by Susan Dexter
There was nothing that could make his leaving likewise bearable, save that he did it for her sake. He must hold tight to that.
Druyan awoke on a narrow cot in a curtained-off corner of the post riders’ hall, with wind-snarled hair and windchapped skin, but otherwise undamaged by her wild night. She limped groaning to the window and saw by the sunfall light that she had slept the whole of the day away.
By the untidiness of the rest of the dormitory, at least some of the Riders had returned, but none was in the hall at that moment. Someone had left bread and cheese and sweet cider and dry clothing for her. Druyan’s eyes misted as she unfolded the garments—doubtless they could have found a woman’s gown for her, but instead the Riders had gifted her with a set of sea blue and gray, their own colors for one of their own. She dressed and ate the food, still alone in the quiet room, and then set off in search of her uncle.
Once she left the Riders’ territory, there were folk aplenty about. Druyan could not fail to hear the whispers and note the pointed Fingers, but she was not minded to duck her head and avoid them as if words and looks had been blows. Nor did she hide her hands in her clothing, as she had used to do when at Keverne. She had forgotten to draw on her glove, but it no longer mattered—she had been too long learning a new grip for every action. Now her eight fingers did as she asked of them, and she should hardly be shamed by that, whatever the size or number of the fingers. She continued serenely on her quest.
Duke Brioc was in his chapel, keeping watch beside the bloodless body of his eldest son. Druyan had gone prepared to beg her uncle for some sense in the matter of Esdragon’s defense, now that he had seen with his own eyes what even a small mounted force might do—but at the sight of his ravaged face her tongue clove to her mouth. The only speech she could shape, she had to couch in words of comfort, which she was not certain Brioc even heard. Dimas was dead, his dream of a fleet probably dead with him. If the storm had swept the raiders away, the Eral had swept a part of Esdragon away first, Druyan thought sadly. The next morning, and the next, would see changes undreamed of a bare month past.
She tarried awhile after she had paid her respects to her uncle, with distant silent members of her family all about her—then the chamber began to seem airless, and when she had to fight down a desire to whistle herself a cool breeze, Druyan knew ’twas time she took her leave.
In the stables she found Valadan most honorably housed in a loose box deep bedded with golden straw. He had topaz lights in his eyes, as well, as he nickered a greeting to her. Druyan pressed her face into his still-snarled mane, felt the little wind of his breath riffle her hair behind her left ear.
A greater wind and a jangle of harness announced two men and two horses entering the stable through the tall outer door. Druyan raised her head, and the pair of weary post riders whooped with delight at discovering their lady safe before them.
Druyan asked urgently for tidings of the coast, and heard a high-hearted account of storm ravages tempered by Rider-carried warnings, so that for all the damage wrought there had been but slight loss of human or livestock life. The Riders conducted Druyan—they would not hear of her leaving—back to their hall, where their fellows were now assembled, eating a hearty supper and wondering where their luck charm had got herself to, after sleeping all the day away.
Druyan thanked them for their courtesies and their tender care of her, and found she had no recourse but to let her comrades feast her and drink toasts to her and to the Warhorse Valadan with their strong cider and foamy ale, while the Battle of the Horse Fair was fought all over again with words and boasts and witty embellishments. One after another, men came forward for a personal word, a confidence or reminiscence for her ears.
As the night wore on, Druyan spared a thought—as perchance no Rider did—for Esdragon’s duke, mourning his favorite son in his cold stone chapel. The man she had left there had not been a leader. Whether he could become one again was difficult to judge. Even with the Eral threat diminished, there would be hard times ahead for Esdragon—for all of them. The room exploded with laughter, and Druyan smiled sadly. None of them was thinking about that now. She wished they might never need to.
She found herself as uneasy among the Riders as she had been among her relations in the chapel. The Riders were warm where her family was cold, but home was still where she longed to be. She should go there, as soon as she could without giving offense. Druyan slipped outside during a heated debate as to the respective merits of two stallions’ bloodlines, fairly sure her opinion would not be sought, since neither horse was Valadan. The torchlit dark was a surprise—sleeping by day rather than by night had disoriented her. She expected to see blue sky, and was confronted and confounded by a firmament black as Valadan’s hide, spangled with stars.
The door released a burst of merriment as if opened and closed. “They all look to you,” Robart said.
Druyan turned to face her brother, something in his tone making her uncomfortable.
“They would ride through the Gates of the Dead, if you went before them,” Robart went on bitterly, gesturing to indicate the garb the Riders had gifted her with. All she lacked was the captain’s badge.
Still she said nothing, though her heart was fluttering uneasily in her breast. He was so angry, more than he showed. She could see him holding it in, like a savage horse. She had always quivered before disapproval—his, her father’s—it was hard not to do that again. It was hard not to feel guilty, even though she’d done no wrong. Her hand began to ache, as if it was a deserved punishment.
“Druyan, it isn’t right. I’m their captain, but it’s you they follow.”
The unfair—yet true—accusation stung like a whiplash. “It’s not as if I set out to take them from you, Robart! We were all of us only doing what we had to.”
“All the same, every man of them’s yours, if you only say the word,” he snapped. “Waggle one tinger.”
“The Riders have more value than simple messengers now, Robatt,” Druyan told him. “Their swords and their horses and their courage saved Esdragon from the raiders. Even Brioc will have to recognize their worth, and we’ll never be left so helpless again. You can make that happen. You, not me.”
“I can if my command’s truly mine.” He had the grace to pause. “I’m asking you to give it back to me, sister. I don’t say you haven’t earned it, but you don’t need it—you’ve got Yvain, that ought to be enough for any woman.”
Druyan gazed into the dark sky. Soon, beyond the thick walls, it would be lightening with dawn, but she couldn’t see it yet. She remembered, with a pang all the years between could not mute, the day Robart had demanded that she give up Valadan, the horse a mere girl had no right to. How unfair! she thought, seeing her life come full circle, with nothing gained at all. She felt a tiny flutter, low in her chest, as if something there longed to leap free.
How dared he ask it of her? If he wanted his command, let him take it—if he could! Robart was their Chief-captain, true, but the Riders were what she had made of them, in a long summer of blood and smoke and hard riding. They all knew it, had pledged it with every mug drained in their hall that night. Must she give them up, solely because Robart asked, because he expected her to do what a proper woman would do? Fine to lift a sword when there was no one else to do it, but once the tight was done, go obediently home and become a helpless dependent once more? Could she do that now? She had other choices. Beneath her heart, something seemed to stir. It felt familiar, yet strange. How long had she been feeling it, without noticing?
She had Yvain. She supposed she still did. He would probably learn to forget his fear of her, if she never showed him that pan of herself again, if she wore a careful mask all the rest of her days. It would not be so hard to do, Druyan decided. Life with Yvain would hardly be unpleasant. He was a better catch than she could ever have hoped to make, wealthy and titled and only as vain of his looks as any proud stallion. The attitude was not unbecoming in a horse . . . she could doubtles
s bear it in a man. Arrogance wasn’t cruelty, or anything else to make her rightly wary of the man. She could have Yvain.
Only . . . she had worked so long to be no man’s possession, to be free. Every farm chore came back to her, all those endless fields of barley. And Yvain feared her as much as he loved her. There would always be that between them, a secret dagger in her heart. Could she bear that?
“It will take Yvain time to square things, of course.” Robart intuited whom her thoughts rested upon. “Faster if you helped him, Druyan. Admit Travic’s dead, and let Yvain ask Brioc for you.”
Again that tiny fluttering under her heart, a secret even Druyan hardly dared to guess at. Wannth flooded into her face, but Robart could not see. Faint and far off in her own memory, two wolves ran together beneath the moon. In the real world, the sunward sky was paling to dove gray, even above Keverne’s walls. It was nearly dawn.
“Yvain’s too late, Robart,” Druyan said. “It has been a year and a day, and all the crop tithes were paid, every last one of them.” She looked steadfastly at the dawn. “As of now, Splaine Garth belongs to me. And I am going home.”
Valadan’s swift hooves carried her to her own gate while the dew still lay upon the grass. All the jewels Yvain might have lavished upon his wife could not have looked half so fair, Druyan thought, as her own fields clothed in sun and water. The dazzle almost masked the storm damage. The flattened grass had already rebounded to hide the fallen branches.
“I wonder if the kitchen roof held?”
Valadan flicked an ear back at her question.
They reached the gate, and Druyan was just about to dismount when it was opened before her. Valadan paced sedately through, with a snort of greeting for Kellis.
“You can go into the orchard,” Druyan said, sliding to the ground and giving the stallion’s shoulder a pat as she pulled the saddle from his back and slipped the copper bit gently out of his mouth. “There are windfalls?” She looked at Kellis for confirmation, got a nod. “Silly question. Don’t eat yourself into a bellyache.” Valadan snorted again, trotted two strides, and sprang over the orchard fence between two tilted posts. Druyan spun back to Kellis with a bright smile stretching her face, uncaring for the moment of wobbly posts poorly set. “Splaine Garth is mine! A year—”
The smile slipped from her lips as she caught sight of the bundle at Kellis’ feet, the closed-down expression on his crooked-nosed face. She knew what it meant, by the chill about her heart.
“A year and a day, Lady,” he completed the phrase for her, formally. “My debt to you is paid, as we agreed.” He didn’t add that he was leaving—that was self-evident.
“I promised you a horse,” Druyan said dully, in that shocked moment. It was all she could think of to say. She had never expected this . . . it was just the same as the moment when she knew her hand was cut half away—she knew that it had happened, and she knew that it hurt, but she could not feel it. Not till much later . . . “There’s not a decent saddle horse left at Splaine Garth.”
Kellis shrugged. “I’m no horseman, you’d be doing me no favor with such a gift. If I grow weary of my own two legs, a wolf can travel as swiftly as any horse.”
As a wolf undeniably had, from one end of Esdragon to the other, keeping pace with the fleetest steeds in the duchy. “You’re going now?” Druyan asked him, aghast. She flailed about for something, anything, to stop him. “What about the barley harvest?”
He had the grace to flush with the shame of deserting her, but Kellis stood his ground. “Ask me first if there’ll be a harvest, Lady. Did you notice the fields as you rode by?”
“Yes,” she said faintly, hardly able to keep her thoughts on grainfields. She remembered sun-gems, and that she had scarcely looked past their pretty dazzle. She had wanted, single-heartedly, only to reach home. To find Kellis. She’d never dreamed she’d ride into this, more dismaying than any storm damage. She’d never thought he’d be leaving. . .
“Harvest’s a fortnight off, at the best,” Kellis reported dutifully. “And lucky to get it, the grain’s nowhere near as flattened as it could have been. Your men might have had to reap it on hands and knees.”
“My men?” she asked stupidly. Nothing made sense to her, nothing. He might have been speaking in the Eral tongue, in place of hers.
“There’s two of them back,” Kellis explained, patient. “Wat and Drustan. They seem to think there’s others headed home, too, maybe held up by the storm.” He shrugged. “Either one will likely cut twice the barley I did, and not take sick from the tools after. You won’t miss me, Lady.” He tried to smile.
Her heart misgave her, seeing that, but all that crossed Druyan’s lips by way of protest was his name, the pair of syllables sounding more angry than entreating. “Kellis—”
He set his mouth. “You promised me my freedom, with time to travel before winter. Didn’t you?”
Panic welled up, black as a squall line, but Druyan refused to let him see it. “You still think Kovelir is your answer?” She was amazed she could speak—something was lodged in her throat, thick as wet wool.
“I don’t know, Lady,” he answered gravely, wearing that open, devastatingly honest look. “I wouldn’t expect any vision I summoned to reach that far. I will have to go there myself to find out—and best I do it soon. It’s been a long journey, full of delays.”
She stared at the pack as he shouldered it. He couldn’t have told Enna he was going—she’d have loaded him down like a market-bound wagon, just for joy at seeing the back of him. All he seemed to be carrying was a blanket and an impossibly small bundle of provisions. Oh, why did I think the only choice to be made was mine?
Kellis inclined his head to her. “Be well, Lady.”
Never again in this life, she wished to say, but the rising blackness had closed her throat tight. She looked mutely into his eyes, watched the colors going from silver to gold and back again as the wind shifted the dapples of sunlight on his face. Wolf’s eyes. Pleading with her to do the sensible thing now and bid him the gods’ speed on his journey, to thank him for a year of good service if she must, but most of all just to let him go. . .
He had his hand on the gate latch, and then he was closing it carefully behind him. He’d been born into an unfenced world, but Kellis knew to shut gates behind him now—she’d come that close to making a farmer out of him.
His boots made no sound in the lane—the storm-torn leaves plastering the dirt were rain—damp, wonderfully silent footing. Or she’d gone deaf from grief, Druyan thought. The breeze roved through the orchard, and a last few raindrops pattered down, like tears.
Don’t look back. No, for his very soul, and for her sake, just as surely, Set one foot ahead of the other—easy, he’d been doing it much of his life. You can be a long way gone by sunfall, and no need to stop then, the moon’s only starting to slide off of full. The trick to walking is, every step throws you off balance, so you have to take the next step to get it back, and then the next, on and on. Simplest thing there could ever be. You’re doing fine, fool, considering you should have done this hours earlier, when you could just have gone, with no one ever the wiser. . .
His ears caught a soft woof Kellis lifted his gaze, despite intentions not to. Rook slipped nimbly under the fence and marched stiff-legged into the lane. Meddy came bouncing behind her, tail waving high, and slid to a startled halt when she saw Kellis.
“Step aside, little sister,” Kellis entreated.
Rook’s brown gaze never wavered.
Do sheepdogs understand when part of their flock is sold or traded? Kellis wondered. Do they just keep stealing them back? He took a step and saw Rook’s hackles rise, till all the hair on her back stood tall, neck to tail. Meddy whimpered.
Kellis drew in a deep breath. “We’ll see who can stare longest, little sister. I am not straying now.”
A year and a day. She had her freehold, and Kellis had his freedom. He was right about that. And I have spent my We doing what others said
was right, Druyan thought as her tears joined the raindrops. Bending to every least pressure, pliant as a grainstalk in the breeze . . . I ’ve been what I was told to be, done what I was told I must do. Given up whatsoever I was asked to, no matter how it cost. Letting him go isn’t half so hard as sending him away would be. He’s doing what he wants to do, and I am letting him. Doing what anyone would agree is right, certainly.
Warm breath on her cheek. Druyan flung her arms about Valadan’s neck and pressed as close to the horse as the fence between them would allow. The contact helped, but still she could feel her heart tearing like rotten cloth, on and endlessly on, as one thread after another parted. She could see, dim and far off, a pair of wolves mnning beneath the moon and the windswept sky—and then there was only a single creature, howling without the least hope of an answering voice. Only the wind, the empty wind, sobbing.
Obedience cost too dear. She could not bend again. Instead, Druyan knew, she would break, shatter, and there would be no one there to gather the pieces save Yvain—who would cheerfully put them back together into another sort of woman entirely, a woman who wore her face over a yawning emptiness where her heart used to be. A woman who would never weep, who might summon a smile when it was seemly, but would never know laughter. Who would certainly never whistle the wind.
Druyan set her boot onto the second fence rail. It stayed firm—the posts the rail ran between were neither of them among those Kellis had replaced. Valadan sidled close, and she climbed to the top of the fence, then slipped down onto his bare back.
He has not gone far. The eye turned back to her sparkled as if full of fireflies.
No. But being Kellis, and stubborn, he might not stop walking at her bidding. Knowing himself unable to outwalk Valadan, he would be forced to halt sooner or later, and she’d have the advantage of easy breath for conversation till he did. Druyan sent the stallion trotting along the fence line, and he turned and sailed over it at the first convenient spot, arching up like a trout after a fly.
