The Heretic

by David Drake

  And what is that? Did he detect a trace of worry in Center’s normal utter neutrality of speech?

  Mahaut, he said. I want her. I want the woman. If she’ll have me.

  Center’s silence and Raj’s good-hearted, throaty laughter accompanied him all the way to the distant watering hole.

  7

  It was when they were a day out from the Valley’s edge that Center reported his conclusion: an invasion of Treville would come on the night of the next new three-moon evening.

  The expedition has been a success. I have factored observed numbers, states of preparedness, known Blaskoye tactics, and psychodynamic modeling using our encounter with the clan leadership. They are coming at what they will view as the first opportunity. This will be the first night when all three moons are below the horizon. There are only three nights a year when this is the case in Duisberg’s northern hemisphere.

  So you won’t have to kill me and start all over because I went for the child, Abel thought. It was not a question, but a factual statement. Meeting Rostov face-to-face was essential to your calculations.

  That proved to be correct, Center replied, a little too quickly and coldly for Abel’s liking. Your gamble was effective.

  Don’t fight it, lad, laughed Raj. It’s good to be careful, but if you can’t be careful, it’s even better to be lucky.

  The next day they encountered the first outlying Scout picket. They had been stationed in position for two eight-days, and apart from operational wigwag had no news to report. For the past days, it had slowly dawned on Abel that they were no longer being pursued. Kruso and a half squad had doubled back to check, and this had proved true. Nevertheless, he ordered the outpost corporal to send out long pickets with good mirrors and be watchful.

  Abel and the Scouts rode on.

  Another day, and they were at the Escarpment’s edge. Another half day and they rode into Hestinga. It was midday.

  He’d thought about bringing the girl to her relatives, delivering her in triumph on a washed and festooned dont, but he’d known at the time it was merely a fantasy. Lilleheim was too far out of the way. Who would take the Remlap boy was more problematic, and Abel was on the verge of ordering a man to feed and clothe him, and to give him a bunk among the cadets, when Weldletter stepped up and volunteered to take the boy in at his officer’s billet. The mapmaker had taken a liking to the child, and, using Kruso for a translator, had spoken gently in his dry, exacting voice to the Remlap boy about the time he’d spent with the boy’s father. These talks seemed to calm the boy on nights when he could be heard crying softly in his meager bedroll—an extra saddle blanket they had converted for the purpose—or at least got the crying to stop.

  So it was the girl who proved more of an immediate problem after all.

  She did not want to physically let go of Abel, much less leave him, when they arrived in the headquarters yard.

  “You have to let me go to the commander,” he told her. “It’s my duty. It’s why I was sent. To bring back a report.”

  She looked up at him wordlessly—she had probably spoken no more than five or six words in the six days they had travelled together—and held tightly to his tunic lapel.

  As if to say: “I am the report,” he thought to himself.

  “I cannot bring you inside,” he said. He looked around, but his men were busy taking care of their donts. He’d handed his own over to Maday to feed, water, and groom.

  In the end, he simply let her tag along close at his heels. The others made not to notice her. Even Lieutenant Courtemanche, his father’s adjunct and the keeper of the outer office gate, only glanced down at the girl, said nothing, and saluted Abel.

  “The commander will see you now, Captain,” he said.

  Captain? Abel thought. But he was too tired to correct the man, and too tired to wonder why someone who was normally an extremely meticulous sort when it came to military matters would slip up on his rank.

  He didn’t have to wait long to find out. When he stepped into the office, his father looked up from his table full of scrolls and said, “Sharplett is dead. You are now Captain and Regimental Commander of Scouts.”

  Abel stiffened to attention. Sharplett.

  Stern taskmaster, ass-kicker, and finally a kindly, if grumpy, uncle to me, Abel thought. “Yes, sir,” Abel said. “How, if I may ask?”

  “A raid ten days ago,” said Joab. “An undermanned patrol, near to the Escarpment. All massacred. He seems to have been targeted. They hung him by his own—”

  Joab glanced down, seemed to see the girl for the first time.

  “He was killed,” he finished.

  “You should give it to Colefax,” Abel said. “He has seniority.”

  “No,” Joab said. “You.”

  Then Joab stood up and smiled at the little girl. “You are Loreilei Jacobson, I presume?” he said. He came around the desk and bent down on his haunches so he was eye to eye with the girl. Abel saw a frown flicker across his face when he noticed the slave scar, but it did not displace his smile, which was genuine. “It is Loreilei, isn’t it?”

  The girl stared back at him, blinked twice, then replied, as if she were just discovering the fact for herself in the speaking of it, “My name is Loreilei. Yes.”

  Then Joab looked up and shook his head at Abel. “I made it worse, didn’t I? Trying to get you away from that woman?”

  “I didn’t do it for that,” Abel said.

  “I’m sure you believe you did not,” said Joab. He turned back to Loreilei. “Your mother has missed you. She will be very glad to see you. Very, very glad. Do you want to see her?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Ah!” A cry from the door. Abel turned. A woman in a diaphanous green robe was standing there. The kohl around her eyes was running in black traces down her cheeks. “My baby, my baby,” Adele Jacobson whispered. She hesitated for a moment, as if to be sure she was stepping into a room and not into a beguiling and empty dream, but then she ran the three paces from the door to the girl and took the child in her arms. “Loreilei.”

  The girl said nothing, but after a moment, she too was crying, letting her mother hold her, envelop her.

  “How did you—”

  “Wigwag from the outpost,” said Joab. “I sent for her immediately. We couldn’t have her around here, of course, so she was waiting in the officer’s mess. I imagine Courtemanche sent for her as soon as you came in.”

  “Thank you, Father,” Abel said.

  “Yes,” he said. He watched the mother and daughter reunion a bit longer. “Lilleheim will have some good news. They sorely need it. As will the Jacobsons.”

  The woman, Adele Jacobson—she was Edgar’s sister, and Loreilei was his niece—was already ushering the child toward the door. “You will have a bath, and your room, I told them not to, never to change it . . . oh, it’s just like it was. And we’ll see to your cut.” She looked at the slavery scar. “I think we can, yes, it should be possible with a little powder to . . . oh, never mind, darling, that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but that you’re back. Let’s go to the wagon. Luther is waiting with the wagon. We’ll go home. Let’s go home. Don’t you want to go home?”

  She asked this as if uncertain of the answer, but the girl nodded. Still, she did not smile, but she was crying, which, for Abel, was the best sign he’d seen from her for days that she might, someday, heal from what had been done to her.

  As Adele led her away, the girl, who was Loreilei, but would always be the girl to him, turned around and gave him a parting look.

  It was a look that was near to being frightening, it was so intense. He did not attempt to fathom the feeling behind it. Then she turned back to her mother, and was gone.

  “I have something for you, Captain,” Joab said. Abel turned back to his father.

  There was the unmistakable clang of metal upon metal as Joab drew his saber from its scabbard. “Few are permitted such a weapon. Captains and above.”

  “Father, it�
�s yours. As DMC.”

  “Not at all,” Joab replied. “I inherited this. It is the Dashian blade.”

  “No other captain has one.”

  “In Treville, perhaps. You are now a regimental commander,” Joab said. “Plenty of Guardians and Regulars in Lindron carry them.” Joab set the saber on his desk, considered it for a moment in its bare form. Then he unhitched the belt and scabbard, and, re-sheathing the saber, set saber and scabbard together back on the desk. “I always told myself I’d give this to you after you had done something . . . extraordinary.” He smiled. “And, of course, after you’d made captain, which I have always fully expected.”

  “Father, I don’t know what to say,” Abel replied. “It is completely ineffectual against artillery. We had exactly no battles, no encounters even, where we grew close enough for sword-work with the enemy. The only time I might have used it, it would have been impossible to conceal, and concealment was what I needed at the time.”

  “I know all this well. Believe me, I’ve experienced it myself,” Joab said. “And yet, I expect you to wear it into battle.”

  “Why?”

  “For the family? For glory?” Joab said. “Some matters cannot be put into words. Just take it, Abel.”

  Your father has a point, lad, Raj said. You should do as he wishes.

  “As you command,” Abel replied. He picked up the saber and scabbard and buckled it around his waist.

  “That’s that. Now, to practical matters,” Joab said. Abel took a stealthy glance but noticed no tear in his father’s eye. Sentimentality was certainly not one of his father’s weaknesses. “Do you have an idea when they’re coming?”

  “Yes, I know exactly. Next new three-moon night.”

  “That actually makes a lot of sense,” Joab mused. “You have an estimate of how many?”

  “It will be . . . overwhelming.”

  “And where they will strike?”

  “No, I don’t know that,” said Abel. He sighed. Not a sigh of regret, but of relief.

  Safe, for a moment, to breathe, he thought. To not fear my next breath will see an arrow or bullet in my back.

  He smiled. “But I do have an idea of what their thinking might be,” he said. “We left them with a certain map, you see.”

  * * *

  “My father is a complete bastard,” Abel said as he paced across the room. Mahaut sat up in a chair. They were in her sitting room now, the room outside her bedroom, her long sickroom, in Lilleheim. He’d thought he would sleep one night in Hestinga, collapse in the bed in his father’s house, the same room he’d grown up in, with the pallet becoming a cot, with the chest of clothing and his few toys replaced by a respectable wardrobe he’d bought with two months of saved wages. But that was not to be.

  And then, rested, he would ride to Lilleheim, leave his dont and sleeping roll at the outpost, and go to see her in the village. Instead, he had ridden to Lilleheim shortly after delivering his report. No rest. He’d barely stopped moving.

  His father had ordered him back to the Redlands immediately to take over Sharplett’s command from the outpost at the Upper Cliffs. He was to leave in the morning. He’d managed to secure permission to wait until after breakfast, so he’d bought at least that much time.

  He’d tormented himself with fantasies that Edgar Jacobson might be there, having returned from his urgent business at Garangipore, but that was not the case.

  She was alone, but for a servant, who absented herself to her quarters quickly enough after he arrived. They sat drinking wine in the cool night air, the room lit by three evenly spaced oil lamps, all profligately lit. The Jacobsons really did have more wealth than they knew what to do with to burn oil like that. He supposed Mahaut was getting used to it, too. She allowed the servant to pour their wine before leaving, but sat upright upon her lounging couch rather than recline in a semi-swoon position, as would most women with her position and means. Abel sat in a leatherback chair that felt solid, comfortable, and far more expensive than anything he could afford.

  The change in her was enormous. No longer was she taking faltering steps, but hopping around with plenty of energy, only hampered by the slight limp in her right leg. She wore a saffron linen gown with a red sash drawing it closed. And she’d even applied kohl liner to her eyes and a bit of rouge to her cheeks.

  “Did you do that before?” he asked her, he said, pointing to his own eye to illustrate. “I don’t remember.”

  “You barely noticed my existence before I was shot,” she told him. “I doubt you remember a thing about me.”

  “Not true,” he said. “I did at least know Xander had a sister.”

  “I saw you,” she said. “When you were in from scouting. That russet tunic. Xander made fun of it, told me how black was better, but I liked it then. And I like it now.”

  “It hides bloodstains well, they say.”

  “No doubt,” she said. “You were saying your father was a bastard?”

  “He didn’t want me to come here. He doesn’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Doesn’t think what is a good idea?”

  “You are married.”

  “We are friends.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I want to be your lover.”

  Now she was taken aback. She flushed, and even in the wan light and even with the rouge, he could see it.

  “I am a ruin,” she finally said. “You of all people know that.”

  He took a strong swallow of wine. There, I’ve told her, he thought. I’ve brooded for two three-moons over how I would say it, and now it’s out, done.

  “An interesting ruin,” he answered her. “You can’t pretend I don’t know. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it.”

  “You’ve healed what could be healed,” she said. Mahaut nodded, sipped from her own cup. The lamplight flickered across her face, and it slowly dawned on him.

  She’s prettier than I remembered. Much.

  “What have you done to yourself, anyway?” he asked her. “You’ve . . . I’m so tired . . . it isn’t just the makeup, is it?”

  “The hair,” she said. “I don’t have it pulled it back in braids. And the robe. You remember me from when I was wearing Xander’s castoffs, and then from the Lilleheim knoll. I long ago made a truce with fine linen, Abel. Let’s just say smooth linen and I became allies, if not friends. And do you like this bracelet? The gems are northern black onyx.”

  She held up her arm, and the robe sleeve fell back to reveal a glittering train of jewels. Her fingernails were painted a subtle red.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to act like they tell you to act,” he said. “I won’t believe it.”

  “The problem, my dear Captain, is not with me, but with your imagination. We didn’t run into one another for a year or more once I moved to Lilleheim. You never saw me this way, that’s all,” she said softly, but with a laugh in her voice. Then she pouted a beautiful, bowed pout. Lip rouge. Just a trace, but enough. “You don’t like it?”

  He didn’t answer, but downed the rest of his wine and moved to pour himself more. She rose, took the pitcher, and filled his cup.

  The slightest trace of hyacinth perfume.

  “I liked you as a tomboy,” he said. “I like you now.”

  And then she bent to kiss him. It was what he’d thought of, brooded on, fallen asleep imagining on cold desert nights. Perfect.

  He stood and picked her up. She was still so slight, so thin from her long recovery. He took her to the bedroom.

  “I have to leave at dawn,” he said. “I have to be on the Escarpment by noon.”

  “Were you thinking of sleeping?”

  “No.”

  He laid her on the bed, untied the red sash, pulled back her robe.

  Somehow he had remembered her breasts as being on the small side, but they were not, they were ample. The scar stretched from above her hip, down her right groin and onto the leg. A portion of muscle had been destroyed beneath it and would never grow back, leaving a s
light depression. This was not beautiful. Neither did it matter.

  He was throwing off his tunic, unwrapping his filthy leg wraps, all at once, all in a frenzy, and she began to laugh.

  “What?”

  “Straight in from the field,” she said. “You probably have the blood of your enemies on you.”

  “Some, yes,” he said.

  “His blood?” The question was sudden, as if it were something she’d wanted desperately to ask and had only now worked up the courage.

  He stepped back. “No,” he said. “I didn’t manage to draw any of that.”

  Mahaut pulled him toward her, guided his hand to the scar tissue.

  Then suddenly she twisted an arm up and under his chin.

  An obsidian dagger was in her hand. Its tip was biting into his neck deeply enough to raise a welt of blood.

  She knows her anatomy, he thought. She’s got it just over the artery.

  “Don’t show pity,” she said.

  “All right,” he said. “I won’t.”

  He drew back, and with the same motion caught her arm, twisted. With a cry of pain, she released the dagger. He took it up and plunged it into the wood of the bed’s headboard, where it stuck fast.

  In almost the same motion, he put a hand on her breastbone and leaned hard onto her, one knee on her bed, one foot on the ground. He stared down at her naked form, said nothing.

  She pulled him closer, kissed him again. Her tongue snaked out and forced its way into his mouth. Now he pulled down his breeches enough, but he was still half undressed. It was enough. And he could no longer wait.

  “No pity,” he said. “And no mercy.” He touched the scar. Then he moved his fingers lower till she gasped.

  Suddenly she cried out. She twisted away from his touch, raised a hand and slapped him across the face. She put her fingernails into it, enough to scratch, to draw blood. He snatched her free wrist, held it tight—under the pressure of his grip, the black onyx bracelet dug into her flesh until she gasped. He pushed the hand down, down to the other hand, wrist over wrist, and held her to the bed. She ceased to struggle but lay rigid, the muscles of her body tensed.