Sun Wolf was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he did not and never would understand women.
Starhawk...
He had always thought of Starhawk as different from other women, even from the other warrior women of his own troop. It was only now, when he was surrounded by women, that elements of her personality fell into place for him, and he saw her as both less and more enigmatic, a woman who had rejected the subjugation these women had been trained in—had rejected it long before her path had crossed his own.
Briefly the memory of their first meeting flitted through his mind; how cold the spring sunlight had been in the garden of the Convent of St. Cherybi, and how strong the smell of the new-turned earth. He saw her again as the tall girl she had been, ascetic, distant, and cold as marble in the dark robes of a nun. He’d forgotten why he’d even been at the Convent—probably extorting provisions from the Mother there—but he remembered that moment when their eyes met and he knew that this woman was a warrior in her heart.
He had never believed that he would miss her as much as he did. Amber Eyes was sweet-natured and supremely beddable, exactly the kind of girl he liked—or had liked, anyway—but it was Starhawk for whom he reached, as a man in danger would reach for his sword. He had never quite gotten over not having her there at his side.
His front runners were cresting the final hill above the copse of woods where they had gathered that morning. They’d covered about two and a half miles—not bad for a first run, for women untrained to it, he thought as he slacked his pace and let himself fall back through the pack once more. He yelled a curse at Gilden, who was flagging, her face the bright fuchsia hue that extremely fair women turned in exhaustion; she staggered into a futile but gratifying attempt at a burst of speed.
He cursed them as he would have cursed his men, calling them cowards, babies, sluts. As he fell back farther in the group, to run beside the grimly stumbling Sister Quincis, he yelled, “I’ve seen Trinitarian heretics run faster than that!”
They broke over the crest of the hill in a spilling wave. Below them, the land lay barren and grayish brown under the sluicing rain, the long snake of silver water in the bottom of the vale reflecting the colorless sky. The brush around it was black, dead with winter. Sun Wolf slowed his pace still further to round in the last of the stragglers. Denga Rey, her hard brown muscles shining with moisture, had already reached the mere below.
He yelled after them, “Run, you lazy bitches!” and collected a look from Drypettis that could have been bottled and sold to remove the veneer from furniture. He was almost standing still as Wilarne M’Tree staggered past. He hurried her on her way with a swat on her little round rump.
By the time he reached the growing group around the water, two or three of them had recovered enough breath to begin throwing up.
“You do that in the woods under the leaves where it’s not going to be seen by an enemy scout!” he roared at the green-faced and retching Eo. “You want Altiokis’ spies to follow the stink of you to your hideout? I mean it!” he added as she started to double over again and, seizing her by the back of the neck, he shoved her toward the trees. Others had begun to stumble in that direction already.
To Sheera, for whom it was too late, he ordered, “Clean that up.”
Without a word, for she was far past speech, she gathered up leaves to obey him.
“And the rest of you start walking,” he ordered curtly. “You’ll get chilled if you stand around, and I’m not going to have the lot of you sniveling and fainting on me at practice tonight.”
“Very nice!” A voice, deep and harsh as a crow’s, laughed from the sheltering darkness of the nearby woods. “I had been told that any excuse for a red-blooded male in Mandrigyn had been sent to the mines. I am pleased to see that the reports were exaggerated.”
Sun Wolf swung around. White-faced, Sheera got to her feet. A tall bay horse stepped from the tangled brambles of the thickets. The woman on its back sat sidesaddle, her body straight as a spear. In the shadows of a green oilskin hood, hazel-gray eyes flashed mockingly. The cloak covered most of her, except for the hem of her gown and her gloves, and these were of such barbaric richness as to leave little doubt about her station. The bay’s bridle had cheekpieces of brass, worked into the shape of flowers.
“Marigolds,” Sheera said quietly. “The emblem of the Thanes of Wrinshardin.”
The old woman turned her head with a slow, ironic smile. “Yes,” she purred. “Yes, I am Lady Wrinshardin. The Thane’s mother, not his wife. And you are, unless I am much mistaken, the legendary Sheera Galernas, in whose honor my son once wrote such puerile verse.”
Sheera’s chin came up. The thick curls of her black hair plastered wetly to her cheeks, and the rain gleamed on her bare arms and shoulders, which had already turned bright red with cold and gooseflesh. “If your son is the present Thane of Wrinshardin who courted me when I was fifteen,” she replied coolly, “I am pleased to see that your taste in poetry so closely parallels my own.”
There was a momentary silence. Then that mocking smile widened, and Lady Wrinshardin said, “Well. At the time, I presumed that, like most town-bred hussies, you had turned down the chance of wedding decent blood out of considerations of money and the boredom of country life. I am pleased to see that you acted rather from good sense.” The sharp, faded old eyes casually raked the scene before her, taking in the exhausted, bedraggled woman and the big man with the chain about his neck who had not the eyes of a slave.
“I don’t suppose I have ever seen a man chase this many women since my husband died,” she remarked in her harsh, drawling voice. “And even he never did so fifty at a time. Is running about the hills naked in the wintertime a new fad in the town, or could it be that there is a purpose behind this?”
“Not anything anyone’s likely to hear of.”
Lady Wrinshardin turned her head slowly at the sound of Denga Rey’s voice, as if she had just noticed the big gladiator. The wrinkled eyelids drooped. “Do I detect a threat in that rather cryptic utterance?” she inquired disinterestedly.
The horse flung up its head with a squeal of fear. From the wet underbrush of the woods, a ring of women materialized behind and around Lady Wrinshardin, some of them a little pale, but all as grim-faced as bandits.
One eyebrow slowly ascended that corrugated forehead. “Goodness,” she murmured to herself. Then, with a quick tweak of the reins, she wheeled the horse and spurred through the line, heading for open country.
“Stop her!” Sheera barked.
Hands grabbed at the bridle, the horse rearing and lashing out at the women who crowded so close around it. Denga Rey caught the bit, dragging its head down while the animal twisted violently to get free. “Enough!” Lady Wrinshardin said sharply, keeping her seat on that pirouetting saddle with the aplomb of a grandmother riding her rocking chair. “You’ve proved your courage; there’s no need to be redundant about it to the point of damaging his mouth.”
The dark woman released her pressure on the bit, but did not step back. Tisa clung grimly to the rein on the other side, her hair in her eyes, looking absurdly young. The haughty noblewoman gazed about at the women hemming her in, and the mocking, amused smile returned to her wrinkled face.
Abruptly she extended her hand to Tisa. “You may help me down, child.”
Startled, the girl held out her clasped hands to make a step. With a single lithe movement, Lady Wrinshardin stepped to the ground and crossed the wet grass to where Sheera stood. She had the haughty and self-centered carriage of a queen.
“Your troops are well trained,” she remarked.
Sheera shook her head. “Only well disciplined.” Alone of the women, she did not appear to be awed by that elegant matriarch. Even Drypettis, whose family—as she hastened to remind anyone who was interested—was among the highest in the city, was cowed. After a moment, Sheera added, “In time, they will be well trained.”
The eyes flickered to Sun Wolf speculatively, then back to
Sheera again. “You were wise not to wed my son,” the lady said, putting back the oilskin hood to reveal a tight-coiled braid of white hair pinned close about her head. “He has no more courage than a cur dog that suffers itself to be put out into the rain and fed only the guts of its kills. He is like his father, who also feared Altiokis. Have you met Altiokis?”
Sheera looked startled at the question, as if meeting the Wizard King were tantamount to meeting one’s remoter ancestors, Sun Wolf thought—or meeting the Mother or the Triple God in person.
The lady’s thin lip curled. “He is vulgar,” she pronounced. “How such a creature could have lived these many years...” Under their creased lids, her eyes flickered, studying Sheera, and her square-cut lips settled into their fanning wrinkles with a look of determination. Sun Wolf was uncomfortably reminded of an old aunt of his who had kept all of his family and most of the tribe in terror for years.
“Come with me to the top of the hill, child,” she said at last. The two women moved off through the wet, winter-faded grass; then Lady Wrinshardin paused and glanced back, as if as an afterthought, at the Wolf. “You come, too.”
He hesitated, then obeyed her—as everyone else must also obey her—following them up the steep slope where granite outcrops thrust through the shallow soil, as if the body of the earth were impatient with that thin and unproductive garment. Greenish-brown hills circled them under the blowing dun rags of the hoary sky.
“My great-grandfather swore allegiance to the Thane of Grimscarp a hundred and fifty years ago,” Lady Wrinshardin said after they had climbed in silence for a few moments, with the tor still rising above their heads, vast as an ocean swell. “Few remember him or the empire that he set out to build, he and his son. In those days, many rulers had court wizards. The greater kings, the lords of the Middle Kingdoms in the southwest, could afford the best. But those who served the Thanes were either the young, unfledged ones, out to make their reputations, or the ones who hadn’t the ability to be or do anything more. They were all of a piece, pretty much—my great-grandfather had one, the Thanes of Schlaeg had one...and the Thanes of Grimscarp, the most powerful of the Tchard Mountain Thanes, had one.
“His name was Altiokis.
“This much I had from my grandfather, who was a boy when the Thane of Grimscarp started setting up an alliance of all the Thanes of all the great old clans, the ancient warrior clans here, in the Tchard Mountains, and down along the Bight Coast, where they hadn’t been pushed out by a bunch of jumped-up tradesmen and weavers who lived behind city walls and never put their noses out of doors to tell which way the wind was blowing. This was in the days before the nuuwa began to multiply until they roamed the mountains and these hills like foul wolves, the days before those human-dog-things, those abominations they call ugies, had ever been heard of. The old Thane of Grim wanted to get up a coalition of the Thanes and the merchant cities and he was succeeding quite nicely, they say.
“But something happened to him. Grandfather couldn’t remember clearly whether it was sudden or gradual; he said the old Thane’s grip seemed to slip. A week, two weeks, then he was dead. His son, a boy of eighteen, ruled the new coalition, with Altiokis at his side. None of us was ever quite sure when the boy dropped out of sight.”
The steepness of the hill had slowed their steps, the old woman and the young one leaning into the slope. Glancing back, the Wolf could see the other women moving about down below, their flesh bright against the smoky colors of the ground. Tisa and her aunt, Gilden’s sister, the big, bovine Eo, were holding the horse still and stroking its soft nose; Drypettis, as usual, was sitting apart from the others, talking to herself; her eyes were jealously following Sheera.
The freshening wind cracked in Lady Wrinshardin’s cloak like an unfurling sail. The wry old voice went on. “Altiokis’ first conquest was Kilpithie—a fair-sized city on the other side of the mountains; they wove quite good woolen cloth there. He used its inhabitants as slaves to build his new Citadel at the top of the Grim Scarp, where he’d raised that stone hut of his in a single night. They said that he used to go up there to meditate. From there he raised his armies and founded his empire.”
“With the armies of the clans?” Sheera asked quietly.
They had paused for breath, but the climb had warmed her again, and she stood without shivering, the wind that combed the hillcrests tangling her black hair across her face.
“At first,” the lady said grimly. “Once he began to mine gold from the Scarp and from the mountains all about it, he could afford to hire mercenaries. They always said there was another evil that marched in his armies, too—but maybe it was only the sort of men he hired. He pollutes all he touches. Strange beasts multiply in his realm. You know ugies? Ape-things—the Tchard Mountains are stiff with them, though they were never seen before. Nuuwa—”
“Altiokis surely didn’t invent nuuwa,” Sun Wolf put in. He shook his wet hair back, freeing it of the chain around his neck; he was aware of the old lady’s sharp eyes gauging him, judging the relationship between the chain and Sheera against the sureness and command in his voice. He went on. “You get nuuwa turning up in records of one place or another for as far back as the records go. They’re mentioned in some of the oldest songs of my tribe, ten, twelve, fifteen generations ago. Every now and again, you’ll just get them, blundering around the wilderness, killing and eating anything they see.”
The fine-chiseled nostrils flared a little, as if Lady Wrinshardin were unwilling to concede any evil for which Altiokis were not responsible. “They say that nuuwa march in his armies.”
“I’ve heard that,” the Wolf said. “But if you know anything about nuuwa, you’d know it’s impossible. For one thing, there just aren’t that many of them. They—they simply appear, but their appearances are few and far between.”
“Not so few these days,” she said stubbornly. She pulled her oilskin cloak more tightly about her narrow shoulders and continued up the hill.
“And anyway,” the Wolf argued as he and Sheera fell into step with her once more, “they’re too stupid to march anywhere. Hell, all they are is walking mouths...”
“But it cannot be denied,” the lady continued, “that Altiokis spreads evil to what he touches. The Thanes served him once out of regard for their vows to the Thane of Grim. Now they do so from fear of him and his armies.”
They stopped at the crest of the hill, while the winds stormed over and around them like the sea between narrow rocks. Below them on the other side, the Thanelands rolled on, silent and haunting in their winter drabness, possessed of a weird spare beauty of their own. The dead heather and grass of the hills of slate-gray granite gleamed silver with wetness. Twisted trees clung to the skyline like bent crones and shook flailing fists at the heavens.
Far off, in a cuplike depression between three hills, a single, half-ruined tower pointed like a broken bone end toward the windy void above.
“What you’re doing is foolish, you know,” the lady said.
Sheera’s nostrils flared, but she said nothing. Quite a tribute, the Wolf thought, to the old broad’s strength of character, if she can keep Sheera quiet.
“I suppose there’s some scheme afoot in the city to free Tarrin and the menfolk and retake Mandrigyn. As if, having beaten them once, Altiokis could not do so again.”
“He beat them because they were divided by factions,” Sheera said quietly. “I know. My husband was the first man in Derroug Dru’s party and had more to do than most with Altiokis’ victory. Many of the men who supported Altiokis’ cause—the poorer ones, whose favor he did not need to buy—were sent to the mines as well. And my girls, the whores who go up to the mines, tell me that there is another army of miners, from all corners of Altiokis’ realm, who would fight for the man who freed them.”
“Your sweetheart Tarrin.”
Color blazed into Sheera’s face, her red lips opening to retort.
“Oh, yes, my girl, we’ve heard all about your Golden Prince, for a
ll that his family were parvenus who made their money off a salt monopoly and from draining the swamps to build East Shore. Better blood than your precious husband’s, anyway.” She sniffed.
“My husband—” Sheera began hotly.
Lady Wrinshardin cut her off. “You really think this pack of white-limbed schoolgirls can be taught to overcome Altiokis’ mercenaries?”
Sheera’s lips tightened, but she said nothing.
The lady glanced down into the vale behind them, as haughty as if she reviewed her own troops. Her hands, in their crimson and gold gloves, stroked the oilskin of her cloak.
“I’ll tell you this, then. If you succeed in what you aim, don’t return to the city. The tunnels of the mine connect with the Citadel itself. Cut off the serpent’s head—don’t go back to hide behind her walls and wait for it to get you.”
Eyes widening with alarm, Sheera whispered, “That’s impossible. Those ways are guarded by magic. Altiokis himself is deathless...”
“He wasn’t birthless,” Lady Wrinshardin snapped. “He was born a man and, like a man, he can be killed. Attack the Citadel, and you’ll have the Thanes on your side—myself, Drathweard of Schlaeg, and all the little fry as well. Wait for him to put the city under siege again, and he’ll fall on you with everything he’s got.”
She jerked her chin toward the rolling valleys and distant tower. “That’s the old Cairn Tower. The Thanes of Cairn ran afoul of the fifteenth Thane of Wrinshardin, God rest what passed in them for souls. The place hasn’t been inhabited since. It is a good run,” she added with a malicious glitter in her eyes, “from here.”
And turning, she moved back down the hill, straight and arrogant as a queen of these wild lands. Sheera and Sun Wolf marked the location of the tower with their eyes and followed her down.
While she was mounting her horse beside the mere again, the lady said, as if as an afterthought, “They used to say that weapons were stored there. I doubt you’ll find any of the old caches, but you are welcome to whatever you come across.”
The Ladies of Mandrigyn Page 11
