While he waited, he went back inside the barbican and examined the gates. Because the gates were unlocked, the ram hadn’t done much damage, with the brunt of the attack borne by the supporting timbers they’d wedged behind them.
After a short wait, the portcullis cranked open, and the bolts on the inner castle gate released. Lyram staggered through into the courtyard and ordered the barbican cleared of corpses, the stones scrubbed, and the gates sealed and relocked as soon as the mechanism was functional.
The courtyard remained relatively clear of smoke. He stood, looking up at a brilliant blue sky. It was a beautiful spring day. The sky above him whirled in a slow, stately dance, and the stones of the courtyard pressed cool against his cheek.
When did I lie down?
In the distance, running feet hammered across the courtyard cobbles.
Ellaeva’s face appeared suddenly, her lips moving, but no words came forth. He smiled at her, or tried, and fumbled for her hand. Her alabaster skin seemed paler than usual, her eyes stark and wide in her face.
Darkness claimed him.
Ellaeva paused at the stairwell exit to the guest quarters and glanced out the arrowslit at the courtyard below. After the morning’s attack, it was still filled with a moderate bustle, men coming and going from the barbican and the guardhouse to carry out repairs on the gates and to remove the last of the dead.
In a quiet corner alongside the kitchen garden, Everard stood conversing with Leinahre. Black wisps of hair had fallen loose from her usual tight bun.
Earlier, Ellaeva almost had to fight the woman off so she could care for Aharris’s head wound. As if a nobleman’s daughter knew enough about medicine to be trusted with Aharris’s life! She frowned. If anything, her own loneliness made her hyper-aware of the yearning of others, and Leinahre was a woman pining for the regard of a man if ever she saw it. What was it she wanted? Just an advantageous marriage, now that Aharris’s wife was dead and he was Ahlleyn’s most eligible bachelor? Or did she have some genuine feelings for him?
In the end, Everard had made the final ruling on the matter and insisted that Ellaeva be left to treat Lyram’s wound. Are they still arguing it now? The lines of Leinahre’s body screamed tension, while Everard stood formally erect, as if deflecting.
Ellaeva leaned close to the arrowslit, as if there were any hope of hearing their exchange. She laughed softly at her own foolishness.
Below, Leinahre passed something over to Everard—a flask?—and turned on her heel.
Ellaeva grunted and left the stairwell for her own room. Aharris’s still form lay in her bed, where she could keep an eye on him for a concussion, so she resumed her seat and retrieved the journal and pen from the dresser.
The crabbed script of the early pages belonged to the last Battle Priestess, Malharni, from two hundred years earlier. She had recorded her experiences, her knowledge, and her most intimate, private thoughts, but the lonely anguish filling the pages made Ellaeva skip past them now. The depth of Malharni’s emotion was too much to bear. Her own nightmares woke her without adding those of a woman centuries dead.
The last pages of the journal bore her own precise, rounded handwriting. Her own notes recorded her past and her present, while the script of Malharni recorded her future.
She shivered and glanced over the top of the book at Aharris, lying still in her bed. He wasn’t what she’d expected. Then again, what had she expected? The books and stories and rumours painted him larger than life: a brilliant tactician, courageous, honest, loyal, charismatic. He was all that—he’d even come out of the castle to rescue her, and thrown himself into danger in the barbican for her—and indeed the men and women who followed him loved him. At the same time, he was somehow less, diminished by exile and drink. Though he’d made some effort to trim his beard, his whiskers remained untidy, and his dark auburn hair hung raggedly to his shoulders.
This was some mess she’d stumbled into. Of course, the goddess had drawn her here for her own purposes, but Ellaeva had glossed over that in her eagerness to find the man who murdered her family. There was a Rahmyrrim here, no doubt, but a tangled web of intrigue ensnared this Aharris son no matter how he eschewed politics. Where did the machinations of the necromancer end and those of his own nobles begin?
Did he really kill his own wife? The rumour was on every tongue, and he didn’t deny the allegation, and yet...
She had difficulty believing the charge. It all might have ended here for her, if not for the commander. She compressed her lips at the memory. Fool man. Her very reason for existence was to protect others, and he’d launched himself into the fray to protect her. When was the last time anyone thought she needed protection, or cared enough to want to protect her?
His regard warmed her a little against the cold knowledge of her future. How many years before she died the brutal, lonely death every Battle Priestess expected? The end might be any day now, or five years in the future, though not much more; no Battle Priestess had yet survived to see thirty. It was what it was. No point railing against inevitability.
Aharris stirred, and she put the journal down.
The commander’s eyes opened.
“Good, you’re awake.”
His gaze moved sluggishly in the direction of her voice, and she rose from her chair to cross to the bed.
“What happened?” His voice came out dry and raspy, and he winced and put one hand to his temple. “It feels like tiny little men are pounding inside my head with hammers.”
“You took a blow to the head defending the barbican.” She allowed a tiny smile to play on the corners of her mouth. “Honourable and romantic, if unwise. Be that as it may, even with your helm on, your brains got scrambled a little.”
Groaning, he sat upright in the bed.
“The gates were sabotaged!” He made as if to toss back the covers, then looked down and hesitated. “You undressed me?”
A faint heat rose in her cheeks. “Everard did.”
“Why am I in here?”
“I feared a concussion, so I brought you here so I could tend your injury.”
His clothes sat on a dresser within reach, and he leaned over to grab the bundle. He began awkwardly dressing beneath the bedclothes. “Leinahre could do as much, surely.”
Ellaeva averted her eyes, fighting a scowl from her face. “Leinahre has no particular healing expertise. I judged my skills equal to the task and chose to oversee it, in the interests of fulfilling my duties. And Everard agreed.”
He paused, half-doubled over under the bedsheets, then began struggling with his trews again. “Have you had a falling out with her?”
Ellaeva glanced at him long enough to impart the full measure of her cool disdain. “Such phrasing suggests we ever had some kind of falling in.”
He grunted. “Why do I waste my time trying to understand women or their interactions? Half the time you carry on like two strange cats in a yard.”
“Sorry, what—?” She glared at him, and he met her gaze with a cool, innocent look.
Nonplussed, her cheeks warmed further. She had no particular dispute with Leinahre, except that the woman thought she was more expert with herbs than she actually was.
“Do you think the necromancer sabotaged the gates?” he said, still struggling with his clothes.
“Unless we have two spies within the walls.”
“What a cheery thought. We’re lucky we didn’t lose the castle. We came closer than I like to consider.”
“Worse, we almost lost you. I won’t give Rahmyr what she wants.”
He tossed back the bedclothes and swung his legs out.
Her gaze strayed involuntarily to his bare chest, heavily muscled and lightly furred with ginger hair. There’d been no men in the cloister where she grew up, and though she’d met plenty since then, none who strolled around half-dressed before her. She jerked her eyes away again.
He snatched up his shirt and pulled it over his head. “How do we find the necromancer?”
> “I’m not sure we can. Even if I stood face-to-face with him, I might not recognise him for what he is. It depends how far into Rahmyr’s clutches he is. The greater the taint, the more likely I can perceive it.”
He curled his fist. “He must have some bolthole somewhere. And if not....”
She knew what he was thinking without the words being spoken aloud. The alternative was unthinkable: if there was no one in the castle who was out of place, then the necromancer must be someone who was meant to be here—someone Aharris knew and maybe trusted.
“What’s the status of the gates?” he said.
“None were seriously damaged, so once the machinery is repaired, they can be locked again.”
“And do we know who accessed the gatehouse last night? I want to know who was last in there before the attack.”
“I believe Galdron is making enquiries.”
“Good.” He reached for his sword, then hesitated. The clan blade stood side by side with hers against the wall, looking like two halves of a matched set. Taking the weapon, he drew the baldric on, and settled the blade on his hip. He pulled his hair loose from the collar of his shirt and ran a hand over the back of his skull. His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “No bandages?”
Her smile changed to a smirk. “Some things Leinahre cannot do.”
“Service to the goddess has some perks.” He gripped her shoulder in a comradely fashion, then passed her, heading for the door.
“Some.” Her smile died, like a flower in sudden frost. Some perks, and a whole bushel of downsides.
With his hand on the door, he hesitated, and the silence stretched into awkwardness.
Ahura, don’t let him ask what’s wrong. She smoothed her face into rigid inscrutability.
His mouth opened as if to speak, but she cut him off.
“You know,” she said, “Leinahre has designs on you.”
She grimaced. Not the best choice of topic to divert his attention, but she couldn’t back out now.
He gaped at her. “What?”
She rushed on. “Perhaps this is welcome news. I suppose you’ll be expected to remarry at some point, and strengthening ties with important vassals can be valuable.”
“What? Marriage? To Leinahre?” His hand dropped from the forgotten doorknob. “She’s a good lass, and I’ve known her a long, long time now, but... she was my wife’s secretary. I’m fond of her—nothing more. Not to mention, I’ll be expected to make a good match and bring some alliance to the clan.”
Ellaeva shrugged and buckled her baldric on over her robes. “Perhaps she simply wonders how much longer you will need her, with Zaheva dead. Your new wife might not have a use for her.”
His face stilled suddenly, his blue eyes chilling into rock-hard shards of ice. “My wife may be dead, and I may be expected to remarry, but you need not talk of it like the ceremony is tomorrow. Zaheva deserves better. How would a woman sworn to chastity know if Leinahre wanted to court me anyway?” The words came out harsh and choked with emotion, and an angry red flush suffused his face.
Ellaeva recoiled, his words cutting too close to the bone in her loneliness. She clenched her jaw so hard her teeth ached. How dare he. But she could say none of the words that sprang to mind.
Yanking the tongue of her baldric through the buckle, she shouldered past him and out the door.
Ellaeva pursued the soldier across the stones, careful to stay within the limits of the practice ground marked out in front of the barracks. She held the wooden sword low before her. The other woman backed away into the lengthening shadow of the castle wall, almost tripping over her own feet in her haste. Ellaeva darted forward. The soldier’s practice sword came up, trying to deflect her. Ellaeva’s wrists twisted, and her wooden blade slipped inside the other woman’s guard. The point came to rest against the breastbone over her heart.
The woman, without even a nod in Ellaeva’s direction, retreated and rejoined her fellows, who were sitting watching the action in the shelter of the barracks wall. When she offered the practice blade around, she received naught but shakes of the head.
Ellaeva struggled to keep the scowl from her face at the low mutters of the group, too low to discern the words. Wind whipped at her robes and tugged on her legs, while on the towers, the banners of Clan Aharris and Clan Maggrig flapped so hard they occasionally cracked. Clouds raced across the sky, driven by the cold air blowing off the mountain.
Calm impassivity at all times. That’s what she’d been taught. A Battle Priestess served in the times of greatest strife, against terrible odds, and must be as a rock for others.
They don’t want to lean on me, they just want me gone.
Bitterness suffused the thought. The depth of the emotion sickened her. Called to a life of almost perpetual conflict, she valued what moments of inner peace she found, but she found precious few here. Every eye followed her, questioning, measuring, and weighing.
Fearing.
And where is my rock? Only her faith in Ahura gave her the strength to put one foot before the other sometimes.
Across the courtyard, a hooded priestess in voluminous black robes passed the locked and barred inner gate and entered the well room, doubtless headed into the catacombs. Ellaeva watched her go, too resigned to her lot for the smouldering resentment of her younger days. She’d gone down to extend her courtesies to the abbess of the cloister upon her arrival, but received only a cold reception. Even her sisters couldn’t understand her isolation, and in their ignorance they only added to it.
A few didn’t fear her—those who had witnessed the events in the barbican a week ago. And is it because of what they saw me do, or because they saw Aharris save me?
She cast a bitter look at the walls, where earlier she’d seen him and then taken steps to avoid him. He’d been avoiding her, too, since their last exchange in her room.
Should have kept my mouth shut.
Something had set him off. Was it mentioning Leinahre? More likely it was the way she’d spoken about Zaheva. She’d been clumsy, desperate to divert him from her own troubles...
“Practising?”
The question jolted her from her thoughts. Aharris stood beside her, his face grown grim and weary from the eleven days the castle had been under siege. Dirt smudged his face, and the stubble had lengthened into a ragged reddish beard. His auburn hair still hung untidily around his collar, fluttering now as the wind caught it. He wore all his armour, but no plaid. If the chill bite of the wind bothered him, it didn’t show.
I must really be distracted if I didn’t even notice him approach.
“Trying.” Her voice carried an undercurrent of resentment. “No one will practice with me, not properly.”
“Is that so?” He grinned, splitting the shaggy red-gold of his beard in what seemed more a baring of teeth than an expression of mirth.
He looked hardly more presentable than when she’d arrived—less, perhaps—and yet, despite that, he remained an astonishingly good-looking man. He still had the flask at his belt, filled with strong spirits, or so the soldiers’ gossip said. In tones of concern, when they mentioned it at all, and that said something for his skill as a commander.
Is he aware of how he looks? Not that it mattered to her. He was too old for her, even if she weren’t already sworn to the goddess. Through her robes, she fingered the scar above her heart where she’d sworn that vow in her own blood.
He was still angry at her. Her connection to the goddess made her sensitive to some things, and his emotion hung heavy in the air.
Aharris glanced at the soldiers. “They’re afraid. Afraid of you, of your power. Of death. Every wise soldier fears death, because he knows she’s coming for him. He doesn’t wish to hasten that day.”
She sniffed. He often seemed to overlook what she was, settling comfortably into her company and forgetting he should fear her. She’d reminded him now, though—tension vibrated in every line of his body. “They are fools.”
“Is it foolish to fear
the unknown? If it engenders caution, one could argue it is wisdom.”
She was in no mood for philosophy. Though she barely knew him, he accepted her in ways no one else ever had. He’d extended the hand of companionship—and then taken it away again. She stilled her features, hoping the bleak loneliness didn’t show in her eyes. It was easier, away from people, where there was no one to remind her of what she didn’t have, what she couldn’t have. What I feel isn’t important, so long as the goddess is served. And somewhere further in the depths of her mind, a tiny voice protested. But why me?
“Spar with me,” she said, unable to temper the aggression in the sudden challenge, and made reckless by the wildness of the wind. Bad weather was coming.
He grinned again. “As her holiness commands.”
He ran to fetch a practice weapon from the barracks. Some of the soldiers dashed off, shouting, and in moments more streamed in, until they lined the boundaries of the practice ground. Lyram’s soldiers, in matching chest and shoulder harnesses, stood side-by-side with the more mismatched castle guard. Coins clinked and flashed in the dimming sunlight as wagers changed hands.
Because he’s so good? Or because he isn’t?
A soldier helped Aharris strip down to his gambeson and tabard, according to the custom for a practice duel of this sort. So he’d no fear of being struck in the practice ring at least. Well, she wouldn’t be taking off her robes to shed her own gear. She closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing, to purge the unreasoning fury. And for what? Because she’d no one to talk to for the few days that Aharris nursed his anger? It was hardly the first time.
No, just the first time someone wanted to talk to me—then changed his mind.
The thought threw fuel on the fires of her emotion.
The commander assumed a stance before her, his blade held in one hand. The clan sword he had left propped against the barracks wall alongside her own, the twin dragon-hilts reflecting the sun. “Ready?”
She gave him a fierce grin. “I’m always ready.”
In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1) Page 10
