“Oh, you’re a wise shrew,” he said. “You know when to bite your tongue.”
“Not so wise,” I said, very low so the others wouldn’t overhear. “Didn’t I advise you to bring that concubine to your tent, and she died anyway? And all your coins wasted.”
“Are you in mourning for my money?” He still smiled, but he dropped his arm. We stood eye to eye, but not touching. “Perhaps you liked me better … richer.”
“It’s not your money I mourn, but her suffering. I wish I’d held my tongue, that she’d died in her clan’s tent without waking.”
“Without honor,” Galan said.
“Then I wish I’d never wakened her when she came to your tent, for her life was misery then. Needless misery.” I’d seen her day after day, fighting to live, wishing to die, all on a smile or a word from him, and her fortitude and suffering were of no account as honor was accounted. And what was her honor worth, if money could buy it?
Did I say Consort Vulpeja’s suffering was needless? It was her dying that was needless. I’d preached to Galan of his faults often enough, but now I said nothing—nothing of my own culpability, of how I’d failed in wit and courage both. How I’d been close enough to Consort Vulpeja to save her life, and had let her die instead.
“Come,” Galan said. “Come here,” and he took my arm and drew me away from the others. Some paces away, on the other side of the midden that had been his tent, he stopped. Over his shoulders I saw Spiller watching us. He leaned toward Rowney to say something and laughed; Spiller was ever too fond of his own wit.
Galan put his hand on the nape of my neck and pulled me toward him. His thumb rested against the pulse under my jaw. “All these foolish wishes,” he said. “Are you an Auspex, that you could have foretold her death and saved us all the trouble?”
I looked sidelong at his face, afraid of what I might see. I was caught by his eyes. The pupils were wide and black in the dark, intent on me.
“I found you by Chance, and I took you for a trinket that would bring me luck, only to find Hazard’s gift was greater than I knew. None of us can be certain of what lies ahead, we can only set one foot before the other. But Hazard has given me a lodestar, for you have a wise heart, and when I followed your heart, you led me true. Even though,” he said, and that smile came again, “even though you had to goad me like a mule with every step.”
I shook my head, remembering the glimpse I’d had of Fate’s kingdom in the palm of the Dame’s hand, how I’d known at last what Ardor required of me. How I was mistaken. “When you followed me you were misled.”
“You sought to save me from grief, and Vulpeja as well, and now grief has come to us anyway and you say it was all for naught. But the one thing you led me to do was the one thing I did well. No matter that I must now go begging to my uncle for shelter, I don’t regret it.”
I turned my head away from the touch of his hand, his eyes. A harsh wordless sound came from my throat. He pulled me again into his arms.
“Would you take so much on yourself?” he asked. “You’re blameless in this. The maid had her reckoning to make, as I do. I won’t quarrel with Hazard, complain that Fate’s road is too hard when—after all—we chose it, that maid and I, with our first misstep. I own the blame for it, for I persuaded her—but I won’t claim what isn’t mine. It was Rodela who broke the peace, and the clan of Ardor who set fire to the tent. Their contemptible deeds are none of my doing, and they must make their own reckoning. The gods will not let them go unscathed; nor will I.”
I saw the anger in his face before he hid it again, as neatly as if he’d pulled down the visor of a helmet. But his arms were too tight around me. “I suppose you think you could have saved her, is that so? Don’t you see the gods have had their sport with us? They gave us the concubine’s life only to take it later. It was in their hands all along, not ours. Let them carry the weight of it.
I saw the truth of what he said, and I did let the gods take that burden. I let it go. The gods send us tribulations, but they also give us this solace: though we may never know their reasons, there is purpose in what befalls us, and we must bend to their will, lean on their strength. Even a king cannot command his own destiny, but must rather face the destiny he’s given. Why then should I feel shame that the gods had overmastered me?
I felt as if I’d been stooping under a great weight, and when it was lifted from me, I could weep at last. I paid Consort Vulpeja her due of tears. She was never dear to me, but I owed her that much for her bravery. It was a woman’s courage, of a sort men disregard. It had shone in her despite her frailty; it cast a light that death couldn’t put out, for courage is never wasted.
I wept because I was alive and she wasn’t, because I had what she would never have, and pity and gratitude were so alloyed they made a piercing blade.
The Crux made room for Galan and his household in a corner of his capacious tent, near the doorway. Before we set foot inside, his body servant, Boot, stood over us drudges to make sure we scrubbed the soot from our skins and beat the ashes from our clothes.
There was little rest for anyone that night. The king had called the heads of the clans together to his hall after supper, and sent them away again in a trice, for what he had to say was quickly delivered. The feud would end by noon on the morrow. The Blood of Ardor and Crux would settle it between them in a mortal tourney. “I’ll lose men I could well use,” the king had said, “but no matter, if I’m rid of this pestilential feud.”
The Crux came back smiling. He called for his Auspices and bade them take the omens. They consulted the starry vault of the Heavens, the shapes of the clouds passing over the newly risen Moon, the dartings of the nighthawks, and proclaimed that the signs—on balance, notwithstanding certain obscurities—suggested the day would be favorable to Crux.
He called for his men, and said to them, “Some of you have learned how to strike a man on his visor with a lance and knock him off his horse. It’s a fine feat and you may well be proud of it. But you’ve played too long at tourneys and now you must forget such niceties. The king has granted us our fondest wish, and tomorrow we will have our chance at Ardor. There will be no quarter. Do you understand? I swear this before you all: I will not yield and lose the tourney and honor with it. If any man of you quits the field while you can still fight, or cries for mercy, I’ll kill you myself when I have leisure. Don’t look to the king to interfere, for he tells me he’s content to let the troublemakers in his army execute each other. When noon comes we’ll count those left standing—so keep your legs under you if you can, eh?
Then his men’s voices rang out and their laughter was loud and hard. I listened, hiding behind the skirts of the Crux’s tent, and marked how they clapped Galan on his back, when not an hour before they’d avoided him. If the Crux hadn’t been there, I daresay they would have congratulated him for starting the feud and providing the occasion for their joy.
But there was still a pyre waiting at the charnel grounds on the sea cliff north of the Marchfield, and Consort Vulpeja to send on her way with the ceremony due her. We went by torch and lamplight, and the path was a chalky smudge under our feet. There was another path stretching toward us across the sea, a silver shimmer cast by the Moon, and it followed as we went, as if inviting the unwary to turn and tread upon it—one of the trickster’s many false promises.
Consort Vulpeja was laid atop the pyre on a bed of heather, with her meager possessions set around her. Noggin, wrapped in canvas, was placed crosswise at her feet. The priests and armigers emptied their oil lamps on the pyre so it would burn hot and fast. Galan put a torch to it.
So Wildfire took his concubine after all. When the shroud had burned away and she was sheathed in flames, she was seen to move. Her limbs twitched, she bent at the waist and her head turned. This happens some—times; they say it means the shade will be restless. But she turned her head away from us and toward the sea as if she were eager to be going. It gave me a fright, it was so lifelike. My eyes wate
red freely, for the pity of it. And from the smoke.
The Auspices called on Crux to strengthen the warriors on the field tomorrow. They made much of the concubine now that she was dead. The cataphracts warmed their anger by her pyre. There were few among them, I should think, who did not need fuel to stoke their battle fever, for cold doubt will dampen those fires in a long night. After the burning Galan smeared one streak of soot across his forehead. He’d wear the mark until she was avenged or he was dead.
It was late when we returned to camp. Now the Blood shut out the night and the wind and crowded into the Crux’s tent, so many of them they must perforce rub elbows and sit knee to knee. Only the night before, the cat—aphracts had gathered for a different occasion, and ended by putting me to the ordeal. Now there were twice as many men, for the armigers were there as well; and all of them would face their own trial ’l. No one noticed me. I stayed on Galan’s pallet in the corner, out of sight behind a stack of wine casks, and I watched.
The Crux’s drudges lit five or six braziers and a lavish quantity of lamps and candles, and the light flowed heavy and gold, like honey, among the men. The air was thick with the fug of smoke, ale, spilled wine, and such cloying attars as the Blood wear to cover up their honest sweat, and I was glad our pallets were near the door, where the drafts slipped in, bringing cold and the smell of turf and saltwater, swelling the canvas walls of the tent.
How they buzzed, clamoring of what they’d do on the morrow. I heard Sire Pava wager he would win three swords, and Sire Fanfarron answered he proposed to do better; he’d follow Sire Rodela’s fashion and take pelts to hang upon his horse’s caparison. And I saw Sire Rodela lean forward into the light from where he sat behind Sire Alcoba’s shoulder, and say he wanted but one trophy tomorrow, and that was a fine suit of armor; he’d be sure to take the cataphract’s measure before he took the trouble to kill him-and when he smiled, I saw teeth glinting under the coarse fringe of his mustache, and how his lower lip jutted above his beard. Sire Alcoba leaned away from him with a sour look, but Sire Fanfarron guffawed. Others laughed too. I thought: So this is how they shun him. It was all forgotten how he’d lied; or what did it matter, since I was a sheath and no harm done after all? And I knotted my hands in my skirts and swallowed bile.
Men show something of their natures the night before a battle. The loud ones drank too much and spoke too freely. Others sat quietly over their cups, perhaps afraid, or aloof from such foolishness. Some slipped away to say their prayers before the shrine in the priests’tent, and came back pensive. The Crux moved among them and wherever he went his laughter rumbled and tumbled like boulders rolling down a mountainside. He mocked his men’s boasts or roused them from their silences, and even those he twitted basked in his regard.
Galan did not boast. He sat on a low stool, leaning against a tent pole, and others came to him. In that warm light I couldn’t see the weariness and strain that had of late been graved upon his face. There was, instead, a smile that came now and then as he talked, and even at times when he sat alone, a smile disclosed in the corners of his eyes and mouth, the slight droop of his lids, the lift of an eyebrow.
Oh, he was glad the king had put steel in his hands and given him leave to use it. He was glad to the marrow of his longbones. All his joy was forged of rage; watching Consort Vulpeja burn had only made him keener. He didn’t seem to reckon the chances of a man on foot in a cavalry charge.
I had reckoned them. From the moment I heard that the king had called for a mortal tourney, I counted him a dead man.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the Crux sent his men away, bidding them to pray and to make their bequests before the priests, for some had beggared themselves and some had bettered themselves since we’d come to the Marchfield, and every man should take thought to what he’d leave behind. He told them to rest if they could, but how could anyone sleep on such a night? Soon they’d begin the slow and meticulous task of donning armor, each cataphract in his own tent with his armiger to attend him. The king had wasted no time; they must be ready by sunrise to finish by noon.
There had been more bluster in the Crux’s tent than you might find in a summer thunderstorm, and now came a quiet like that which follows the rain. The Crux called for one of his varlets to rub him down, and he stripped and sat on a stool while Boot kneaded the knots from his sinews. The Crux’s chest was broad, the muscles in his limbs long and ropy; one leg had a thick white scar from groin to kneecap.
He hadn’t spoken to Galan all evening, and now that they were alone—save for their men and me—his silence was more marked.
Galan sat with his head turned away, the lamplight unsteady on his face. He had no need to prepare for the morning, for he still wore his armor. It was all the clothing he had left after the fire. His jacks had already brushed the mud from his metal fitments and polished his buckler and helm; he’d honed his weapons himself to make certain of the edge. All was accomplished but the waiting. Behind his head shone the quarter Moon, woven of silver thread in the tapestry that hung across the tent. There was bread and wine before him on a small table, for he’d had no supper. He reached for the bread, one of Cook’s best white loaves, and pulled off a piece with his deft fingers. But instead of eating the bread, he set it back down and stood abruptly.
He knelt before the Crux as Rodela had knelt the evening before, but there was submission in his back, humility in his neck. His uncle stared at him with no warmth at all, not even that of anger. And waited, for Galan was slow to speak.
At last he said, “Sire, my offenses are many, but there is one in particular I wish did not lie between us—that I misspoke when I doubted your justice last night.”
“Wishing won’t unsay it,” said the Crux.
“I spoke in heat.”
“Men say what they mean when they forget to guard their tongues.”
“Maybe. But don’t we sometimes grow wiser on reflection? I know you for a just man. I own I shouldn’t have doubted you. Will you permit me to ask your forgiveness?”
“You thought me corrupt, but you’re the one who corrupted the ordeal. There will always be questions, now, about the truth of it.”
Galan said nothing. He kept his head bowed low and I couldn’t see his face.
His uncle gave a sour laugh. “Have you learned at last not to quarrel with me?”
Galan looked up at him. “Sire, I am your penitent. Absolve me, I beg you, so I don’t have to go into battle tomorrow carrying this regret.”
The Crux beckoned to his jack, Tel, to bring him his underarmor. Tel knelt to pull on the red leggings, thick with many layers of linen and stitching, and to lace them up. The Crux looked over his head at Galan. He said, “I have had it in mind to forbid you the tourney.”
Then sly hope whispered to me that Galan might outlive the next day. The heart is a fool and will listen to any sweet insinuation.
The Crux lifted his arms so his shirt of linen underarmor could be pulled over his head. Boot and Tel tugged at it on either side. When the Crux’s head emerged, he said, “Did your tongue swim away, Nephew? Have you nothing to say?”
“I’m in your hands, Sire. I’ll do as you command.”
“Will you, now? I’m not accustomed to finding you so biddable.” The Crux’s voice was cutting and his stare just as sharp.
Galan looked away from his uncle’s gaze and down and waited in stillness. I thought perhaps he submitted himself to Fate as much as to the Crux.
And yet, how could I trust such meekness from him? I saw the same distrust in the look the Crux gave him.
He frowned at Galan. “You’d lack your own armiger.”
Galan’s head came up. “That’s just as well, isn’t it, Sire? Seeing that my armiger was faithless.”
“I can’t let you ride. My word will not bend so far.”
“I’d never ask it.”
“A man afoot will not last long.”
Galan shrugged. His eyes were steady on his uncle.
&n
bsp; Now the Crux’s mail leggings were girded on. They fit snugly, with many points to fasten them to the underarmor. When the Crux spoke again, his voice was rough. “I dread to tell my brother his son died before ever we got to war. But this is your battle, I can’t keep you from it.” He put his hand on Galan’s shoulder.
Galan got to his feet and smiled, his face so bright I looked away. “Don’t grieve for me, Uncle. I’m not dead yet.”
I turned my back to them and my face to the wall. I lay on my side; anything else was intolerable. I had kept pain at a distance and now I made it welcome. It had its own pulse and everything yielded to it. Galan and the Crux talked on, but I no longer listened.
Hope was a viper.
It was near dawn before Galan came to lie down beside me in all his armor. I kept my back to him and looked over my shoulder and there he was with his head propped up on one hand.
Rowney and Spiller had been lying on their pallets nearest the door, whispering. When Galan came they fell silent. Tourneys were for the Blood only, though jacks had been killed trying to get their wounded masters off the field. Maybe they fretted about the dangers to come tomorrow; more likely they’d been wagering on the outcome.
“You went to sleep in your clothes,” Galan said behind me. He began to untie my headcloth. He unwound the headcloth twice, three times, and I lifted my head so he could do it. He let down my hair and I hissed when I felt it against my burns.
“Your pardon,” he said, and combed it to one side with his fingers. Then he laid his head down with my hair for a pillow. He took care not to touch my shoulders. “Is there much pain?” he asked.
“Sufficient,” I said.
“Where Rodela cut you?”
“Not so bad. The burns have nearly driven it out of my mind.”
A small laugh, a puff of air against my neck. “That’s a blessing.”
Galan’s hand was on my shin, under my skirts. He wore a metal prick-guard, which was cold even through the wool of my dress. “Tomorrow,” he said, in a voice so quiet I had to turn my head to catch it, “no—today—I’ll kill my bastard cousin.”
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