I rolled toward him and groaned, but he said to keep still.
I said, “You can’t.”
He said, “Many men will die today. Why shouldn’t he be one of them?”
“You swore, you gave your word you’d abide by the Crux’s judgment.”
“Hush,” he murmured. “I never did swear. He said—if my reason was satisfied—do you remember? And reason tells me it wouldn’t be safe to let Rodela outlive me. Do you pretend you don’t want him dead?” And he pushed my skirts up and bared my legs. I felt the kneecop and the scales affixed to his leather kilt against my skin.
“No.”
“Well then,” he said, and his hand was busy undoing the laces of his prickguard.
“You must not,” I said. But I didn’t move away.
“Why not?”
“I can’t lie on my back or my belly, it hurts either way.”
“I have considered it,” Galan said in my ear. “Get on your hands and knees.”
I thought if he mounted me like a dog, he’d be quick as a dog, and that was just as well. I feared the pain, and feared the Crux too, that he might see us there in the dark corner. Yet I wouldn’t deny Galan. I wanted him. It wasn’t desire I felt, but longing. I longed for him as if I’d already lost him.
Galan was not quick, he was one to linger if it pleased him. I braced against his weight but he did not shove into me so much as sink, and the pain was overtaken slowly at first and then faster. And Desire brought me her gifts after all: the craving of any bitch in season, forgetfulness. We were long past tenderness and he was relentless and I didn’t want him to relent, I wanted the slickness and his hands on my hips and his gasps and the moans jolted out of me. I wished I could see his face but I’d take this. I could take it. I raised my head and my hair clung to my face, and though my eyes were open, I was blind. Metal from his armor galled as he dug into me, and when he was in so deep that it hurt when he moved, he shuddered and bent over me, his hands on the ground beside mine, and bowed his head, breathing hard.
I said no when he withdrew. I was not ready for it to end and this day to begin, I would never be ready. I lowered myself onto my side and he lay in front of me this time, face-to-face, knee to knee.
For a while we were silent.
“Did I hurt you?” asked. “You’re crying.”
I shook my head.
He put his arm over my waist and his forehead against mine. “Dear heart,” he whispered, “if I die today … I have thought on it … there are some here who would treat you well. Pava, you know—but you might also go to Sire Lebrel; he’s often admired you.”
He might as well have struck me. I doubled over and put my arms over my head and wailed, but the sound was stifled, I couldn’t get it out. I couldn’t breathe. I’d thought only of his death, not what might happen after. And he’d pass me to another as a man might leave a favorite horse to a favored friend. Not even a friend, he had no friends now.
“Listen, listen!” He pulled my arms away from my face. “Do you think I’m not jealous? Even as a shade I’ll know when another man touches you. But if Rodela should outlive me—though I mean to see he doesn’t—you’d best find yourself a new cataphract. Rodela will kill you if he can. You need a protector.”
A thin keening escaped me at last and I began to weep. Galan said hush, hush soothing me like a child. But even as I tried to hold back the sobs lest they be heard, even as I was overtaken and harrowed by them, my thoughts went on ahead with a terrible clarity.
When the weeping had passed, Galan kissed me and rolled on his back to fasten his prickguard. In that moment his face looked pure, his utter self, washed clean of the smiles that had played about his mouth and the frowns that had troubled his brow. Only the ash on his forehead marked him.
If he would not hear me now, he’d never hear me. I said, “Galan, there will be sacrifices before the tourney, I suppose.”
He turned his head toward me and nodded.
“Then you must give my mare to Hazard. The mare you let me ride.”
“Must I?” His eyes were wide and dark.
“And you must pray to Hazard—to Fate—to relieve you of Sire Rodela. You must not meddle with him.”
“Mustn’t I?”
“You have enough enemies on the field, you don’t need another. Leave Rodela to the gods—even if he should survive the tourney, I think he’ll not live long. Promise me to leave him be.”
“I’ll do what’s needful. I won’t promise otherwise.” His eyes had narrowed. I saw he was displeased, yet I went on. “Didn’t you tell me this very evening that I had a wise heart, that I led you true? Why will you not listen to me now?”
“Because in this matter, my head is wiser than your heart. I know Rodela too well. Let a dog live and he’ll bite.”
“It’s your hot blood that speaks, not your wise head.”
“Is your blood so cold, then?” He was glaring now.
For a while I was silent, turning over in my mind words that might persuade and also mollify him, for the more I insisted, the angrier he became. But no words came to me save the truth, and that I couldn’t say. That resolve that I’d taken in heat to kill Sire Rodela had indeed grown cold, cold as winter. And though I couldn’t kill him in hot rage, I’d kill him nevertheless.
It was only yesterday that Sire Rodela had stolen part of me. A long, empty night and a long, eventful day since. In the night I had lingered over the idea of steel; it was voluptuous to imagine driving a blade into him. But I kept coming back to poison. I had the dwale to hand, yet how to give it to him? He was not such a fool as to take food from me. In the day, still I fretted over this puzzle—never asking whether I should kill him, only how it might be done. Even the fire hadn’t driven such thoughts away for long, for he’d rekindled the feud that killed Consort Vulpeja—he might as well have carried a torch himself. Had I wished to forget Rodela, the pains he’d given me would not permit it; they kept faithful company.
The unrequited desire for someone’s death is like unsatisfied lust, in this way: it will not leave you be. I had suffered it before, hating Sire Pava, but he’d been beyond my reach.
Rodela’s death was mine. I found I was jealous of it. And furthermore I saw as plain as could be that Galan had missed his chance to kill him clean, and if he did it now, it would all begin again. Even if—as he claimed—he would not be forsworn, the gods did not take a man at his word, but at what he meant by it. Among all the dangers of the day, this one he could avoid. He shouldn’t carry this to battle with him and tempt the gods again.
I was angry with Galan for his obstinacy, yet why should he be otherwise? He didn’t know I claimed Sire Rodela’s death for myself, and I couldn’t tell him. I saw the danger in speaking; but silence was dangerous too.
“No—I see you’re not cold-blooded, but rather too warmhearted,” he said, after a long pause. I didn’t like the way he said this, or the upright lines that gathered between his brows, or the tightening of his lips so that a crease appeared at either corner. “For you claim your heart tells you I should spare Rodela.”
I nodded.
“Then I ask myself,” Galan said, “why is your heart so solicitous of him? Perhaps he didn’t lie after all. Maybe you won’t be sorry if he outlives me. Maybe you already have your next man.”
In my outrage I hit him with my fist, a glancing blow under the eye. He blinked but did not flinch. Now the emptiness of his face was frightening, barren instead of pure, a wasteland.
So wrong. It would never go well with him—I was too forward in my speech and he too ready to take offense. Always when I thought I saw the way most clearly, then I was snared by the unforeseen.
“I can promise you this,” he said, rising to his knees and setting his scaled kilt to rights. “If he’s in reach of my sword, I’tl strike him down—because if Chance puts him in my way, can I refuse her gift?”
I cursed that jealousy of his that had turned him from me. His doubt lay just under t
he skin. I had only to scratch and he bled distrust. He stood and I grabbed his ankle. My voice had been ill-used and I could hardly make myself heard. “Sire, how can you doubt me now? You know he lied. Please … it can’t be borne.”
He moved away from me and nudged Spiller with his foot. “Rouse up, lads. We mustn’t be late.”
Not long after, I heard the Crux say to Galan, “This is why I can’t abide women on a campaign. They’re always wailing.”
CHAPTER 15
Mortal Tourney
he saying is that hearts break, but that’s not what happened to me. Instead my heart was squeezed and squeezed, my body a fist around it. After a while there was nothing left but a hard pit, like the stone of a fruit, small and heavy. And my breath clouded the cold air and I found I was not dead, after all.
I stood on a hill above the tourney field, and all the other inhabitants of the Marchfield were there too, spreading around the horizon, and every one of them jostling for a better view—and the Sun was a handspan high, spilling gold over the land, and the sky was a sheer deep cobalt above the sea—and I saw what a fool I was; I saw the more clearly because my heart was stony. I saw how a man astride a courser becomes one with it, they become a great singular beast, much more fearsome than a man who stands on his own legs. Put ten, twenty, thirty of these beasts together, put a man among them, and see how small he is. That’s how small Galan was, standing below me on the tourney field.
And I knew my concern over Sire Rodela, whether Galan should or should not kill him, was a trifling distraction. Galan must have known, as I knew now, that he’d be the first to die today, ridden down in the charge. I’d shied from it; perhaps he had too, with his jealousy, his threats and promises. He was a man, after all, he would boast.
I saw Galan looking up at the sky and I followed his gaze to see white gulls and black ravens and, high above them, two falcons tilting as they wheeled.
The crowd was restless. A great altar had been set up between the lines, and the procession of sacrifices was long. While the clans of Crux and Ardor fought on the field that day, so too their gods would contend, and each clan vied to make the most lavish offerings. And each warrior prayed to his forebears or to Rift or Hazard or any god whose favor he sought, and sent his prayers winging on their way with blood: Make my armor strong and my arm stronger. I saw my mare Thole among the horses dedicated to Hazard, and wondered if Galan offered her on my advice or to make me rue it. She died and I felt nothing.
So many animals slaughtered, one by one: oxen and horses, goats and sheep, roe deer and fighting cocks. Among so many opposing prayers, not all could be answered. If any god might listen to me, it would be Ardor—but today Ardor was Galan’s enemy, and therefore mine. Today my prayers were leaden, and couldn’t rise.
It had been four tennights and a hand of days since we came to the Marchfield, and I’d never seen such a crowd, not even on Summons Day. When the word went out that the king had called for a mortal tourney, his whole army came to watch, along with the queenmother’s Wolves. The merchants left their stalls guarded by boys who followed as soon as their masters’ backs were turned—and the armorers came, and the goodwives, butchers, shepherds, laundresses, shipwrights, and the bare-legged children who dug shellfi sh in the tide pools. Then came those who preyed on the rest of us, the pickpockets and strongarms, peddlers of pisspot ale, two-copper whores. And every man sporting a sprig or a ribbon, green for Crux or rose for Ardor, and tempers dry as kindling. Every one in motion, shoving downhill to get closer to the field, pushed back by the Blood of Prey and Rift, who guarded the boundary, herded this way and that by varlets clearing space so that their masters could see the tourney from seats under their bright canopies. Every one gossiping, bickering, quarreling because one stepped on another’s toes. Every one wagering. The oddsmen gave the two clans an even chance, though Ardor outnumbered Crux by four cataphracts. The odds were eleven to one against Galan.
We drudges of Crux watched from a hillside south of the tourney field, nearest to our clan’s line. Flykiller had chased some kitchenboys from a boulder and now we stood upon it, a head above the crowd, with Fleetfoot and Galan’s horseboy, Uly. Flykiller’s long reach and his glower kept others away from our perch.
The Sun rose and shadows retreated across the field. It was a clear cold day: no fog, no clouds, nothing but smoke from the smudge pots and braziers, mist from our mouths. I’d draped Mai’s shawl over my headcloth to cover my shoulders, but the Sun found my burns and set them afire again. Elsewhere I was chilled.
Priests examined the entrails for omens and the carcasses were dragged away. There’d be such a feast after this tourney that the meanest beggars would eat.
A rumormonger nearby amused the restless crowd in the lulls between sacrifices. He rode upon the shoulders of a massive fellow who bore him with the sullen patience of an ox. His long, bony legs dangled around the man’s neck. His standard, a hollow tongue of cloth, waggled on the pole when the wind caught it. For a copperhead he’d make up a riddling rhyme about one of the warriors on the field, and many a drudge asked for one about his master. They were not all flattering. I had a few coins knotted into my shawl, and I gave two copperheads to Fleetfoot to bid the man come closer.
The rumormonger looked down at me and I up at him. He wasn’t one I’d seen before. I said, “That man afoot down there, who is he?”
He said,
Who started the trouble that troubles the king?
He crowed like a rooster, though he’s just a chick.
The Crux hopes to tuck him safe under his wing.
But he’ll die all the same if he doesn’t fly quick.
“I don’t want one of your riddles. I want his name.”
“Sire Galan dam Capella by Falco of Crux. And you’re his sheath, so why do you ask?”
I was not surprised he knew Galan. A rumormonger should know every man of Blood in the Marchfield by his insignia, his armor and horses, his manner of fighting. But if he knew of me, surely he was good at his trade. I said, “Will you stay by me and keep him in sight and tell me how he fares?” I showed him two silverheads in my palm. His mount gave me a wink, which was startling; the man seemed so like a beast, I’d almost taken him for one.
The rumormonger looked at the coins and said, “Keep your silver. This is as fine a spot as any to stand.”
Down on the field they were also restless. There were more than seventy horsemen, all told, and each man kept his stallion on a short rein to make him prance and stamp and toss his head, to show off the fine arch of his neck.
I saw Galan among them, leaning on the shaft of his scorpion, trusting his fellows to keep their mounts from trampling him. On his baldric he bore his two swords, the greater and the lesser, and his mercy dagger. His buckler hung by a hook behind his hip; it served better as a weapon than a shield, with its sharpened rim, spike in the center, and a pair of sword-catcher horns jutting from the sides. There was no hiding behind it, for it didn’t even cover his forearm.
His scorpion looked like a twig next to the war lances carried by the other cataphracts for use in the charge. These lances had ironwood shafts, twice a man’s height and thick as a man’s arm at the base, and leaf-shaped heads of the best steel to punch through shield, plate, mail, and underarmor to find blood and bone. No other weapon could do so much against a man in a metal carapace.
And Galan was not well armored. From where I stood the green canvas of his brigandine looked dull, save for the rows of rivets glittering in the Sun. The fire had taken his shining cuirass of plate, and he must gamble on speed. Soon we’d see if it served him. He had his back to me. When he turned his head, I saw his visor was down, the silver face in the beak of the iron gyrfalcon.
They carried away the altar, and two boys ran along the lines of mounted men with painted kites trailing behind them. Wind took the kites and lifted them as high as the birds overhead: the sign of Crux to the south, the sign of Ardor to the north.
The Bloo
d began to roar and beat weapons against shields. The spectators raised their own clamor of whistles, hoots, shrieks, ululations, bellows, chants of praise and mockery. I covered my ears against this uproar and before I knew it—before I was ready, how could I be ready?—the warriors set spurs to their horses and the horses surged forward. I felt the pounding of hooves through the ground, as if the hills were hollow as a drum.
Galan moved when the horses moved, but soon he was left behind and all alone. Some spectators taunted him, calling him a coward, but those of us nearest to him saw clearly that he did not hold back, nor did he hurry. He strolled. The ribbons on the shaft of his scorpion fluttered and the banner of his house snapped in the wind, and he looked, in the arrogance of his grace, as though he set out to cross the king’s hall rather than a battleground.
He had walked perhaps a quarter of the way across the field when the two lines of horsemen met in the middle, and I learned what was meant by a mortal tourney.
This time the cataphracts didn’t aim to score points—so many for a hit to the helmet, so many to break a lance, so many more for unhorsing a man. This time the hills resounded with the clang of metal against metal instead of the crack of splintering wood. Many men were toppled from their saddles. Horses skidded, fell, thrashed on the ground. The lucky ones—men and horses both—staggered to their feet again. The dead were left lying underfoot, along with those too sorely wounded to help themselves, and at this distance no one could say which was which, not even the farsighted rumormonger. Though we all could see that Sire Choteo of Crux was dead, impaled on a lance through his chest. The melee boiled around them. Horsemasters rode into the field to lead remounts to their masters. They carried mercy daggers to kill the horses too injured to mend. I saw a jack cut down as he tried to drag his master to safety.
The rumormonger sang out the names of the fallen and cried victory for Crux in the charge. We’d lost five men to Ardor’s seven, and many in the crowd around me shouted huzzah and waved their green-sprigged caps in the air. But how could the fallen be counted while men were still dying? For the battle hurried on heedless of such victories, swifter by far than a tourney of courtesy.
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