Mistress of the Catacombs

by David Drake

  He grinned. A choice didn't have to be good to be easy.

  The four men at the front of Lord Lerdain's tent didn't have uniform equipment like the Blood Eagles, nor was their varied armor as heavy as that of the line infantry they resembled. Most wore iron caps instead of helmets with visors and flaring cheekpieces, and they carried small bucklers instead of targets so heavy that they required a shoulder strap as well as the soldier's left arm for support.

  Regardless of their equipment, these were tough veterans. Merchants from one end of the Isles to the other hired Blaise armsmen as bodyguards. That's what these men, now protecting the son of their count instead of acting as hirelings for strangers, were.

  Two of the guards had short broad-bladed spears meant to slash rather than throw; the other two had hooked swords bare in their hands. They watched silently as Sharina and Carus approached.

  The section leader, a spearman, had a heart tattooed on one cheek and a skull on the other. At the distance of a double pace he dipped his spearpoint toward Carus, and said, “That's close enough. Sir.”

  “Don't get your bowels in an uproar, soldier,” Carus said in a bored tone. “The folks in Donelle sent the count a thank-you gift for arriving, and he's passing her on to the boy.”

  “Eh?” said the section leader doubtfully.

  Carus touched the peak of Sharina's cowl to draw it back. Sharina slapped his hand away. They hadn't discussed this; Sharina was acting as seemed natural for the character she mimicked tonight.

  “Hey, temper temper,” Carus said with amusement. He waggled his fingers to shake the sting out of them. “Show the boys the goods so they don't think you're some cutthroat out to scrag his lordship, eh?”

  Glaring at him, Sharina jerked the cowl down herself. She shook her head side to side, spreading her blond hair in a loose cascade. Moonlight woke as fire from her diamond-studded combs. She'd had to place them herself and hastily, but she thought both her mother Lora and her maid back in Valles would give her efforts qualified approval.

  Sharina transferred her disdainful glance to the section leader, then deliberately drew the cowl up to cover her face again. She continued to watch the guards coldly from beneath it.

  “By the Lady...” the section leader muttered. In a normal voice he went on, “Does Lord Lerdain know she's coming?”

  Carus shrugged. “I don't think so,” he said. “Ask him. And believe me, if he's not interested, the little lady won't go to waste.”

  “You have a better chance of feeding the Mistress than you do of knowing me, dog,” Sharina said. The contempt in her tone roared straight down from the Ice Capes and the Pole. She turned back to the guards, and added, "Rouse Lord Lerdain and enquire what his will for me may be. This isn't a matter for lackeys.”

  The other spearman whispered something. The section leader nodded and rapped his spear into the little gong hanging from the tent's ridgepole. A steward in an unbelted silk tunic raised the flap from the inside; he was barefoot but held a lighted lantern.

  Sharina walked forward, tossing back her cowl again. No one tried to halt her.

  “I am here at your master's service,” she said to the steward before the guard could speak. “If he chooses to send me away, well and good; but no other will make that decision.”

  The silver broach at the throat of Sharina's cape was unpinned; she held the halves closed with her left hand. Now she slid that hand down the seam to grip again just above waist height. The front gaped open; the single tunic she wore under the cloak was of diaphanous silk with panels of lacework.

  Smiling like a blond icicle, she closed the cape again.

  “Oh!” said the steward. “Yes, of course. Please follow me, ah, mistress...”

  He turned; Sharina stepped between the guards. Carus called, “Your ladyship?”

  Sharina looked over her shoulder. Carus cleared his throat, and said, "Ah—shall I wait? In case, ah, Lord Lerdain doesn't want your company?”

  “I scarcely think that's likely,” Sharina snapped. She followed the steward into the tent's anteroom, which held clothes chests and an inlaid bed.

  As the flap closed, Sharina heard the section leader say, “Not a bit likely with that randy bugger, sir. Mind, I'm a little surprised his old man gave her a pass hisself.”

  A velvet curtain separated the anteroom from the tent's inner chamber. The steward slid it partway open. Without entering, he said quietly, “Your lordship, you have a visitor.”

  “Huh?” said a sleepy voice.

  Sharina pulled the curtain back farther so that she had a good view of the inner chamber—and the reverse. A lighted lantern hung from a trellis anchored to the ridgepole. Lord Lerdain's bed was of chased and gilded bronze, with a tasseled silk canopy.

  The count's son and heir presumptive, a husky youth with fair hair, sat up. He'd run to fat when he was his father's age, but for the moment he was a well set-up fourteen-year-old who looked as if he'd give a good account of himself in a fight.

  “Your father sent me, your lordship,” Sharina said. She looked at the steward. “I believe your master can handle matters from here. Or"—she glanced at Lerdain appraisingly—"perhaps not. You're rather young, aren't you?”

  “By the Shepherd's dick, I can!” Lerdain said, bounding out of bed. His long muslin sleeping tunic bore the lion symbol of Blaise woven in red. He reached for Sharina.

  She turned her back and pulled the curtain closed. The steward hopped hastily away. Lerdain fondled her from behind.

  Sharina twisted to face the youth. He tried to kiss her. She put the index finger of her left hand on his lips, and said, “Carefully, milord; not a sound.”

  “What?” he said in puzzlement.

  Sharina held his right wrist in her left hand and touched the point of her Pewle knife to the skin beneath his breastbone, just hard enough to prick. Lerdain jerked at the contact and stared down at the blade she'd hidden under her cloak. It was polished steel and as long as his forearm.

  “If you stay quiet, you won't be hurt, and your father won't be hurt,” Sharina continued in the same low, pleasant voice as before. “Otherwise, there won't be enough survivors from this army to bury the dead; but that won't matter to you, because I'll have spilled your guts right here and now.”

  “You?” said the youth. He wasn't shouting, but his voice started to rise from a hoarse whisper. “You can't—”

  The trellis was made from thumb-thick ash poles. Sharina held Lerdain's eyes with her own while her right arm slashed sideways, so suddenly that her heavy blade was against the boy's belly again before he could react. The guards and steward must have heard the whack! as the keen edge parted the trellis, but the sound wasn't so untoward that it'd bring them rushing into the nobleman's privacy.

  “That could've been your spine,” Sharina said. It was good that she'd had an excuse to let out some of the emotions surging in her blood. Even so, her voice and the big knife trembled. “You're no good to me or the Isles dead, but I'll still kill you unless you do exactly what you're told.”

  Lerdain was taller and stronger than she was, but even so Sharina's additional five years gave her more ascendency over the boy than the weapon in her hand did. He might have tried to struggle for the knife, but the firm assurance in Sharina's voice cowed him. He'd have died beyond doubt if he'd grappled with her, but he wouldn't have believed that.

  “What do you want me to do?” he said in a husky voice. He probably wanted to turn his face, but Sharina's eyes held him like a vole facing a blacksnake.

  “Do you have a long cloak in here?” Sharina said. Garments hung on a rack at the foot of the bed, ready for the steward to offer in the morning; she didn't dare look away from Lerdain to check them, though.

  “I guess,” the boy muttered. The Pewle knife prodded him a little harder. “Ouch! Yeah, there ought to be a...”

  He nodded toward the rack. “Can I look?”

  “Yes,” said Sharina, nodding and drawing the blade back slightly so Lerd
ain could turn. She put her hand on his right elbow as he rummaged through the shadowed rack, warning the boy that no matter how quickly he turned he wouldn't be able to grab her knife wrist. It would take a braver man than most to lunge at the Pewle knife with open eyes.

  “Here,” Lerdain said, pulling down a campaign cloak of dark, closely woven blue wool. It was what a common soldier used for blanket and shelter when no other was available. “Is this all right?”

  “Yes,” Sharina said. The only reason the count's son would have such a garment was to become anonymous in event of disaster. “Put it on, but don't raise the hood yet; and don't do anything foolish. There's no reason you shouldn't live for the next half century if you don't make me kill you tonight.”

  She wondered how she sounded to the boy; like some sort of demon, she supposed. She wasn't angry. She spoke the way the butcher did when he made his rounds through the boroughs north along the coast of Haft. The butcher killed hogs not because he was angry at them, but because it was his job to clamp the beasts' snouts with toothed tongs and to thrust his keen blade into their throats while each owner's wife held a bowl of oatmeal below to catch the blood for pudding.

  The boy must have understood that; he shrugged into his cloak, careful not to seem hasty. The Pewle knife's broad blade would slice him from kidneys to collarbone if Sharina needed to kill him.

  “I've put the cloak on,” Lerdain said, stating the obvious to prod Sharina into giving the next order. She wasn't quite conscious. Rather, the part of her mind in control wasn't her intellect. That part of Sharina os-Reise wouldn't have been able threaten to slaughter a boy, even to save the kingdom.

  Lerdain was barefoot, but the cloak hid his sleeping garment. In this warm weather, many of the soldiers wouldn't bother with footgear while they were at leisure.

  “Step over to the back of the tent,” Sharina said, nodding. “I'll open it. Stick your head out and quietly ask the two guards there to come over to you.”

  “Open it?” the boy said with a frown. “It's—”

  “Move,” Sharina said. She guided him by her grip on his right elbow. “Now.”

  When Lerdain stood by the tent's smooth silk panel, looking sideways at her, Sharina made another lightning stroke with the Pewle knife. It went in and down, ripping the tough fabric as easily as it could have let out the boy's life.

  Lerdain's mouth fell open. He must have had a similar thought.

  Sharina gestured curtly with her left hand. Obediently, the boy leaned out through the slit, and said, “Ah—could you... ? I mean, would—”

  There was a clang like an ironbound chest slamming. “Oh!” said Lerdain as he jerked his head back into the tent.

  King Carus forced two dazed-looking guards through the opening, tearing the fabric wider. He held the men by the necks. One had lost his iron cap; the other still wore his, but it'd been displaced when Carus slammed the guards' heads together as they stared at Lerdain. There was enough construction noise, even at this hour, that the risk wouldn't be great.

  Carus tilted the latter guard so that his cap fell off also, then crunched their skulls into one another again. Sharina's mouth tightened as though she'd bitten on a lemon.

  “Is there time to tie them?” she asked.

  “No need,” said the king. He'd taken off his helmet and sword belt. He'd waited in the shadows as planned till Lerdain drew the guards' attention, then struck like a leopard.

  Blood trickled from the guards' nostrils and ears. Sharina thought of twenty thousand hogs being slaughtered—except that hogs don't scream, “Mother!” and “Oh, it hurts, it hurts so bad... .”

  She was sorry for the guards. She'd pray to the Lady for their souls, if the Isles survived and she survived.

  “All right, boy,” Carus said to Lord Lerdain. “We're going to walk to the gate. You keep your face hidden and your mouth shut. Understood?”

  “What happens then?” the boy said. He was standing very straight, with his eyes focused on the wall past Carus' shoulder.

  “Nothing bad,” the king said with a shrug. “The wizards of Moon Wisdom decorate a gallows, but that's not something any decent human being ought to regret. Now—does the lady there with the knife scare you?”

  “No!” Lerdain lied. “I'm not afraid!”

  “Then you're a fool,” Carus said with a smile. The smile changed, drawing the boy's eyes and holding them. “And if I don't scare you, you don't have the brains of a maggot. Because I'll do anything to save the Isles, do you see? Absolutely anything.”

  The king's voice had a gentle lilt. A weasel's chittering had more mercy in it.

  Carus drew up the boy's cowl and snugged it over his forehead. “Good,” he said, still smiling. “I'm glad you understand. Let's go, then.”

  He left through the slit panel. Lerdain hesitated, then followed when Sharina prodded him with the tips of her left fingers. When she slipped out in turn, Carus already wore his helmet and was belting on his sword and dagger.

  The tents crowding the area behind Lord Lerdain's held common soldiers. They weren't marshalled in straight lines, and their guy ropes interlaced as randomly as sticks in a squirrel's nest.

  A dice game was going on in one, spilling lanternlight out of the open flap. Carus guided his companions past, paused to check his bearings, and set off in the direction of the east gate at a swinging pace.

  He began to whistle. Sharina's memory supplied the words: Me oh my, I love him so; broke my heart to see him go... .

  “They sang that in your day too?” she asked.

  Carus chuckled. “'My True Love's Gone for a Soldier'?” he asked. “Aye, girl, they did. And they'll sing it or a song like it as long as there's women and armies, I shouldn't wonder.”

  They were nearing the east gate. Several of the men on guard were talking to figures on the other side through gaps in the log gate. They continued their negotiations while their fellows straightened at the approach of Carus and the two cloaked figures a half pace behind.

  “Where's your officer?” Carus asked in a mildly irritated voice. The troops wore leather breeches and carried spiked halberds instead of spears; Sharina couldn't guess which island they came from.

  “Yeah?” demanded one of the men who'd been chatting through the gate. He wore a bright gold gorget decorated with polished—not faceted—jewels.

  Sharina put the fingers of her left hand on Lerdain's spine, just at the base of his neck. The only threat was what the contact implied about her other hand, hidden beneath her cloak.

  “Moon,” said Carus. He gestured to the gate with his left hand. “We're going out.”

  “Did the sun addle your brains?” the guard commander said. “Why're you doing that?”

  Carus shrugged. “Tomorrow I'll be able to tell you—if I make it back,” he said. “But if I make it back, you'll already know. All right?”

  Sharina marveled at the easy way the king handled the question: saying nothing but hinting that he was offering a great secret. Her fingers gently rubbed the boy's back as though she were calming a nervous hound.

  The commander shook his head in wonder. “Stars, then,” he said. “Come on, boys; we'll crack this thing open enough that our loony friends can get out.”

  The gate was of green wood, boles cut to length but not squared; it was enormously heavy and probably strong as well. Six guardsmen, one of them leaning on a crowbar to lift the end, dragged it narrowly ajar.

  “You first, milady,” Carus said in a low voice. Sharina didn't argue; she squeezed through at once.

  Carus stood behind Lerdain, bracing his hands on the gate leaf and the jamb. He shoved hard, spreading the opening enough for the boy to climb through without having a notch pull his cape off. What would happen then was anybody's guess.

  The people outside the gate were all women, old enough that they were probably trying to sell something other than themselves. They backed away when Sharina came through, then stood staring at her.

  Carus followed t
he boy out. He tipped his helmet in salute to the guards, then grinned at his companions.

  “Let's go,” he said. “There'll be a patrol with horses waiting for us, but if we miss them in the dark, we've got a long walk ahead of us.”

  He tousled Lerdain's hair under the cowl. “Cheer up, lad,” Carus said. “You've saved a lot of lives tonight, not least your own.”

  They started eastward, feeling the eyes of the camp followers on them as long as the moon allowed. Before that, Carus started whistling again.

  There were no Blaise patrols out, so Sharina sang in a cool, clear voice to the king's accompaniment, “Only time can heal my woe, my true love's gone for a soldier.”

  * * *

  Ilna's fingers played idly with her cords as she sat on the bare basalt. Occasionally she raised her head toward the barrier in the sky, but her mind already had the information it needed.

  She smiled faintly. Which is as much as to say that I have a loom and a roomful of thread, so the only problem is placing the individual strands where they belong. What else was there to weaving, after all?

  This world was oddly silent. The wind sighed through branches, and she could hear trees creak as they swayed. There were no birds and no animals except the spiders themselves. Were there streams with fish in them? Ilna doubted it, because that wouldn't fit the pattern she was forming of this world.

  The spiders watched her. They didn't interfere, they didn't even move for the most part. Occasionally a long, hairy leg adjusted a strand of silk. In the far distance, a green-and-gold monster was decorating her web with a fine silk ribbon midway between the hub and the rim.

  Ilna didn't ask herself what purpose the ribbon might have. Everything had a purpose, everything fit into the pattern.

  The thought made her pause, then smile wryly. She'd thought—she'd said—that she didn't belong in this world, but of course she did. That was as surely true as every thread in her own simpler patterns belonged where she'd placed it.

  She didn't believe in the Great Gods, but she believed in craftsmanship and she knew craftsmanship. The pattern someone, Someone—perhaps the cosmos itself, Ilna neither knew nor cared—wove with human threads couldn't be chance.