by Judith Tarr
How very interesting, Roland thought, that she had done what a king might do, or a queen: come out last, as one who was entitled to do such a thing. Nor did anyone voice an objection.
Royalty indeed. Lesser rank would not dare this, even in an infidel’s house.
They were not to ride out, he discovered, without a full farewell. Musa’s servants, his men-at-arms, his kin who were in the house, had all gathered. As the Franks rode through the gate, they found the road lined with people.
Those were for Roland. They chanted his name as he rode past, a long roll of sound that seemed to carry them all down the dusty road to Saragossa. He was moved by it to do a thing he seldom did, for then the whole world knew he was there: he set his aurochs’ horn to his lips and winded it. Even as softly as he blew on it, the sound shook the earth and trembled in the sky.
His men were grinning. They did love it when their commander was celebrated—and these were foreigners, infidels, which made it all the sweeter. Roland could not but do it justice: keep his head up, his back straight, and acknowledge the people’s acclaim with all the grace that he had.
The crowd thinned as they rode on, until there was nothing but open country ahead. Roland found himself riding side by side with Sarissa. “You’re a great favorite hereabouts now,” she said.
“Pity it failed to be of any use to my king.”
“Yes,” she said. “Pity.” But she did not seem unduly cast down.
“I half expected,” he said, “that you would stay in Agua Caliente.”
Her eyes flashed on him. “Did you? Why?”
“It’s a pleasant place. You’re clearly welcome there.”
“I’m welcome among the Franks.”
“More than welcome,” he said. “But it’s a siege. There’s nothing pleasant in it.”
“You are in it,” she said.
Even now he could blush when she spoke so. “You do this for me?”
She nodded. “Can you think of a better reason?”
“Myriads,” he said.
Her quick smile warmed him. “O modesty! You are enough. Believe that.”
“But when we come there,” he said, “how can we continue as we were? Your honor, your good name—”
“Will yours be harmed by association with me?”
“No,” he said. “But—”
“My honor is my own,” she said. “You can do it no harm.”
He slid eyes at her. “That could almost be reckoned an insult.”
“What, that you have no power to dishonor me? No man’s love can do that.”
“You are not . . . of a mind with the rest of the world,” he said.
She did not take the bait. She only smiled her most infuriating smile and wandered off to torment someone else.
The siege was much the same as it had been when they left. The engines battered walls and gate. Both were held fast against the Franks.
After so long away, the stink of siege was overpowering. Roland envied Sarissa the Saracen veil that she drew over her mouth and nose as they passed the outer boundaries of the camp. Even coming from upwind, it was a mighty stench. He breathed as shallowly as he could, and tried not to taste the air that he drew in.
He would learn to bear it again. It was not a choice one had in war.
He had expected the stench, and the spread of trampled, barren land outward from its extent of a dozen days past. So too the toll that sieges took on men: boredom, sickness, quarrels and ill humor that could spread like a pestilence from company to company and nation to nation. But there was something else.
He had hardly looked to be welcomed back with shouts and wild cheering, or with such adulation as had seen him off from Agua Caliente. This was Turpin’s embassy, not his; he had gone simply as commander of the guard.
Still, as he rode through the lines to the king’s vantage, what began as a prickle in the spine grew to a distinct sense of enmity. It was a stench all its own, black and potent. At first he reckoned that there must be enemies in the camp, envoys from Saragossa perhaps; but he caught a man’s eye in passing, and it focused on him. That was hate—clear, direct, and no doubt in it. This man hated Roland. Hated and feared him.
The man was not alone. It was a murmur through the ranks, a shadow passing over them, as word of his coming spread. The witch. The witch is back.
Roland’s shoulders tightened. His skin rippled. If he let go now, he would gratify them all.
He held to his human shape. He rode as he did in battle, as if he knew no doubt, no fear. Those were buried deep. Never show fear, Merlin had taught him even before the master-at-arms in his father’s house. Never let them know that they can overcome you.
He thought he knew who it might be, who had done this. The length of his absence would have been long enough if seeds had already been sown—and he did not doubt that they had. Ganelon had had a year to discover both what Roland was and that Roland had slain his demon servant. He had lain low, tutored the king’s son, pretended to be no more than he seemed. Now, perhaps, he had begun to move. What was a year, after all, to a man who measured his life in thousands of them?
For the moment Roland had duties, and no proof that Ganelon had begun the whispers against him. He rode through that fog of hate, denser than the reek of men and dung and cookfires. He armored himself against it as he could, and did his best to be glad of one thing: that he would see his king again.
Charles’ welcome was as glad as he could have wished, even though the king knew by then that Turpin brought back no new alliance. He greeted both Roland and Turpin with a broad and altogether unfeigned grin, and embraced them heartily, kissing each on both cheeks. He had, as it were by chance, a barrel of good wine for them, new bread and white cheese, and a haunch of roast ox. It was a coarser feast than they had had in Agua Caliente, but it was their own: their own king, their own camp, their own war.
With the king and the Companions, Roland had come as if to haven. But there was a storm without. It showed in the faces of certain of the pages and servants as they waited on the feasters, and in the eyes of courtiers who happened to be about. People were staring at Roland.
Whatever tales were being told of him, they had spread fast and far. He endured for as long as he could, till he had to slip away or leap out of his skin. Then he did a thing he had never yet done in camp among his own people: he kept his head down and altered his gait and let men think he was someone other than Roland of Brittany.
His own tent was waiting as if he had never left it: his belongings, his armor and weapons, his battle-brother Olivier with a jar of hoarded Frankish ale. The flap was tied back, Olivier sprawled at ease in the shade, grinning lazily as Roland slipped round the tent and dropped beside him.
“You owe me a ruby,” Olivier said.
Roland cursed as the hot flush rose to his cheeks. “Pest! Who told you?”
Olivier shrugged. “Everybody knows. But even if they didn’t, I would. Her smile is different.”
“She never smiled before.”
“Yes,” said Olivier.
“And they call you a womanizing fool.”
“Why not?” Olivier said. “I am.” He filled a wooden cup and handed it to Roland. His own was empty, but he let it be.
“Tell me what else everybody knows,” Roland said after a swallow of warm brown ale. It was dreadful, but it tasted of home. It comforted him.
Olivier did not try to evade the question. “So you heard it, coming in.”
“I felt it,” Roland said.
“Fair knocked you down, did it?”
Roland shrugged.
Olivier frowned into the glare of daylight. For once he was not wearing the mask of the amiable idiot. “It began as soon as you left. People started whispering. Stories ran round, rumors—like fire in dry grass.”
“But for what? Why, and why just now? I’ve done nothing but what I always have.” Except, Roland thought, for the slaying of the bull. But he had done that elsewhere, days after thi
s would have begun.
“God knows why,” Olivier said, “or who started it. Did you do something before you went? Let someone see something he shouldn’t?”
“Not a thing,” said Roland.
“Maybe,” Olivier mused, “it needed your absence, somehow. You’ve been with the king since Paderborn; you’ve been away at most a handful of days. Someone must be jealous. Or afraid of you.”
“Maybe,” Roland said. “But that much hate, that quickly—someone’s been telling the truth.”
Olivier sat up sharply. “Not one of us. I’d swear it on holy relics.”
“I can betray myself well enough,” Roland said, “without help from the rest of you.”
“Not enough for this,” Olivier said. “This is concerted hate. You have an enemy, and he’s clever. No one remembers where he first heard the rumors, but everyone has heard them. Everyone’s afraid.”
“Tell me which stories they’re telling,” Roland said.
“There are several,” said Olivier, “but the meat of them is this: that you come of a long line of Breton witches, that your true father was a devil, and that you can take any shape that suits you. They’ve been eyeing every creature that runs or flies, and swearing that each of them is you.”
“Ai,” said Roland.
“Indeed,” said Olivier. “And then the whispers get lower, and people say to one another, ‘He’s so close to the king. What’s he doing to the king?’ There’s the hate, brother. There’s the fear. A devil’s get is the king’s Companion, his champion. Add in envy from the court, and there’s a fine brew of poison for a summer’s siege.”
Roland set down his barely tasted cup of ale, clasped his knees, and rocked as he had done when he was a small feral child. There was comfort in drawing himself in as tightly as possible, as if he could go deeper inside himself and build the walls higher and keep out the world.
The world was calling him. The amulet under his tunic had begun to burn. Durandal was singing, faint but clear.
He unfolded. The sword lay on the cot, sheathed and wrapped in his war-cloak. He uncovered it, drew it, sat again and laid it across his knees.
Olivier watched him in silence until he had gone still again. Then his battle-brother said, “You don’t even look human.”
“I don’t think I am,” Roland said, but distantly. He had, until now, used the sword as a sword: weapon of war, sharp and deadly but simple enough. But Durandal was more than a sword. Great power was in it, high magic.
“I killed a bull,” Roland said, “while we were among the infidels.”
“I heard,” Olivier said. “The Spaniards there were hailing you as a sort of god.”
“And here,” said Roland, “they curse me for a demon. I need to know why, and why now. What profit is it to anyone to turn the army against me? I have no more power here than I ever have. I’ve slain no bull for them to marvel at or excoriate me for.”
“Personal enmity?” Olivier wondered.
Roland nodded slowly. “It must be. But to prove it . . .”
“Let me do the hunting,” Olivier said. “I’m the great ox, the chaser after women. No one will suspect me, or find it odd to see me nosing about. A woman can hide anywhere, after all.”
“No,” said Roland. “It could be dangerous.”
The blue eyes brightened to a distressing degree. “So it could! All the better. As for you, brother, the more ordinary you seem, and the less you stray from your accustomed round, the more likely you’ll be to prove the rumors wrong. How perfect a simple soldier can you be?”
“Not very,” Roland said with a twist of the lip. “Olivier, I won’t have you—”
“It’s settled,” Olivier said. “Now put the sword away. You look as if you’re about to conjure the hosts of heaven with it.”
“I should like to,” Roland muttered, but Olivier had the right of it. He sheathed and veiled the sword again, drained another cup of the awful ale, and let himself be put to bed though it was barely sunset. Later, he thought, much later, he would slip away. But not while Olivier was awake and watching him.
CHAPTER 23
Sarissa heard the whispers, saw the dark stares. She felt in her heart the hate the Franks directed toward Roland. It made her deeply and abidingly angry.
Someone here meant him ill. And no matter that the whispers were not far off her own doubts and fears. She loved him in spite of them. These rough barbarians had no right.
He came to her in the night, creeping softly out of the dark, slipping beneath the wall of her tent. He seemed the simple, eager lover, but there was a tautness in him that even she could not smooth away. It marred the harmony. They were awkward; they struggled, more like warriors than lovers, until Sarissa collapsed in a fit of laughter.
Roland withdrew as far as the tent’s compass would allow, drawing into a tight knot, turning his back on her. She bit back the last of her mirth and went softly after him. Just within reach, she stopped. She ran her hand down his spine as she had that first night.
This time he refused to turn. But she persisted. She spread hands across his shoulders, and stroked upward, gathering his thick black hair at his nape. It always seemed to need cutting. It was long enough now to plait, which she did, slowly, lingering over each woven strand.
He had shut her out. She tied off the plait between his shoulderblades with a bit of fringe from the blanket. Softly she said, “I wasn’t laughing at you.”
She was astonished when he responded. “I didn’t think you were.”
“Then why—” She stopped. Of course she knew why.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “With what’s being said of me, let alone the matter of your honor or your reputation—”
“That matters nothing,” she said.
He turned. His face was white and set. “It matters a great deal. I can’t ask you to bear the burden of me.”
“I already have,” she said. “There’s no changing it.”
He shook his head. “Someone wants my blood, with my name and honor besides. I won’t cost you yours as well.”
“Let me judge that,” she said.
“No.” He rose. He found his garments where they lay scattered. He put them on.
She made no effort to stop him. Maybe he thought her vanquished because of it. Well, and let him think so. He had his arrogance, that one.
She let him go, though it tore at her heart to see him so stiff and so very much alone. He needed that, just then. She gave it to him.
When he was gone, she called Tarik. She seldom did that. The puca was his own creature; he did not obey orders, though he would serve her of his free will.
He took his time in coming. She had expected that. She used it to wash and dress and plait her hair. Not that he would care, but it settled her mind. It made clear what she must do.
He slipped through the tentflap in a guise he seldom wore, because, he declared, it was anything but elegant. She wondered if this young man-shape had looked so much like Roland before they both met the Breton Count. Maybe it had. They were descended of the same kin and kind, when it came down to it. That too-pale skin, that black-black hair, struck her strangely just now, and those eyes as yellow as a cat’s, regarding her with a cat’s insouciant stare.
He bowed low, half in reverence, half in mockery. His grace was not human—but it was very like Roland’s. “You command, great lady?” he inquired. His voice at least was different: lighter, softer, without the Breton accent.
“I never command you, my friend,” she said, “but I do ask. If you can help—”
His lips drew back from sharp cat-teeth. “Help you hunt?”
She nodded.
He laughed silently. “Always, great lady. I will always hunt for you. What are we hunting? Snakes?”
She held him with her stare, though that was not easy. “You know something. Tell me.”
“I know,” he said, “that snakes hunt him.” He said it so, with as much reverence as was in h
im.
“And who is the snakes’ master?” Sarissa asked, forbearing for the nonce to remark on a puca’s speaking of any man as if he were worthy of respect.
Tarik twitched in his skin, shivering, though his eyes were as bold as ever. “You know,” he said.
“I do not.”
He shrugged. If she wanted to be a fool, his expression said, then let her.
Snakes, she thought. Serpents—the old serpent. But—
“He was cast down!”
“He rose up,” Tarik said.
“Here?”
“Where else would he be? Or you?”
She had been led to this army, this king and his people. And there was darkness among them. She knew that. And Roland was—
“He does not belong to that one,” Tarik said flatly.
“He was bred by that one,” said Sarissa.
“Even the first of them was no loyal servant.” Tarik’s grin was full of fangs. “The serpent is here, himself, not his child or his servant. I will hunt him for you.”
“How long have you known?” Sarissa asked him.
“Long,” said Tarik.
She had not asked, too sure that the darkness came from Roland. Maybe the darkness had fostered that. Was not its master the Father of Lies?
Tarik shrank into his most favored form, the small grey cat. Before she could call him back, he was gone, vanished into the night.
He knew where the serpent was. And he had not told her.
“Great goddess,” she whispered. Tarik was going to hunt the old enemy himself. His powers were not inconsiderable, but he was a very minor demon. He was never a match for the corrupter of kings.
She spun in frustration, a whirling, stamping dance. He had warded himself from her. The fool. He could not die as men died, but he could be destroyed. If the old enemy had restored even a portion of his strength, he could crush the puca beneath his foot.
The world she had envisioned even this morning was proved to be a false image. Roland—the more his own people condemned him, the more certain she was that her doubts were folly. Now she faced a truth she was not ready after all to face.
