Igrid felt herself blush. What’s wrong with me? Gods, I’m just being practical. I tried to help him, didn’t I? Just like I tried to help the girl. I could have left them behind, but I didn’t. Not my fault. The gods saw fit to make them wither.
She wiped the sleeping Lancer’s forehead with a cloth dampened with cool water. “Not my fault,” she muttered into the darkness.
A wolf howled in the distance, as though the night had decided to answer. She reached for a blade. She had seen plenty of wolves and wild dogs shamelessly feasting on the dead during the past few days, but thankfully, they kept their distance. After all, they already had plenty of bodies to satisfy them. Still, when she noticed that the fire was beginning to die, she gathered more wood. Fire, she knew, was her best defense against the wild.
Near dawn, rain began to fall. The campfire hissed, sputtered, and went dark. Igrid tied a cloth around her nose to block out some of the grisly reek and returned to the field of dead men. She gathered a stack of battered shields and propped two of them together to form a makeshift tent over Arnil’s face, offering him a little protection from the storm. He continued to toss and mumble, completely unaware.
“You’re welcome,” she grumbled. She fashioned another crude shelter for herself. Then she stooped wretchedly in the cold, arms crossed, and waited for the storm to pass.
Igrid did not know when she fell asleep, but she awoke shivering and hungry. It was mid-morning and cold, but the rain had stopped. She checked the First Lancer. Though he trembled from cold, his fever had broken. She did not know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. Shaking her head, she set about finding kindling for a fresh fire.
The rain had rendered all the surrounding wood unusable. She’d had the foresight to prop a shield over her remaining firewood, but the storm had produced far too much rain, so thoroughly soaking the surrounding grass that the wood had become damp anyway. She tied a cloth around her face and forced herself to approach the dead again.
Days of rot plus the routine machinations of scavengers had done their work. The smell was terrible but not as bad as the grisly, open eye sockets. Her stomach tightened and turned, but she pressed on. She approached one dead Lancer, then another, using a knife to cut the straps and remove their armor, which was already beginning to rust. Holding her breath, she cut away the wool and leather padding the Lancers wore beneath their armor. She did the same for several slain Dhargots.
The cloth was stained in dried blood, but the armor had kept out the rain. She returned to the campsite with a grisly mass of cloth she could use for kindling. She sprinkled the cloth with liquid from a flask of strong flammable spirits she had found among the dead then used flint and tinder to start a fire.
The fire was smoky and foul, but the wind was in her favor. She stacked the damp firewood near the sickly blaze, hoping the heat would dry it out. She checked on the Lancer again. His shivering had ceased. She grabbed the waterskin and managed to get him to drink a little, though he still did not stir.
She contemplated what she would do once he woke up. He was still an important man, and she might earn even more rewards for her assistance if she got him back to Ivairia in one piece. Her rumbling stomach reminded her of the dried rations she’d found. She ate her fill, forcing down the tasteless foodstuffs, and washed it down with a little sweet wine she’d also taken off the dead. Then she armed herself as best she could, taking up a crossbow in addition to her sword and knife, and went on patrol.
No one had returned to the field to claim the dead. Still, Igrid wanted to have a solid awareness of her surroundings. If any surviving warriors approached, she would see them long before they saw her, giving her time to flee, hide, or prepare to fight. She walked a broad perimeter of several miles and saw only empty grasslands scattered with trees and the remains of the dead.
Around early afternoon, she returned to the camp. She checked Arnil again, saw that his condition had not changed, and tried to feed him a little more broth. She ate a little more herself and rested.
She felt a familiar, tingling tightness in her abdomen, accompanied by a vague soreness in her nipples, and cursed. This is a hell of a time for my monthly bleeding! Still, it was something of a relief. The last thing she needed was to find herself with Rowen Locke’s bastard child.
She stayed at the camp until boredom overtook her, then she went down to the stream to bathe. Late-afternoon sunlight sparkled off the water. She stripped naked and left her clothes—a mismatch of articles looted from the field—on the ground beside the water, next to her sword, which she’d thrust into the earth where it would be within easy reach.
She tested the water with her toes. Despite the sunlight glinting off the stream, the water was shockingly cold. She forced herself to wade in anyway, stopping only when the water rose past her thighs to her waist. She shuddered and swore loudly, but she was glad for the way the cold drove the lingering weariness from her body.
She washed her face, rubbing her eyes. She hadn’t bathed since washing the blood off Anza. Igrid shuddered again, though it had nothing to do with the cold. She pushed the image of the girl’s face from her mind, willing anything to replace it.
The Isle Knight had probably reached the Wytchforest. She wondered if he was still alive. Part of her even missed him. “Don’t be a fool,” she grumbled. “You betrayed him. He hates you now. You’d be better off falling in love with an Olg.”
She knelt on the pebbly stream bottom, letting the water rise above her head. She stayed a moment in watery darkness, her eyes closed. The water did not feel so cold anymore. She could even feel the sunlight streaming through the water, caressing her. Despite herself, she smiled. She held her breath as long as she could then straightened. She combed back her wet hair with both hands, wiped her face, and opened her eyes.
She found Arnil standing on the bank, dressed only in his trousers, using his sheathed sword as a crutch. Arnil’s pale face blushed. “Forgive me. I was just…”
“Being a man,” Igrid snorted. She waded back to shore without covering herself and used an old cloak to dry off. Arnil turned his back as she dressed. How is he even awake? “You shouldn’t be moving yet. You’ll reopen those damn wounds I spent so much time stitching.”
Arnil inspected his bare chest. “You sew well, milady. These should hold.”
Igrid finished dressing, pulled her long crimson tresses behind her head, and tied them in a wet knot. “I’m no lady, Lancer. And I’m not an Iron Sister anymore, either.” She grabbed her sword and started back to the camp. “You’re probably hungry. There’s plenty of bread and dried meat, though you’re probably better off with broth and wine for now.”
He reached to grab her wrist, wobbled, and missed. “How long—”
“Three days. Four, if you count today. I thought for sure you’d go to the gods.”
Arnil traced his stitches with his fingertips. The skin was an ugly purple, and the stitches were seeping blood and pus, but that was not unusual. “You’ve cared for me all this time?”
For no reason Igrid could understand, she blushed. “Spare me your courtly gratitude, Lancer. I’m still keeping your coins, and whatever else your king gives me for keeping you alive.”
Arnil nodded. As he hobbled back to the campsite, she looked at him more closely and realized he was balding. He was thin, too, and only a little taller than she was.
He looks like some dainty princeling exiled to the wild to reform him of his cravings for common whores and gambling. She smiled.
Then again, she had seen him charge five Dhargothi horsemen by himself. And when she’d found him by the river, he was wreathed in the bodies of slain foes. Spurred by sudden curiosity, she asked, “Why were you scouting the Dhargots? You don’t really think they’d invade Ivairia, do you?”
The Lancer returned to the tree he had been leaning against and, with Igrid’s help, sat down again. Igrid fed the fire and handed him a wineskin to drink from while she fixed his broth. When she looked at hi
m again, the wine had left his lips red.
He took another drink, his face still expressionless, and said, “We’d heard how the Dhargots were sweeping east, claiming all the realms previously conquered by the Throng. Cassica is close to our borders. We trade with them for cloth and grain. When the sorcerers took Cassica, they never marched any farther north. They left us alone, but we didn’t know if the Dhargots would do the same.”
“If you just wanted to scout, you should have sent fewer men. You were too obvious.”
Arnil laughed. “A scouting party of a hundred horsemen. We might as well have been blaring trumpets while we rode, for all the noise we made. Had it been up to me, I would have ridden alone, or nearly so. But courtly protocol requires that the First Lancer travel with an appropriate entourage.”
She heard an unmistakable tone of bitterness and self-deprecation in his voice. “I’ve never known a knight to disparage his own precious Order.”
“Any decent knight hates his Order, or else he’s a fool. And anyway, I have a habit of voicing thoughts other men know to keep quiet. It’s why the king listens to me… though he’d probably rather I shut my mouth half the time.” He yawned and checked his wounds again. “What’s your name, Iron Sister?”
She frowned. “I told you—”
“Then give me your real name so I can stop offending you.”
My real name? She almost laughed. She thought of inventing a new one, or maybe using Haesha again. “Igrid. But I don’t feel like telling you my story, so if you want to talk, tell me yours.”
Arnil shrugged. “I was born into House Royce. My father is King Rodrick Whitetower’s nephew. When I was five, they stuck a wooden sword in my hands, pointed at some sack men stuffed with straw, and told me I’d better learn how to kill. Not my fault I happened to be good at it.”
Igrid scoffed. “So you were raised in a castle, or at least a keep of some kind. You probably had servants—women like me who had to do whatever you said, or else they’d be fighting the dogs for table scraps.”
“Wolves,” Arnil corrected. “Greatwolves, especially. Since the famine, there aren’t many dogs left in Ivairia. But we have plenty of wolves.”
Igrid’s frown tightened. “Simplefolk sick and crying right outside your tower window while you ate your venison, smiled at your minstrel, and fucked your whores. And you want me to feel sorry for you?”
“Actually, I didn’t ask for pity. But I would accept some of that broth.”
She poured the contents of the pot into a wooden bowl and handed it to him. The broth was still thick and cold, but Arnil drank it without hesitation. When he returned the bowl, she filled it again and passed it back.
He nodded his thanks. “In my lands, peasants who talk like that would be flogged and stocked in the public square.”
She reached for her sword. “Threaten me again—”
He waved his hand between swallows of broth. “No threat, milady. Call it surprise.” He finished the bowl, set it on the grass, and turned his attention to the wineskin. “You talk like someone who has been wronged—and not just by my men.”
“Is that your way of asking for my story?”
He lowered the wineskin. “If you like.”
Her derision faded. She saw an earnestness in his eyes. She wondered if his curiosity was only the ploy of a man turned lustful by the sight of her bathing in the stream. She was all set to refuse him, then she changed her mind. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Arnil took another drink then handed her the wineskin. “Start anywhere. Start with a lie, if you want. Just talk.”
Igrid glanced at him. The moment seemed too much like her last encounter with Rowen, but she heard something in Arnil’s voice that she had not noticed before. Grief? Guilt? She thought again of the bodies strewn across the plains.
He just needs to listen to something other than his own thoughts. That, at least, she understood. And before she knew what she was doing, she was talking. And even more surprising, she was telling the truth.
Once Igrid began, she could not stop. She felt a vague sense of disbelief when she saw sunset filtering through the branches of trees hours later, but still, she continued her story as Arnil listened. She spoke of being an orphan on the streets, of the brothels in Lyos, of her wish to join the Iron Sisters. She even spoke of Hesod’s bloody fall and the Iron Sisters’ slaughter, how she had turned craven when her order needed her most and fled, pretending to be a priestess. She tried to choke back her tears, but she gave in and told her tale as though she were alone, merely confessing her sins to the encroaching darkness. Much of the tale mirrored what she’d told Rowen. There was no longer a pretense, no secret agenda. She simply felt the need, finally, to speak without even the slightest lie.
She even spoke of her chance encounter with Rowen on the road to Atheion, how she had assaulted and humiliated him, only to have him save her from a fate worse than death. Arnil had been a rapt listener throughout her tale, but he seemed especially interested in the Shel’ai woman who wielded the power of a Dragonkin, for word of her exploits at the Battle of Lyos had already traveled north to Ivairia.
Igrid shared what little she understood of Fadarah’s mad conquest and Rowen’s and Silwren’s far-flung attempts to thwart him. Though she said nothing about sleeping with him, after some shamed hesitation, she spoke of how she had repaid Rowen’s mercy by trying to steal from him, only to have the illusion turned against her. She feared seeing rebuke in the Lancer’s eyes, but he merely listened.
She spoke lastly of Anza, just another nameless wretch, one of thousands throughout Ruun, though her death had affected her strangely, unexpectedly breaking something inside her. When at last Igrid fell silent, she looked around, as though waking from a daze, and realized it was dark. While she talked, Arnil had tended the fire. She found him staring at her. He had not interrupted her once.
She flinched, suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t know if I answered your question somewhere in all that… but if you want me to be clear, Lancer, it’s not knights and noble lords that I hate. It’s not even all the cutthroats and rapers, if you can believe it. They are what they are. No, it’s those bastards who talk of honor like it’s a real thing, then stab you in the back the moment you start to believe them. Better not to believe and rob them of their chance.” She shrugged. “It’s not a warm way to live, but at least you survive that way. Otherwise, you’d need a damn army to keep safe.”
Arnil was silent for a time. “That Isle Knight you spoke of…”
“Rowen.” Igrid blushed when she said his name.
“Had Sir Rowen been in my place, do you think he would have killed those squires for their crimes?”
Igrid was startled. “Yes,” she said finally.
Arnil nodded. “Good. That’s three of us. Find a few more, and maybe we’ll put together an army someday.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
QUE’AHL
Rowen stood outside the simple Wyldkin cottage that served as both guest quarters and prison, glad that he had been allowed a moment to wander. In contrast to the majesty of the forest beyond, the fortress was stark and utilitarian. Buildings were unadorned, with narrow doorways and even narrower windows. While some Sylvs walked in the streets, others crossed raised platforms joined by wooden bridges that, Rowen guessed, allowed defenders to rain arrows on any Olgrym who succeeded in breaching the fortress.
The Sylvs had taken their weapons—including Knightswrath—but so far, they had not been mistreated. After Silwren’s dire proclamation, Captain Essidel promised to keep them safe in Que’ahl while he appealed to his general for further instructions. The general, Seravin, apparently occupied a nearby fort. Essidel had ridden out at once to speak with him, promising to be back by morning. Though it was the middle of the night, the stronghold was more than adequately lit by torches and lanterns.
Rowen had hoped to speak with Silwren, but the expenditure of magic outside the gates had taxed her greatly, and
she’d fallen asleep almost as soon as they were escorted to their lodgings. Finally, unable to sleep and irritated by Jalist’s snoring, Rowen stalked off. Wyldkin and Shal’tiar frowned when they saw him walking alone, but no one challenged him.
In the captain’s absence, their safety—and Que’ahl’s defense—had been entrusted to Briel. He seemed none too pleased with the duty and was even less pleased when Rowen joined him on the wooden battlements. “Where is the wytch?”
“Asleep,” Rowen said. At least, he hoped she was. He worried that her nightmares might conjure fire as easily as her hands did. “I keep thinking I understand her. Then I think I don’t.” Rowen was surprised that he’d spoken so bluntly.
“You’ll get no sympathy from me, Human. If it weren’t for Captain Essidel—”
A Wyldkin woman rushed up to the battlements and interrupted them. The two spoke in a rush. Rowen’s patchwork knowledge of the Sylvan language was not enough to tell for certain what they were discussing, but he caught a certain word spoken again and again, always with a mixture of disgust and trepidation: Olgrym.
He felt for his sword before he realized it was gone. He wore plain clothes, too. His armor was in the cottage. Rowen turned, about to go back for his armor, but decided to talk to Briel first, who was speaking with a cluster of officers. Rowen waited until they dispersed.
Briel gave him a cold glance. “Go back to your wytch. You’re in the way here.”
“What’s happening here?”
“Olgrym. They are moving south, hundreds strong.”
Rowen made no attempt to conceal his disbelief. Everyone knew that due to constant fighting among the Olgish clans, no single clan could boast more than fifty warriors at a time.
Briel said, “I wish I were lying, Human, but I am not. There are at least sixty clans scattered throughout Godsfall, and it seems they’ve all united under one banner.”
Knightswrath (The Dragonkin Trilogy Book 2) Page 24
