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Page 34

 

  Joscelin glanced from the retreating Camaelines to the impassive Skaldi to me with a look of utmost bewilderment. "What is it?" he asked me at last. "Have you any idea what they've done?"

  "Yes. " I stood ankle-deep in snow, shivering under the bright sun. The sky overhead was a remarkable blue. "They've just sold us to the Skaldi. "

  If his response was singular, Joscelin's reactions were always swift. The words were scarce out of my mouth before he was scrambling for the pack and his sword, boots skidding in the snow.

  The Skaldi leader loosed a shout of laughter, whooping to his men. One of them spurred his shaggy horse forward, intercepting Joscelin, who dodged. Another drew a short spear and thundered past the bundle, his mount's hooves spraying snow as he leaned down to pluck the pack neatly from the snow on the tip of his spear. Joscelin veered toward him, and the Skaldi jerked his spear, tossing the pack to a comrade.

  They surrounded him, then, laughing with ruddy cheeks and high spirits, tossing the bundle back and forth across the circle while Joscelin spun about hopelessly, floundering in snow. The Skaldi leader sat apart, grinning with strong white teeth as he watched the entertainment. I won dered if the Camaelines had unbound Joscelin's hands knowing what would follow.

  It was worse than the Eglantine adepts taunting him in Night's Doorstep, and I stood it as long as I could before I threw away our one advantage.

  "Let him be!" I called to the leader in fluent Skaldic, raising my voice so it carried across the snow. "He does not understand. "

  His yellow eyebrows rose, but he betrayed no other sign of surprise. Joscelin, on the other hand, had ceased his futile efforts and stood gaping at me as if I'd grown a third eye. The Skaldi leader waved negligently to his men and moved his horse over to stare down at me. His eyes were a light grey, and disconcertingly shrewd.

  "Kilberhaar's men didn't tell me you spoke our tongue," he mused.

  "They didn't know," I replied in it, doing my best to hold his gaze despite my shivering. Kilberhaar; Silverhair, I thought, and remembered Isidore d'Aiglemort's pale, shining hair. "There are many things they do not know. "

  The Skaldi gave his roaring laugh, tossing back his head. "Those are true words, D'Angeline! You say your comrade does not understand. Do you?"

  I knelt in the snow, as gracefully as my cold-stiffened joints would allow, and kept my gaze on his face. "I understand I am your slave, my lord. "

  "Good. " A look of satisfaction spread across his face. "Harald," he shouted to one of his men, "give my slave a cloak! These D'Angelines are frail creatures, and I would not have her die of cold before she has a chance to warm my bed!"

  It got a laugh; I didn't care, for a young man whose mustache was barely started rode over grinning and tossed me a thick garment of wolfskin. I wrapped it around me and pinned it with frozen fingers.

  "Thin blood," observed my Skaldi lord, "though they say it runs hot. " Reaching down with one brawny arm, he lifted me into the saddle behind him. "You ride with me, little one. I am Gunter Arnlaugson. Tell your companion to be wise. "

  He wheeled his horse, bringing us broadside of the still-staring Cas-siline.

  "Joscelin, don't," I said through chattering teeth. "They won't kill us out of hand; they paid too dear. Skaldi value their slaves. "

  "No. " His blue eyes were fixed and wide, nostrils flared. "I failed you with Melisande Shahrizai, and I failed you with d'Aiglemort's men, but I swear it, Phedre, I won't fail you here! Don't ask me to betray my oath!" He lowered his voice. "The Skaldi's sword is in your reach. Get it to me, and I swear I will get us out of here. "

  I didn't look; I could feel it, the leather-wrapped hilt protruding from Gunter's sword-belt near my left elbow. Joscelin was right, it was in my reach.

  And we were alone, in a frozen wasteland. Even armed, the Cassiline was still outnumbered eight to one, by mounted Skaldi warriors.

  "I have lived in servitude all my life," I said softly. "I'm not willing to die for your oath. " I touched Gunter's shoulder. He looked back at me, and I shook my head. "He is too proud," I said in Skaldic. "He will not heed. "

  The shrewd grey eyes narrowed and he nodded. "Bring him!" he called to his men. "And have a care he does not hurt himself on your spears," he added with another roar of laughter.

  It took all seven, and I had to watch it.

  I daresay Joscelin himself had never known, until that moment, what true battle-fury was. He fought like a beast at bay, bellowing with rage, and for a time I could see nothing but horses' bodies and thrashing limbs. He succeeded in wrenching a short spear loose from one of them and kept them all at a distance then, jabbing and threatening; if it had been a more familiar weapon . . . I don't know. I cannot afford to guess.

  "He looks like a girl," Gunter commented, his expression lively with interest, "but he fights like a man. Like two men!"

  "He is trained to it from childhood," I said in his ear. "D'Angelines have betrayed him, the man you call Kilberhaar. Make him your friend, and he may fight for you against him. "

  It was a risk. Gunter's gaze slewed around to me, considering. "Kilberhaar is our ally," he said. "He pays us gold to raid your villages. "

  The shock of it went through me like a knife, but I kept it from showing on my features. "To have a traitor for an ally is to have an enemy-in-waiting," I said solemnly, silently blessing the number of hours I had spent translating Skaldic poetry. Gunter Arnlaugson made no reply, and I kept my mouth shut, leaving him to think on it. His men, half of them dismounted, finally succeeded in bringing down the thrashing Joscelin, wrestling the spear from his grasp and forcing him facedown in the snow.

  "What shall we do with him?" one of them called.

  Gunter thought about it a moment. "Tie his hands and let him run behind your horse, Wili!" he called. "We will tire the fight from this wolf-cub before we reach the steading. "

  It was quickly done, and we set out, riding beneath the bright blue sky. I clung awkwardly behind Gunter, pathetically grateful for the fur cloak and his burly frame blocking the wind, and trying not to look back at Joscelin. They had bound his wrists before him, attaching a long thong like a lead, and one of the Skaldi held the end, forcing the Cassiline to run behind his horse. Joscelin floundered in the snow, sometimes losing his footing and being dragged, until the Skaldi halted and gave him time to gain his feet. His breath came raggedly and his face was bright red with cold, but his eyes glared fierce blue hatred of everything and everyone around him.

  Including me.

  Hate me, I thought, and live, Cassiline.

  It was nearing nightfall when we reaching the steading, our shadows stretching long and black before us across the deep snows. Gunter made up a song as we rode and sang it aloud in a powerful voice, about how he had outfoxed Kilberhaar and captured a D'Angeline warrior-prince and his consort; it was a good song, and I didn't bother to correct him. By that time, I was so cold, I could barely think.

  There were a handful of snug cottages in the steading and a great hall. The doors to the hall were flung open wide as we approached, and men and women alike poured out shouting congratulations. Gunter dismounted, beaming, firelight from the hall catching the bronze fillet that bound his hair. He lifted me down from his horse and shoved me toward a knot of Skaldi. "See my new bed-slave!" he roared. "Is she not fine?"

  Hands grasped at me, prodding and examining; too many faces, crowding close, ruddy and rough-hewn. I struggled free, searching for Joscelin.

  He had sunk to his knees behind the Skaldi's horse, exhaustion compelling the obedience that nothing else would. Whoever said the Cassiline Brotherhood was a humble order, lied. His chest heaved, and his hair had come completely loose from its tidy club, rimed with frost. He glared through it at me.

  "Joscelin," I murmured, cupping his cold face in my hands. He jerked his head away and spat at me. I felt Gunter's hands on my shoulders, drawing me away, tucking me
under one massive arm.

  "Look at him!" he said jovially. "A proper wolf-cub, he is! Let him spend the night with the hounds, then, eh?"

  There was no shortage of willing hands to wrestle the Cassiline into submission. Laughing and shouting, a group of young men dragged him away; to the kennels, I could only surmise. I was spun around again by Gunter's grasp, propelled staggering into the warmth of the great hall.

  "Shame on you, Gunter Arnlaugson!" The exclamation came from a woman, against whom I fetched up like a bit of flotsam, stumbling away awkwardly. She was young, and pretty enough by Skaldic standards, with sun-colored hair and sharp blue eyes. At this moment, she had both hands planted firmly on her hips, and her eyes were narrowed. "The poor thing's half-frozen and terrified to death, and you're bragging about bed-rights! No wonder you've not found a woman to warm it before this. "

  A round of laughter echoed from the rafters, and my fiercesome Skaldi lord looked down and shuffled his feet, before coming up with a retort. "Ah, Hedwig, you know I'd no need to go raiding over D'Angeline borders if you would have me, lass!" he said, grinning. "Now there's no telling what this little one can teach me, and you'll be sorry for the loss of it!"

  "Not tonight, you won't. " Despite the laughter his retort won, her reply was no less acerbic. "A bowl of warm soup, and a turn by the fire, that's what you need, isn't it, child?" she said kindly.

  "She's a barbarian, Hedwig, she can't understand a word of it," someone said good-naturedly.

  "I understand," I said in Skaldic, struggling to make my voice heard. Still shivering under my fur cloak, I sank to my knees and grasped her work-roughened hand, kissing it. "Thank you, my lady. "

  Embarrassed, Hedwig snatched her hand away. "Gods above, we'll have none of that here, child! We're not savages, we don't make slaves crawl on their knees!" Gunter had not said as much, I thought, rising, and filed the thought for future usage. Clapping her hands, she shouted for a bowl of soup and ordered room made at the hearth for me. There was grumbling, but she was obeyed.

  I was in no shape to protest, even if I'd been minded to, which I was not. I took my seat by the fire, and the roaring heat of it slowly thawed the ice at the marrow of my bones. I could see Gunter in the hall, half a head taller than any other man there, boasting and making the best of the situation.

  Later I learned what that night should have been obvious; Hedwig's father had been the lord of the steading, until his death. Gunter had won the leadership by might of arms, but had failed thus far in his campaign to win Hedwig's heart, and some of her father's legacy of command still clung to her.

  If I do not love the Skaldi—and I cannot, for what they sought to do to the land to which I was born, and which is ever a part of me—it is not in me to hate them, either: I knew kindness at their hands. If I knew cruelty—and I did—it was no more and no less than the cruelty they inflicted upon each other, for theirs is a harsh and warlike culture. But it is not without its beauty, even if it is born of blood and iron; and as I have learned, it is not without compassion.

  Skaldi drink deep when celebrating, and they celebrated that night. Enough mead to drown a village flowed, and there were songs and fights and constant laughter. No one kept a close watch on me, and I daresay if I had wanted to slip away, I could have done so. But where would I have gone? I was in no condition to flee across miles of snowy wastes, through hostile territory. I thought of finding Joscelin, freeing him, and attempting the flight, and I shivered.

  So it was that I stayed, while my new Skaldi masters sang and boasted and drank, and worried about Joscelin freezing in the cold, until a hand shook my shoulder and I woke with a start, to realize I was drowsing. It was Hedwig, who took me kindly to her room, shooting baleful looks at an only semi-abashed Gunter. There she made up a pallet for me, of straw ticking and heaped blankets, alongside her own bed, and I curled up like a dog myself and let sleep, honest sleep, claim me.

  FORTY-ONE

  Thus began my period of slavery under the ownership of Gunter Arnlaugson, Skaldic chieftain of one of the westernmost steadings held by the tribe of the Marsi—under the aegis, I would learn, of the great war-leader Waldemar Selig, Waldemar the Blessed.

  I was roused that morning by Hedwig, who showed me, to my immense joy, the bathing room. The bath itself was nothing more than a tub of battered tin, but it was sized for Skaldi, which meant I had ample room to sit and wash myself. Hedwig showed me how to fetch water and stoke the fire to heat it, marvelling that I had no knowledge of such things.

  I may have been a servant all my life, I reflected, struggling with a heavy pail of water, but of a surety, I had been a privileged one. Still, I had never known a bath so sweet as that first one I drew for myself in Gunter's steading. Even the lack of privacy—for Hedwig perched on a stool and observed, while other women came and exclaimed—could not diminish its pleasure.

  "What do you call this?" Hedwig asked, pointing at my marque; still unfinished, of course. I was glad, at least, that I had paid Master Tielhard in advance. If ever I returned to the City of Elua, surely he would honor our contract. I gave its name, translating as best I could into Skaldi, and explained that it was the sign of a Servant of Naamah. This too required considerable explanation, which the women heard with puzzled looks. "And these?" Hedwig asked then, her hovering finger indicating the fading lines of Melisande Shahrizai's handiwork. "This is part of the . . . the rituals?"

  "No," I said shortly, pouring a dipper of warm water over my skin. "That was not part of Naamah's rituals. "

  Something in my tone stirred Hedwig to pity, and she shooed the other women out of the bath, remaining to help me out of the water and into a rough-spun woolen gown, so long on me that it dragged on the floor. "We will have it hemmed," she said pragmatically, and loaned me her own chipped comb for my damp, tangled hair.

  Washed and combed, I felt more properly myself than I had since Rousse's messenger had entered the marquist's shop, and I endeavored to take the measure of my situation.

  The great hall of the steading was a busy place. It is, I learned, the heart of any Skaldi community. The outlying fields were held by Gunter's thanes, or warriors, and farmed by their carls, who I took to be a class of peasants or bondsmen. For this privilege, they supported the thanes and paid a tithe in herds and grains to Gunter. When Gunter and his thanes were not out raiding or hunting, they spent their time carousing in the hall, wagering on contests of strength and song.

  For all of this, Gunter was not a bad lord as such things are reckoned. The Skaldi have an elaborate system of law, and he heard complaints twice a week, deciding fairly and impartially as he could. When a decision went against one of his thanes and he was ordered to make reparation to one of his own carls for the unlawful stealing of a yearling bull-calf, he did it without grumbling.

  These things I observed over time; then, on that first day, I merely kept my eyes open and my mouth closed, trying to make sense of it all. Of Gunter himself, I saw nothing during the daylight hours. His thanes abounded in the hall, honing their weapons and working thick bear-grease into their leather footware, laughing and joking. They made comments aplenty, elbowing each other and eyeing me, but made no move to molest me, so I ignored it, silently thanking Elua that it seemed I was Gunter's property alone, and not to be held in common among his men.

  While the men idled and jested, the women worked tirelessly. There is a great deal to be done to keep the great hall in a steading functioning smoothly; tending the hearths, preparing food, cleaning up after drunken warriors, mending and spinning and sewing. There were housecarls who helped with the heavier work, but much of it the women did themselves. Hedwig ordered them about with a tone much accustomed to being obeyed, not shirking to labor herself. When I asked her what my duties were to be, she waved me away, saying it was for Gunter to say. I asked then if it was permitted for me to leave the hall, for I was concerned for Joscelin and wished to find him. She bit her lip and shook h
er head. Of her own accord, I think, she would have permitted it, but she dared not cross Gunter so far as that.

  So I was confined to the hall, and the attentions of Gunter's thanes.

  One of the youngest—Harald the Beardless, who had given me his cloak—was the most daring of them, and a skilled poet in the bargain. If my heart had been less like a stone in those days, I might have blushed at some of his verses, which gave an exceedingly detailed inventory of my charms.

  It was amid one of the latter that Gunter burst into the hall, attended by a couple of his men, shouting for mead. I don't know where he had been all day, but he was glowing with the cold, snow clinging to his cloak and leggings. When he unclasped his cloak and slung it aside, I saw Mel-isande's diamond about his neck and gasped aloud.

  It was an incongruous thing, that glistening teardrop lying in the hollow of his powerful throat. I hadn't even had the sense to wonder about its loss; it had been amid our baggage, it seemed, as untouchable to d'Aiglemort's men as Joscelin's Cassiline weapons had been. No small wonder, I thought. I would sooner steal from the Cassiline Prefect than Melisande Shahrizai. The sight of her diamond drew exclamations, and Gunter laughed, running one thick forefinger beneath the black cord.

  If I had thought about it, I would have welcomed its disappearance; but here it was now, again, dangling from the throat of my Skaldi master. I felt Melisande's presence in my life like a touch, and despaired.

  "D'Angeline!" Gunter shouted, catching sight of me sitting by the fire. I rose with an automatic curtsy, awaiting with bowed head as he strode across the hall. "I have a powerful hunger upon me!" Strong hands closed about my waist and he lifted me into the air, planting a loud kiss on my less-than-willing lips. Gunter roared with laughter, holding me suspended. "Look at this!" he shouted to his men. "These D'Angeline women weigh no more than my left thigh. Think you she knows what a real man is?"

  "Nor like to, at your hands," Hedwig retorted sharply, emerging from the kitchen with a ladle held in one hand like a sword. "Put the child down, Gunter Arnlaugson!"