A Mankind Witch (3 page)

Getting up the next morning was even more torture. The bruises had set, and for all that it was midsummer, it was still cold at first light. He chewed on his coarse rye crust and supped the weak, sour small-beer handed to them in the garth outside the kitchen. In the kitchen, the morning's work had plainly begun well before, and the noise was enough to make him retreat from it. He chewed cautiously. His mouth was sore. Looking around he realized that he stood in a little island of silence, while the other ragged thralls jostled and talked—in muted voices, true, among themselves. And across the yard he caught sight of the tormentor of yesterday. He had a dirty bandage around his head. And the minute his eyes locked with Cair's, he shied away.

Cair's own head had bled, and his hair was matted with dried blood. But it was only when he'd helped to lead the horses out to the paddocks down beside the water, and took the opportunity—along with one of the other two thralls—to wash his face in the cold water that he could wash it clear gingerly. And peer at his reflection in the water. He didn't think, all things considered, that he looked that terrifying. So, on the way back up to the stables, he ventured to ask what was going on. The other man who'd bothered to wash had spoken peasant Frankish to him yesterday. He was presumably a Frankish prisoner taken on one of the locals' raids. "Why is everyone behaving as if I have the plague this morning?"

"I haven't done anything to you," said the other thrall, warily.

"Except kick me and trip me facedown into the dung heap yesterday," said Cair.

The thrall held up his hands pacifically. "But I didn't know, then."

"Didn't know what?" asked Cair.

"That you were a man-witch." Even after the rudimentary wash by the lakeside, the man's face was none too clean. The dirt was the only bit of color on it, right now.

Cair was about to deny this latest piece of ridiculousness when it struck him that it might be useful. These were pagans, after all. They weren't likely to accuse him of trafficking with the devil. "Who told you?" he asked, doing his best to look threatening. He raised one eyebrow, a trick he'd practiced and used to some effect on prisoners himself. If this was the only coin he had to play, well, then he would play it with skill.

The thrall's eyes widened, and he looked ready to bolt. "I saw, yesterday, what you did to Eddi. And I've heard from Piers that one of the other new captives says you were floating on the sea, miles from the land."

Now,
thought Cair,
all I have to do is find out what I "did" to Eddi,
who was presumably the person who had given him the bruises that hurt so devilishly this morning. Whatever it was, Cair hoped the bastard was at least half as sore as he was. He ached. Even his aches had aches. He could use any reputation that would stop this from happening again. There were a few tricks he could use to foster the story. There were a fair number of things a civilized man knew to be science that these ignorant pagans would take for magic. But for now he kept his mouth still and let the tongue of rumor speak instead. From experience, he knew that it always spoke louder than any mere man could. He and his brother had cultivated rumors of the Redbeards' uncanny successes, and of the folly of resisting them, for just that reason. Even the Venetians were inclined to run, and, when cornered, surrender rather than fight. It always made for easier victories if the victims were half paralyzed with fear before they even went into the fight. Logical thought did not come into these things, thought Cair wryly. "See you behave yourself today, and you won't get what you deserve. I'll stay my vengeance. For now."

The thrall nodded so eagerly that his head was in danger of parting from his shoulders. "Nobody will give you trouble. I promise."

"Good. Now show me what I am supposed to do around here. I don't want more beatings." He saw instantly that this had been the wrong thing to say, and rectified it immediately. "My powers are low now, too low after my magics at sea, calling the king's ship to me, to undertake great workings again. But I can still manage to deal with the likes of Eddi. Or you. However, I am here for a greater purpose than to waste magic on thralls, if I don't have to."

The thrall nodded. "We'd better go and muck out then. Signy never says anything, except if the horses are badly looked after."

There was that name again. He'd taken it for a Norse insult the first time he'd heard it. This thrall and the others in the stable yard put a fair degree of disdain into it. "Who is this Signy?"

"The old king's daughter. King Vortenbras's sister. Half-sister."

It was curious that these slaves would even dare to treat someone that high-born with anything but the very greatest respect, or even omit a title. They certainly spoke the name of Vortenbras's mother with hushed deference. It appeared that how much respect a thrall got from his fellows was largely determined by who owned you. Thus the sooner he, Cair, got himself transferred to the service of some more important personage, the better. It would make life more comfortable, until he could escape.

"They say that she is a
seid
-witch," said the thrall with disdain. "Or at least the queen does. But I never saw any sign of it."

During the rest of the day, Cair gradually pieced together a great deal from his new informants, Henri, once a fisherman from the coast of nearby Helgoland, and Thjalfi, their half-witted companion in labor. Thjalfi had no problem repeating the story, over and over again, of Eddi and the bucket. It would appear that Thjalfi had, prior to Cair, been Eddi's favorite kicking target. By the way the moonling smelled, Cair wished that Eddi had kicked him into the water. Thjalfi had no Frankish, but he was slow of speech as well as wits, and he repeated things endlessly. As a learning tool he was an asset, if a noisome one. If Cair understood Thjalfi right, Cair had called Eddi "Buckethead" and a string of strange and obviously magical words. And the bucket had come from nowhere and landed on Eddi's head.

The Berber-coast obscenity Cair had yelled at Eddi hadn't been "Buckethead." But it did sound similar. Luck and a falling bucket had been on his side. Now he just had to capitalize on it.

From Henri he learned a great deal more. King Vortenbras of Telemark's hall was some fifteen leagues from the coast—for just the reason that Cair had surmised. Once the small Norse "kingdom" had had its seat on the coast. And inevitably had raided far and wide . . . and brought down the wrath of the Danes and Holy Roman Empire on its king's hall. Now, with the royal hall tucked into the mountains, beside what had been an ancient holy site, silver coming from the mountain mines, and a treaty with the Holy Roman Empire, Telemark under King Vortenbras was a growing power. Rumor had it that the limits of this power irked the king. He was looking to stretch them, folk said.

Then, as the afternoon drew in, Cair got another surprise. As he was carrying in a load of straw, a woman spoke in Norse, plainly giving some instruction. Cair felt that he ought to know the speaker. He peered up from under his load, and saw Henri and Thjalfi bowing. "
Ja,
Princess Signy."

It was the woman he'd taken for a thrall-wench the night before.

Her dress was indeed shabby for a noblewoman, but in the clearer light he could see that it had been, at least once upon a time, a good riding habit. She wore some jewelry, too. Poor stuff, but if he had noticed those bracelets he'd never have mistaken her for a thrall. Her hand rested on the head of one of the hunting dogs that seemed to slope around everywhere in this place. She was inspecting the stable, and pointing to a tag end of a halter rope buried in the bedding straw. Cair was standing a great deal closer to it than she was, and he could barely see it. The woman must have eyes like a hawk.

She was a slight little thing compared to most of the women he'd seen here, fine boned, they called it back on Lesbos, where he'd grown up. Her hair was so strained back and tightly braided that it was virtually invisible from the front. He put down the net of hay. Bowed, considering the ramifications of his encounter last night. What had a noblewoman—who had plainly been crying—been doing in the stables after the household was abed? Cair was a thinker. Life, especially to a master of ships and men, was a chess game and you had to think at least five moves ahead if you wished to win. "Pick that up!" she snapped at him—in Frankish. "Don't you watch where you put things down, thrall? They told me I had a new stable-thrall that spoke no Norse and was too old for good work, but I didn't expect you to be an idiot, too. I suppose I should have. They always give me the insolent, sick, lame, and lazy. I don't care elsewhere, but you'll learn to do a proper job with the horses or I'll have you whipped. Even if I have to do it myself. And learn to speak Norse."

Picking up the hay, hastily he did his best to bow again. But she was no longer paying any attention to him. Instead she'd gone with Henri to inspect some saddle galls on the rough-coated bay. Her voice as she talked to the horse was now as gentle as it had been waspish a minute ago. And if she'd recognized him, she'd not given any sign of it.

Afterward, when she'd left, Cair found himself doing some further cleaning of the two stalls that the princess had been dissatisfied with. He'd already come to realize that her section of the huge stable was cleaner by several degrees than the other parts. He was also aware that the horses in this part of the stable were old. Several of them were definitely beyond work.

Henri grumbled. "It's only those of us in the stables that she makes work. Those house-thralls of hers are the laziest bunch of sluts you've ever met. The queen's women work their fingers raw. But not Signy's. No. Half the time they tell
her
what to do. And the queen lets them! But I'd swear the mistress spies on us down here. Look at Vortenbras's men. Half the day they can sleep in hay loft. The only time I thought I'd try that she turned up and nearly pulled my ear off. And we get the worst food and everything."

"That is going to change."

Henri blinked at him. "No, it's not. The king doesn't love his half-sister."

Cair stared pointedly at him. "I have my powers. Do you want your head in a bucket?"

Henri gaped at him. "You mean . . ."

"I mean the Princess Signy wants her horses cared for. A fine and beautiful noble lady must have what she desires." Cair was much more observant than his fellow peasant horse boys. He'd looked up, just briefly, a few moments before. Above the stalls, the roof beams had been layered with rough timber to make a sort of ceiling and junk store. The timber didn't fit too well. And through one of the cracks Cair had glimpsed a piece of embroidery that he'd seen earlier.

It would have been difficult for Cair to have said just when he had moved into the role of man-witch. His facial color—in a region where the slave-thralls had scant contact with the wider world, and had mostly never seen anyone with Mediterranean coloring and curly black hair—helped. To the ignorant, anything different was to be feared. It had probably started with his knowledge of elementary physical chemistry. Perhaps the king and his hearthmen were better informed, but the slave-thralls regarded very nearly everything as magic. Cair was a hardened empiricist who had studied with not one, but two, of the leading philosophers of the age. He was familiar with the works of Averroës, and had had long conversations with Biringuccio—one of his brother's captives, and now a trusted master metallurgist in Carthage. He had dabbled in alchemistic experiments himself, making distillations, aqua regia, aqua fortris, and iron vitriol. He'd experimented with different mixtures of black powder—these barbarians still bought theirs, and used precious little of it. He had a firm grasp of mathematical thought, particularly geometry. It had been useful to him both as a commander of ships and in siege work. He'd spent many hours in debate of these and other matters with others of his social order in the Barbary states. It was what a gentleman did in winter, after all. It was that or drink and fornicate.

And yet his most spectacular results had come from a small piece of badly flawed amber, and the minds of his audience. The amber he'd found down by the riverside. Perhaps this country was where it came from. Or perhaps it had once been a piece of bead. All Cair knew was that he'd had the marvelous attractive properties of rubbed amber displayed to him before. He'd jammed the amber into a knothole in a piece of twisted wood. It looked like some ancient piece of a bear's eye. He rubbed it with a piece of scrap wool plucked from a dog-rose thorn. He had been absently rubbing it when two of the other thralls came up to him. "Hear tell you are a
balewerker
," said the one, in atrocious Frankish. Cair was getting used to the Norse brand of the Germanic languages, and could understand a bit more than he let on. He understood the aside, or at least the gist of it, which was "this should be good for a few laughs."

Balewerker
—"evil-worker" was one of the titles given to Odin. The pagans were quite content to have their gods capable of both good and ill, and you'd better respect them or you were likely to experience the ill side. It reminded Cair of the mildly scandalous story of the young woman whom the priest had caught bowing when he mentioned the devil. The young woman of negotiable morals was hauled before the senior priest, who had demanded to know whether she worshiped the devil. She was shocked, but pointed out that a bit of respect didn't cost anything and might help her one day. The priest wasn't amused, but Cair had been. And now he faced the same. If he was a good enough "
balewerker
" he'd get respect. If not . . . the beating of a few days ago might be a minor one.

"I have some small powers, yes." He went on rubbing the amber thoughtfully.

"Hah. Show us then," said the one with the scarred face, and fine, wispy hair. The man's breath reeked of ale. It was early in the day for that sort of tippling, especially from a mere thrall. Odds were he'd been raiding the brew house, and thence came his courage.