B007IIXYQY EBOK (63 page)

Athelinda might have laughed at the sight of her would-be groom, had she not been so stricken with dread, for his fine raiment only made more apparent how unrefined he was. It was as if a brigand had stolen the clothes of an effete prince. Gundobad looked as she believed elves must look, with a healthy fringe of bristling red beard, a round, protruding stomach, spindling legs, a glimmer of malicious playfulness firing his eyes.
Even his horse did not seem to like him—the beast snorted and picked up its feet with distaste, seeming to contemplate throwing his rider. Gundobad clutched the reins as though he had a dangerous dog on a leash. His pastry-flour skin was blotched with red from bouts of mead-drinking that lasted a night and a day; all knew him as a man whose appetites were stronger than his will.

“My lady Athelinda, greetings to you,” he called out to her. “It’s time you’re wedded, and none make a more suitable husband than me. Go deck yourself in your finest clothes and your greatest treasures. My patience is at an end.”

“You are a pitiable fool to think you can walk where Baldemar walked.” Athelinda’s voice was harsh and raw. “It will be the hand of a dead woman you’ll take.”

Gundobad ignored this and dismounted near the marriage tent, brushing the dust of the journey off his cloak. He ordered the harpist to play. The fluttery notes, so regal and poised, were so absurdly out of place Athelinda wondered if she
had
taken that last short step to madness. She felt all the venomous sadness fermenting in her breast boiling up in a violent eruption.

“Bed down here and you lie in a nest of wasps,” Athelinda shouted from the doorway. “Lie where Baldemar lay and the coverlets will burst into flame. Taste my mead and your entrails will shape-shift into vipers. Before Hel I declare it, you’ll awaken on the marriage-morn to find your gut the habitation of white worms.”

This brought uncomfortable quiet to the company; there was something darkly menacing and wrong in the sight of this handsome and imperious woman, the noblest among them, reduced to helpless rage. Surely the powers of night would descend to vindicate her.

After an awkward length of time Gundobad proclaimed with thin gaiety, while grinning and nodding, “I like her spirit!” He was determined to fight the unease settling over the yard in an evil cloud. He ordered a cask of his own mead opened—an unrealized deference to Athelinda’s threat. Gundobad himself planned to touch none of it—he seemed to sense he would need his wits about him to claim this difficult bride.

Athelinda regarded Gundobad with empty eyes, a look he misread as defeat. Then she withdrew abruptly into the gloom of the hall.

“Mudrin,” Athelinda whispered, “bring out my marriage dress.” Mudrin fled past her and opened the oak chest by the hearth and, with trembling hands, brought out a girdle of silver and a voluminous white woolen shift, its square neckline and hem embroidered with entwined serpents in crimson and woad blue. Mudrin looked at Athelinda, her eyes blurred with hopelessness. “Dare we desecrate this!”

“It is fitting I should die in it. Understand, Mudrin, I go to my death. I mean to slay him before I take the vow, and then end my own life.”

Mudrin caved onto the mead bench and broke into desolate sobs. Fredemund held her hands to her temple while slowly shaking her head, muttering, “Lady of Night, have mercy! Fria, how can you allow it.” Athelinda took a battered Roman short sword from the wall, a relic from the battle with Wido. When she had put on the long white garment, she instructed Mudrin to conceal the weapon beneath its folds, and had her cut a small opening in the shift so the sword could be drawn out.

“And bring in the pendant of garnet and the doeskin shoes. Today I will greet Baldemar before the Sky Hall arrayed exactly as on our marriage day.”

Carefully Fredemund arranged the cloth to disguise the sword. Then she put a silver circlet on her lady’s head and fastened the gem-studded iron clasps at her sleeves. Over this she put a cloak dyed in delicately tinted squares of red and blue, fastening it at the shoulder with an intricate gold fibula in the shape of a boar with a carnelian eye.

“Quickly, the hearthfire, or he will suspect,” Athelinda said to Mudrin. The thrall woman got up heavily as if drunken with tears, found a jug of water, and poured it down the hearthfire’s length, extinguishing it. At a wedding the hearthfire must be lit anew. At the last moment Athelinda felt a spasm of faintheartedness, and she turned away from the door.

“I have never used a sword,” she whispered. “I cannot!”

Fredemund leaned close, her lower lip protruding slightly as it did when she set her mind on a thing. “You’ve gutted a hog, haven’t you?” she said in her rough, sweet whisper, gripping Athelinda’s shoulder with a doughy hand. “Rest your fears, my lady. Wodan will guide your hand.”

In answer Athelinda stiffened her spine, nodded slightly, then went out into the sunlight in her finery, forcing herself not to think of the sword, hoping this would prevent Gundobad from noticing its outline against the cloth.

She saw that while she was preparing herself, Witgern and his party had arrived. As she suspected, they were pitifully few, a disheartening sight, each with skeletal hollows about the eyes, the stench of hopelessness about him. Among them were Amgath, who once leapt a flaming cart, and tall golden-haired Coniaric, never defeated in a footrace. Neither looked strong enough to sit a horse. They collected by the gate, quietly watching.

I should not have sent for them, Athelinda thought. I only summoned more witnesses to this loathsome ceremony.

The marriage priestess, a sturdy, bland-faced woman of middle years called Alruna, stood in the shadow of the tent, her head bowed. In one hand, she held a torch to relight the hearthfire; in the other, a gilt horn of mead for the wedded couple to share.

Gundobad was surprised by Athelinda’s sudden docile calm, but thought: Ah, she admires my boldness—and she is, after all, a practical woman.

As Athelinda walked down the avenue of shields and moved into the shade of the tent, she walked a little stiffly but maintained a look of serenity, looking neither right nor left. The blade of the sword was like ice against her thigh. She halted beneath the marriage tent alongside her groom. Discreetly her right hand moved closer to the opening Mudrin had cut in the cloth of her gown. Gundobad stood next to her, smiling smugly, his thrust-forward stomach reminding her of a rooster’s chest, his heavy, rasping breaths making him seem greedy even for air. She thought—an ox would have more sensitivity to what passes here.

Do they not see how violently I tremble? What madness! Baldemar, come close and lend me strength.

“I call down Fria to witness,” Alruna drawled in settled contentment. Athelinda despised her; how could she take part in this sanctified rape? Athelinda knew then how great Geisar’s influence still was among the Holy Ones; no priest of Wodan before him had ever succeeded in corrupting a marriage priestess. These were evil times, a good time to die.

“…this hallowed joining of woman to man…,” Alruna droned on. Athelinda paid little attention until she heard the words, “…you will now cross hands, left to left, right to right.”

Athelinda tensed.
The handfasting.
This was the rite that would bind her forever to Gundobad. His hands were already extended. She forced herself to meet his eyes. Slowly she brought her own hands up; her palms grew wet with perspiration.

Now. The sword. Now.

The silence was sundered by a noisy clattering of hooves.

A single rider galloped at great speed beneath the Cat-Skull Gate, then halted abruptly where the flax field gave way to the yard. Athelinda recognized the horse first—it was the dappled stallion from the horse test. She looked more carefully. Then drew in a breath and took a quick step forward to better see, almost toppling the priestess’s oakwood table.

Auriane.

She wanted to cry out a warning.
My child, why do you come alone? They will murder you.

But Athelinda’s throat was frozen. Too late she realized her quick movements exposed the sword’s pommel through the opening in the marriage dress.

Gundobad saw. He seized Athelinda’s sword, roughly drew it out, then angrily threw it onto the ground in front of his men.

“Treacherous troll-woman!” He grasped Athelinda’s arm in one huge fist, twisted it painfully and forced her to her knees. She uttered a small cry of pain.

Gundobad’s men stiffened uncomfortably, their feelings ranging from embarrassment to outrage on Athelinda’s behalf. Mudrin ran to her mistress, all reason gone, crying out, “You
swine!
How dare you!” Gundobad struck the thrall-woman so hard across the mouth that a thread of blood streaked down her chin. Mudrin sank to the ground.

“Gundobad,” one of his men said quietly. “Look behind you.”

Gundobad turned, and said with nonchalance, “There is nothing behind me but the ghost of a niding who dares skulk about amongst the living.”

“Get up!” he then commanded Athelinda, attempting to drag her to her feet. But Athelinda wrest her arm from his grip and fell back to her knees in the dust. Then she sat motionless, eyes fixed on the sky as she rapidly intoned the words of a curse.

Auriane sprang to the ground and approached them, halting when she was but a spear length from the marriage tent. A taut silence descended as the company shifted its attention to her. Athelinda joined them, slowly dropping her gaze to look at Auriane.

Athelinda was disoriented by the sight of her—she did not know this woman who was her daughter. Auriane’s hair was drawn sleekly back into a Suebian knot, giving her a look that was steely, refined. Those gray eyes were remote as she stood alert and still in a warrior’s stance, concentrating fiercely upon Gundobad alone. Athelinda felt fear for her and pride in her, standing there so straight and young in a fawnskin tunic; she seemed womanish and boyish at once, while calling up something else that was neither, just pure human spirit that was flexible and strong, a creature blending her father’s will of adamantine with her own pure and solemn passion.

There was something of ancient songs in the scene. This spear maid returned from the dead to aid the living seemed to have sprung from the imagination of some bard.

Athelinda then recognized the hilt of Auriane’s sheathed sword.
She has found it. But what does she think she is doing? Surely she does not mean to engage Gundobad in single battle.

Impossible fool, Athelinda thought. The use of the sword in single battle requires time and schooling. Even with a powerful weapon such as that, a valiant heart is not enough. Daughter, your blood will soak the ground.

“Leave at once, Gundobad,” Auriane said. It was a voice to still hearts as when a temple bell is struck, sharp, clear, resonant, and rich with generosity. Only Athelinda noticed it faintly trembled. “And I will let you live.”

“The closeness of marital happiness must have addled my wits.” Gundobad’s red lips stretched into a broad grin. “I thought I heard you say—”

“You know well what I said!” With a light swift motion Auriane drew the sword. Athelinda shut her eyes and silently spoke the word,
No.

“Alruna! Commence!” Gundobad commanded. “Pay her no mind.”

But Alruna was staring at the sword in Auriane’s hand, a look of slow recognition coming into her face. Witgern, Thorgild, and the former Companions edged close, and they, too, began to regard Auriane’s sword with sharp interest. Gundobad did not have time to wonder why.

For Auriane erupted from stillness to frenzy. The crude instinct of a beast of prey was all that saved Gundobad’s life, for he drew his own sword just in time to deflect a strike that would have decapitated him.

The soul-shattering clang of blade on blade shocked him awake, and Gundobad realized how close he had come to death.
What is this? A witch-warrior? A woman possessed by Tiwaz himself?
So quickly was he spun into the narrow world of life and death he had no time to be amazed at her fury, her art, as that swordblade flashed out with fearful speed and assurance. She was all about him like shifting gusts of wind—surviving this storm was his single thought.

The warriors watched in baffled quiet—in one moment a wedding proceeded, then
this.
They had seen dogfights easier to follow.

When Gundobad recovered from surprise, he collected himself and began to bear down on her, driving hard with coarse, sweeping strokes, striving to push her back through brute power. But Auriane was fluid as water flowing around stones; she performed a seamless dance of whiplike cross-strokes, each executed with raw exuberance as if this were play. Lightly, deftly, she teased him forward.

Athelinda felt a chill as if a spirit crossed her threshold. There was a power here above her understanding, greater than that startling skill, that bewildering speed, that towering confidence—and, of course, it must be the sword.

This is the Fates’ deliverance. I am not abandoned.

Gundobad slowly took ground, using his sword like a scythe cutting invisible grain. He was not a subtle man and he knew no cunning tactics, but he had never needed them. In a world where strength was always pitted against strength, he was stronger than most men; he was more than twice her weight and had their blades contacted directly he could have thrown her to the ground with enough force to knock the breath out of her. His victory, he knew, was a matter of time.