Firethorn (12 page)

We awoke, limbs intertwined, and found the Sun up before us. From an outcropping we saw the camp below, on a sandy bank by a bend in the river. Little figures bustled about—more a hornets' nest than a beehive, I thought: all sting and no honey. From the vantage of the camp, surrounded by trees, you couldn't see what we saw: we stood on a last promontory of the forest. The hard foothills of the mountains, stone ribbed, cloaked in trees, met the rolling hills of the plains in a ragged line. The river we'd followed all this way looked like a twisting silver cord; in the distance it flowed into a larger river, braiding into a great skein of water that lay coiled and tangled across the lowlands, catching the light. In the far west the plains were still steeped in the blue air of dawn, pricked here and there by watchfires. At our feet the hills were potbellied with soil, under a dun hide stitched with hedgerows. I counted four villages nearby on high ground, each walled and with a stone tower. Groves and copses cast long black morning shadows over the fields—but these were mere islands of trees. We'd reached the edge of the Kingswood.

When we came down the camp was abuzz with the story of how Sire Galan had burned Sire Rodela's hair and then vanished into the woods. I wished I could become as small as a mouse and ride hidden under Sire Galan's surcoat, above his heart; had I not already broken my promise—my boast—to the Crux that no one would quarrel over me? We'd made them all late; the baggage was loaded. The First of the clan would have no patience for these faults. He seemed a man who would keep his word and not hesitate to feed me to his war dogs.

But no, I misjudged. The Crux was in a good humor. The cataphracts were already on horseback; Sire Galan's black stallion had been saddled and stood by, yanking up grass by the roots. The Crux leaned forward, resting his crossed arms on the high pommel of his saddle, and looked down at Sire Galan. I might have been a mouse after all, for all the notice he took of me. “I heard you took up barbering last night, Galan. But it seems you don't know how to go about it. Shall I send you back to your father and tell him to apprentice you to a barber for the proper schooling? Or do you still plan to be a warrior?”

“Sire Galan shrugged and smiled up at his uncle. “Rodela was in need of a trim, so I gave him one. How does he look?”

The Crux laughed and picked up his reins. “Like a sheep with the mange. He won't need to be shorn again for a long time to come. Get to horse, boy. I was just about to leave you behind. Guasca said you must have been eaten by a bear, and Pava said some mountain cannywoman had trapped you in her cave—but I knew better.” His voice changed: still a note of indulgence, but under it a rasp like iron on stone. “I've known you for a lazing prankish dillydallier since you were a boy. But I advise you not to try my patience further. You will be schooled or you will go walking—behind us or home to your father, at my choosing.”

Sire Galan swung into his saddle in one move, all grace and no effort. He looked not a bit chastened; his shirt hung open about his throat and he wore a few leaves and pine needles on his clothes.

As they rode away Sire Pava said, “I shall call you barber, Cousin, since you've taken up that profession.”

“That suits me fine,” I heard Sire Galan say. “I can strop my blade so fine and shave a man so gently it will take him an hour to find I've barbered his head from his body.”

Sire Rodela did indeed look mangy. He made Spiller trim the burnt ends of his hair with a knife, but it was still uneven and rough. He'd been outfaced when Sire Galan had cropped his hair; he'd been mocked, and yet Sire Rodela shone a little brighter for reflecting his master's glory—for Sire Galan was even more admired in the troop since he'd chastised his man so cleverly. Maybe this was why Sire Rodela bore more of a grudge against his master's men and me than his master. Or he needed no reason.

He knew how to carry a grudge. He'd sucked whey from his mother's teats while Sire Galan had been sucking cream. No doubt it rankled that his grandmother had been a concubine rather than a wife. By the thickness of a blanket—being born on the wrong side of it—he was Musca rather than Falco, for the children of concubines belong to their mother's house. Like all the Musca he took pride in his bitterness. According to Spiller, Sire Rodela claimed his great-great-great-grandfather had been head of the Crux clan before they came to this country. But once here the house of Musca had fallen on stony ground. Ill will had planted them where they could not thrive, and they'd kept tallies of their enemies for these many generations.

And surely Sire Rodela had the look of a man who had been cheated and expected to be cheated again. He'd likely dupe others first if he got the chance, being so sure they'd gull him if they could. I didn't understand why Sire Galan trusted him at his back, before or after he had shorn him. I suppose he took envy for granted, and suspected nothing more.

By the time we reached the lowlands, the wind had changed, bringing with it the smell of turned earth, dung, and smoke from stubble burning after the harvest. The priests called a halt when we drew near a great elm alone in a field of flowering corona. Its branches were black with starlings, numerous as leaves. The birds all sat looking into the wind, and they raised a great raucous chorus.

We waited until the starlings took to the air and wheeled above us two times, black wings against gray sky, swirling like dye stirred into water before they flew away north over the hills. I must have seen this sight a thousand times, but it awed me now, how they moved with one will, how they waited for us before taking wing.

The omen was good, so said the Auspices, according to rumor. I was uneasy; when the gods send messages they must be meddling.

We'd been the better part of a tennight on the road when the little river we'd been following met the great river. We forded where it ran slow and shallow, its marshy verges alive with waterfowl. Low clouds shut out the Sun. There was a new smell in the air, fresh and damp, and a drizzling mist that turned dust to mud. Across the river the road climbed into low hills barren of trees, with fields bounded by knee-high stone walls instead of hedges. Even the ground under our horses' hooves changed, becoming chalky and gray, too lean for much but pasture and heath. The shepherds' huts looked like rubble scattered over the hills.

The Crux had kept us to a pace that wore out the shoe leather of the foot soldiers (those who were shod, anyway), but the morning after we forded the river we stayed long in camp, in the ruins of a fortress built on a mound. The tower was broken, most of its stones pulled down and the timbers lying half burned and rotting on the ground. The wall at the foot of the mound had all but disappeared, the stones carted away for other walls, but a thorn hedge still stood guard, shiny and black in the mist.

The jacks took out their pumice stones, grit and vinegar, awls and laces, and set to work on the armor, so we knew we were close to the Marchfield at last. The cataphracts would go clad in full harness to prove their readiness to the king, and to strut before the other clans, no doubt.

It was a gray morning, between the stones and the mist; even the turf was bleached of color. But I sat with my cloak snugged around me, looking at red, thinking of red. Spiller was helping Sire Galan pull on his underarmor: a pair of leggings and a long-sleeved doublet quilted of heavy linen. This underarmor was sewn three fingers thick where there was most need of padding, and could by itself turn a blow. Many waxed cords, or points, dangled from the quilted cloth, which were used to tie on the plate armor. The linen was dyed red with madder—so as not to show blood, Spiller said.

Sire Galan already had many scars on his body, and I was acquainted with them. Most were earned training with weapons of wood or blunted steel; he'd won a few in duels. I supposed he'd acquitted himself well enough, for he was still walking the earth, and likewise I supposed he'd killed before, though he never said so. The king was said to frown on duels for wasting men, and to wink at them too, for keeping men courteous and in fighting trim. Those who are neither do not live long.

A man in the village once cut himself so badly with a sickle the blood could not be stanched. The Dame had rushed to the field to see what could be done, though it was not her place to heal him. The man was already dead, his skin white, the ground under him red. The Dame told me later there was enough blood in a body to fill a firkin like the ones we used for ale. Man or woman, Blood or mud, it is all the same: once it's let out, it can't be poured back in. Sire Galan and the others had set out of a purpose to spill blood, and it was hard to say whether gods or men were more thirsty for it.

Over the red linen went a shirt and leggings of mail. This shirt, or hauberk, came down to his hips. Some of its tiny links were tinned so they shone, and with the duller iron links they made a feather pattern, which marked him as house of Falco.

This was fine plumage indeed, and yet Sire Galan was only half in his harness. Over all of this went an outer skin of plate, to give him a tougher hide than he was born with. The metal was shaped to his measure and inlaid with silver godsigns for his protection, and each piece was lined in velvet to save on bruises.

It took most of the morning to put it on, and Sire Rodela and Spiller to do it—Spiller with his fumble fingers and Sire Rodela with his curses. Besides the laces to tie the plate to the underarmor and mail, there were buckles and hinge pins and staples and other fastenings.

They started with the leather shoon, wrapped top and toe with narrow bands of iron, for if a man loses his feet, he has nothing to stand on. Next they strapped on greaves for his shins and kneecops for his knees. They tied his prickguard to his leggings with waxed points. Then they belted on a kilt of iron scales laced to deerskin, which covered his thighs and was split for riding. They buckled on his steel cuirass, which was fashioned with artistry to look like a man's torso, front and back; on the chest was engraved a stooping hawk, marked out with silver inlay, and godsigns surrounded the navel. On Sire Galan's right arm, they tied a leather sleeve covered with metal scales, each scale overlapping the next so he could swing a sword with ease. His shield arm had only the mail. Besides all this, there were other sheaths of hammered plate: flaring wings for his shoulders, a gorget for his neck, elbowcops. His gauntlets were fine examples of the armorers' cunning, covering the backs of his hands with strips of metal riveted to give ease of movement, even to each finger, and the knuckles were spiked; the palms were of leather reinforced with mail, so he could grab a blade and not be cut. Sire Rodela hung a baldric about Sire Galan's shoulder and waist to hold his weapons: longsword, smallsword, mercy dagger.

Last they put a little padded cap on Sire Galan's head and fastened it under his chin, and tucked his hair up under it, and put his steel helmet over it. The helmet put Sire Pava's to shame, that he had scraped us bare to buy. It was shaped like a gyrfalcon's head with its beak gaping open; the visor was a silvered mask that covered Sire Galan's face with his own likeness. When he pulled it down, a Galan of metal peered from the gyrfalcon's mouth—a serene face to wear to war. I watched his face as his men armored him, and he looked like the mask: calm, somewhat solemn, somewhat content, the way a child looks playing with a bit of clay, absorbed in the task.

He pushed up his visor and came over to me. He put his shield arm around me and pulled me close. This new skin of his was cold and hard, and I was glad of it. But I wished I could take him by the hair and dip him in metal, so that he was covered all over, for I didn't like the chinks, the way a dagger could find the back of his knee and hamstring him, or a sword find its way through the mail under his arm. We are imperfect vessels. We leak so easily.

e took to the road after the morning mists had lifted, and we'd not been riding long before the Crux sent his men to drive us faster. We spread over the verges of the road into the fields and began to trot and then to canter. Thole stretched into the gait, trying to keep up with the larger horses. The earth resounded under their hooves. We left the foot soldiers and oxcarts and mules behind, and the gold and green banners streamed above our heads. I felt caught up in the spectacle, though I bore no colors but a dark blue dress and the bleached linen of my headcloth.

The road dipped and rose, and we came over the last hill and saw the army encamped over a full league of rolling plain. Beyond the army, the sea. I had imagined the sea would be like a great lake in a bowl of mountains, water cupped by land, but it spilled past the horizon. There was no edge to it; sea dissolved into sky and sky into sea in a gray haze. The surface of the water, green and pocked, reflected the low clouds like an old bronze mirror dulled by verdigris. It was marked by whitecaps quickly scrawled and quickly erased, leaving nothing for the eye to fasten on, a scene absurdly fl at and featureless. Yet my eye was caught by it. I looked right past the March field until we were down the hill and riding through a city of sumptuous pavilions and squalid hovels, so swarming with men and horses—and sheep, chickens, boys, dogs, goats, women, and mules—that I was bewildered.

The cataphracts gave a shout and the Crux led us straight in at a gallop, to the crossroads at the center of the Marchfield, where stood the king's hall. As we passed the tents and lean-tos and corrals, the campfires and dungheaps, I saw we were not much of a spectacle after all. A woman looked up from her laundering, a boy from polishing armor; a couple of warriors saw the banners and hailed us. Among so many I thought we'd disappear like a drop of dye in water.

We dismounted and knelt on the beaten ground before the king's hall. From a distance I'd mistaken the hall for a building, and indeed it was larger than any structure I'd ever seen, being the height of four men and wide enough to swallow the Dame's manor and her kitchen garden besides. But it was a vast circular pavilion, framed with timbers of great girth and walled and roofed with painted, gold-stamped leather; a herd of oxen must have given up their hides for it.

King Thyrse himself came out to greet us. The Crux gave him his sword, offering it by the hilt, and the king reversed it and gave it back. He pulled the Crux to his feet and gave him the kiss of peace on his forehead. Then he welcomed each cataphract by name, starting with his own bastard, Sire Guasca, and Sire Galan next, and gave them leave to stand. The armigers remained kneeling, heads bowed, palms flat on the ground. It was not so long a ceremony, but too long for me with my knees on the flints in the road. The horses grew restive behind us, pulling on the reins in the horseboys' hands.

I wouldn't have known him for the king if not for the obeisance we paid him. He was dressed more like some middling-rich armiger in a coarse shirt under a velvet brigandine stained with rust; he wore a plain red cap on his head. He was not so tall, either. I could have looked him eye to eye-except my forehead was to the ground, like the rest of the drudges, and I had to peep at him from under my brows.

I'd seen him before. This was the huntsman who'd brought down the stag in the Kingswood and taken his crown of antlers. His clan was Prey, and he was First of his clan as well as king. No wonder he could summon Prey Hunter and the god would come.

The Crux led us to a bare patch of pasture set aside for his troop. I saw he was as important as they'd said in the village, for we were less than a stone's throw from the king's hall.

The Marchfield, which had looked so sprawling and shapeless to me at first sight, had an underlying symmetry. It was like the divining compass Az had drawn for me in the dirt, with twelve roads, some mere paths, leading outward, from the king's hall at the center to the twelve directions. These roads cut the Marchfield into twelfths, called arcants. Unlike Az's compass, it could not be divided into equal domains for each god or clan, because King Thyrse and his sister, Queenmother Caelum, required half the arcants between them for their troops. The rest of the clans crowded into the other half.

The king had Prey's cataphracts under his command, and also hundreds of well-seasoned horse and foot soldiers, mudmen who gave their allegiance to the king and a daily ration, in something of that order. Queenmother Caelum's army of northerners, her Wolves, had taken four twelfths of the compass, from west-of-north to east, and marked their camp with her pennants of crimson and white. Some had mocked her men at first, saying they were called Wolves for their bravery in harrying sheep—but behind the tents and on the tourney field, they'd taught the mockers what it meant, until their name was spoken with grudging esteem.

The clan of Rift had an entire arcant, between the king and queenmother, to house a large troop of priests who served the avatar of the Warrior. They were so steeped in the mysteries of war, so hardened by its disciplines, that they were said to be more lethal without weapons than other men were with an arsenal.

Each of the remaining ten clans had half an arcant, the boundaries marked by banners around the tents. The king kept his best captains close to his hall; we were south-of-west, sharing an arcant with the clan of Lynx, arrived two days before—but they were farther from the king and nearer the sea. The Dame's husband had been a Lynx. He died before I came to the manor, and the Dame had never spoken of his clan.

We made a better camp than we had on the road. Summons Day, when all the clans must appear or pay forfeit, was still more than a tennight away, and there was no telling how long we'd be there after that. The Auspices blessed the ground with libations of wine and oil, the smoke of candlebark, and the sacrifice of a goat. The Crux marked out the boundaries and divided the space, setting aside the greater part of it for the horses. Foot soldiers were put to work robbing stones from pasture walls to build the corral, a pen for the manhounds, and a great central hearth. After their other work was done, they built lean-tos for themselves against the walls of the corral and dog pen: rough shelters of stone and rope, thatched with gorse brush.

The First's men knew what they were about, and raised his great pavilion quickly at the point nearest the king's hall, and the priests' green tent next to it to serve as both shrine and shelter. This left them free to offer advice (much of it unwanted) to the other varlets as they puzzled and cursed and fussed with ropes and poles and canvas. Sire Pava had bought a round tent of painted leather in Ramus, but he'd left the poles behind; it had never occurred to him that there could be a land without trees. I hid a sneer behind my hands to see him mocked for this by the other cataphracts, until the Crux's bagboy came back with a mule laden with kindling and told Sire Pava's jack, Gaunt, where he could buy wood.

Sire Galan's tent was wider than Az's hut and so high that a tall man could easily stand inside. It was made of canvas patterned with light green and yellow fletches, coated with wax against the damp. The wind plucked at the walls and made the poles and ropes creak. It was more pleasant to me than a house of stone or mud because its walls barred neither light nor air, and yet it was wonderfully dry inside, but for a leak or two at the seams when one of the clouds scurrying by overhead spattered us with rain.

Toward evening I carried two iron pots and a waterskin down the west path, toward the sea. It was Noggin's duty to fetch water, but I was in need of a reason to look at the sea again. Among so many tents, I could only glimpse it.

The narrow path gleamed where feet had worn through the turf to the chalky ground. It twisted around hummocks, through gaps in stone walls, and behind the backs of the tents, before leading me to the edge of a cliff. White seabirds hovered before me in the gulf of air, making small gestures to hold themselves steady, disdaining to overtax their wings. Far below, the sea began.

The path went over the cliff's edge. It was steep, but I was used to scrambling on rocks in the mountains. I left the pots behind, for I needed both my hands, and followed it down, holding on to tufts of sedge and outcroppings of crumbling stone. I hitched up my kirtle and squatted at the water's edge. The sea had a strong smell, not unpleasant. I took a taste and spat it out: saltier than tears. So I learned what everybody knows—that the sea is brine—and was reminded of my ignorance of the world beyond the Kingswood.

I walked north along the shore, and the sea wind pushed at me as if it meant to slip my shadow loose and fling it as high as those white birds. Cold waves splashed over my feet and tumbled the pebbles and shells on the strand. The Sun was low and swaddled in clouds, but she sent a little red light skipping over the water toward me.

Hundreds of ships rode the swells, bare masts as close as dead trees in a flooded forest. I'd never seen sails, so the masts puzzled me. We had boats of bent willow and leather in the village, as clumsy as a barrel unless you had the knack; these ships were bigger than houses, with smooth sides painted with godsigns. Big as the vessels were, it was hard to believe that so many men and horses and wagons could be poured into them and transported over waters so wide you couldn't even see the other shore, much less be assured of finding it.

I'd not been alone for more than a moment since starting this journey. Always in sight, everything I did or did not do remarked on. Not that I was so remarkable, but soldiers are often idle and always looking for diversion. So every man in the troop had a taste of me, my name on his tongue. I hadn't felt how much it pressed upon me, the weight of their speculations, until I set the burden down by the shore.

I dug my feet into the sand and took root there until the Sun had been quenched in the sea. Once I'd known every face in my world. Now I was among strangers, too many to count. I had tied the thread of my life to one of those strangers, and I wasn't sure whether, twisted together, we would make a stronger cord. I felt more myself when we were not together. But Wend Weaver was at work. Sire Galan and I were between her finger and her thumb as she spun, and I feared that if we snagged or tangled, she might get out her shears.

I scrambled up the cliff. The sea was luminous, brighter than the sky and land, as if it held the last light of the Sun. Somehow I'd mislaid the two pots—or they'd been stolen. I feared Spiller would complain of me, and I cast back and forth along the cliff's edge looking for them. After a while I gave it up and made my way on another path toward the campfires and torches, small puddles of light and sound.

Behind the tents a gray shadow detached itself from the other shadows and stood in my way. “What's this?” he said, and he pulled off my headcloth so that my hair came down. He called out, “Come see what I've found! A stray skinsheath!”

I snatched at the cloth, but he held the other end of it. “I'm no stray. I'm of Crux's company.”

“You' re not,” he said, “or you wouldn't be here.”

When one farmyard dog starts barking, the rest join in. Soon I had a pack around me, yammering. I reached for my knife and my hand brushed the bag of finger bones hanging from my belt. I didn't need to cast the bones to know the counsel Na and the Dame would have given, for I had them to heart. Na would have said, “All you can do with that little blade is scratch, and scratching will worsen the itch,” and the Dame would have advised another use for it, if other means failed—the only sure escape being to turn it on myself. I palmed the knife and tucked my hands into my sleeves. I said again (but my voice was smaller than I'd hoped), “I'm of Crux's company. My cataphract will come looking for me.”

The first man mocked me. “Her cataphract will come looking for her—she thinks a cataphract will come looking for his laundress! I suppose she's the only one can keep his dirties clean. Well, will you wash my linens too?” His teeth flashed, and the whites of his eyes. He said to the others, “Aren't I a woman dowser, you laggards? My rod can find quim in a desert!”

I took a step to the side, and he stepped in front of me again.

Another said, from behind my shoulder, “Maybe, but it's such a little stick.” A third said, “Trave dowses women all right, but his rod hangs down as soon as he finds one, so what's the use?” They hooted.

Trave replied, “Oh, no. It stands up and quivers; it points right at her. Shall I show you?” He lifted his tunic and began to unlace his prickguard.