Hawkmistress! (48 page)

“The king’s quartermasters have given the soldiers an extra ration of wine,” Lord Ranald said, “but not enough to make them drunk; they will sit round their fires and sing in the moonlight, that is all.” He offered Romilly his arm. “Shall we join them at their fires? There are three or four men in my old unit who have fine voices and sing together in taverns; they sing well enough to get all the beer they want, and more. And be assured they will offer a Swordswoman no discourtesy, but be pleased to know you have come to hear their music.”

“They sound not like such fine voices,” said Romilly, listening to the discordance of the faraway song, and Ranald laughed.

“They are but amusing themselves; it would not be worth the trouble of the Windsong Brothers - for so they call themselves, though they are not brothers but four cousins - to sing before all are assembled and calling for entertainment. We will be in plenty of time to hear them, and the soldiers like it if the gentry come to their fires to hear their amusements.”

Put like that, Romilly could not refuse, though she felt dull and headachy and wished she could go quietly to bed. But with the camp filled with song and laughter she knew she would not sleep anyhow; perhaps Ruyven had the discipline for quiet meditation in such a racket, but she did not. She took his offered arm.

The moonlight made it almost as bright as day - well, perhaps a grey and rainy day; she did not think she could have read print, and the colors of Ranald’s garish cloak and her own crimson tunic, were indistinct, but there was plenty of light to make out where they were going. A part of Romilly, unawares, was cropping grass in the meadow with Sunstar, and yet she was filled with a strange restlessness. As they neared the fires they could hear the soldiers roaring out a song whose words were far from decorous, about some scandalous goings-on among the nobility.

“O, my father was the Keeper of the Arilinn Tower, He seduced a chieri with a kireseth flower; From this union there were three; Two were emmasca and the other was me…”

“That song,” said Ranald, “would have them torn to pieces if they sang it anywhere on the Plains of Arilinn. Here it is different, there is an old rivalry between Arilinn and Neskaya Towers …”

“Curious goings-on for a Tower,” said Romilly, whose picture of a Tower was still colored by what she had seen in Ruyven’s disciplined and austere thoughts.

He chuckled. “I spent a few years in a Tower - just enough to learn control of my laran. You must know how it is. When it began, when I was thirteen, I sometimes could hardly tell myself from a crtdmac in rut, or from going into heat with every bitch on the farm! It was very upsetting to my governess - I was still in the schoolroom then. Of course, she was a frozen-faced old viper - I won’t insult my favorite dog by calling the lady a bitch! I am sure she often wished she could have had me gelded like the pack chervines, so she could go with my lessons!”

Romilly giggled uneasily. He sensed her unease and said kindly, “I am sorry - I had forgotten you were a cristoforo and brought up to their ways. I had thought girls were different, but I had four sisters, and if I had ever entertained any feelings that girls were different and more delicate, I got over them soon enough - and I won’t apologize, you are a woman from the mountains and I know from your work with the birds that you have been around animals enough to know what I mean.”

Romilly blushed, but the feeling was not unpleasant, and she remembered the high summer in her own hills near Falconsward, the world flowing with life, cattle and horses mating, so that she too had unashamedly shared the flow of nature all round her, even though, with her child’s body, it had been an undifferentiated awareness, sensual but never personal. She knew he was teasing her, but she did not really care.

Listen,” said Ranald, “There are the singers.” They were all in the uniform of common soldiers; four men, on tall and burly, another with shaggy, reddish-brown hair and an untrimmed patch of beard, one short and fat with a round, rosy face and a lopsided smile, and the fourth tall and gaunt, with a scrawny face and big red hands; but from his throat came the most exquisite tenor she had ever heard. They hummed a little together to find their pitch, then began to sing a popular drinking song which, Romilly knew was very old.

Aldones bless the human elbow.

May he bless it where it bends;

If it bent too short, we’d go dry, I fear,

If it bent too long, we’d be drinking in our ear…”

They finished the catch by up-ending their tankards with a flourish to show them empty, and the soldiers roared approval and poured them all brimming mugfulls, which they drank and then began another song.

Their songs were rowdy but not indelicate, mostly concerned with the pleasures of drink and women, and their voices were splendid; with the rest, Romilly cheered and sang along on the choruses till she was hoarse. It made her forget her own strange feelings, and she was grateful to Lord Ranald for suggesting this. At one point someone thrust a mug into her hand - it was the strong, fragrant lowlands beer, and she felt a little tipsy from it; her voice sounded good to herself - usually she had no singing voice to speak of - and she felt pleasantly dizzied and yet - not drunk enough to be off her guard. At last, it grew later and the men sought their beds, and the Windsong Brothers, full of wine and yet walking steadily, sang their last song to wild cheers and applause. Romilly had to lean on Ranald as she sought her tent.

He drew her close to him in the bright moonlight. He whispered, “Romy - what is done under the four moons need not be remembered or regretted.”

Half-heartedly she shoved him away. “I am a Swordswoman. I do not want to disgrace my earring. You think me wanton, then, because I am a mountain girl? And Lady Maura shares my tent.”

“Maura will not leave Carolin this night,” Ranald said seriously, “They cannot marry, till the Council had agreed, and will not while she is needed as his leronis, but they will have what they can; do you think she would blame you? Or do you think me selfish enough to make you pregnant, while we are in the middle of this war and your skills are as valuable as mine?” He tried to pull her into his arms again, but she shook her head, wordless, and he let her go.

“I wish - but it would be no pleasure to me if it was none to you,” he said, but he pressed a kiss into her palm. “Perhaps - never mind. Sleep well, then, Romilly.” He bowed again, and left her; she felt empty and chill, and almost wished she had not sent him away….

I do not know what I want. I do not think it is that.

Even in her tent - and Ranald had been right, Lady Maura was not within, her blanketroll was tossed empty on the floor of the tent - she felt that the moonlight was flooding through her whole body. She crawled into her blankets, pulling off her clothes; usually she left on her undertunic at night, but tonight she felt so heated in the moonlight that she could hardly bear the touch of cloth on her feverish limbs. The music and the beer were still pounding in her head, but in the dark and silence, it seemed that she was outside in the moonlight, that she was somewhere pawing at the grass, a sweet, heady smell arising from the earth and somewhere a frantic restlessness everywhere within her.

Sunstar, too, seemed flooded with the restlessness of the four moons and their light … now she was linked deep in rapport with the stallion … this was not new to her, she had sensed this before, in bygone summers, but never with the full strength of her awakened laran, her suddenly wakeful body … the scent of the grass, the flooding of life through her veins till she was all one great aching tension … sweet scents with a tang of what seemed to her shared and doubled senses a tang of musk and summer flowers and something she did not even recognize, so deeply was it part of herself, profoundly sexual, sweeping away barriers of thought and understanding … at one and the same time she was one with the great stallion in rut, and she was Romilly, frightened, fighting to break out of the rapport which she had, before this, shared so unthinking, it was too much for her now, she could not contain it, she was bursting with the pressure of the raw, animal sexuality under the stimulating light of the moons… . She felt her own body twisting and turning as she fought to escape, hardly knowing what it was she dreaded, but if it should happen she was terrified, she would not bear it she would be drawn in forever and never get back never to her own body what body she had no idea it was too much unendurable … PASSION, TERROR, RUT …NO, NO…

Blue moonlight flooded the tent as the flap was drawn back … but she did not see it, she was beyond seeing, only the moonlight somehow reached her fighting body, tossing head. …

She was held gently in gentle arms; a voice was calling her name softly. Gentle hands were touching her.

“Romilly, Romy … Romy, come back, come back … here, let me hold you like this, poor little one …come back to me, come back here …” and she saw Ranald’s face, heard his voice softly calling her; she felt as if she was drowning in the flood of what she was not, came back gratefully to awareness of her own body, held close in Ranald’s arms. His lips covered hers and she put up her arms and drew him down wildly to her, anything now, anything to keep her here safely within her own body, shut out the unendurable overload of emotion and physical sensation; Ranald’s arms held her, Ranald caressed her, she was herself, she was Romilly again, and she hardly knew whether it was fear, or gratitude, or real desire, that locked her lips to his, flung her into his arms, thrusting away all the unwanted contact with the stallion, reminding her that she was human, human, she was real, and this, this was what she wanted… . She could read in his mind that he was startled and delighted, even if a little overcome, by her violent acceptance, and more startled yet to find her virgin, but it did not, in that shared violence of that moment, matter to either of them at all.

“I knew,” he whispered afterward, “I knew it would be too much for you. I do not think it was to me you were calling, but I was here, and I knew….”

She kissed him thankfully, astonished and delighted. It had happened so naturally, it now seemed so sweet and right to her. A random thought, as she floated off into sleep, touched her mind at the edge of laughter.

It would never have been like this with Dom Garris! I was perfectly right not to marry him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Carolin’s army remained encamped in the watercourse for three days. On the third day, Romilly went out to fly the sentry-birds again, Ranald at her side. She was quite aware that she must somehow shield her thoughts from Ruyven; he would not understand at all what had happened. He would see only that his young and innocent sister had shared her bed with a Ridenow lord, and to do her justice, Romilly was more worried that this might spoil the ability of the three of them to work together, than she was troubled by any sense of shame or regret for what she had done. Ruyven would be certain to think that Ranald had played the seducer, and it was not like that at all; he had simply pulled her free from something she had found herself quite unable to tolerate. Even now, Romilly did not know why she had found it unendurable.

“Remind me not to look at you and smile like that,” Ranald said, picking up her concern lest Ruyven should know, and she smiled back. She felt soothed and happy, able to look into the pasture by the watercourse where Sunstar and the horses were grazing and pick up her old, close communion with the stallion, with no sense of distaste or unease, no break in her warm sense of unity with Sunstar.

Ranald made it so easy for me.

Maura told me, about something else; horses have neither memory nor imagination. That is why I can pick up where I left off.

Twice during these days she went and joined the Swordswomen’s mess, sharing her meal with the women of the Sisterhood. Clea jeered a little at her.

“So you are still one of us, in spite of hob-nobbing with the nobility and all?”

“Be fair,” said Jandria, “she has her work to do just as we do, and Lady Maura is as good a chaperon as a whole hostel full of our sisters. One of the handlers is her own brother, too. And if rumor tells true-” but she looked inquisitively at Romilly, “that same Lady Maura will one day be our queen - what do you know of that, Romy?”

Romilly said, “I know no more than you. And King Carolin cannot marry until the Council gives him leave - a noblewoman of Lady Maura’s station cannot marry without parental consent, and how much more if the king comes wooing? But certainly, if they have their will, there will be a marriage made.”

“And if there is not, the king will get him a bastard to make as much trouble in the kingdom as that gre’zuin Rakhal,” said Tina scornfully. “Nice behavior for a leronis - I know from her waiting-woman that she spent two nights in the king’s tent; what sort of chaperon is she for Romy, then?”

Ranald had taught her to shield herself a little; so Romilly managed neither to blush nor turn away her eyes. “Between three ugly birds and my brother, do you truly think I need a chaperone, Tina? As for Maura, I have heard she is kept virgin for the Sight, and I cannot believe she would endanger that, even in a king’s bed, while the war still rages; but I am not the keeper of her conscience; she is a grown woman and a leronis, and need account to no man.”

Clea made a contemptuous sound. “So she might sell her maidenhood for a crown, but not for love? Bravely done, leronis!” she made an applauding gesture. “See that you profit by her example, Romy!”

She had thought that among these women, who were free to follow their own wills, she might have been able to speak of this thing that bad happened to her; even now, she felt, if she could speak with Jandria alone, she would like to tell her … but Jandria was already rising to attend on Carolin’s advisers, and there was no other, not even Clea, whom she had thought her friend, to whom she felt she could talk freely. Not after their scornful words. No, she would not speak of Ranald. They would not understand at all.