The Dragon Throne (13 page)

“I believe they must be the sons of mountain goats,” offered Ester.

“Or their fathers.”

The young lady laughed.

When Rannulf and Nigel came up the trail, however, Edmund felt a renewed stab of concern.

Rannulf's features were shadowy, and he did not use his right arm, employing his left hand to hold the reins. Nigel rode close behind his old friend, and several times during the trip up the foothills the two knights had conferred privately.

Rannulf and Nigel paused side by side on the trail now, leaning back in their saddles to take in the sight of the peaks as Edmund joined them.

“It will snow tonight,” said Rannulf.

Strikefire nuzzled Surefoot to one side, skirmishing over a tuft of wildflowers. Surefoot gave a playful bite in response, but moved. As the sun eased behind a shard of rock, Edmund saw the vapor of his own laugh in the sudden, profound shadow.

“Does Rannulf ride easy?” Edmund asked Nigel, as though Rannulf could not overhear. It was a polite way to frame the question, and it was also safely worded. A direct question about one's health could reach a devil's ear, and cause bad luck. Here in the mountains a knight could not be too careful.

“Rannulf is more oak tree than man,” said Nigel. “Isn't that right, old friend?”

Rannulf himself sighed, as though impatient—or embarrassed. Or perhaps some darker, more secret intent made him look away.

Nigel reached down to straighten Strikefire's rein chains—a link had become tangled. The charger exhaled a gush of air, shying away, and Nigel offered a gentle
cluck-cluck
. “It's all twisted,” he said.
To-wrast
. Nigel laughed softly, and gave the horse a soothing pat, reassuring both mount and man.

But
to-wrast
meant more than “twisted,” Edmund knew. It also could mean “amiss.” And Edmund found himself that night, lying on a hard pallet in a smoky, naked-timbered inn, thinking: amiss.

Our efforts are all amiss, and Nigel knows it.

EDMUND RECOGNIZED THE HUSH THAT descended around the inn the following morning.

Rannulf had been wise in foreseeing the weather. The morning was cold and quiet. The young knight crawled from under the bristly wool of the blanket, convinced that no monk ever wore a hair shirt more prickly than the blankets of this high country.

He found Sir Nigel in the doorway, watching snow swirl down from the sky in the very early morning. The snow was serene, and it was familiar. Edmund had loved the long snowy mornings of his early boyhood, helping his father plane barrel staves. He had heard that some of these mountain wastes were snow-clad year-round, and now he believed it.

“He can ride,” said Nigel, answering Edmund's unspoken question and taking a swallow of his usual morning beverage, warm wine.

Edmund could not suppress a very slight sigh of impatience. The journey to the Holy Land had softened some toughness in Nigel's character, and made him more given to laughter. But sometimes he still retreated to the terse manner of old, a warrior who would rather strike a blow than talk.

Sir Nigel stirred, perhaps suddenly aware of having offended the younger knight. “Edmund, Rannulf will not speak of his hurt.”

 

The trail was always in shadow now, except when the meager path snaked upward, over a ridge, and then sunlight was near-blinding off the snowmelt.

Rude huts had been fitted together beside the trail, peaked structures of rough-barked timbers, commanded by a crucifix or a figure of Our Lady. And more than once these shrinelike shelters were overlooked by the key-carrying image of Saint Peter. Travelers associated the venerable saint with stone, and there was rock all around, devout mounds of it.

 

One afternoon Edmund repaired a shrine that had been desecrated, chopped with an ax, the holy image removed. Edmund put a handful of late-season flowers on the simple wooden shelf that served as an altar, and prayed to Saint Mark, who was God's lion and a source of courage. Wowen joined in, the young squire saying, “Don't worry, Sir Edmund, we won't let the Devil's harm go unmended.”

 

The first travelers' hospice, when they attained it—a barn-like building of dark wood, surrounded by glittering stony rubble—was empty. An order of monks was celebrated for their ministry to travelers, but within the expansive hall of the shelter were only a few hacked pieces of broken furniture, and signs of darkened blood on the stone-slab floor.

The Savoyards consulted with one another, hitching their belts and pointing upward, toward the mountain heights. Now Edmund's all-but-imaginary grasp of their language become helpful.

“
Briganti
have done all this,” they said, their usual spirits now thoroughly dampened. “
Banditti,
deaf to God.”

“Is this the work of Conrad of Saxe?” asked Edmund.

One Savoyard crossed himself, and the others grew tight-lipped.

 

Nigel fell the next morning, fording a rushing stream, the roar of the water echoing so that no voice could be heard.

The surrounding peaks were covered in what the folk of Edmund's childhood called
myst-hakel
—a cloak of mist. Edmund had found himself singing earlier that day, the pretty tune with the chorus “and serue the God of Christen men.” His hearing was poor with the thunder of white water, but he was certain Ester and Hubert joined in.

The travelers had left the tall, deep-rooted trees far behind. The last bushes, wind-knotted shrubs, gorselike greenery, had been left behind, too. The only fodder for the mounts was the scattered hay and summer grasses abandoned by monks in their apparent flight.

Nigel was in the lead, hooded and cloaked. Without warning, his horse went down, and then was up in an instant, like a thing that had not really happened. But the saddle was empty, and Nigel was nowhere to be seen.

Edmund plunged up to his knees in the numbing water, the hard current nearly cutting his feet out from under him. He groped for Nigel, and found the heavy fabric of his mantle with his fingertips. The young knight heaved the master warrior out of the all-but-freezing cascade.

 

“I am not hurt!” protested Nigel.

Rannulf looked down from the saddle, with a skeptical smile on his scarred features.

“No bones are broken,” insisted Nigel, “by Heaven's mercy.” The drenched and shivering knight stepped to Strikefire's bridle, and gripped it. “I am not,” he said, breathing hard, “even so much as bruised.” He considered, and then confided to his friend, “It's nothing one of my old pleasure wenches couldn't cure with a kiss.”

When Clydog offered Nigel a blanket, however, the knight was pleased to throw it over his shoulder.

 

That evening as they approached yet another abandoned refuge, the simple building a silent hulk, Rannulf made a low
tssk-tssk
to his mount, and investigated a huddled, wasted heap of what resembled kindling and rags up the wind-stripped slope.

“The piteous wight,” exclaimed Rannulf, when he returned, with uncharacteristic compassion. “A monk, I judge by his habit.”

“How killed?” asked Nigel, who, like his old friend, took comfort in the hard facts of weaponry.

Rannulf made a motion, his finger across his throat.

It was not the first time Edmund felt a jolt of impatience with the master knight. Such a crude gesture could only offend and frighten the ladies.

ESTER LOVED THE STARS, SO CLOSE SHE WAS sure that if she stretched her hand, the tiny chips of light would part, quaking, and her hand reach through into Heuenriche—the Kingdom of Heaven.

She loved hearing Edmund reassure Hubert that they would all see him safely with Galena again, at peace within the Roman walls. She was delighted at the way Edmund and his friend made gentle mockery of the guides. She enjoyed Edmund's songs, and his way of stopping to gaze with wonder at a cloud formation or a glint of rain far below.

She and Edmund exchanged examples of lore—he knew all there was to tell, it seemed, about wood elves and enchanted pools of water. She was able to enlighten him with more courtly legends, like the story of the pelican who nourished her young on blood she pecked from her own breast.

Rannulf was the only traveler who could gaze long into the void. Pebbles knocked loose from the trail bounded and echoed downward for several heartbeats. Horses snorted and bridled, and Edmund calmed them with a touch.

“Perhaps you are descended from the centaurs,” Ester said one morning, as Edmund heaved the heavy saddle blanket over his mount.

She meant it as an artful compliment, but Edmund gave an uncertain smile. “My family were English freed-men,” he replied. He thought for a moment. “Who are these centaurs you mention?”

“The centaurs were half horse,” she said, holding Surefoot's bridle.

“These horse-men live beyond the Great Sea, perhaps,” said Edmund thoughtfully.

“They are creatures of legend,” said Ester, “from long ago.”

“I am half horse, though, even so,” said Edmund. “And I think some animals are half human.”

Why, she wondered, did he have to take every statement so seriously? While Hubert could banter with Edmund, and easily make the tall young knight break into laughter, Edmund treated Ester with a gentle deference.

 

One evening as Clydog was starting the cooking fire—blowing on an ember he carried wrapped in dry moss and a cunning nest of woven grasses—Rannulf offered Ester a blanket to sit on, freshly brushed by his own hand. The bearded knight did this without speaking, in his customary silence.

Edmund shook out a blanket of his own, and said, “Sir Rannulf, forgive me for saying so, but the Lady Ester deserves higher courtesy.”

Rannulf stared at Edmund, saying nothing.

“Your manner is so austere,” Edmund explained, exasperation in his voice.
Hausterne
. The word meant “rugged,” but it also meant “harsh.” “A lady is not an ox.”

Edmund's tone was earnest to the point of confrontation, and Hubert and Nigel stood still, their features uneasy at hearing the legendary knight so bluntly criticized.

“Good Edmund, I am honored by Sir Rannulf's care for me,” said Ester quickly and quite sincerely.

Rannulf let his shoulders rise and fall in a sigh. The seasoned knight had been aware of the glances between Edmund and the Lady Ester.

“I have few graces,” Rannulf said after a silence, speaking with the self-conscious effort he would have used on a Latin verse. “But by God's wounds, Edmund and my lady, I apologize to all for any offense.”

 

Devoid of self-pity as he was, Rannulf nevertheless required a vigil in the quiet, star-riddled dark to regain his usual detachment.

Walking alone at night was often fatal, even in England, where ponds and ditches claimed the lives of infants, drunks, and wayward sentries. In this wild land, to wander would mean to risk stumbling into an abyss. It was true, however, that Rannulf had a growing admiration for the manly Creator who could make such perilous summits, such cold, baleful wind, and such relentless torrents.

He stood a quiet, lone vigil, and relished the silence. Besides, alone under the starlight, he could unbind his wound and test the strength of his right arm. No corruption simmered in the ugly gash at the crook of his sword arm—Rannulf was grateful for that. But when he gripped the pommel of his sword, he could feel both pain and weakness in his muscles. A sinew had been cut, and it was not healing quickly.

Rannulf's mother had died giving birth to her son nearly forty summers ago. His father had been a castle steward, gifted at directing mortar work, erecting walls and towers for lords along the English coast. Albert of Rye had had enough silver to hire the best fighting instructors for the youthful Rannulf.

Rannulf was already a squire, serving a succession of battle-hungry warriors, when word came that a drunken knight had killed Albert in an accident, mistaking the honest castle man for one of his servants. Rannulf wasted no time in finding the wine-bloated knight, challenging him to a joust, and killing him.

But the ease of this revenge had stirred a hunger for more of the same in Rannulf, and his career had been a long string of killings carried out without much effort and surely without joy. Heaven for Rannulf would be carrying the prize of the drunken knight's head into his father's chamber day after day, and hearing his father gasp, “Who killed that wine-blind murderer?”

And then realizing the truth.

Now footsteps crunched toward Rannulf across the snow.

Instinct made the veteran knight reach for the sword at his belt. He winced at the pain in his limb. Then he recognized Edmund's tall form against the starlight.

“Please forgive me, Rannulf,” said Edmund after a silence, “for speaking to you so churlishly.”

There was something about Edmund that reminded Rannulf of his own slain father—a steadiness, and a gentle humor combined with good sense. Rannulf rarely indulged in introspection. The killer of so many men did not dwell on nightmares, nagging doubts, or his own past sins.

Rannulf gave what he could of a smile though his scarred lips, and nodded. He felt an inner tension vanish. “Give it not another thought,” he said, warm with affection for the young man.

Most men found much pleasure in women, but Rannulf was not one of them. Nor did he favor the touch of men, beyond the simple and soul-strengthening embraces of companionship. Something in Rannulf's heart stood off from people altogether, but he counted himself a loyal friend.