She put her arm through both arm-holes and felt it drag, though not as much as she had expected it would. Meeting his eyes, she wondered what he saw, or whether it was the mere whim of feeling which prompted him to offer the armour to her. But something held her back from asking.
“You will wear it?”
She pulled it close. “Of course I will wear it. And thank you,” she added, hoping it did not sound so much like the afterthought that it was.
He turned away, smiling as if to himself. “And sure you would have done the same for me. To bed with you, Lady Spitcat. Tomorrow brings many awful and new things for you.”
“And for you?”
He turned at her question, slowly, and there was not a trace of laughter or mockery in his eyes as they met hers. He knew what she was thinking: they were both thinking it. Tomorrow, more awfully than when they had faced off for their duel, Rupert and Dammerung would pit themselves against each other. It had been dreadful before, for it had been kin-blood and, in a sense, an inner quarrel with Plenilune looking on. Now it was war, with Plenilune blood laid on the line, Plenilune lives taking Plenilune lives. And all because of Dammerung. All because of Rupert.
It must be awful, thought Margaret, to carry that weight.
He reached out and gripped her upper arm, again as he might grip Skander, and shook it a little, hard. “Good hunting, Margaret.”
She smiled wanly for him. “Good hunting.”
He let her go and returned to his chair where he sat, broodingly, looking off goodness alone knew where. She watched him a moment longer before breaking away, and ducked between the heavy hangings into the rear part of the tent which was her chamber. She pulled the hangings to, propped the leather bodice against her trunk, and, disrobing, crawled into her bed. It was stuffy in the tiny room; the lamp-smoke made a fine blue haze on a blurred backdrop of gold and ruddy shadow, and though the storm-wind buffeted the sides of the tent, little draught leaked in to disturb the heavy atmosphere. Her heart began to quicken in spite of herself. Rolling over, settling into the pillows, she did her best not to think about tomorrow nor Dammerung’s awful, distant face.
Three quarters of an hour later the storm had broken over the fellside. It roared and gusted and brought down hasty, light sprays of rain, and Margaret dozed to the sound of it. It was more sound than rain, and it was pleasant to be cosy and dry while, on the other side of thick canvas, the fell country cat howled dismally, unable to touch her. She did not know afterward if she dreamed it or not—she was so close to being asleep—but she fancied once that the hangings parted and a figure that she though was familiar, but had darkness where its face should have been, stood in the opening, looking down at her. It was only a confused image. She did not remember when it came or when it passed, or if it was real or not. When she woke in the morning the nightingale was singing and the sound of the storm had ceased.
Aikaterine had been and gone. The chamber was arranged, her gown from yesterday folded and stowed, her gown for today draped over the trunk. As she sat up, rubbing absently at her eyes, Margaret saw her articles laid out in a perfect row on the little table that served as her vanity: cosmetics, brushes, hairpins, jewels, as if she were, not at camp, but at Lookinglass. She thought she was meant to be comforted, but the juxtaposition of the articles with their surroundings made the camp world only starker.
What time was it? She had slept through any sound of watch change. The hangings were so dark that they let no light through; her lamp was so low that it cast only a thin light over the room. Deliberately she swung out of bed, flinging back the rugs that served as her blankets. The air was not of a nighttime cold, but there was still a chilliness lingering underfoot. It must be dawn, or past it. With swift strides Margaret crossed to the vanity and sat down, pulling the brush through her hair and, giving it a twist as Aikaterine had taught her, secured it in place with the heavy ornamental comb. The matched garnets of her earrings and heavy tiered necklace winked back in the glowering light at the red-moon curve of the comb.
Still in her shift she rose and, with a feeling of dark foreboding, fitted herself into the leather bodice. Her shift kept it from sticking and chafing on her skin; it was a little too tight, but that was better, she thought, than it being too large and unwieldy. She ran a quick, appraising eye over it in the little mirror and thought it looked ghastly plain next to the lavish sparkle of her jewels. Hastily she flung overtop of it the silk gown of scarlet and gold stamp-work that gathered and flowed and purred in the lamplight, and with that the picture was perfect But oh! the silk was cold, and it was odd to feel the weight of leather—unlike whale-bone, to which she was accustomed—pressing her body in all over. With some delicate manoeuvring she managed to put on her boots; it did not help that she was hurrying, hoping that Dammerung would have woken her if things had begun already. Finally she got the last loop of cord through the last loop of metal, tied off the cords and, though she had told Dammerung last night that she was not afraid, she could not deny the horrid clenching of her chest—which had nothing to do with the bodice—as she thrust back the hangings and stepped into the fore part of the tent.
There she stopped, hesitating with her arm still out to hold back the curtain, on the outskirts looking on.
Skander was up and had joined them; he was bent over the scarred table looking at a topographic map, his brows furrowed, a piece of bacon sheeny with grease in one hand. He had not noticed her—or, at any rate, he had not yet acknowledged her—and she got a good impression of his likeness in that moment. He was dressed in the rich earthy colours of red and brown, rather simply, with a quilted leather jerkin and leather reinforcements over the most stressed part of his clothing. She marked that his current gear suited him better than his New Ivy finery: his frame was more at home and looked far more fetching in bullhide and broadcloth than in silks and silver thread. But though he was dressed simply, he was heavily armed. An ornately acid-etched battleaxe hung like a gibbous moon over one shoulder, gleaming milky and dark-iron in the dim morning light. A two-handed sword hung with it, and the long cavalry sword Gram swung at his hip. He had a crop and knife on his opposite side, and pouches and daggers and what looked like small cattle-trops hanging from his belt. Every way he turned light caught fire on hilt and buckle and worn silvered wolf-skin. She shivered with cold apprehension and turned away.
Dammerung was nearly finished: he was just fastening the last toggle of his tunic at his shoulder. He did not wear white today. He wore a light tunic of silk with a complicated tea-green and tea-brown pattern over a quilted leather jerkin like Skander’s. His breeches, too, were backed with leather where a long day in the saddle was liable to chafe. He turned—bits of gold thread woven into the tunic sparked in the mirror—and picked up from a table a claymore like Skander’s, which he fitted over one shoulder and under the other arm at his back. To the claymore he added, not one, but two short swords; he settled Widowmaker in an honourable place at his left side and checked over a number of knives on his person.
He examined the entirety in the mirror and seemed satisfied, then he caught sight of her watching him. He turned sharply round. For a moment he looked her over. His eyes dropped for a fraction of a second below what, had he been anyone else, Margaret would have considered couth: he marked that she wore the leather bodice. A smile jerked at his mouth and the bitter, half-laughing wing-lines flashed round his eyes as they jumped back to her face. “Good morrow.”
“You are wearing a lot of weapons,” she replied. “Is it not very heavy?”
“He has a tendency to break things,” said Skander without looking up.
Margaret looked from him to Dammerung again.
The War-wolf touched his trunk smartly with one toe: the lid crashed down and the latch clicked to. “True an’ I hit hard: you could fill an armoury with the blades I have broken. Only Widowmaker has survived me.”
Margaret surveyed his arms but there was not much to see for the long, loose silk sheaves that were his sleeves. He was not big and muscular like his cousin, but she did not doubt the image of him breaking an axe in two while shearing through buckler and bone.
Skander’s voice cut aptly through her thoughts. “Dammerung, must I insist?”
Dammerung only smiled and did not let his gaze waver from her. “Nay, Lady Spitcat is all one for this, isn’t she? Not a blanch on that cheek, coz—look at it!”
“I am not inclined to look at ladies’ cheeks,” muttered his cousin.
The grey-blue eyes danced. “After all, what is death?”
What is death? Last night she had not been afraid, not of death nor really of pain. This morning she was worried about pain and, had it not been for that single stark moment just before bed last night in which she and Dammerung had looked into each other’s eyes and seen the shared horror in them of what was happening in Plenilune, she might still flick death a careless hand. Now it was different. Now it meant something: not for her, not for him, but for what was left behind.
“It is a damned inconvenience to the rest of us,” she said. The words came so quick out of her mouth they surprised even herself.
Like a falcon bating, his brows flickered upward. “Yes,” he mused. “I thought so too at the time.”
Skander opened his mouth as if to speak, seemed to think better of it, and smoothed his own feathers. “I go to rally before the mists lift,” he said, rolling up the map and stepping toward the tent opening. “If you have need of me you’ll find me where the ravens thicken.”
“I’ll look for you among the spears,” Dammerung said with a click and a flash of one ringed hand in salute. When Skander was gone he turned to Margaret. “You have not eaten. Are you hungry?”
“No,” she replied truthfully. She could not dream of eating. All her insides, she found, had gone wrong and felt more like cold lumps inside her skin against which her heart pounded with a sickening heat.
She was grateful that he did not look sympathetic. “You will be,” he told her uncompromisingly. “I give it five minutes before Mark Roy and Lord Gro come up. There are nuts and fruit on the table there: best scarf while you have time and before we have to be on our best behaviour. I’ll join you.”
They sat in comparative silence and ate the strawberries and blueberries and nuts that Aikaterine had brought up. The bacon was gone, but the heady scent lingered heavily on the air and made Margaret nauseated. She ate gamely and numbly. She would have liked to have asked Dammerung questions about how he thought the day would go forward, but she found that not only did she not know enough about war to ask, she did not want to pester him. He seemed lost in thought, eating mechanically, fetching her on occasion a brief glance, and at another moment twisting suddenly to look out the tent-flap. But he did not seem concerned, and that comforted her.
It was precisely five minutes, and just when Margaret felt she could not safely swallow another bite, when the entryway darkened and Mark Roy’s short, broad figure cast a watery shadow on the ground. He stepped in and Lord Gro ducked in behind him.
“You’ve come,” said Dammerung frankly, and gestured to Skander’s vacant chair and a battered stool.
“We’ve come,” Mark Roy replied lightly. The two men bowed to Margaret and took their seats. “The mists are still lying low,” the king went on. “What do you make of the lie of our foe?”
Dammerung’s lip curled upward in a playful smile. “I think it a pretty lie, but an old one. Nay, what—the lie? He holds the dalemouth like a boar and backs up the fellsides so that he has height and downward speed for his ally. We have that here, but we must stretch ourselves to meet in the middle.” He turned again and peered outside. There was not much to see: from their height they had a view over the picket-line and the top of the next tent down, and then nothing but a beautiful steel-blue swimming of dawn air and the huge blurred bulk of the next hill over. “You are right about the mists. The war-dogs will have sport today.”
Margaret shivered.
Mark Roy said, “Gro wants especially to pair with Lifoy. There is some matter between them, it seems, that needs finishing.”
“Oh?”
Put on the spot, with Dammerung’s inquisitive eye lying lightly upon him, Gro clenched his lips in a thin line and looked, for a moment, as if he meant to politely bow out of explaining. Margaret liked him and she felt sore on his account for Mark Roy singling him out. But a moment later he lifted one hand, as if the explanation lay in the palm of it, and said frankly, “There was some quarrel between him and my lady, and the wound has never closed.”
“So you choose rather to make it mortal,” said Dammerung without any tone of disapproval. “They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but I find sending flowers to a man scorned lacks any potency. Still,” he smiled, “I think she made a good choice, your lady. You may have the field before Lifoy. And God help his soul.”
Lord Gro nodded wordlessly and Dammerung turned to Mark Roy. “I hope you have no especial place to be because I need you to take Aikin and Brand under your wings. Aikin—I don’t mind where he be, but Brand has the makings of Achilles and I would rather him bang about where you can keep an eye on him.”
Mark Roy looked troubled. “He had hoped to run among your pack, my lord.”
“Well I know it,” said Dammerung gently, “but when last I was to let him run among my pack I had a man have his guts torn out at ten yards by the Man of Blood down yonder. Brand is fierce—too fierce as yet: Plenilune has more need of him than of his corpse.”
“On that score, my lord, we are well agreed.”
Margaret carefully tucked her arms up close, for her skin was beginning to be cold and she did not want Dammerung to know. He knew, though: she caught his sidewise glance at her face and downward over her arms, but he looked almost faster than thought and no one caught it but herself.
“Is that all?”
“Unless you have more for us, that is all. I think we know our places.”