Wildfire (19 page)

 

  
I let Sire Erial go, and he rubbed his arm, staring. He caught sight of something over my shoulder and his face changed.

 

  
I turned and saw Galan a few paces behind me. He was smiling, but not in a comforting way.

 

  
“I, I sent for your sheath,” Sire Erial said. “Because Mole is sick.”

 

  
“I heard,” said Galan.

 

  
I said, “His sheaf can’t ride. I must see if…Cook will take her in an oxcart.”

 

  
Galan took my arm and marched us away, and Mole leaned on me, moaning. She was so slight it was easy to bear her up. I got her settled on sacks in the back of one of Cook’s kitchen carts, and gave her my old sheepskin cloak for a coverlet, as Galan wouldn’t lend her a featherbed.

 

  
By then Sire Galan’s belongings were packed and the mules were all standing patiently in line.

 

  
Galan asked, “What did you say to Sire Erial?”

 

  
“Nothing. Nothing but some good uncle, good counsel.” I grinned, thinking of Sire Erial staring at me as goggle-eyed as a frog bemused by a snake that intends to eat him.

 

  
He looked at me hard, but there was a trace of mirth in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “I’d tell you to govern your tongue, but I know you can’t. Or won’t. But have a care, my heart. Most men aren’t like that rabbit Erial. I don’t want you picking quarrels that I will have to fight.”

 

  
“My hearth,” I said. “My heart.” I reached out to touch the full curve of his lower lip. He stopped my hand by catching it in his own.

 

  
“Will you mind?” he asked.

 

  
“I’ll try. You start quibbles enough of your own, don’t you?”

 

  
But I was remorseful, fearing Sire Erial might be harsher to Mole now. Some take correction contrarily, by increasing their faults.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

  
  
  
CHAPTER 7
  

  
Snowbound
  
  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  
I
stood outside the tent looking up at the lopsided Moon, waxing toward the half. It was a clear night, and I was glad to see stars after so much rain, but the faint ring around the Moon promised yet another storm. I counted three stars in the ring; every star meant a day till rain or snow fell. That’s what the old Auspex of Crux in our village used to say, and he was known for a shrewd weather priest. It would be snow, I thought. The turf underfoot was brittle and covered with hoarfrost. The cold rains had chilled us through; this was another kind of cold, keen and dry.

 

  
I closed my right eye, and the Moon was sharp edged and bright, his silver beginning to turn gold as he descended toward the hills.

 

  
I closed my left eye instead, and was afraid. In my right eye the Moon dimmed, turned a dirty yellow, and the shining ring around him was a gossamer web. The sky no longer appeared deep black but rather the color of lead. Many stars had vanished. I looked through each eye again and there was no doubt: a haze had gathered in my right eye.

 

  
The sparks and coronas that had troubled my vision after the lightning had faded days ago, along with the hammering headaches. Perhaps this too was but a passing affliction of my sight. It was a slight change after all, so slight I hadn’t noticed it when I used both eyes at once.

 

  
I heard Sire Rodela humming with pleasure in my ear—gloating. That must mean my vision would get worse.

 
  

 

  
We entered lands belonging to the clan of Eorőe, which was loyal to Prince Corvus. Still we marched unopposed. Rumors of the slaughter in Lanx traveled before us. Towns and villages supplied the grain, fodder, and meat demanded by the queenmother’s requisitioners. Soldiers were forbidden to go marauding for their own enjoyment, but it was impossible to stop light-fingered foraging. Few of the local folk dared protest when sheep, chickens, piglets—or even a son or daughter—vanished into the army’s maw. Our
warriors found the townsfolk contemptible. “Too much peace makes for a soft belly,” Sire Edecon said.

 

  
It was true, there had been many years of peace here in the heart of Incus, and the towns weren’t fortified and garrisoned for war, though many had ruined towers and breached walls, reminders of less peaceful times. Years and years ago, when King Voltur first came to power, some of the Firsts had been like little kings themselves, each one in his own domain. He’d humbled them, destroying their clan strongholds and putting an end to their petty wars. These days the high-ranking Blood of Incus preferred to play at courtier in Malleus, leaving the care of their people and lands and enterprises to poor country cousins, or even mudfolk—some of whom managed to profit from our passing by selling supplies to the army at steep prices.

 

  
It was certain the prices in the market outside our camp were higher than I’d imagined possible. I went there in search of childbane and cloth with which to make a new compass. The trouble was, I’d given my last coins to Mole, and for barter I had nothing but some remnants of cloth left over after making my dresses. I promised Fleetfoot an onion pie if he’d come with me, and Rowney came too, saying he needed a cobbler to mend one of his boots. I found the market bewildering. I could hardly tell who was buying and who was selling in such a crowd. Childbane was nowhere to be found. A rag peddler took my scraps of good green wool in return for two small pieces of linen, gray for Prey and yellow for Eorőe. He easily bested me in the trade. In the hubbub his words became commingled with the words of others, and I couldn’t understand him. As if I were thunderstruck again.

 
  

 

  
The storm came in three days, as promised. A wind from the west hurled snow in our faces. Frost balked and tried to put her tail to the wind. I gave up walloping her with my heels and dismounted and dragged her along by the bridle. By the time we halted, around midday, all was blinding gray confusion.

 

  
The wind blew down any stretch of canvas raised against it. We made a shelter by building two walls of grain sacks and baggage and laying tent poles crosswise over them. Then we draped Sire Galan’s waxed canvas tent over the poles, anchoring the edges so it wouldn’t fly away. We crawled under it, Galan’s jacks and Fleetfoot and I, and the dog Piddle. Ev stayed outside to tend to the horses and mules. I worried about how he and the foot soldiers would fare without shelter.

 

  
It was good to be out of the wind and snow, but the discomforts of our refuge were soon apparent. We lay side by side like logs, and the air, once it grew warmer, also grew more rank. The canvas flapped alarmingly in the wind, until snow weighed it down so that the roof sagged between the poles,
closer and closer to us. We made do without fire. Spiller passed around a skin of ale he’d kept from freezing between his leg and his horse, and I rummaged in my saddlebag for raisins and twice-baked rockbread, so called because you could break your teeth on it if you didn’t soak it first. I looked through the slit we’d left open to the storm. Not that there was much to see. It was midafternoon, but it seemed like twilight, ash gray and sunless. Now and then the dark form of a man would stagger past, shrouded against the gale. Already the snow was knee deep.

 

  
Spiller said, “What I wouldn’t do for a ham hock!”

 

  
“Hush,” said Rowney.

 

  
“Or perhaps a hen stewed up with turnips and onions.”

 

  
“I’d like a sausage,” Fleetfoot said.

 

  
“Who asked you?” said Spiller.

 

  
I could smell a fire and meat roasting on it. No doubt it was the Crux’s provisioner at work. Cook could make a feast appear anyhow, anywhere. The Crux’s varlets had raised his tent somehow, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had blown down around his head, and the heads of Sire Galan and his fellows. I almost wished it on them, out of envy. It was the Crux’s duty to feed the Blood of his troop, as it was Sire Galan’s duty to feed us, his servants. Sire Galan had purchased food in Lanx that was supposed to last for a month of campaigning, and mules to carry the food. I blamed Spiller, who’d done the haggling, for getting barley that was half chaff, and beans hollowed out by weevils. We were all thoroughly sick of stockfish, sprats in mustard, and herrings in pickle. Still, we ate better than Galan’s foot soldiers, for Spiller was stingy with their rations.

 

  
I had Rowney to one side and Fleetfoot and Piddle to the other. The boy had fallen asleep with his arm over the dog. Piddle raised her head, sniffing, and when I caught her eye she licked my cheek. Rowney lay on his back. I didn’t know how he could stand having his nose so close to the sagging ceiling.

 

  
“What
would
you do for a ham hock?” Rowney asked.

 

  
Spiller said, “What do you mean?”

 

  
“I daresay there are ham hocks and chickens and sausages in the next town. We could go get some.”

 

  
“Now?”

 

  
Rowney laughed. Spiller’s voice had gone high. “Of course not now. When the snow eases.”

 

  
Spiller raised his head and I saw him grin. “Whenever it suits—I’m for it. I’m tired of pease. Pease isn’t a man’s food.”

 

  
“Best not wait too late,” I said. “Or all those ham hacks and passages will be in the maws, jaws, of the keenmother’s Woes.”

 

  
Sires Galan and Edecon came wading through the drifts. They stamped and brushed snow off their clothes and crawled into the shelter. We all had to shuffle about so that I was next to the wall of baggage and Galan was next to me, and we were even more crowded and stinking—warmer though.

 

  
Sire Edecon said there was a powerful stench of mud, and the varlets should sleep outside; it was like sleeping with hogs. Sire Galan said Sire Edecon should not be so delicate with respect to his nose, and it was brutal cold outside and a peril to man and beast.

 

  
We drudges said nothing at all.

 
  

 

  
I dreamed the weather turned warm, the airs soft and misty, and gnats swarmed over the fields. I planted cuttings of gooseberry and honeysuckle and crab apple east of the house. There was a ruin of an old barn or croft farther down the hill, just a corner left of two stone walls, and against the south-facing wall I was amazed to find wallflower still in bloom. I picked some for a tisane to bring on my tides, which were a few days late in coming.

 
  

 

  
Another gray twilight, dawn this time, and Rowney started a commotion in the shelter by wriggling out of it. Piddle scrambled out next, putting her big paws on whoever was in her way, and I followed. Snow sifted down in gentle flakes, nothing like the fury of the day before. Our shelter was nearly buried under a drift that looked like a frozen wave, with ripples all over the surface and a sharp crest. The wave had broken over Rowney when he burrowed out. He brushed snow off his hair and shoulders. It was so early there were only a few other drudges stirring.

 

  
I was surprised to see there was a town quite nearby, in the valley below. Like many of the towns we’d passed on the way to Malleus, it had a paved square lined by houses of two or three stories set close as teeth, and a scattering of crofts on the outskirts. Sometimes the towns were at crossroads; this one had a drawbridge over a navigable river that made its way south along the narrow valley. Smoke rose from the chimneys, but this morning I didn’t envy the people snug in their houses. It was the first heavy snow of the winter, and I delighted in it as much as Piddle, who romped about, breaking the smooth crust.

 

  
I heard Spiller cursing at Fleetfoot, trying to roust him out to get wood and water. The boy crawled out from under the canvas, scowling. He could barely wield a hatchet, but Spiller didn’t care: it was a bagboy’s duty to fetch wood, so fetch it he must. I helped Fleetfoot as usual—not that he was grateful.

 

  
By the time we got back with brush and wood, Galan’s foot soldiers were digging a clearing to put up his tent, and Spiller was melting snow on a
small fire. He taunted Fleetfoot for being lazy and clumsy, and the boy wagged a finger as soon as Spiller’s back was turned, making the sign for a cowardly dog.

 

  
A little while later Spiller knocked Fleetfoot on his buttocks for losing a wooden spoon or a bag of currants, and the boy sprang up and threw a handful of snow in Spiller’s face. Spilled howled and swung and Fleetfoot skipped away.

 

  
Rowney looked up from shoveling snow and said, “Boy, you better fleet-foot it as fast as you can, because if Bloodspiller gets hold of you, you’ll be sorry.” But Fleetfoot couldn’t run, or it would be said he didn’t have the heart to finish a fight he’d started, even if the fight was with a man and he couldn’t win it.

 

  
I said, “Splitter, leave him be, he’s just a boy.”

 

  
Spiller said, “A boy in need of a whipping,” and he rushed at Fleetfoot, who dodged him easily and threw more snow.

 

  
The drudges within shouting distance gathered to watch and wager. And to laugh, because the more Fleetfoot dodged, the more Spiller got riled, and the more he looked a blundering fool. Piddle dashed about, barking as if it were a great game. But at length Spiller lunged and caught Fleetfoot by his tunic, and served him with heavy blows. Fleetfoot flailed at him with his right hand, and got in a hit on Spiller’s nose, still sore from the cockfight. Piddle caught a mouthful of Spiller’s leggings. Neither did the jack much harm.

 

  
The lad wasn’t going to cry mercy. I dithered, thinking that if I stepped between them, Fleetfoot would never hear the end of jeers about hiding under my skirts. And then he’d have to pick fights with the jokers.

 

  
Spiller knocked Fleetfoot to the ground and knelt on his ribs and struck him in the face. Piddle bit Spiller on the arm and hung on, and he shouted, “Call off the dog or I’ll wring his neck!” In due time Rowney and Cook pulled Spiller off Fleetfoot and congratulated him on his glorious victory. They said he was a fine fellow and he’d shown it by defeating a ham-fisted boy.