Kushiel's Dart (Phedre's Trilogy #1)

Kushiel's Dart (Phedre's Trilogy #1) Page 45

"The stocks were sent," he said breathlessly, "and we've your horse near saddled, sir. Is it true Waldemar Selig is making camp?"

"Selig's orders," Joscelin repeated brusquely.

"Lord Selig has sent for me as well," I said imperiously. "You will bring my horse and see him saddled."

The carl glanced at Joscelin, who shrugged and nodded. He ran off shouting, and a couple of boys raced into the paddock to round up my pony. The carl returned, touching his forelock.

"Fodder for the horses." I looked at Joscelin. "How many did Lord Selig say? A dozen?"

He gave a glare under the wolf-mask. "Fodder for a dozen," he echoed.

"Yes, sir." The carl gave a nervous bob, and whirled off again. We watched in a kind of shock as Selig's folk made ready the manner of our escape, loading the horses with supplies. They even led the horses out of the paddock for us. Joscelin secured Selig's saddle-packs on his mount, lashing them atop the packs already in place. He swung himself into the saddle, snapping his fingers at me. It was a Skaldi gesture, but I saw the steel glint of his vambraces beneath the sleeve of his wool jerkin and held my breath. No one noticed. I mounted and took up the reins. My hands shook. They will put it down to the cold, I thought, waiting for Joscelin until I remembered that he'd no idea which way the hunt had gone. So many small details to give us away! I nudged my pony forward, leaning down to whisper in its ear. "Ride to the north end of the lake, and up the mountain trail," I murmured in D'Angeline.

It was enough. Joscelin gave a curt nod to the carl and said to me in Skaldic, his tone impatient, "Go!" He set heels to his horse, trotting briskly toward the verge of the lake, and I followed.

We had to ride past the tents of the other steading riders, where some few remained; only the favored ones had been invited to the hunt. I was thankful that Harald numbered among them. Alone among those encamped here, he knew Joscelin by sight, maybe well enough to pick out his seat on a horse, to know him in disguise by the glint of steel at his wrists, the twin daggers, the protruding hilt.

But Harald was with Selig, and there was no one else who would see, at a distance, that the White Brethren who rode with me was no Skaldi. A handful of thanes shouted greetings and cheerful obscenities; Joscelin laughed in response, and once responded with an obscene gesture I'd no idea he knew. Gunter's men used to do it behind my back, and laugh like boys if I caught them out at it.

The day was perishingly cold, and the air made my lungs ache, stiffening my face to a mask. I thought of the night, when the temperature would drop, with terror. We should have procured a tent, I realized. The Skaldi would not have taken them on a hunting party or an overnight raid, but Selig might have sent for one, if he sent for me. If we freeze to death, I thought, it will be my fault.

We made it around the north end of the lake, and picked out the trail leading out of the valley, clearly marked by the passage of mounted men and dogs. It was steep, but at least the horses didn't have to flounder through unbroken snow. We threaded our way up, both of us listening intently for sounds of Selig's hunters in the distance. There was nothing but the sound of the forest, occasional birdsong and the faint noise of snowy branches shifting. I turned to look behind us at the top, and Selig's steading lay far below, the lake like a blue bowl. Joscelin blew on his fingers.

"How shall we do this?" he asked.

I considered the view behind us again. "We'll follow their trail a little further, until we're well out of sight from the steading. Then we go west." I drew my fur cloak tighter around me and shivered. "Joscelin, this was as far as my plan went. I know where we are, thanks to Selig's maps. And I know where home lies. How we get from here to there alive, I've no idea, except that we'd best get as much of a start as we can, before they find us gone. And I didn't think to get a tent."

"You found us a way out. I'll find us a way home." He gazed around the forest, his blue eyes familiar and strange beneath the hood of a White Brethren. "Remember," he added, "I was raised in the mountains."

I took heart at that, and blew on my hands as he had. "Let's go, then."

We rode some distance along the hunters' trail, then veered off sharply to the left, heading westward. Joscelin made me wait, holding the reins of his horse, while he retraced our steps through the snow and erased them with a pine broom.

"They'll not see it if they're not looking," he said with satisfaction, hurling his pine branch away and remounting. "And not if they ride at dusk. Come on, let's put some distance between us."

There was only one thing we had forgotten.

It happened not long afterward. We rode in silence, as best we could; only the creaking of leather and the blowing and snorting of the horses gave us away.

Enough for the White Brethren who guarded the boundaries of Selig's territory to hear.

They are well concealed in snow, with their white pelts. Knud might have known they were there, but we did not, until they sprang up, spears ready to cast, crying out a challenge.

And seeing Joscelin attired at one of their own, fell confused.

"Well met, brother," one called cautiously, lowering his spear. "Where are you bound?"

I do not think Joscelin had any choice in the matter; there was no lie convincing enough to explain our presence here and gain us passage, even if they didn't penetrate his disguise. I heard him murmur one anguished word, and then his sword was out and he clapped his heels to his mount, charging them.

The one who'd spoken barely had time to frame an expression of astonishment before Joscelin rode him down, sword flashing in a killing stroke. The other scrambled backward, cocking his spear, as Joscelin swung around toward him. His eyes flickered frantically, trying to decide: the horse or the rider? He flung his spear at Joscelin, aiming at his heart. Joscelin dropped low along his horse's neck, and the spear passed cleanly over him. Swinging himself upright, he rode down the second of the White Brethren. This one got his shield up; it took several blows to finish him.

There is nothing redder than fresh-spilled blood on virgin snow.

Joscelin rode slowly back toward me, his expression stricken. His eyes, that had looked so young when first he gazed at the forest, looked sick and old.

"It had to be done," I said softly.

He nodded and dismounted, cleaning and sheathing his sword. Without looking at the man's face, he went to the nearest of the White Brethren, the first one, who wore crude fur mittens on his hands. One still clutched his unused spear. Joscelin drew them off gently, bringing them to me. "Don't say anything. Just put them on."

I obeyed him without question. My hands swam in them and I could scarce grasp the reins, but they were warm. Joscelin remounted and we set out again.

No one else challenged our path, and it grew evident as we journeyed that we were in uninhabited territory. We pressed the horses as hard as we dared, forging through snow that at times was nigh breast-high on my shaggy pony. For all that, he seemed hardier than Joscelin's taller mount. Once we had to cross a quick-flowing stream, that ran with such vigor between its narrow banks as to render it unfrozen. We let the horses drink, holding them to small sips; it would have given them colic, Joscelin said, to fill their bellies all at once. He emptied out two of the meadskins there, filling them with clean water.

We paused only to rest the horses, and then only briefly. Our midday meal was a handful of pottage oats, chewed dry and washed down with icy water. From time to time, Joscelin would dismount and lead his mount, breaking a path and giving it a respite from his weight. He made me do it once too, when I was turning blue with cold. I cursed him for it, but the exertion warmed me. He was right, of course. If the horses foundered, we'd be caught for sure.

I had in my head a clear map of the route we must take to reach the lowest pass of the Camaeline Range. It was something else, though, to measure it against the vast, trackless expanse we travelled; and I was no navigator. When at last the sun began to sink in the west, throwing tree-shadows long and black toward us, I realized we'd angled off-course. We corrected our course, then, trudging westward toward the lowering orange glow.

"That's far enough." Joscelin's words broke a long silence between us. A scrap of light remained to be glimpsed through the trees, and no more. "Any further, and we won't be able to see to make camp."

He dismounted, then, tying his horse's reins to a nearby branch. I followed suit, trying not to shiver at the encroaching darkness. "Do you think it's safe to make a fire?" I asked through chattering teeth.

"It's not safe not to, unless you want to freeze in your sleep." Joscelin tramped down a patch of snow, then set about gathering dead branches, stacking them efficiently. I helped as best I could, lugging wood to the fire site. "We need to tend to the horses first," he said, digging out Selig's tinderbox and kneeling to strike a spark. Once, twice, three times, it failed to catch. My heart sank. Unperturbed, Joscelin drew one of his daggers and carefully shaved wood from a dry branch, then struck another spark. This time, it caught. He nurtured it tenderly, feeding it with twigs, until a tidy blaze resulted.

"What do you want me to do?" I felt hopelessly inadequate.

"Here." Joscelin handed me the cook-pot. "Fill it with one of the skins, and water the horses. We can thaw snow to refill it. When you're done, set the pottage to cooking."

Circumstance is everything. In Delaunay's household, I'd have balked at eating a meal cooked in a pot from which horses had drunk; now, it couldn't have mattered less to me. My hardy pony dipped his muzzle and drank deep, lifting his head when I drew the pot away lest he guzzle too much at once. Droplets of ice formed on the whiskers that grew from his soft muzzle, and he looked at me with dark limpid eyes under his forelock.

While I went about my assigned chores, Joscelin worked with a tireless efficiency that humbled me, removing the horses' saddles and rubbing them down with a bit of jersey-cloth, rendering makeshift hobbles from a length of leather he scavenged from one of the packs, giving each a measure of grain fodder—which smelled, in truth, better than our pottage—and erecting a windbreak from deadfalls and gathering a night's supply of wood. He gathered more pine boughs, green ones, hacking them down with his sword while I stirred the pottage, and made a springy bed of them upon the snow. Rummaging among Selig's clothing, which I'd taken, he found a woolen cloak which he spread over the boughs.

"It will keep the snow from stealing the heat of our bodies," he said by way of explanation, sitting on the pine-bed and drawing his sword. "We'll... we should sleep close, for warmth."

There was an awkwardness in his tone. I raised my eyebrows at him. "After all we've been through, that embarrasses you?"

He bent his head over his sword, running a sharpening stone that had been among his things the length of the blade. His face was averted, fire-cast shadows flickering in the hollow eyeholes of the wolf-mask on his brow. "It does if I think on it, Phedre," he said quietly. "I've not much left to hold on to, by way of my vows."

"I'm sorry." Abandoning my burbling pottage, I came over to sit beside him, wrapping both mittened hands around one of his arms. "Truly, Joscelin," I repeated, "I am sorry." We sat there together, staring into the fire. It burned merrily, melting a hollow into the snow and throwing dancing branch-patterns into the night above us. "I tried to kill Selig last night," I told him.

I felt the shock of it go through him, and he turned to look at me. "Why? They'd have killed you for it."

"I know." I gazed at the shifting flames. "But it would have been sure, that way. The Skaldi wouldn't unite under another, he's the one holds them together. And you wouldn't have had to betray your vow."

"What happened?" His voice was soft.

"He woke up." I shrugged. "Maybe it's true, maybe he really is proof against harm. It was that old priest made me think it, who called me Kushiel's weapon. But he woke up. I was lucky, he didn't know what I was about."

"Phedre." Joscelin drew a shuddering breath, and loosed it in a sound almost like a laugh, but not quite. "Plaything of the wealthy. Ah, Elua . .. you put me to shame. I wish I'd known Delaunay better, to have created such a pupil."

"I wish you had too." I drew off one of my mittens and plucked a twig from his hair, toying with it to feel its fineness. "But in all fairness, when I first met you, I thought you were—"

"A dried-up old stick of a Cassiline Brother," he finished, shooting me an amused glance. "I remember. I remember it very well."

"No." I gave his hair a sharp tug and smiled at him. "That was before I met you. Once I did, I thought you were a smug, self-satisfied young prig of a Cassiline Brother."

He laughed at that, a real laugh. "You were right. I was."

"No, I was wrong. The man I thought you were would have given up and died of humiliation in Gunter's kennels. You kept fighting, and stayed true to yourself. And kept me alive, thus far."

"You did that much for yourself, Phedre, and for me as well," he said soberly, prodding the fire with the tip of his sword. "I've no illusions on that score, trust me. But I swear, I'll do what's needful now to get you alive and whole to Ysandre de la Courcel. If I'm to be damned for what I've done, I'll be damned in full and not by halves."

"I know," I murmured. I'd seen his eyes when he killed the White Brethren. We sat in silence together, until I broke it. "We should eat."

"Eat, and sleep. We need all the strength we can muster." Heaving himself to his feet, he sheathed his sword and fetched our pottage from the fire. We had but one spoon between us, and took turns with it, filling our bellies with warm, albeit tasteless, food. When it was gone, Joscelin scraped the bowl clean and filled it with snow to melt, while I sat part-frozen, part-warm and drowsy with exhaustion, huddled in my cloak.

We laid down then together on the pine-bed, piling every spare bit of hide and wool upon us. I lay curled against Joscelin, feeling the warmth of his body seep into my limbs. "Sleep," he whispered against my hair. "They'll not find us tonight. Sleep." After a while, I did.

FIFTY-TWO

I awoke in the morning alone, stiff and cold.

If I had thought the voyage from Gunter's steading to Selig's was hard, it was nothing to this. Whether I had known it or not, I endured that journey as a cherished and pampered member of the tribe. I did not think, then, on the fact that I'd no need to saddle my own horse, to cook my own meals, and make do for myself in every way possible.

Now, I needs must shift for myself, for speed was of the essence, and Joscelin—no matter how efficient—was but one man, and not bred to the Skaldi wilderness, where the cold cuts deeper and the snow drifts higher than in the mountains of Siovale.

We came to a new language together on that deadly journey, one of quick gestures, nods and grimaces. I learned things I had never known, nor ever thought it would be needful to know, such as the most efficient way to pack a horse and the best way to pick a trail through dense growth where twining branches hidden beneath the snow formed traps to entangle horses and humans alike.

I learned to wrap my head in wool as if in a burnouse, saving precious heat, draping a length across my face to protect it from the wind. I learned to crack the ice from my garments and press onward without pausing. I learned to dig ice out of my pony's hooves, when the tender pad inside cracked and bled. I learned to carry a dagger—Trygve's dagger, that Joscelin had kept—at my waist and to use it for simple chores.

These things I learned, and quickly, for we travelled as fast as we dared, pushing ourselves and our horses close to the point of foundering. Our flesh grew numb, and we had to check our extremities for signs of the dead white flesh that betokened frostbite. On the second night, a pack of wolves circled round while we made camp, close enough that we caught glimpses of them through the trees. Joscelin worked frantically to build the fire and raced around the edges of the camp shouting when it was lit, brandishing a torch. They withdrew, then, into the forest, but we caught sight of their eyes reflecting fire in the night.

Still, we saw no one on the second day, nor on the next. That was the third day, when we lost a precious hour in a near disaster. It befell us atop a snowy ridge, where we dismounted and paused to get our bearings. Shading my eyes against the snow glare, I pointed to the distant north, where a thin trail of smoke threaded into the blue sky behind a twin-forked mountain peak.

"Raskogr's steading," I said, my voice muffled through the wool shroud across my face. "One of the Suevi. We need to bear a little south and follow the ridge."

Joscelin nodded and took one step forward.

The ledge of snow crumbled beneath his feet, nothing under it. With a shout, he went down, tumbling head over heels in a sliding sheet of snow. I flung myself backward in terror, scrabbling for solid rock, and found myself clinging to a rough boulder that thrust out of the snow, empty air inches beyond my toes. My faithful pony tossed his head and snorted in alarm, while Joscelin's horse bolted some yards away and stopped, rolling the whites of its eyes.

Trembling, I leaned forward to look.

Far below, Joscelin was pulling himself out of the snow, apparently unharmed. As I watched, he tested his limbs, checking himself for injury, then felt for his weapons. His daggers were at his waist, but his sword had come out of its sheath. I could see it protruding from the snow, a length of blade and the hilt, halfway up the ridge.

Seeing me peer over the ledge, he signalled he was well. I waved back and pointed at his sword. Even from here, I could see his disgust.

It took him the better part of an hour to climb back up the ridge, for thrice the sliding snows gave way beneath him, casting him back down half the distance he'd gained. Much of the time I spent stomping after his recalcitrant horse, that blew out its breath in a frightened cloud of frost and floundered away through the snow when I got near. Finally I remembered what the children of Perrinwolde had done, and lured it with a handful of oats. When at last I captured its reins, I was so cold and tired and frustrated that I leaned my face against its warm neck and wept, until my tears froze bitter and icy on my cheeks. Joscelin's horse munched its bit of fodder and nuzzled my hair as if it hadn't been the cause of such dismay.