Brotherhood of the Wolf (15 page)

Akhoular whistled to the camp at the base of the tree. He was growing short on men. He'd lost three assassins this week. Yet he called a young man, a Master in the Brotherhood of Silent Ones.

“Bessahan, two riders! They carry a message,” he said. He pointed toward the road, though the assassin below him would not be able to see through the forest.

Akhoular said, “They ride fast toward Carris. You must kill them.”

“They shall not reach Carris,” Bessahan assured the farseer. The Silent One leapt onto his force horse and drew
his dirty brown hood low over his face. With one hand, he reached back behind the saddle and checked to make sure that his hornbow was still tied to his saddlebags.

He spurred his horse and raced down the mountainside.

6
AMONG THE PETTY LORDS

“Here now, that's much better,” Sir Hoswell said. Myrrima watched her arrow arc into the air and hit its target eighty yards distant. Her shot fell a foot low of where she wanted, but it was the third time in a row that she'd hit within the red circle of cloth pinned to the haycock, and she felt proud.

“Good, milady,” Sir Hoswell said. “Now if you do that ten thousand more times, you will internalize it. Learn to shoot that distance, and then learn to shoot farther and farther. Soon you'll shoot with your gut, not your head or hands.”

“I'll have to raise my aim,” she corrected. The thought of shooting ten thousand more times worried her. Already her fingers and arms were sore from the labor. “That shot wouldn't have stopped an Invincible.”

“Pah,” Sir Hoswell said. “Maybe you wouldn't have killed him, but you would have made an eunuch of him. And if stopping him from rape was your aim, he'd definitely walk with a limp in more appendages than one.”

Myrrima glanced sideways at him. Sir Hoswell smiled broadly. He was a wiry man with a bushy moustache, a thin beard, and the heavily lidded eyes of a lizard as it lies half-asleep on a warm stone. His smile would have been pleasant if his teeth hadn't been so crooked.

Sir Hoswell stood close, too close. Myrrima could not help but feel uncomfortable. They were in a glade in a narrow valley not far from the tents put up by petty lords
of Heredon. Yesterday hundreds of boys had been practicing archery here, but today was the day of the great feast. Trees hunched close within fifty yards on either side of her, and Myrrima could not help but feel alone and vulnerable.

She'd known Sir Hoswell nearly all her life—he was from Bannisferre, after all—yet somehow today she did not trust him. It was growing late in the afternoon, and she wondered if she should head back to the castle.

The oak trees on the hills here formed a natural barrier that shielded them from view. Myrrima had no other witness present. She knew that being alone with a man other than her husband might seem scandalous, but now that she'd decided to prepare herself for war, she did not want to attract Borenson's attention. If her husband guessed her intent, she feared he'd forbid her. She needed someone to teach her martial skills.

Sir Hoswell had been a friend to her father, and he was a fine bowman. When she'd found him here practicing his skills, she'd asked him to give her lessons for the afternoon, and he'd agreed. With the endowment of wit her mother had granted her two weeks past, Myrrima found that she was learning the basic skills of archery much faster than she'd thought possible.

“Try again,” Sir Hoswell urged her. “And this time, pull that bow back harder. You need to hit him firm, to get deep penetration.”

Myrrima drew an arrow from her quiver, glanced at it quickly. The fletcher had done a hasty job. One of the white goose feathers wasn't glued and tied properly. She wetted her finger with her tongue and smoothed the feather into place, then took the arrow firmly between her fingers, placed its notch on the bowstring, and drew the arrow back to her ear.

“Wait,” Sir Hoswell said. “You need to work on a firmer stance.”

He stepped up behind her, and she felt the warmth of his body, the warmth of his breath on her neck. “Straighten
your back, and turn your body a little more to the side—like this.”

He reached up and took hold of her left breast, adjusted her stance by half an inch, and stood there holding her, quivering. The man's legs shook.

She felt her face redden with embarrassment. But in her mind, she heard the voice of Gaborn, the Earth King, warn her, “Run. You are in danger. Run.”

Myrrima was suddenly so frightened that she loosed the arrow by accident. But Sir Hoswell did not release her breast.

As swiftly as she could, so that even with his endowments of metabolism he could not avoid it, she twisted around and brought her knee up into his groin.

Sir Hoswell half-collapsed, but he had her blouse in his hand, and he tried to pull her down with him.

Gaborn's voice came a second time. “Run!”

She punched at his Adam's apple. He tried to draw back, and in doing so let go of her blouse enough so that after she landed the blow, she broke free.

She turned to run.

He grabbed her ankle, tripping her. Myrrima shouted “Rape!,” turned and kicked at him as she fell.

Then he was on her.

“Damn you, you bitch!” he hissed, slapping a hand over her face. “Shut your yap, or I'll shut it good.”

He twisted his hand, putting his palm against her chin and pushing with incredible force so that her neck arced backward painfully. Then he adjusted his fingers, pinching her nostrils closed. With his palm over her mouth, she could not breathe. With the weight of his body on her, she could not escape. She tried to fight him off—rammed her thumbnail into his right eye so hard that blood gushed from the socket.

“Damn you!” he cursed. “Must I kill you!”

He punched hard in her guts, knocking the air from her, making the gorge rise in her throat. For a long moment she
struggled silently, fighting only to get a breath as he worked to untie his belt with his free hand. Her lungs burned with the need for air, and her vision went red. Her head began to spin, as if she were falling.

Then she heard a snapping sound, and all the air went out of Sir Hoswell. He rolled from atop her. Someone had kicked him—kicked him hard enough to break ribs.

Myrrima gasped for fresh air, felt her lungs fill and fill again, yet still she could not get enough air.

“Here now, what's going on?” a voice asked. It was a woman's voice, and the accent was so thick that at first Myrrima did not recognize that the woman spoke Rofehavanish.

Myrrima looked up. The woman standing over her had blue eyes and wavy black hair that fell in ringlets about her shoulders. She looked to be twenty years old. Her broad shoulders hinted of more strength than even a working drudge might have. She wore a plain brown robe over a shirt of stout ring mail, and she had a heavy axe in her hand. Behind her stood a mousy woman in scholar's robes, a Days.

Myrrima glanced over at Sir Hoswell, and she half-wondered if the woman had dealt him a deathblow with the axe. This was no commoner. She was a Horsewoman of Fleeds, a warrior with enough endowments of brawn and grace that she'd likely be a match even for Hoswell.

But Sir Hoswell was still alive, holding his ribs, hunched over like a whipped cur. Blood flowed down his face. Yet he snarled, “Stay out of this, you Fleeds bitch.”

“Och, I would not be addressing a girl so harshlike, especially when she's wielding an axe and you've had no proper introduction.” The woman smiled in mockery of a lady's courtly manners. Yet her smile was full of malice.

She studied him for half a moment, then frowned. “Och, if Heredon doesn't breed better warriors than this,” she mused, “I'll never get bedded.”

Myrrima was gasping, terrified by all that had happened.

The woman's words barely registered, but Myrrima understood it as a joke.

The Horselords of Fleeds had bred horses for a thousand generations, bred them for strength and beauty and intelligence.

In the same way, noblewomen of Fleeds bred themselves to get children. A highborn woman might ask a dozen worthy men to sire children on her during her lifetime, she might even marry a man, but a husband would never rule her. Women alone carried the right to title, since in Heeds it was believed that “No child can know its father.” The women of Fleeds laughed at the queer notion that men should rule. Thus, in Fleeds a “king” was only a man who had married a queen. And if she chose to dispose of him and choose another mate, then he would lose his title.

“I—ah,” Myrrima stammered. Hoswell held his bleeding forehead, then half-dropped, as if weary.

“You, ah, what?” the woman asked.

“I'm sorry,” Myrrima said. “I only asked him to teach me to use a bow.”

The woman spat at Hoswell. “You'd think your northern lords would
want
to teach women to fight, what with Raj Ahten knocking down your castles.”

Myrrima couldn't argue. She knelt over Hoswell. He coughed and began feebly trying to crawl to his knees. She tried to help him up, but Hoswell slapped her hands away. “Leave me, you Mystarrian whore! I should have known you'd be trouble.”

He made it to his knees, then got up and lurched away, swaying from side to side.

Myrrima didn't know quite how to feel. She was stung by his words: “Mystarrian whore.” She'd been born and raised here in Heredon. Hoswell knew her. Did he dare call her a whore for marrying a man from Mystarria?

The woman of Fleeds said, “Don't make any sad faces for that one. I know his kind. At dinner, he'll be telling them all that he had his way with you, then tripped and hit his face on a rock.”

“We should go get a physic,” Myrrima said. “I'm not sure he can make it back to camp.”

“It will just lead to a fight,” the horsewoman said. “If you want to avenge your honor, just put an arrow into the fellow's back now.”

“No,” Myrrima said.

“Then leave him.”

Myrrima frowned. She didn't think herself a paragon of virtue, but she'd never thought she'd leave a wounded man to fend for himself.

I should be mad as hell at that blackguard, not feeling sympathy for him, she thought.

Myrrima hardened her jaw. If she were going to go to war, she'd see worse than some man staggering around with a knot above his nose.

“Thank you,” Myrrima said to the horsewoman. “I'm lucky that you happened by.”

“Oh, I didn't happen by,” the Fleeds woman said. “I was around the spur of that hill, and the Earth King said someone here needed help.”

“Oh,” Myrrima said, surprised.

The horsewoman studied Myrrima frankly. “You're a pretty thing. What endowments do you have?”

“Two of glamour, one of wit,” Myrrima said.

“What are you? Highborn, or a wealthy whore? Though I don't see much difference between the two.”

“Highborn…” Myrrima said, then hesitated, for it was a lie. “Sort of. My name is Myrrima. My husband is in the King's Guard.”

“Have
him
teach you the bow,” the woman said, not hiding her disgust at northerners and their dullards' ways. She turned as if to march up into the trees.

“Wait!” Myrrima begged.

The woman turned.

“Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Myrrima thought her manners sounded far too dainty, too refined for such a rough woman.

“Erin, Erin of Clan Connal.”

She was a princess, daughter of the High Queen Herin the Red.

“I'm sorry for your father,” Myrrima said, for she could think of nothing else to say. Word had reached Heredon several days past that Raj Ahten had captured the High King Connal, and fed him alive to frowth giants.

Lady Connal merely nodded, her blue eyes flashing. She could have said something deprecatory about her father, demeaned his prowess in war. Such deprecations passed for humility in her land. She could have given some sign that she loved him. A child's love for her father was also a worthy emotion. She did neither. “Many warriors died,” was all she said. “Men
and
women. The dead ones are the lucky ones. Some things are worse than death.”