Firethorn (43 page)

Now I looked at Galan and there was misery in the way he looked back. “I am content,” I said again, to him. “And besides, when does Sire Rodela claim he coupled with me? Sire Galan knows I've been by his side nearly every night since he took me into his household, and those few nights, he knows right well, Sire Rodela accompanied him. And in the day, I was always with one or another of my master's drudges and Sire Rodela was always under Sire Galan's eye. He must take you for fools if he expects you to believe him!”

I knew at once I'd overstepped—I should never have called them fools. They did not laugh now. Their silence hardened against me.

Sire Rodela was quick to answer. His tone was mocking, even in the face of the Crux's bleak regard. “You may remember, Sire, that there were four nights when Galan was otherwise occupied in the matter of a certain wager. I suppose the sheath was galled because he spent himself elsewhere. Anyway, she let me know there was room on the blanket, and it mattered not a whit to me whether she opened her legs to satisfy her jealousy or her appetite. I didn't care to question, as long as I could have her.”

“You were with him those nights, guarding him,” I said, and my voice cracked. He made it sound so likely. It was the careless way he spoke, as if he couldn't be bothered to lie about it. He gambled away the Crux to please the cataphracts, and it seemed to me he'd won them.

Sire Rodela shrugged and turned toward me. “But you know better, don't you? I left the jack to stand guard and slipped back to the tent.

“I'd sooner take a viper to my bed.”

Sire Rodela smiled. “So you say now. You sang sweeter before.”

Galan was gripping the arms of his chair as if he held himself in it by force. He turned to his uncle and said, “He lies and lies and lies and you let him. What kind of man is this, with so much malice in him? He has a taste for flaying. He skinned that armiger—do you remember him?—he was found in the sea with a piece of his scalp missing; he skinned my sheath because she wouldn't do his bidding, because she burned that scalp to placate the dead; and now he'd use his sharp tongue to part her from me. Don't you see he means to flay me too?”

But the cataphracts did not see. The lie was simpler than the truth and easier to believe. And Galan had said too much; though his words were balm to me, they discomfited his fellows. I could see it on their faces as they glanced at each other.

Galan went on regardless. “Every word he says adds to his offense and all you can say to me is
sit down—
as if I were a child. Will you give me no remedy, Sire? Must I bear this insult? Any man of you would answer him as he should be answered, with a sword—must I bear it just because he's in my household?” Now he rose to his feet and his words ran headlong. “Surely it makes the offense greater that he's my cousin and that he's sworn to me, though he takes his oath to be as thin as the vellum it was writ on. Will you leave me no remedy but murder? I'd rather kill him fair, but any way, I mean to kill him.”

Galan took a stride toward Sire Rodela as if he'd do it there and then, but quick as he was, the Crux was quicker, and Galan found him standing in his way with a naked sword. He pushed Galan hard with the fist that held the hilt, so hard he stumbled backward and sat in his chair again. The Crux laid the sword flat on the floor between Galan and Sire Rodela. In the voice he used in the field to command his men, the voice that could cut through the sounds of battle, he bellowed, “The first man to step over this blade will feel it bite his neck. Now sit down and be silent!”

He turned on Galan. “I shall put you in a baby's gown and tie a napkin around your neck if you don't master yourself. Are you still unweaned? Do you still play at spindles at your nurse's knee? You are of a man's estate but you've the temper of a child and a child's tantrums. You'd think he'd laid hands on your wife, not your sheath! You have two women in your bed now and Rodela has none, and did you think even so to have a quiet household?”

The words hailed down on Galan but he didn't seek shelter. He met the Crux's glare with one of his own. This was unjust. They both knew Galan had sent for Consort Vulpeja to end the feud he'd begun, not for a bedmate.

The Crux came forward until his boots brushed the sword on the ground. He loomed over Sire Rodela and spat out his words. “I never before blamed my father for siring so many bastards on his concubine, but today I'm ashamed of him for making me kin to you. Did you think I'd judge you lightly for sticking your little dagger in your master's sheath? If your story is true, you betrayed your master not once but many times—and you left him with only a worthless jack to guard his back. Now you have the bad grace to boast of it. Perhaps you think your quittance will be less if the sheath proves faithless and therefore worthless. You forget it's
your
faithfulness in question. Hers is of no importance here. And if your claim is false, if you've lied to make mischief, I'll give you special cause to regret uttering it.” Sire Rodela's shoulders hunched about his ears and his eyes looked no higher than the tops of the Crux's boots—and still he carried his head too stiffly; there was defiance in it.

The Crux turned his back on Sire Rodela and resumed his seat. He straightened the folds of his surcoat over his thighs. He waited until the silence became wearisome, and then he said, “As Sire Rodela says one thing and the sheath another, there's but one way to find out, and that's by ordeal.” Now he looked at me and for the first time I met his eyes directly. “When we're done here tonight, we will give her to the dogs. If she's lying they'll sniff it out. If she's telling the truth—and keeps a stout heart—they'll leave her unharmed.”

I was thickheaded and slow to understand. And yet part of me was quicker: a wail began deep in the belly and crawled upward. I ground my teeth to prevent its escape.

The Crux watched me with a cold eye and deigned to address me. “I've given you leave to speak freely tonight and you've been bold enough to call a man of the Blood a liar. If you wish to recant your words, you may do so now, and stand for a liar yourself—and escape the dogs.

Galan began to rise and the Crux said to him, “Be still!” He said to me, “Well? What's your answer?”

I bowed my head. My throat was dry. I swallowed and swallowed and each time came a jabbing pain.

Trial by ordeal. For themselves, the Blood reserve trial by combat. For us, there is the ordeal. When I lived under the Dame's rule, such things were only rumors, but under Sire Pava I had seen it once when a village woman accused his horsemaster, Harien, of taking her against her will. The steward had given her the black drink, which is supposed to poison those who lie and spare those who tell the truth. She didn't survive it, but still I believe she didn't lie, for other women had whispered of Harien too; afterward they didn't dare.

I'd never heard of an ordeal by dogs. It was more fearful to me than poison. I'd run from the gazehounds in the Kingswood and seen them tearing at the stag. These war dogs were fiercer still, bred and trained to hunt foot soldiers and bring down galloping horses, the better to get at the horsemen's throats. Fleetfoot and Ev still slept with the pack, for they'd made themselves useful to Dogmaster and gained a place among the dogboys; but the dogs didn't know me. I avoided their pen. Was it true they could smell falsehood? For sure they could smell fear. Even I could smell it now in the stink of my own sweat. They would savage me for it. I had no faith the truth would shield me.

The Crux said, “Do you admit you lied?” Now it was my turn to feel the brunt of his contempt. Mud is easily scraped from a boot, he'd said of me once. And he'd said, “Keep her out of my way or I'll feed her to the dogs.” He'd rid Galan of me one way or the other.

I looked up. Galan too waited for my answer. His brows were drawn together in a frown and his eyes were in shadow. He was a jealous man and Sire Rodela knew it; he'd counted on it. I said to Galan and Galan alone, in all the room, “Whether the dogs prove to be wise judges or as foolish as men, I told the truth. I swear to it.” I spoke in anger that he should need this from me, but even as the words were out I saw that I had misunderstood his look. He lifted his hand as if he would reach across the room and cover my mouth.

“No,” he said, his words overtaking mine. “Sire, I beg you, don't make her suffer this ordeal. This is a matter within my household, and no one else's concern. And I believe her.”

“You may believe what you please. To be sure, it's none of my concern if you are fond to foolishness. But what's between you and Rodela
is
my concern,” the Crux said. “It's why we are met here tonight. I would know whether he lies.”

Galan said, “Then give Rodela to the dogs instead. It will save you bother, for they'll tear him to pieces.” Now he made Sire Rodela out to be no better than a mudman; the insult did not go unnoticed, to judge by the muttering of the cataphracts.

The Crux said coldly, “If you're so sure of your sheath, why object to the ordeal? The manhounds will leave her unscathed if she's faithful. And if not, good riddance.”

“Sire, I know my armiger and my woman, I know them by heart, and I don't need dogs to tell me which of them is faithless. But if it's proof you're after, give me leave to fight Rodela and I'll prove on his body that he is false.”

“It is the third time, by my count, that you've asked this of me tonight,“ said the Crux, “and I'm weary of it. The answer is no, the answer will always be no. You started a feud with Ardor over a woman and set the whole Marchfield into an uproar, and now you'd do the same for our clan. I've been patient with you, because I know you tried to mend the feud you began. When you took Consort Vulpeja to your household, you took a man's part and tried to sow accord where you had earlier sown discord. But discord is a weed that often overgrows the crop. The gods are more vengeful than we are and were not appeased. So when will you learn not to beget feuds in the first place? Will you learn this after you've turned the Moon against the Sun, setting the house of Musca against Falco until we've let blood all over the floors of our keeps? Or will you learn now, beforehand, and stay your hand and be ruled by the clan's good?”

Galan made no answer. What the Crux said was wisdom, no doubt. I had hoped Galan would choose another time to grow wise.

“Now, Galan,” the Crux went on, “will you keep your temper or must I walk you up and down like an overheated horse?”

The cataphracts had been quiet; I'd almost forgotten they were there. Now one smiled and the next stretched out his legs and another whispered to his neighbor. The Crux had allowed a little levity to ease his men's disquiet, like a swallow of ale for a thirst. A swallow was all.

Galan turned his face away from the Crux and I saw how the cords of his neck stood out and his jaw clenched. He looked down at the hands that lay useless in his lap. How easily his uncle had made him look a fool, a hothead; how well he had hobbled his rage. Galan said no more of dogs.

“Well then. Good then,” said the Crux. He looked around the tent, he gathered up the men in his sight, but his glance passed through me as if I were unseen. He said, “This isn't such a grave matter, after all. We've no need to consult the Council of the Dead or study omens to read the will of Crux. Yet it will be a grave matter if we are not agreed, today, to make an end to it. Otherwise there will be rumors and whispers and disputes, men taking this side or that, and I will not have it.”

He paused and leaned forward in his chair. “Does any man here doubt Sire Galan was wronged? An armiger should be as a shield arm to his cat-aphract, his master. His
master.
Should a man be on guard against his own arm lest it strike him? A cataphract has the right expectation that his armiger will shield not only his body but also what lies within the bounds of his protection: his lands, his chattels, his women. Rodela, instead, struck at what lies closest to Galan, he attacked him in his very bed. Whatever Rodela did to the sheath, whether he lied about it or not—and I will speak of that later—he did disgrace his oath.”

The Crux raised his voice and made his pronouncement. “For this offense I settle on Sire Galan the Musca village that lies at the eastern end of Crookneck Pass, on Hunchback Mountain, and its pastures, fields, coppices, herds, and peoples, and the tolls, taxes, and rights pertaining to it.”

There was a pause. Galan twisted in his chair, never looking at his uncle. I wondered if the Crux was done, if that was all. It was less than it seemed, and more. A Musca village would be nothing but a huddle of tumbledown crofts on a stony mountain flank. Even so, the house of Musca could not afford to lose one. It was well known how poor they were, and how proud. They'd hazarded all the coin they could rub together to equip Sire Rodela as an armiger, in hopes that he'd win enough plunder to become a cataphract himself in the next campaign. It was the best they could do, though every other house in the clan had at least one cataphract in the troop. Now he'd bring home nothing but sorrow. If he lived.

Into the silence crept Sire Alcoba's voice, lightly. “A village is a high price to pay for trifling with a sheath's virtue—even a Musca village. Even a virtuous sheath, if such a prodigy exists.”