Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (10 page)

Quickly she emptied out the water and dried the basin roughly with her fingers before stuffing it back into her pouch. The Moot would be breaking up now and she would be missed if Drwyn – or worse, Ytha – came looking for her.

It was dusk before Drwyn returned to his tent. Two of his warriors followed him, carrying his purchases from the fair. They made poor porters, stacking the goods haphazardly in the middle of the tent, but he did not appear to notice. He dismissed them with a flick of his hand and rummaged through the bundles like a puppy at play.

Teia, mending a winter tunic by the light of a lamp, watched him with half an eye. The seal fur was deliciously soft on the skin but stitching it was hard work. Even if she followed the holes of the old seam it was difficult to force the bone needle through; her thumb was raw and all she could concentrate on was finishing it so that it would be over and done. She was only dimly aware of Drwyn sorting through his acquisitions, telling her what he had traded for a saddle cloth, some plaid for a cloak, a new steel knife, until an open hand connected with the side of her face. She flew backwards off her cushion, pain blossoming across her cheek.

Drwyn kicked her mending aside and loomed over her. His new knife was in his hand. ‘Pay attention,’ he snarled. He snatched her by the upper arm and hauled her to her knees. ‘Look at me when I speak to you!’

Another backhanded slap landed across her mouth, just to make sure she understood. Her lip stung and she tasted blood. Drwyn’s face was twisted, teeth bared in his beard like the fangs of a bear, his breath sour in her face. Slowly he raised the blade and held it flat against her cheek. The steel was cold as ice; she could not help but flinch.

Drwyn laughed. ‘I’m not going to mark you, girl. Not this time, anyway.’ He released her and stuck the knife through his belt. ‘Clean this place up. It’s like a goat pen.’

Then he was gone, back out into the night.

When he returned, he was drunk. Not insensible, but drunk enough to lash out at her when she tried to avoid his lust and the stench of
uisca
on his breath. Enough to keep on hitting after she had submitted, punctuating the lesson in obedience with a harsh litany of the respect she would owe him when he was Chief of Chiefs and king of the plains. Enough to hit her again, later, when after all the grunting and shoving he could not finish what he’d started.

‘Useless
cuinh
.’ He stuffed his softening organ back into her, scratching her with his ragged nails. ‘Take it!’

Teia pressed her face into the furs to stifle a cry. Her tender parts stung and burned with every lunge of his hips against her. Gritting her teeth, she prayed.
Please, Macha, finish him quickly. Bring the rain, and let him sleep
.

After a few clumsy thrusts, he slipped out of her again. ‘Bitch!’ he roared, and heaved her away from him. She fell against a brass-bound chest and agony burst through her side. For a few seconds she couldn’t breathe properly, could only lie there and whimper with her eyes screwed shut. Something was broken, surely. Only a broken bone could hurt that much.

‘Get up.’

If she didn’t, he’d hit her again. Breathing in fast, shallow pants, she attempted to roll onto her knees. As soon as she moved the pain returned, white and blinding as lightning. She fell back, clutching her right ribs.

‘I can’t,’ she sobbed.
No no it hurts too much I can’t move oh Macha keep me it hurts
. Curled into a ball around her pain, Teia waited for the next blow.

‘Now,
cuinh
!’

She flinched from his voice. But the blow never came, and she dared to peer up at him through her tangled hair. He was sitting on his heels, sweat-sticky and sullen, thick
daigh
drooping in the dark thicket between his thighs. Catching her eye, he sneered.

‘Look at you.’ His gaze raked over her as if she was a mess one of his dogs had left on the bed. ‘Can’t even keep a man hard, can you?’

She shrank away from the surly light in his eyes. The
uisca
had robbed him, not her, but the drink had also left him too thick-headed to see it.

‘Answer me!’

‘No, my chief,’ she managed. Her cut lip was beginning to swell; forming the words left blood on her tongue.

‘Get over here.’

Keeping her eyes on the furs, she crawled towards him. Every muscle in her side was on fire. His right hand was tugging and twisting his member into a semblance of an erection, its angry red head glowering at her like a bloodshot eye. Dread filled her.

‘That’s better.’ As soon as she was close enough, his left hand seized her hair and forced her head down. ‘Now show your chief the proper respect.’

7

SUMMONING

In the chill pearly light of dawn, Teia dropped to her knees in the grass behind the chief’s tent and retched. Each spasm of her belly hurt her ribs as much as the blows that had given her the bruises in the first place, and the vomit stung the cut in her lip. Again and again she heaved, until there was nothing left to come up but a little sour bile. Strings of spittle trailing from her mouth, she leaned on her hands until the spasms ceased and then stayed there, too weary and sore to move. Tears leaked from her eyes.

So that was that. She was carrying. Slowly, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sat on her heels. There’d been no blood this past quarter-moon, and she’d hoped it meant nothing: Drw’s sudden death, the upheaval after – every woman knew events like that could disrupt the moon-tides. But sicking up the bread and milk she’d forced down to break her fast, that was enough to be sure.

Drying her eyes, she looked around to see if she’d been observed, but the camp was barely stirring. Drwyn’s snores from inside the tent said he’d not be waking any time soon, but when he did he’d expect to be fed – or brought a bucket. Either prospect set her stomach surging again, and she willed it to steady. Her belly and side were too sore to stand much more vomiting without sobbing.

It was bound to happen, sooner or later. The simples she’d learned from her mother didn’t include a preventative that was effective more than three times out of seven, and Drwyn had an appetite that needed frequent sating. Catching for a child had been as inevitable as the goats catching for kids.

He would have to know, of course. Eventually. She thought of him inside the tent, sprawled on his face, reeking of last night’s
uisca
and snoring like a thunderstorm. Then she thought of him holding her head down until she gagged finishing him, and shuddered.

The promise of a son might stop him hitting her, if nothing else. He might even marry her. As his wife she would finally be more certain of her status, which would increase with each son she bore, and in some respects she would have more freedom . . . but in many she would have less. It was difficult to say which was worse – concubinage or the fur-lined cage of wifely duty.

Wincing, she eased herself to her feet and walked back around the tent. Smoke was rising from some of the Crainnh cook-fires and from the wider hollow where the other clans were camped, blue against the iron-coloured sky. Frost silvered the grasses and had left a skim of ice on the water bucket by the entrance. Teia scooped it out and held it up to the thin sunlight, tracing the delicate pattern of leaves and stags-horn moss the frost had made before it melted in the warmth of her hands.

She was only delaying the inevitable, she knew, but she wanted a chance to get her stomach under control before she had to cook and serve Drwyn’s meal. The thought of food made her nauseous again, but she dared not throw up in front of the chief. He would know for sure then and she was not ready to face that. Not yet.

Two days passed, painfully slowly. Bruises coloured Teia’s shoulders and abdomen as brightly as a jewel-bug’s wings and her broken rib made it difficult to bend over or stand up straight without pain. Drwyn’s savage wine-head that first morning gave her some bitter pleasure, but after that he stayed more or less sober, spending all his time with Ytha or the other chiefs as they renewed old alliances sworn in his father’s name and began forging the new ones that would secure his position as Chief of Chiefs. He returned to his tent only to sleep or change his shirt; to Teia’s relief, he left her alone. A small mercy, but she was thankful for it. It also meant she could seek out a bidewell plant; a sliver of the root tucked into her cheek helped keep the sickness at bay, though she feared it would soon be seen for what it was.

Thus far, however, Drwyn had not noticed, so preoccupied was he with politicking. Teia had decided that he was not terribly observant to begin with, but come the fourth morning of the fair he was too full of nervous excitement to have noticed even if she had sicked up all over his boots. Today the Gathering would end and the clans would ask for Maegern’s blessing. Drwyn’s mind appeared to be fixed on that with an intensity she had never seen in him before.

Teia watched him pacing the tent as she nibbled on a heel of dry bread. It was the only food she had found that she could keep down first thing in the morning. He was dressed in his best again, combed and oiled, the golden torc of the chief gleaming around his thick neck. He kept fiddling with it, fingering the wolf-head bosses with their emerald eyes that glared at each other across his throat.

She didn’t like the torc. The wolves’ faces were far too lifelike for her peace of mind. They stared, teeth bared to snap, and the jewels in their eyes sometimes caught a light that was not there. She did not recall the torc looking so menacing around Drw’s neck. In fact, she could not recall it being jewelled, either, not before the day when Ytha had held it above Drwyn’s bowed head whilst the ashes of his father’s pyre smoked behind him.

He gave the heavy gold twist a final tug and sighed. His gaze roamed around the tent, finally coming to rest on Teia. Still nibbling nervously on the bread, she looked up.

‘You look pale,’ he said abruptly. ‘Are you sick?’

‘No.’ She shook her head a little, dabbing at crumbs on her lip. ‘I’m just tired.’

‘Have Ytha give you a draught to help you sleep.’

‘I’m all right.’

His gaze was unsettling. There was something about it, a heat, a hunger, that made Teia’s throat contract and her mouth dry up. She could hardly swallow her mouthful of bread. Putting the crust on her plate and her plate to one side, she got carefully to her feet. Drwyn’s gaze followed her as she walked to the tent entrance. She pushed through the flap to find Ytha standing just outside. Before she could stop herself, Teia squeaked in surprise.

The Speaker raised an eyebrow, her face impassive. She was pale from three days of fasting but carried herself rigidly upright, as always, wrapped in her fox-fur mantle. Her hair was once more swept back behind its golden crescent, emphasising her gaunt, strong features and the deeply shadowed sockets of her eyes. Like a horse skull, lying bleaching in the grass.

‘Teia,’ she said, tone neutral.

‘Speaker.’ Teia bowed her head and kept it down, staring at the turf in front of her boots until she got her nerves under control.

Drwyn emerged from the tent. ‘Is everything ready?’ he asked.

‘It is.’ Ytha’s voice was crisp as new snow. ‘The other chiefs await us at the Moot ground.’

‘Then it begins.’

Teia darted a glance up in time to see Drwyn offer his arm to Ytha. The Speaker hesitated, then accepted with a gracious inclination of her head. Teia bit her lip. Oh, Drwyn was bold, bolder than ever his father had been. Most clansmen would sooner run barefoot across the ash-fields of the Muiragh Mhor than invite a Speaker’s touch, and Ytha amongst Speakers was an ice-bear amongst foxes.

The two made a striking pair. Almost of a height, both powerfully built for their sex, but where Ytha was pale and chill, Drwyn was dark and hot. Teia was struck by the contrast, but also by the odd rightness of their pairing, light and shade, ice and fire, totally unalike and yet interdependent, like day and night. Together they made a whole to lead the Crainnh, but either one of them could snuff her out as easily as pinching the wick of a lamp.

She watched them walk away into the bustle of the camp, and as they disappeared from her sight a queer shiver ran through her body, like a cold draught through a warm tent. Her mother called it the touch of the harrow-bird: so the superstition ran, it meant a raven alighting on the place of one’s death. Teia shook it off, but she made the sign of protection over her brow and heart, just in case.

As she went carefully about her chores, she could not keep her mind from pondering on the rite the Speaker would perform. She had only seen a summoning once before, six winters ago, when the plague had struck down four clans in as many weeks. Their Speakers had formed a circle around a fire and joined in a desperate prayer to the Goddess of the Dead not to take any more souls. Maegern had not answered them and the plague had raged for three more weeks, taking Drwyn’s mother, his second wife and infant son in quick succession. Then, as abruptly as it had come, it had ceased. Those who were already sick had begun either to live or to die and the burnings had stained the skies black well into the new moon.