Wildfire (18 page)

  
Sire Galan laughed so hard his eyes watered. He said, “Waggers! Waggers!” and hooted until I poked him in the ribs. It went better than I’d hoped.

 
  

 

  
I hurried Frost along to catch up with Mai’s oxcart. She was sitting on the driver’s bench. Pinch walked along beside the ox, flicking his switch and singing in time to the squeaking of a poorly fitted wheel.

 

  

 

  
Oh why the onion in your hand?

 

  
I asked of the queenmother.

 

  
Why it is for to make me weep

 

  
The tears to move my brother.

 

  

 

  
I climbed up beside Mai and we jounced along. She wore a magenta sling to support her vast belly, and she eased it from her neck to her shoulders, and told me the latest gossip about the trouble in Lanx. “The fishermen won’t fish, they say Torrent is angry. The queenmother ordered some of them gaffed on their own hooks and hung from the walls of Torrent keep, but still they won’t go. So it’s all aboil there. I heard Queenmother Caelum sacrificed twenty ships to Torrent. She had them rowed out to sea and set ablaze—to placate the god, she said—but I warrant it was to make certain there’d be no easy retreat for us. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that if we lose the port, we’ll be pinched between Lanx and Malleus.”

 

  
Pinch was eavesdropping. “It was those brides,” he said, making the avert sign. “There’s a curse on us now.”

 

  
“I heard you prophesied it,” Mai said.

 

  
“Me?” I said.

 

  
“Yes, you, my dear. I heard you said, ‘A water wife will bring you strife, a curse to last you all your life.’”

 

  
I said, “Who told you that? Some…thundermonger?”

 

  
Mai shook her head. “Poor silly girls, those brides. If they’d lived, I’m sure they’d have found more pleasurable ways to punish their husbands. But they made a fine end, didn’t they? Maybe now a man will think twice before he gives a maid cause for vengeance.”

 

  
I sat leaning against Mai, thinking of the maids of Torrent and others who’d already fallen in this war. Since we left Lanx I’d often caught sight of Penna from the corner of my eye, and turned my head to find it was nothing, or rather something white—a shirt showing between the laces of an oversleeve, or a gull landing in a field. She made use of such things, briefly. And at such times I felt that the dead of Lanx followed us like an invisible swarm, drawn by what they had once possessed, for their intimate belongings had been stolen instead of burned as was proper. I shuddered to think of Galan surrounded by shades as thick as carrion flies. That he was ignorant of their presence did not make him safe.

 

  
I said, “So many hates—how will we appease the debt, dead?”

 

  
She said, “I shouldn’t worry about the dead. Few of them have the strength of will to do harm.”

 

  
I said, “But if they do? Who can avert their…verses?”

 

  
Mai patted my arm. “Let the priests worry. It doesn’t weigh upon us.”

 

  
“But but—” I leaned close to her and whispered. “Ever since the frightening struck me, I have a…taunt in my ear, a haunt. I can’t get rid of it, and I don’t want any suspex to know. Do you know of someone who could banish it?”

 

  
She gave me a searching look. “Who is it?”

 

  
I shook my head.

 

  
Mai said, “Don’t you trust me, Coz? Ah, never mind, I won’t pry. But why don’t you catch this shade by the nose, eh? Get it to tell you useful things.”

 

  
Had she found my finger bones and divining compass when I was thunderstruck? Why else would she say that? I looked at both sides of her face, and couldn’t tell what she knew. “Oh gods, Nay, Nai,” I said. “Not this one. This shard, this…sharp is full of grimace and I must be rid of him. Can you help?”

 

  
“It will cost plenty.”

 

  
I opened the purse I had hanging around my neck. Mai took two of the goldenheads Sire Galan had given me, and a silverhead—the one she’d given me two days ago. “This one’s for my trouble,” she said.

 
  

 

  
Long after dark the sounds of men carousing and brawling could be heard through the cloth walls of the tent. Sire Galan was out roaming with his
armiger at his elbow and a jack at his heels. It seemed to me he was less eager than he once was to come home to bed. Yet he’d be eager enough to avail himself of me when he did come home—and I to avail myself of him.

 

  
Meanwhile the wait. Rowney was outside dicing with a jack named Cockspur, and Fleetfoot was asleep, so it was safe enough to spread out the divining compass on the bed. I’d memorized another godsign—Delve—which had been stamped upon the grain sacks in Mai’s cart, and I found it on the compass with some satisfaction.

 

  
I recalled all twelve gods now, and all their avatars, though my tongue stumbled over the names when I tried to speak them aloud. After many evenings puzzling over the compass, I had notions about where each god should be in the circle, but without the godsigns to fasten them down, I couldn’t hold them in mind all at once. The gods jostled, they traded places.

 

  
Our camp was like the divining compass enlarged, a circle divided into twelve equal arcants. Each afternoon surveyors marked the chosen ground and laid out crossing paths, and varlets cleared the land and raised pavilions. But our encampment wasn’t as evenly portioned between the clans as the compass was between the gods. Troops under King Thryse’s personal command and the queenmother’s Wolves took half the camp, and the rest of the companies shared the other half, crowding two or more to an arcant. Several new companies had joined us in Lanx, from clans loyal to the queenmother.

 

  
The camp also was divided by circles, like the divining compass. The inner circle held the pavilions of the cataphracts; the second circle the foot soldiers, surrounded by baggage carts; and the outer circle the mounts, pack beasts, and livestock cared for by horseboys and drovers. And all around the horizon of the camp, we were guarded by sentries and dogs.

 

  
There was order to it, the same order each night though we moved from place to place. I found my way about by the clan banners raised around the pavilions, for I remembered well which color belonged to each god. If I had a banner from every clan, I could stitch them together to make a new compass.

 

  
Banners were hard to come by. I just needed little scraps of cloth. Crux’s green was easy, and Mai would give me copper-colored cloth for Delve, and magenta for Carnal. Maybe I could dye cloth—no, easier to buy it. I still had a gold coin. One could buy almost anything in the market that sprang up outside camp every night, full of whores, sutlers selling food and drink (mostly drink), and traders who ventured out from the towns.

 

  
I kissed the bones and pulled tight the drawstring of the compass.

 
  

 

  
The sky was just lightening to gray in the east, and we were packing to leave, when Sire Erial sent his jack Bean to me, asking if I’d see to his ailing sheath. Bean said a mule had kicked her. I hadn’t been called upon as a greenwoman since Wildfire struck me, and I wasn’t sure I could heal someone else when I was in need of healing myself. But I couldn’t refuse to try.

 

  
Sire Erial’s sheath Mole had earned her name by the habit of scuttling about with her head hanging low. Though she and I were both followers of the company of Crux, we’d hardly spoken. I used to try to talk to her, but she was too timid to give me a greeting. There was a rumor that Sire Erial let his armiger and jack and bagboy and horsemaster use Mole when he was not inclined.

 

  
Sire Erial’s tent had already been taken down. Mole was lying on a straw-stuffed pallet on the ground. Her face was tanned by the Sun, but sallow rather than ruddy. Grimy too. She wouldn’t look at me.

 

  
“You got kicked?” I said. “Can I look?”

 

  
Mole nodded. I peeled off the blanket and found her wearing a filmy green shift in the fashion of Incus. She was thin, whittled down by too much work and not enough food. Through the gauze I could see a purple bruise on her left side, near her bottom rib. I put my warm right hand over the bruise and pushed down gently. Her ribs felt solid, no wiggle or give, but she yelped in pain. I’d seen worse bruises on Sire Galan and his men after tourneys, and I wondered if she was pretending to feel poorly to get out of working.

 

  
But my hand told me otherwise. She wasn’t feverish; her skin was cold and damp from sweat. I pressed on her abdomen and felt some swelling and hardness there, on the left side. She moaned and shrank away from me, her belly muscles tensing. I said, “You don’t have a broken thing, a broken jab…jib, but—I beg person, I’m sorry—I must see where less, where else it hurts. Here? Here?”

 

  
“My shoulder too,” she said, with her head turned away from me.

 

  
“For why? Did you get kicked there too? No?” That was puzzling: Her shoulder had no bruises or tenderness, and she could move her arm, but she had pain inside. She was shivering now and I covered her again with the blanket, which was dirty and torn. She did laundry for her master and his armiger, no doubt, and neglected her own.

 

  
I looked up. Bean and the bagboy Oakhead were busy rolling up the canvas panels of the tent to pack on a mule. Sire Erial sat nearby on a folding camp chair, with his back to me and his feet to the brazier. A mule hadn’t done this to her. More likely she was lying on the ground, and a man kicked her. In passing, maybe. A beating would have left more bruises. This
thought put me in a fury, which I tried my best to hide. “Which mule…fool was it?” I said to Mole.

 

  
Her eyelids lowered. She wasn’t going to tell me.

 

  
Without turning to look at me, Sire Erial asked, “Can she ride?”

 

  
“Hasn’t she been riding?” I said. The bruise looked several days old.

 

  
“She’s worse.”

 

  
I leaned closer, my hands around her wrists. Her pulse flickered rather than throbbed, and her breathing was quick and shallow. Her sweat smelled sour—she was none too clean—but at least there was no scent of corruption.

 

  
I could ease her pain with willow bark and soothe-me, and keep her warm with blankets, so she might ride with Sire Erial and his men. But I thought she’d mend sooner if she stayed behind, free of serving them one after the other, free of kicks and blows. I whispered, “Vole, listen. Will you bide or will you ride? Understand? If you cannot, if you haven’t the stretch, the strengithe—then I will seek a peace for you, a place—some cram, farm, croft herearounds.”

 

  
She shook her head. I pulled out the pouch hidden under my bodice, and emptied it of coins: one blonde, and all the rest copperheads. It was all I had left. I put the coins in her hand and closed her fingers around them. “If you want to stay above…behind, I mean, I wouldn’t leave you all all alost—I’ll find somewhere, somewhat for you.”

 

  
“I must ride,” she whispered, and tears slid from her eyes and sideways down her cheeks. “I can’t die alone—I’m going to die, I know it. Who would care for me? No one. Don’t think worse of me, I beg you.”

 

  
She tried to give me back the coins, and I pressed them into her hands. “You shan’t die,” I said. Though in truth I wasn’t sure. I tucked the blanket around her and turned to Sire Erial. “She needs to go in a baggage.”

 

  
“What do you mean, a baggage?”

 

  
“She needs a baggage—you know, what wheels along. And a cloud to wrap around her, she’s too cold.” I held up a corner of the blanket. “Like this, a cloudlet, only stuffed with fur, with furthers?”

 

  
Sire Erial shook his head. “I heard you were addled. I didn’t believe it until now.”

 

  
I helped Mole sit up. I took pains to gentle my touch, to straighten her dress and tease out the tangles in her matted hair. At first she shied from me like a skittish horse, and it was a victory to win from her a tremulous smile. I said, “Now, can you stand, do you think?”

 

  
I put my arm around her waist to hold her steady. For a moment it seemed as if she might swoon. Sire Erial came over and said, “Where are you going? What’s wrong with her?” I’d never noticed how young he was,
with spots on his face, and stray hairs on his upper lip and chin that showed he had yet to shave. He was, in my estimation and that of his fellows, a better braggart than fighter.

 

  
I said, “I think it best if she rides in a cookstart, an an…oxstart, but not astride, Sire. I’ll ask the…the one who cooks, the Cox’s provendiser, if he can take her. And she must not be ridden, because a man’s hate, his weight, will do her hurt. You must leave her belone for a month at least, you and your men.”

 

  
I found I couldn’t fear him, not when rage was so much more delightful. I put my warm left hand on Sire Erial’s arm, and he tried to shake me off. “So, Sire, are you the one who kicked her? Was it you or one of your villains? It was you, wasn’t it?”

 

  
“A man may chastise his sheath,” he said. “Sire Galan should chastise you, then you’d not be so brazen.”

 

  
“It’s not for you to advise him, Sire Folderol, he does as pleases him. And it pleases him to have me willing, not skulking and sulking like a a…moodiwart, a moil, mole. Ah, well, you’re green—perhaps you don’t know there’s more pleasaunce to be found when your…if she is pleased too, hmm? Maybe she’d be better pleased if she wasn’t shared. Or do you fret that your badboy would mind? Are you afraid of that, Sire? You could buy your men off with a few quims—that is to say with two cobbleheads for a cheat drabble-tail.”

 

  
“How dare you speak to me this way! I’ll pluck out your tongue for it!”

 

  
I bared my teeth at him and tried not to laugh. There was nothing to him but bluster. “My tongue was already plucked, Sire Erien. Can I help it if Wildire made me unspeakable? So heed me. Do you want her to mend? Then wait till after this month of loneliest, longest nights, and then—and then let her ride you—let her ride pillion on the pillicock, let her mount the stallion, eh? And maybe in a little while she’ll be mare to you again.”