Joscelin, upon gaining the summit, simply lay on his back and stared at the sky, exhausted. I gave him the waterskin without speaking, and he drank.
"We have to keep going." His voice was reedy, lungs seared by his exertions in the cold air, but he heaved himself to his feet.
I nodded. "At least the horses are rested." It was a feeble witticism at best, but that was how we kept ourselves going.
And onward we went.
Neither of us spoke that night about the time we had lost, but we were both on edge, jumping at the sounds of the forest: shifting snow, the sharp crack branches will make when the sap freezes in their woody veins. Joscelin stared moodily at the fire, poking at it as he did when he was thinking.
"Phedre." His voice startled me, and I realized the extent of my nerves' fraying. I met his sober look. "If.. . when ... they catch us, I want you to do something. Whatever I say, whatever I do, play along with it. Here, I want to show you something." Rising, he went to our packs, and came back with Trygve's shield. It was a simple round buckler, hide-covered, with a steel disk at the center and straps to go over one's arm. I'd wondered why he hadn't discarded it, when he fought better without one.
Under the Skaldic night skies, he showed me how to wield it, slipping my arm into the straps and covering my body.
"If you have a chance," he said quietly, "any chance, to get away, take it. You know enough to survive on your own, while the supplies hold out. But if you don't.. . use the shield. And I will do what I can."
"Protect and serve," I whispered, gazing up at him, silhouetted against the starry night. He nodded, tears in his eyes, glimmering in the dark. I felt a pain in my heart I had never felt before. "Ah, Joscelin..."
"Go to sleep." He murmured it, turning away. "I'll take the first watch."
On the fourth day, it snowed.
It was the sort of weather that played with us as a cat will play with a mouse between its paws, battering us with whipping wind and a flurry of whiteness, then drawing back to allow us enough of a respite to press forward, sometimes huddled over our mounts' necks, sometimes wading through snow waist-deep, until the next blast came, swiping at us with wintry claws.
I fell into a cold dream, numb and frozen, huddled in the saddle or stumbling in Joscelin's trail, only his curses and exhortations keeping me moving. I don't know how long we travelled that way. Time becomes meaningless, measured out in lengths of endless staggering in a frigid daze, broken only by brief moments of lucidity when the snows broke and the landscape lay visible before us, showing our markers.
There is a sound the wind makes when it gusts, a high keening sound, as it bends around rock and tree. I grew so used to it, I scarce noticed when it changed, no longer rising and falling but rising steadily, rising and rising.
"Joscelin!"
The wind tore the word from my lips, but he caught it, turning back, a strange and hoary figure under the wolf-pelt. I pointed back along our trail with one mittened hand.
"They're coming."
He threw his head back in alarm, gaze sweeping our surroundings. There was nothing for the eye to see, nothing but swirling snow. "How many?"
"I can't tell." I made myself be still, straining to hear the distant yells over the keening wind. "Six. Maybe eight."
His face was grim. "Ride!"
We rode, then, blindly, the way one flees in a nightmare. I hunched in the saddle and clung to my pony's neck, the air gasping in my lungs like knives as my mount struggled gamely in Joscelin's wake, plunging and churning the snow. I could hear them now, clearly, a bloodthirsty Skaldic war-chant that rose above the wind and battered our ears like raven's wings, urging us onward, onward, into the madness of flight.
It was too much, and we had too little left to give. I heard the sound of howling Skaldi pursuers string out, half their number circling around our forefront. I rode, floundering, alongside Joscelin and shook my head at him as we burst into a clearing, near a promontory of rock. His horse was nigh done in, and I could feel my pony's sturdy sides heaving under me.
Joscelin drew up his horse, then, a serene calm settling over his wind-burned features. "We will make a stand, Phedre," he said to me, very clearly. I remember that so well. He nodded at the promontory, dismounting and handing me Trygve's shield. "Take this, and guard yourself as best you may."
I obeyed, getting down from my exhausted mount and settling the shield on my arm, my back against the rock. Our horses stood without moving, heads low, trembling as the lather turned to ice on their coats. Shield-armed and settled, I stood watching while Joscelin drew his sword and walked out into the middle of the clearing to meet them, a lonely figure half-lost in the swirling snows.
I'd been right; there were seven of them. Volunteers, Selig's best, the fastest riders, the most skilled trackers. It was something, that it had taken them four days to catch us. The howling had stopped when we ceased to flee, and they rode silently out of the snows, dark and ominous. Seven. They halted before Joscelin, ranged in a semicircle. He stood alone, his sword hilt at shoulder-height, the blade angled across his body in the Cassiline defensive pose.
And then he threw it down, and clasped his hands in the air above his head.
"In Selig's name," he cried in passable Skaldic, "I surrender!"
I heard laughter, then a gust of wind came, and snow-devils obscured my vision. When it died, I saw four had dismounted and approached him on foot, swords drawn, and one battle-axe among them. Two riders hung back.
The third rode toward me.
Joscelin, hands clasped above his head, waited unmoving until the nearest Skaldi reached him, poking his chest with the tip of his sword.
Then he moved, and steel rang in the clearing as he swept the Skaldi blade away with one vambraced forearm, both daggers suddenly in his hands, moving as unexpectedly as the skirling winds. No one will ever write of the strange poetry of that battle, the Cassiline's ballet of snow and steel and death in the Skaldic hinterlands. Figures moved like wraiths in the snow-veiled clearing, only the clash of arms giving the deadly lie to their dance.
And the Skaldi rider approaching me drew nearer, until I shrank back against the rock and threw up my shield in defense.
It was Harald the Beardless, of Gunter's steading.
I stared, astonished; in two heartbeats, he was off his horse and inside the reach of my shield, wrapping one arm around me and setting the point of his dagger to my throat. "D'Angeline!" he cried, pitching his voice toward the battle. "Let be! I have the girl!" I struggled in his grip, and he tightened it. "Don't worry," he muttered under his breath. "I'll not do it, Selig wants you alive."
On the field, I could see one of the figures pause; Joscelin, it had to be. He had his sword back, and I knew it by the angle at which he wielded it. Two of the Skaldi were down, but as I watched, one of those still mounted spurred his horse forward, axe sweeping for a blow.
"Joscelin!" I filled my lungs to bursting with the shout, willing it to reach him. "Don't listen to him!"
Harald swore at me, clamping a hand over my mouth. I stamped on his foot and nearly broke free, but he regained his grip, shifting the dagger so I felt its edge. From the corner of my eye, I could see that Joscelin was down, rolling, but he fought still; the mounted Skaldi was slumping sideways in the saddle.
"I traded places with one of Selig's thanes to come after you," Harald hissed. "Don't make me harm you, D'Angeline! I mean to regain the honor of our steading with your return."
He held me hard against his side, my shoulders pinned, the shield awkward between us. Fumbling at my waist, I slid my hand out of my oversized mitten and felt the hilt of Trygve's dagger beneath me. I wrapped my fingers about it and eased it from its sheath.
Joscelin was on his feet again, dodging through the snow, quick and agile. If nothing else, he had learned to maneuver on this terrain, the hard way. Two Skaldi yet opposed him on foot, and one on horseback. None of them had ever been forced to run over miles of wasteland behind one of Gunter Arnlaugson's horses. The Cassiline sword flashed through the snow-laden air, and another of the unmounted Skaldi went down.
"Let me go, Harald," I said softly, twisting to gaze at his face. So young, the golden stubble of his first beard just thickening. Despite the cold, my hand was slippery with sweat, clenched about the hidden dagger hilt. "I am a free D'Angeline."
"Don't try to sway me!" He looked away stubbornly, refusing to meet my eyes. "I'll not fall under your witchcraft, D'Angeline. You belong to Waldemar Selig!"
"Harald." My hand was trembling, holding the dagger so near his vitals, hidden behind the shield bound so awkwardly to my left arm. Pinned against him, I could feel his warmth. He had given me the fur cloak I still wore and been the first to sing songs about me. My vision was blurred with tears. "Let me go, or I swear I will kill you."
Intent on the battle, he shouted a warning to the last mounted Skaldi, who narrowly avoided having his horse hamstrung by Joscelin. It was a measure of our desperate straits, that he would attempt such a thing.
As was what I did.
"Forgive me," I whispered, and pushed the dagger into Harald with all my strength.
I do not think, at first, he knew what had happened; his eyes widened, and his arms fell away from me. He looked down, then, and saw between us what the shield had hidden. With a gasping sob, I forced the dagger upward toward his heart and let go the hilt. Harald took a step backward and looked up at me, his eyes quizzical as a boy's. What have you done? they seemed to ask of me. What have you done?
I gave no answer, and he crumpled to the ground and lay unmoving.
The last Skaldi rider saw, and gave a cry. Turning away from Joscelin, he spurred his horse toward me, looming through the snow. With nowhere to run, I waited, dumb and silent. In the distance, Joscelin dispatched the lone unmounted warrior and raced for a horse, any horse.
In dreams, things happen slowly. It was like that still, this unending frozen nightmare. I could see the Skaldi's face, distorted with rage, shouting curses I couldn't make out in the rising wind. Selig wanted me alive, Harald had said; I could guess his second choice. He would take me dead. At twenty yards, I saw the Skaldi cock his arm, spear at the ready. At fifteen, he cast it.
I closed my eyes and lifted Trygve's buckler.
The impact jarred my arm to the bone, knocking me off my feet. Opening my eyes, I saw him above me, blotting out the winter sky atop his horse. Still strapped to my arm, the shield was useless, cracked beneath the force of the blow, the lethal, leaf-shaped tip of the spear gone clean through to the inside.
If he had had a second spear, I would have died then. I know this. But what spears he'd had, he had already cast. He dismounted and drew his sword.
"No!" Joscelin's shout split the air, and the Skaldi turned, hesitating at the now-mounted Cassiline's approach. I struggled to free myself from the useless shield, scrambling backward through the snow. Face grim, Joscelin lashed his borrowed horse forward, nigh on us.
Too hard, too fast. The horse stumbled, slid, losing its footing; it went down hard, head low, the mighty body crashing to the snow-covered earth. Sword in hand, Joscelin was flung free and fell no less hard, some distance from the thrashing horse.
The Skaldi looked back at me and grinned, the fierce, savage grin of a warrior with nothing left to lose. "You first," he said, and raised his sword high above his head, preparing to bring it down two-handed upon me.
"Elua," I whispered, and prepared to die.
The blade never fell.
It slipped, instead, falling away from his nerveless fingers to fall with a soft thump into the snow. The Skaldi stared down at himself, where the bloody tip and a handspan of Joscelin's sword protruded. No one, I think,
fails to be surprised at the death-blow when it comes in battle. He turned about slowly, his hands going to the blade's tip. I saw the hilt and the rest of the blade standing out from between his shoulders. Joscelm was still down, propped on one arm; he'd thrown it from where he'd fallen. The Skaldi stared at him in disbelief, sinking slowly to his knees. Still clutching the tip of the sword lodged in him, he died.
It was quiet then, but for the wind and snow. Joscelin got painfully to his feet and came toward me, staggering. I saw when he drew near that he had a cut on one cheekbone, already frozen, and runnels of blood in his hair. He turned the last Skaldi on his stomach and tugged his sword free, bracing one foot on the body to get it loose. I stood wearily, and we held each other upright.
"Do you know what the odds of making that throw were?" Joscelin murmured, wavering on his feet. "We don't even train for it. It's not done."
"No." I swallowed, and nodded at Harald, motionless by the promontory, a dusting of snow already covering him. "Do you know he gave me his cloak? He never even asked for it back."
"I know." With an effort, Joscelin released me and stood on his own, passing one hand to his side. "We have to keep moving. Take . . . take anything we can use. Food, water, fodder . . . we could use more blankets. We'll take a pack-horse, use whichever mounts are freshest. We need to gain some distance before we rest."
FIFTY-THREE
Stripping the dead of spoil is a grim business. I have heard that Skaldi women sing as they do it. I tried to imagine kind-hearted Hedwig doing it, and could not; then I remembered how the women of Selig's steading hated me, and I could. We did not sing, Joscelin and I, working together in numb horror. We did not even speak, but only did what was needful.
One of the Skaldi horses, the one that had fallen, had broken a leg and had to be put down. Joscelin did it with his daggers, cutting the large vein on the neck. I could not watch. We took two of their horses, and left the others to fend for themselves, hoping they would find their way to a steading before the wolves found them; they were nigh as tired as our own mounts. I kept my pony, though, unable to bear leaving him for the wolves. And in truth, he was hardier than the horses, quicker to regain strength. I learned, later, that the breed was native to the Skaldic lands; they'd bred for the larger mounts with strains of Caerdicci and Aragonian horses, better for battle, but not for enduring the cold.
So it was that we set out once more.
It had been my intention, when we reached it, to follow the Danrau River, keeping it in sight until we reached the Camaelines. It was Joscelin's idea to follow the riverbed for a time, rendering our trail invisible, then cut to the south and throw off any other pursuers. We had no way of knowing whether there were others, or how many or how far behind they might be, but I suspected Selig would send more than one party.
We followed his plan, our horses picking their way cautiously through the cold, fast-flowing water, and he did as he had before, backtracking to erase our trail where it emerged from the river. How he did it, I do not know, for by then the cold and exhaustion were so deep in my bones that I could barely think. It wasn't until he returned, hollow-eyed, that I re alized he was worse off than I. It is a strange thing, human endurance. After the river, I would have said I was done in, but when I saw his condition, I found a bleak pocket of strength that kept me going, taking the lead to forge a trail through the gathering dusk. The wind had picked up again and there was no shelter to be found, only barren rock and thin trees. I knew, by then, how to look for a campsite. There was no place to be found, so I kept going.
I don't know what all I thought of, trudging through the endless winter, leading my horse while Joscelin followed, hunched in his saddle, the heavily laden pony trailing. A thousand memories of home, of fetes I had attended, of patrons, of Delaunay and Alcuin. I thought of the mar-quist's shop, of the healing springs of Naamah's sanctuary, of Delaunay's library, which I had once thought the safest place in the world. I thought of Hyacinthe and the Cockerel, and the offering we had made at Blessed Elua's temple.
At what point I began to pray, I don't know, for it was a prayer without words, a remembrance of grace, of Elua's temple, scarlet anemones in my hands, the earth warm and moist beneath my bare feet, cool marble beneath my lips, and the priest's kind voice. Love as thou wilt, he had said, and Elua will guide your steps, no matter how long the journey. I clung blindly to the moment, along my endless journey, until I could go no farther and stopped to look about me, realizing in the gloaming and snow that I had walked straight into a wall of stone.
This is the end, I thought, putting out my hands and feeling the stone before me. I can go no further. I dared not look behind me.
My left hand, sliding sideways, met no resistance. Darkness opened in the rock before me. Groping, I felt my way forward, trusting that my mount was too exhausted to run.
It was a cave.
I went into it as far as I dared, sniffing the air for scent of wolf or bear. The sound and force of the wind died inside the stone walls, leaving a strange black stillness. There was no sense of any living thing. I emerged, fighting my way through the snow to Joscelin's side. He looked blearily at me through frost-rimed lashes.
"There's a cave," I shouted, cupping my mouth against the wind, then pointing. "Give me one of the torches, and I'll look."
Moving as though it hurt to do so, he dismounted, and we led the horses into the overhang. With a faint, dim light still filtering through the opening, we unpacked the tinderbox and the branches swathed in pitch soaked rags we'd taken from the fallen Skaldi. I struck a spark and a torch flared into light.
Holding it aloft, I ventured deeper into the cavern.
It went farther than I'd guessed, and was vaster. Alone in a dark arena, I turned about, letting torchlight illuminate the walls. I'd been right, it was empty; but there, in the center, were the remains of an ancient campfire. Glancing up, I saw high above a small rift in the stone ceiling, a hole for smoke to escape.
It would do. It would more than do.
I wedged the torch in a crevice, and went back for Joscelin. This time, it was I who did the lion's share of the work, tending to the horses, who huddled gratefully out of the gale, gathering scrub branches and laying a fire on the site of ancient ashes. I even found a massive deadfall and devised a crude hitch for the pony, dragging the better part of a small tree into the cavern itself. The wood was dry and burned without much smoke, until the space was suffused with welcome warmth and light.