He was sitting on a bench cleverly fastened together so that it could be broken into easily transportable sections. He looked at Liath and slid to one side, making room for her.
When she sat, he gave her his spoon so she could share his stew. The smell, however bland and greasy, made her stomach growl and her mouth water, and she set to work, all the time so very aware of him beside her, every least shift of movement as he adjusted his posture or set weight on an elbow or nudged his foot up against hers. She had forgotten how big he was, something more, really, than just muscle and height and the breadth of his shoulders. This was the glorious prince she had fallen in love with at Gent—miraculously recovered from his mortal wounds and fully in charge of the army that followed at his heels very like a well-trained and adoring hound.
For the next hour the flood of petitioners did not abate. No complaint was too trivial to address; no soldier too humble to be refused entrance; no decision too weighty, since he evidently had the gift of knowing exactly whether it needed immediate resolution or time for thinking over.
A horse must be put down, but its meat and gristle could be added to the stewpot, its hair and sinews used for stringing bows and strengthening rope, its hide scraped, its hooves boiled down. Two men had quarreled, and a knife had been drawn and one of them stabbed, although not fatally, but Sanglant simply assigned them to different units and forbade them from speaking.
“Shouldn’t an example be set so other men don’t pick fights?” Liath whispered.
Although his foot lay hard against hers, he was careful not to touch or look at her in view of the men waiting their turn to address him.
“This is the time for a soft hand, not a firm one,” he murmured so quietly that only she, and Heribert standing behind him, might hear. “No one will say so aloud, but it is a lovers’ quarrel. My army has marched a long way without the comfort of women. Such things will happen. I won’t punish them for seeking relief.” He shifted restlessly and pulled his foot away from hers, as though it burned. But then he spoiled it by grinning, although he was not looking at her.
That grin had the force of a hundred caresses. She got very hot, but she was ready; she guarded the force of her desire, not wanting to light the tent on fire. She could control it—more or less. Yet holding it in only made her want him more.
Captain Fulk stuck his head in. “My lord prince.”
Quickly he armed himself. He paused only to kiss Blessing before he went outside with Liath. There, a dozen captains and noble companions waited.
“Who’s this fine heifer?” demanded a big man dressed in the embroidered tunic and fur-lined cloak of a nobleman. He leered at her as he looked her up and down, and she knew that she had seen him before, but she could not place him. “Can I have her when you’re done?”
Sanglant stopped dead and turned. A hush choked off the conversations between the gathered crowd as everyone stilled. There are some things that have no physical body and yet can be felt as strongly as the slam of a rock into one’s head.
“What did you say about my wife, Wichman?” he asked so pleasantly that Wichman went ghastly pale and took a step away from him, although Sanglant had not moved, not even his little finger.
Liath recognized him now—Duchess Rotrudis’ reckless son, who had harried Gent for months and taken Mistress Gisela’s poor niece into his bed against her will. Sanglant’s interference irritated her; did he think her helpless? Yet she did not know how to respond. She possessed no skill at crossing words like swords. She had power, but so did a spear—and it was the person who wielded it who gave it direction and aim.
She fumed as Wichman retreated, as the other captains and nobles came forward to greet Sanglant and exclaim over his return to strength. To meet her warily or pleasantly, depending on their nature. She had to learn who they were, but names and titles spat at her in such quick succession that while all the names stuck she could not recall which name matched which face.
“And this is Lady Bertha, my strong right hand,” Sanglant said last of all. “She is the second daughter of Margrave Judith.”
That caught Liath’s attention.
“You are Hugh’s sister,” she said, not having meant to speak any such words.
“So my mother told me.” Bertha looked nothing like Hugh, having no particular elegance and less beauty, but she appeared tough and competent. “So he claimed, since it gave him the advantage of our support when he needed it. I might have wished otherwise, since I always detested him.” She smiled mockingly as Liath schooled her expression, for she had never expected to hear Hugh spoken of so slightingly by his own kinfolk. “Have I offended you? Perhaps you held him in some affection.”
Sanglant glanced at her, but she shook her head, aware of the way his shoulders tensed as he waited for her reply.
“I did not. I am only surprised.”
“My mother spoiled him, and he only a bastard. Why should my sisters and I not resent him? Well, so be it. According to this good Eagle, he has earned his just reward and luxuriates in a position of great power and influence with many a noble lady begging for admittance to his holy bedchamber. It was ever so with him, and he always put them off, like dangling meat before a starving dog and then pulling it away before it could taste it. He liked them to beg. And they did,”
Sanglant was looking stormy, and while Bertha’s sentiments might appeal, Liath did not find the noblewoman’s manner particularly sympathetic. But she did not know how to change the subject.
Heribert stepped forward. “They are coming, my lord prince.”
Bertha looked past Liath, and laughed. “Not as many as you wished, eh?”
Sanglant seated himself in the chair. “That depends on what they have to say.” The others ranged around him, falling into obviously familiar patterns but leaving Liath unsure how to position herself. Where did she fit in?
She had felt so strong, walking the spheres, but there she had been acting alone. Here, maybe she would never fit into the tightly woven army that Sanglant led. She stared at the sun’s fiery trail, a golden-pink layer sprawled out along the western hills. Ai, God, how cleverly Sanglant had placed himself: it seemed as if the sun set in order to do him obeisance.
Gyasi appeared at the head of a score of riders who pointed at the hooded griffin, exclaiming among themselves. They bore two banners, one marked with three slashes and the other with a crescent moon. Sanglant shifted in his chair, hand restless on his hilt of his sword, as Gyasi dismounted and led six of the Quman forward: four winged warriors and two women wearing impossibly tall conical hats ornamented with beads and gold. The two barbarian women were burdened with more jewelry even than Sorgatani, as if the weight of their gold determined how important they were.
As they advanced, Liath slipped sideways, out of the crowd. Wichman glanced at her as she slid past him, and he recoiled, bumping into Brother Breschius, who constituted the other half of Sanglant’s schola.
“I pray you, Brother, attend me,” Liath said softly, and Breschius obediently walked with her a stone’s toss away from the rest. They halted near a group of soldiers come to stare and to keep their prince safe from the interlopers. “What do you know of these Quman?”
“Little enough.”
“What do those markings mean?”
“It is the mark of a snow leopard’s claw, the device of the Pechanek tribe. They are the ones who abandoned us the day we met the Horse people. The other—” He shrugged helplessly. “—I do not know. Brother Zacharias would have. He knew a great deal, for he had lived as a slave in the Pechanek tribe.”
“I know no Brother Zacharias. Where is he now?”
“He fled with Wolfhere when we were in Sordaia.”
“I heard a little of this tale. Is it certain that Wolfhere betrayed Prince Sanglant?”
Breschius shrugged. “Who can know? Both he and Zacharias are gone in the company of a small, dark man, a powerful sorcerer, so Gyasi says. That’s all I know. I was with Prince Sanglant at the palace of the
exalted Lady Eudokia. I did not witness the incident. Only Brother Robert did, who was Lady Bertha’s healer. The poor man died a few months ago of the lung fever. It is a miracle that Prince Sanglant kept so many of us alive. Yet perhaps not a miracle at all. He has the regnant’s luck.”
So he did, as he allowed the Quman representatives to kneel before him. The griffin cowed them; he had been right about that.
“How came you to his service, Brother? I do not recall you from King Henry’s progress.”
“I am not Wendish, my lady. I was born in Karrone but sent early to a marshland monastery. That is how I come to speak Wendish. I lost my hand in the service of the God, for I set out to bring the light of the Unities to those who live in darkness. It’s a convoluted tale, but this much may help you make sense of it. I was a slave among the Kerayit, taken to be a pura by one of their shamans.”
Astonished, she looked at him more closely, but no mystery clung to him. He seemed calm, and confident, a middle-aged man with handsome enough features that, she supposed, might attract the attention of a lonely young woman doomed to isolation. Of course, he had been young then.
“You do not live among the Kerayit now.”
Breschius’ smile was leavened by regret, an old sorrow never quite recovered from. “She died, and I came into the service of Prince Bayan. When he died, I swore to follow Prince Sanglant.”
“Why?”
“Can you not see why, my lady? Look at these Quman. They come to ally themselves with the man who defeated their greatest leader, the man who led the army that devastated their ranks. They see it, too. They will not resist him.”
Yet not every creature that encountered Sanglant succumbed to his charisma. Li’at’dano had not.
“Tell me this, then, Brother, since you lived among the Kerayit. Why do their males remain among the herds?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why is it only the female centaurs rode out to meet us?”
“Ah. Yes. That puzzled me as well, for the Kerayit I traveled with had little intercourse with the Horse people. But I learned the truth eventually. The Horse people are not like us. They are only female.”
“How can they only be female? What does that mean?”
“It means just that. They are only female.”
“How can they breed, then?”
“They have puras, do they not? The stallions. Only the female foals breed true. The males are all colts.”
An eerie whistling rose from the ranks of the Quman riders, and the hooded griffin tugged at its chains. It lifted its blinded head and screamed as the whistling grew more shrill. Sanglant stood and strode across the flattened grass as, above, Domina appeared in the sky, circling. The last rays of the sun flashing in her iron wing feathers. The whistling ceased as the Quman fled to their horses and cowered when her shadow passed over them. But Sanglant moved in within range of the silver griffin, and before Liath could cry out a warning, he grabbed hold of the rope that bound the hood around its neck and yanked its head down.
“Fulk!” he shouted. “Bring me meat!”
There they stood, he and the griffin, engaged in a battle of wills as its mate shrilled an anxious cry and, at last, beat down to land in a flurry of wings while men shouted and dashed for safety. It infuriated Liath that he would put himself in danger so soon, but she clenched her hands and endured, teeth gritted and heart hammering madly. She knew better than to interfere. Some idiotically brave soldier ran over to the prince carrying a satchel; the young man had an arm already bound up in a sling, but that did not deter him. He even had a stupid grin on his face, relishing the danger, and would have stuck close if Sanglant had not ordered him to stand away.
Under the gaze of every soul there and with Domina poised tensely but still so close beside him that in a single pounce she could bury him under her claws, he fed the meat to Argent. The griffin ate neatly out of his hands, although certainly he was careful to keep his fingers clear of its vicious beak.
“The Quman follow those who wear the wings of a griffin, and now he means to tame one, not just kill it,” murmured Breschius admiringly beside her. The cleric was as much a fool as the rest of them! Yet it was true that Sanglant was a magnificent sight, uncowed by the griffin, master of his fate. “Now these who are here will bear this tale back to their tribes.”
3
AT long last the crowd dispersed, all but the two dozen attendants who swarmed in and around his tent, and she found herself seated on the pallet with her boots off and Sanglant wide awake beside her, the barest smile illuminated on his face and the rest of him shadowed.
“I pray you, Heribert,” he said softly, “put that lamp out.”
Heribert rolled his eyes, but he rose from the pile of furs he slept on, licked his fingers, reached up to the lamp hanging from a cross pole, and pinched out the flame.
Sanglant sighed heavily.
A hundred thoughts skittered across Liath’s mind, and died.
All at once he enveloped her with his arms and let his weight carry her down onto the pallet, and there he lay with his body half on her and a leg crossing hers at the knee.
“You can’t know,” he murmured. “You can’t know. Not one day went by that I did not think of you. And mourn for you. And curse you. And want you. You can’t know how much I have been wanting you.”
By the feel of him pressed up against her, she had a pretty good idea. She wriggled a little, and his grip on her tightened so very gratifyingly as they kissed again and he eased a hand up under her tunic to brush the contours of her ribs.
Then someone coughed.
“I can’t,” she whispered, going rigid in his arms.
He tensed. “You can’t?” Anger tightened his voice. Whenever they spoke, his anger swam close to the surface, waiting to strike.
Yet this was no battle against him.
“There are so many people in here,” she whispered. A dozen or more, many of them still stirring as they settled down. That cough was likely an honest clearing of the throat, but it had startled her out of her passion nevertheless.
She felt his attention flash away from her. His fingers rapped a beat on her ribs as he puzzled over her words.
“They’re sleeping,” he whispered in reply.
“They’re not! Not all of them.”
“Then they soon will be.”
“And if they don’t?”
“They’ll pretend to sleep.”
It was nothing to him, who had spent his entire life in just such a mob, never truly alone, never knowing privacy and certainly never craving it. The only time he’d known solitude was as Bloodheart’s prisoner, and even then he had been surrounded by Eika dogs, his pack; surely he’d been driven half mad because of his isolation.
“I just can’t,” she repeated, not sure if he could ever understand her. The press of them all around was too much. She could not ignore it. She could not endure it.
“I can stand this no longer,” he said hoarsely, in echo of her thoughts. “I don’t care where, but I do care when. And if I don’t do this now, I swear to you, Liath, I am going to die of frustration.”
He grabbed her cloak, her hand, tugged her up to her feet, and said, commandingly, to the tent at large, “No one follow us!”
Heribert began to chuckle, and then half the tent did as well. She was burning with embarrassment, but Sanglant took no notice because he never did. He dragged her out of the tent, and by the time he had ordered off half a dozen startled but swiftly amused guards, she was laughing, too, running with him out into the grass in her bare feet. She had left her belt behind, so the hem of her tunic lapped her calves.
When they reached the crest of the hill, she tripped him and they rolled, tumbling, wrestling, giggling, until the slope of the ground shifted and they came to rest where the ground cupped into a man-sized hollow. He kissed her so long and hard that she got dizzy. There was grass in her hair and up and down her sleeves and between her toes, and for a miracle the
grass distracted him more than it did her. He cursed as he brushed himself off, and he shook out the cape and settled it over a swath of grass. After trampling the cloth to make a flat resting place, he drew her down.
She unbuckled his belt, suddenly intent on her task, on wanting to caress him, to feel his skin naked and pressed against her own, but he caught her hand in one of his.
“Nay, not yet. Not yet.” He kissed her knuckles before clasping her to him. “Ai, God. Let me savor it.”
They lay there for a while. She closed her eyes and let the chill spring breeze kiss her face. Nothing could make her feel cold now, with her arms wrapped around him and his around her. He breathed, as silent as the brilliant stars that blazed above them.
“Liath,” he said after a long time, “do you still love me?”
“You asked me this before. Weren’t you content with my answer the first time?”
“You don’t ask whether I still love you.”
Annoyance flashed, as brief as a falling star that streaked the night sky, and then she laughed and rolled up on top of him, trapping him beneath her.
“Do you still love me, Sanglant? I know you still desire me, that is obvious enough, but desire isn’t always love.”
“I still love you,” he said, the laughter gone out of him, “but I don’t know you. Are you still Liath under all these clothes? Are you still Liath under your skin? Are you still Liath at all, or a succubus come to plague me? Will you abandon me again?”
“Never willingly,” she whispered.
He shook his head brusquely; she felt the movement as much as saw it. Although her night vision was keen, sight mattered much less now than touch, than smell, than the taste of his despair and anger and the elixir of his arousal.
“I do not fear death. I only fear madness. I have cursed you for four years for abandoning me, because anger was the only thing that kept me from despair. I know that we have undertaken a great battle. I know that circumstances may force one of us to travel along a separate road from the other for a time, a short time, I pray. But I will have you pledge to me now what you pledged to me in Ferse village, our mutual consent made legal and binding by the act of consummation and the exchange of morning gifts. If we can have no marriage, then let it be done with. I can suffer and go on alone if I know this is the end. But I cannot love you this much and always wonder if you will leave me again as unthinkingly as my mother abandoned my father. As she abandoned me.”