Bridge of the Separator

V

For a long moment, Rhavas simply stood motionless, as if the storm had frozen him in place. It was not so much that he didn't believe his ears: much more that he didn't want to believe them. The ice that grew inside him had nothing to do with the frigid weather. Here were his own words, coming back to haunt him.

If Skopentzana falls to the Khamorth, on my head be it. That was what he'd told Toxaras, that or something so close as to make no difference. The mason who'd commanded the militia was dead and couldn't see his revenge. But the horror of it closed round Rhavas' heart like a vise and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

How had the barbarians broken in? He didn't know. Maybe it didn't matter (though some frightened, foreboding part of him said it was liable to matter very much). In certain ways, it surely didn't. If they were in, the Videssians had to drive them out again if they could. And those who were not fighters had to look to their safety—again, if they could.

The prelate hurried back inside the residence. When he got there, Matzoukes greeted him with, "What's that racket, very holy sir? Why is everybody yelling in the middle of this dreadful storm?"

Rhavas told him why. The young priest went white as the clean snow outside. Rhavas went on, "I know you're from this city, holy sir. You will have kinfolk for whom you are concerned. See to your loved ones. I don't mind, not now."

Matzoukes bowed. "Thank you, very holy sir. May the good god bless you for your kindness. But by the vows I swore, my place is at your side, not my family's. I'll stay."

"No, not now," the prelate said. "Were things different, I might seek to hold you to those vows. Not now. In the name of the lord with the great and good mind, I release you."

"Are—are you sure, very holy sir?" the young priest quavered. Rhavas nodded firmly. He drew Phos' sun-circle over his heart to reassure Matzoukes, who said, "The good god bless you. After all this is over, I'll come back and care for you the way I always have. I swear I will, very holy sir!"

"Of course," Rhavas said gently. "Now go." Matzoukes dashed away. Rhavas thought he would likely be killed in the sack. Better he should die with his family, the prelate told himself. He feared the militiamen couldn't oust the nomads, not after they'd gained an entrance.

You'll likely die in the sack yourself—that was the next thing that occurred to Rhavas. He confronted the notion with regret but, he was proud to discover, without much fear. He remained convinced he had done what he could for Skopentzana. If the good god willed that he should die a martyr at the hands of the demon-worshiping Khamorth, he was ready to face the perilous journey across the Bridge of the Separator. He drew himself up very straight, bracing himself to face his end with as much dignity and courage as he could muster.

And then dignity dissolved and courage took on a new shape. "Ingegerd!" he exclaimed. He had sworn to Himerios that he would do all he could for the garrison commander's wife. If he had less noble, less altruistic reasons for hoping she safely came through this ordeal, he did not have to admit them to anyone, even to himself.

He started to race out of the residence, as Matzoukes had done. The young priest had had the sense to take a shovel with him, to dig his way through the worst of the drifts. Rhavas realized he would have to do the same. Matzoukes had even left the better shovel, the one with the smoother handle and the broader blade, for him. That was generous of the youngster.

Shouldering the shovel as if it were a spear, Rhavas left the residence. He had trouble seeing very far through the swirling snow. Some of the cries he heard, though, were not cries that would have sounded from Skopentzana were all well.

Digenis pushed past him toward the temple. Pointing that way, the scribe said, "We'll have sanctuary there, eh, very holy sir?"

"I doubt it," Rhavas said. "I doubt the Khamorth know the meaning of the word. You would do better either to hide or to fight." Digenis stared at him as it he'd suddenly started spouting the plainsmen's speech. Then the man went on into the temple regardless of what he'd said. Rhavas sighed. He didn't know why he was surprised, but somehow he was.

Others, men and women, were also heading for the temple. Did they think a building would save them? If they did, Rhavas feared they were doomed to disappointment—and probably just doomed.

"You! Prelate! You stinking, bald-arsed, very holy sack of horse turds!"

Rhavas had been insulted before. He didn't think he'd ever been reviled with such crude excess. Drawing himself up with angry wounded pride, he demanded, "Who speaks to me so?"

"I do, by Phos!" Voilas strode out of the swirling snow. The militia leader carried a spear with fresh bloodstains dripping down the ash-wood shaft from the gore-clotted iron head. "I do, and if you want to curse me, go right ahead. I don't even care anymore. You've already cursed Skopentzana, you poxy, pious pissweed!"

"You lie," Rhavas said furiously.

"In a pig's pizzle I do," Voilas retorted. "Who said, 'Let the peasants come in. They won't work any harm'?" He pitched his voice to a mocking whine nothing like Rhavas', but perfectly designed to get under the prelate's skin. Pointing with the spearhead, he went back to his normal tones to say, "Well, very holy sir? Was that you, or wasn't it?"

"What if it was?" Rhavas changed the grip on his shovel. If Voilas came after him with that spear, he vowed to himself that the other man would get the surprise of his life.

But Voilas didn't thrust with the spear or throw it. He just gestured with it. Videssians habitually talked with their hands; since his were full, he used what he was holding as an extension of them. "What if it was? I'll tell you what if it was, and may you take knowing what it was to the ice with you. You'll have been by the postern gate near the main west gate?"

"Yes?" Rhavas hadn't meant to make the word a question, but found he couldn't help it. Apprehension sent a chill up his spine that had nothing to do with the snowstorm in which he stood. "What about that postern gate?"

"What about it? I'll tell you what about it." Voilas' fury was so volcanic, Rhavas half expected to see the snow clinging to his beard and eyebrows puff into steam. The militiaman went on, "Here's what about it. One of your fornicating peasants—one of the peasants Toxaras wanted to toss out, one of the peasants I wanted to toss out, one of the peasants you said we bloody well had to keep on account of they were all such wonderful fellows—one of those peasants, very holy sir, snuck out at first light or maybe a little before, opened up that postern gate, and waved to the stinking barbarians to come on in. And you know something else? They did."

"No," Rhavas whispered. Again his own words tolled in his mind, harsh as the clangor of an iron bell. If thus-and-so happens, on my head be it. Thus-and-so had happened, had happened at the hands of one of the people he'd tried to help. Where was the justice in that? On my head, Rhavas thought dizzily.

Voilas laughed in his face, remembering those words, too. "You cursed Toxaras, and for what? For doing what he could to save this city and the people who live in it. And then you went and cursed yourself, and now it's come back to bite you, and I hope it bites you even harder than it bit him, if a curse can bite harder than killing a man. Serves you right, very holy sir. You're getting just what you deserve. It's just a pity the city's suffering on account of you knew everything there was to know." He spat at Rhavas' feet as if he were rejecting Skotos, then stormed away.

Rhavas wanted to shout after him, wanted to tell him it was as much the militia's fault as his. If the militiamen hadn't harried the peasants every chance they got, if they hadn't left Glykas dead in the snow . . . But if the peasants hadn't been in Skopentzana to begin with, none of the other troubles could even have begun. On my head be it. There it was, not only on his head but on his shoulders, pressing down as if he were trying to carry the weight of the world. He'd asked for this. He didn't know he'd asked for it at the time, but he had.

And now he'd got it.

He wanted to sink down into the snow. How could Phos have let this happen? Or was it Skotos? The god of light and the god of darkness were eternally at war. Only the blackest heretics and lovers of evil believed Skotos could be the stronger. With this disaster staring Rhavas in the face, he was tempted to wonder why.

He spat. If he came to believe the dark could be stronger than the light, then everything he'd lived for became meaningless. I will not do that. I must not do that, he told himself. What he had to do now was everything he could to salvage good from this catastrophe.

On toward the house where Himerios had lived, the house where Ingegerd still dwelt. Sometimes he forced his way through the snow, sometimes he used the shovel to clear a path for himself. By now, people all through Skopentzana were crying that the Khamorth were loose in the city. So far, though, Rhavas had seen none of the barbarians.

The prelate rounded a corner and almost fell over a body lying in the snow. The corpse was very fresh. Only a little snow lay on it, and its blood still stained the snowdrift in which it lay. An arrow stuck up from the dead man's back. Hastily sketching the sun-sign, Rhavas hurried on.

More Videssians came out of their homes. Some shouted at others to get back inside. Others called for getting away however they could. Even in the midst of chaos, Videssians still argued with one another. A couple of them turned to Rhavas. "What do we do, very holy sir?" they called.

"Fight if you can," he answered. "If you can't, pray." That left them quarreling over which they ought to do. He might have known it would.

Finding his way was a nightmare. He knew Skopentzana well, but the snowstorm was enough to confuse anybody. The town's twisting streets were confusing enough when he could see farther than the end of his nose. Now . . . Now he went down two or three blind alleys and had to double back on his track.

As he was coming out of the mouth of an alleyway, people on the street into which it opened fled past him, crying, "The Khamorth! The barbarians!"

He looked in the direction from which they were running. Up the street after them came a plainsman on a pony: a burly, broad-shouldered man with a big nose and a bushy beard. The Khamorth wore furs and leather. He held a curved sword in his right hand. Intent on his prey, he paid no attention to the prelate—if he even realized Rhavas was there.

Rhavas swung the shovel—not at the barbarian, but at the pony forcing its way forward through the snow. The blade smashed into the horse's right foreleg. With a horrible scream of surprise and torment, the beast crumpled. Its rider also cried out in surprise. Rhavas hoped the horse would crush him under it, but he kicked free and scrambled to his feet. Somehow, he hung on to his sword.

He shouted again. This time, the cry had words in it, though Rhavas did not understand his guttural language. The Khamorth advanced on him past the thrashing pony. The barbarian was badly bowlegged, which might have been funny under less frightening circumstances. As things were, it just made his clumping, purposeful gait all the more menacing.

"Get back!" Rhavas shouted, hefting the shovel.

Plainly, the barbarian knew no more Videssian than Rhavas did of his language. Just as plainly, the Khamorth wouldn't have been inclined to listen even if he had understood. Rhavas set himself. He had more reach than the Khamorth, but a shovel was only a clumsy makeshift weapon, while a sword was made to let the life out of foes.

Fast as a striking snake, the Khamorth slashed at Rhavas. The prelate barely blocked the blow with the shovel's shaft. The nomad cut again. Again, Rhavas turned the stroke. He lashed out with the shovel, as much to keep the barbarian busy as for any other reason. The Khamorth tried to use the sword as Rhavas had used the wooden handle of the shovel. The edge of the shovel blade caught the sword squarely—and broke it, sending all the sword but a short stub and the hilt flying through the air.

The plainsman stared in horrified astonishment at what little he had left. He threw the stub at Rhavas' head. Rhavas ducked. The Khamorth turned to run. Rhavas pursued him. Neither of them could move very fast. When the Khamorth floundered into deeper snow and slowed even more, Rhavas swung the shovel again.

This time, the blade bit into the side of the plainsman's head. The barbarian wore no armor, only a fur cap. The shovel smashed in his skull as it would have smashed an earthenware wine jar. He crumpled; all the bones in his body might suddenly have turned to water. A harsh stink fouled the air—his bowels had let go. He twitched for a little while, then lay still. He would never get up again.

Rhavas stood over him, panting harshly. The prelate stooped. Yes, the Khamorth had a knife on his belt. Rhavas took it and walked back to the pony he had crippled. He stooped again. This time, he cut the suffering animal's throat. The steppe pony let out an amazingly human sigh as its life rivered out of it. The smell of blood—all hot iron—reminded Rhavas of the inside of a smithy.

He realized nothing good would happen to him if the barbarians found him standing near the bodies of one of their friends and his horse. He hurried away. He was lucky no other nomad had happened by.

He shook his head and swore as foully as he knew how. If he were lucky, the Khamorth never would have broken into Skopentzana at all. If he were lucky, they never would have surged across Videssos' frontiers, either. If he were lucky, Stylianos never would have rebelled against Maleinos. What he had here wasn't good luck. It was only luck a trifle less disastrously bad than it might have been.

Still Skotos' luck, he thought. He shook his head and spat in the snow. The Khamorth were welcome to the dark god. "Phos!" Rhavas said. "I follow Phos, and none other." By the way he spoke, someone might have claimed he did.

More bodies lay in the snow. A few were plainsmen. More, far more, were Skopentzanans. Shouts and curses said fighting still went on here and there. And despairing screams said the Khamorth were amusing themselves in other ways besides simple slaughter.

Rhavas squeezed the shovel more tightly. If that happened to Ingegerd . . . "No," he muttered. He'd told Himerios he would protect her from such things.

An arrow thudded into the door of a house behind him and stood there thrilling. He waited for another one to pierce his heart or his belly. But the plainsman who'd shot at him just rode on by. Why not? The barbarian would have plenty of other targets later.

Here was Ingegerd's street. Three Videssians lay dead in it, their blood staining the snow. One was a woman. Her skirt was hiked up to her waist. Rhavas bit his lip and turned away. He was not supposed to see such things.

He knocked on the door. Only silence answered him. He knocked again. A little panel in the center of the door swung open. For a moment, he stared into one of Ingegerd's pale eyes—so startling to a man used only to brown.

The panel shut. The door opened. "Come in, very holy sir, and quickly!" Ingegerd said. "What are you doing here? It's madness in the streets."

He went inside. She closed the door behind him and set the bar in place to hold it closed. He said, "I told Himerios I would do what I could for you if things went wrong. Things have gone wrong. Here I am. What I can do, I will."

She looked at him. For a moment, he thought she would say she was likelier to be able to look out for him than the other way around. Had she said that, she might well have been right. That would have made it more humiliating, not less. But what she did say after that quick appraisal was, "There's blood on your robes, and on the spade as well."

He looked down at himself. Yes, he was splashed with red. He shrugged. "It's not mine." He told the the story of the fight with the nomad in a few bald sentences.

When he was through—even before he was through, in fact—Ingegerd's eyes lit with more warmth than he'd ever seen in them before. "That was bravely done, very holy sir, bravely done indeed."

"Was it?" Rhavas only shrugged. He hadn't thought about bravery. He hadn't thought about anything, except that the Khamorth would kill the people he was pursuing and then that the barbarian would kill him.

"Here. Wait." Ingegerd opened a chest of polished cedarwood. Out of it she drew something wrapped in oily rags—a sword, Rhavas saw when she removed the swaddling. "Take this. Himerios had his best blade on his hip when he hied southward, but this spare will serve you better than a spade."

Even when she spoke Videssian, she did so with the cadences and rhythms of the Haloga language she'd left behind. She held the sword out to Rhavas. The hilt fit his hand as if made for it. Men had been making tools for murder as long as any other sort, and had turned that trade into art no less than any other.

"Thank you," Rhavas said, even though he was no swordsman. Then, as he would not have with a Videssian woman, he added, "But what of you?"

"Here is another blade," she said, reaching into the chest once more. "If need be, we shall battle back to back." By the way she held the sword, she knew what to do with it. She might not have a man's strength, but she would not lack for skill.

"For now, perhaps the best thing we can do is stay where we are and hope the barbarians will not trouble this house," Rhavas said.

"Yes, that is wisdom—for a while," Ingegerd said bleakly. "If the Khamorth gain mastery of the city, though, they will leave no home unravaged."

"They will have to slay me before they trouble you," Rhavas declared.

That was the strangest sort of gallant speech a priest of Phos might give. Again, he waited for Ingegerd to mock him. She did nothing of the sort. Her eyes warmed again. "You are gracious, very holy sir," she said. "Maybe it will not come to that. I hope it will not come to that." She didn't say she thought it would not come to that.

As if to explain why she would not say such a thing, several horsemen thundered down the street past the barred front door. They shouted to one another in their throaty, guttural tongue. Though Rhavas could not understand what they were saying, their tone of voice told him they were having the time of their lives. More than anything else, he hated them for the obvious pleasure they took in destruction.

Ingegerd's face twisted. "So much for the militia. A fine set of heroes they turned out to be."

"It is . . . not quite so simple as that," Rhavas said. On my head be it. He told her how the peasant had opened the postern gate and let in the Khamorth.

"Oh," she said in a flat, almost dead, voice when he finished. "And it was at your urging that the peasants stayed in the city."

"Yes." Rhavas answered with one pained word of his own. He might have known she had the wit to cut straight to the heart of his anguish. On my head be it. Those words, he feared, would torment him to the end of his days. He bowed his head. If Ingegerd chose to swing that sword, he would accept the stroke from her with a sort of despairing joy. It would free him from the blame, from the curse, he'd called down on himself.

But she said, "Very holy sir, you could not have known ahead of time how it would turn out. We have to do what we can now for Skopentzana and for ourselves."

It wasn't absolution. No one save possibly the ecumenical patriarch could give him that. But it came closer than anything else he was likely to find in Skopentzana. "Thank you," he whispered.

"For what?" Ingegerd spoke in honest perplexity. "You did what you thought best. What else could you do?"

More Khamorth galloped past outside, shouting in their own language. More screams and cries of pain and shrieks rose from all over the city, and the ones that had words were in Videssian. Rhavas bit the inside of his lower lip till he tasted blood. No, he would not find absolution in Skopentzana, if he ever found it anywhere. And what he had thought best had proved worst. How could he forget that? How could he pretend it was not so? He couldn't, and he knew it. A talent he lacked was the one for self-deception.

And then he stopped worrying about what he had done, what he hadn't, and what he might have, for a new cry rang through the city: "Fire!"

Ingegerd's eyes went very wide. Rhavas suspected his did, too. They both said the same thing at the same time: "We can't stay here now." Flames would race through Skopentzana. Fire was always a dreadful danger because it was so hard to fight once it got loose. If anything, it was worse in winter. Some wells would be frozen, which mattered little when people could make do with melted snow but a great deal in fighting flames. The drifts in the street would thwart bucket brigades, too—and so would rampaging barbarians with swords and bows. To the Khamorth, fire was a tool for driving their quarry from its hiding places. And it was all too likely to prove a brutally effective tool, too.

"What food do you have that we can take with us?" Rhavas asked. Then he bowed his head again. "If you care for my company, I should say. If not, I will find my own way as best I can."

"Two together are better than one alone," Ingegerd said—not a ringing endorsement, but an endorsement. She turned away. "Let me see what I can bring—for you are right, and we will have to flee the city if we can." When she came back, she had a blanket slung over her shoulder—a makeshift knapsack. "Bread. Cheese. Sausage."

"Good." The prelate scowled. "As good as it can be, anyhow. Good would be having the barbarians beyond the walls where they belong."

Ingegerd opened the panel in the door again and looked out. "No horsemen, not this minute," she said. "Bodies in the street that were not there when you knocked . . . Come on." She unbarred the door and went outside.

Thick, choking smoke already fouled the air. How many fires had the Khamorth set? How fast were they spreading? Too many and too fast—those were the only answers that mattered to Rhavas. He needed a moment to orient himself, then swung toward the south. "The closest gate, yes?"

She nodded. "Yes. What else can we do?"

"Nothing." Rhavas was far from sure even fleeing would help, but it was the only hope they had.

He hadn't gone far before he thrust the sword Ingegerd had given him into his belt and went to work with the shovel—not against the Khamorth, but against drifted snow that blocked their way. Shovelful after shovelful flew. In other times, it would have been great sport: either that, or it quickly would have worn Rhavas out. Now it was only one more thing he had to do.

He fought through the drift, and he and Ingegerd went on. The way was easier for a little while—others fleeing ahead of them had partly cleared it. But that meant it was easier for the Khamorth, too. A bearded barbarian on foot came out of a house. He dropped the silver candlesticks he'd been holding and ran toward Rhavas, swinging back his sword for a killing stroke.

The prelate had no chance to drop the shovel and draw his—Himerios'—blade. He'd won once with his unorthodox weapon. Maybe he could again. But the Khamorth was dreadfully close and looked dreadfully fierce—and then looked dreadfully surprised as a fat snowball caught him full in the face. He coughed and sputtered and brought up a mittened hand to get snow out of his eyes and nose.

Rhavas hit him in the face, too, but with the iron blade of the shovel. The nomad roared in pain. Blood spurted from his broken nose and from a great gash on his cheek. It spattered the snow, horribly red. Rhavas hit him again, this time in the side of the head. He crumpled, sword falling from nerveless fingers.

"Well done!" Ingegerd said from behind the prelate.

Rhavas' heart thudded. "I thought I was a dead man," he said. "Phos bless you for your quick wit—and for your strong arm."

"That was . . . not so much," Ingegerd answered. "Halogai know what there is to know about snowballs and the throwing of them. I only wish I had been able to put a rock in the heart of that one."

"Even without, it did what it needed to do," Rhavas said. Ingegerd nodded. They pressed on.

They had to turn back from one street. Fire had got there ahead of them. Flames and black smoke billowed up, blocking the way. Through the clouds of smoke, Rhavas got brief glimpses of bodies sprawled in the snow. They all looked Videssian. He sketched the sun-sign, wishing them a safe journey over the Bridge of the Separator to a happy, joyous afterlife beyond.

When Rhavas and Ingegerd turned south again, they came up to a temple the plainsmen were plundering. Three blue-robed priests lay outside in pools of blood. Rhavas sketched the sun-sign again. "They dare!" he whispered in outrage and shock that seemed ridiculous in retrospect—of course the barbarians dared. But knowing of it and seeing it proved two different things. "They dare to rob the house of the lord with the great and good mind!"

"To them, it is but a store of gold and jewels," Ingegerd said.

She was right, of course. A laughing Khamorth carried an icon of Phos out of the temple—not for its beauty but for its gold leaf. Maybe he thought it was gold all the way through, though the weight should have given that away. Other nomads brought away better spoils.

"Quick," Ingegerd hissed. "Past them while they care more for booty than for blood."

She was also right about that. The Khamorth were happy with what they'd taken, and briefly sated. They let the prelate and the woman get past them without more than a glance. A few doors down, other barbarians had broken into a tavern. Wine and beer delighted them as much as gold had pleased their fellows at the temple.

What Rhavas dreaded was half a dozen of them coming after him and Ingegerd at once. Even if he beat back the first couple of attackers, it would only enrage the rest—and he could not afford to lose at all. Ingegerd, perhaps, could afford it even less than he could, for the Khamorth were more likely to kill him cleanly.

She might have plucked that thought from his mind. "Do not fret," she said as they hurried past the tavern. "They will have no sport over me. I know how to draw the blade across my own neck if fortune fails us."

"May the good god prevent it," Rhavas muttered.

"Yes, may he indeed," Ingegerd answered calmly. "But in case he does not, I can look after myself."

That should have bordered on blasphemy: how could mortals presume to set their will against Phos'? And suicide normally sent someone falling from the Bridge of the Separator down to the eternal ice. Suicide under such circumstances, though . . . Rhavas could not find it in himself to condemn such a thing, and could not believe the lord with the great and good mind did, either.

"Quickly," the prelate said as they went past the tavern. "If they notice you are a woman . . . things become more difficult." And anyone who would not notice that Ingegerd was a woman was not paying attention.

But Rhavas got her round a corner before a startled shout rang out from the direction of the tavern. The barbarians had been too intent on the drink they'd found to think of other pleasures right away. "Here, let me lead," Ingegerd said then. "I think I can lose them in the maze of streets."

"Go ahead, then," Rhavas said. "Try not to use any ways where the snow has not been trodden, or they will trail us the more easily."

She nodded. "A thought of weight . . . Down here now." She turned left. "Now through this alley." Only a few people had gone through it; she and Rhavas did their best to step in the tracks that were already there. She pointed to the right. "Now that way—and we should be close to the gate."

The next interesting question was whether they would be able to get out. Were the gates open? Did plainsmen swarm around them? Even if he and Ingegerd could escape Skopentzana, what then? Could they make their way across country to the closest village, or even to the closest farmhouse? How could they keep from leaving a trail wherever they went?

That wasn't one interesting question—it was more like half a dozen. Unless they could find answers to all of them, they would find answers to other questions, the ones of the sort where no one who learned them was in any position to pass them on to anyone else.

The gates were open. Rhavas breathed out a sigh of relief and a young fog bank to go with it. He and Ingegerd weren't the first ones to flee this way. He saw no great swarm of plainsmen, either. The Khamorth were having better sport inside Skopentzana than they would have had outside the city. Odds were they thought they could hunt down escapees at their leisure. Odds were they were right, too, but Rhavas refused to dwell on that.

"Out!" he said to Ingegerd.

"Out!" she echoed. They both ran for the gate. They ran out through it. Once beyond bowshot from the walls, they paused for a moment, panting. If anything was more exhausting than running through snow, Rhavas could not imagine what it might be.

He turned back toward Skopentzana and shook his fist at the strong stone walls and at the barbarians inside them. "My curses on the Khamorth!" he shouted. "May they suffer what they have made others suffer! May they die as they have made innocent Videssians die! May they burn as they have made Skopentzana burn! And may pestilence destroy any of the murderers my other curses do not overtake!" He spat in the snow.

Ingegerd nodded somber approval. "That is an excellent curse, very holy sir. I do not think any of my own people could have laid a stronger one on the plainsmen. May it bite deep. May it bite as deep as the one you set upon the man who commanded the militia."

Rhavas wished she hadn't spoken of Toxaras. And then, all at once, he wondered why. If he had cursed Toxaras, maybe he really could curse the Khamorth, too. And he wanted to curse the barbarians. "May it be so," he said, accepting the possibility. "And now, I think we had better find shelter for ourselves."

"Yes, that would be a very good thing to do," Ingegerd said. "Hard to tell where the road is with so much snow on the ground."

When the snow finally melted in spring, the road would disappear into a sea of mud for a few weeks. Mosquitoes and gnats would make Skopentzana and the countryside miserable. But that time lay in the distance. For now, winter still reigned supreme here. Rhavas pointed toward a grove of bare-branched apple trees ahead. "That is an orchard. Where there is an orchard, there will be a farmhouse. If people still live there, perhaps they will take us in. And if it should be empty, we can rest for a while, build a fire—"

"Better not," Ingegerd broke in. "The smoke would draw more eyes than we want to see."

He bowed. "You are right, of course, and I am wrong. But the day is cold, and the night will be colder."

"I have a thick blanket here." She patted the makeshift knapsack. "If we lie under it together, we can stay warm, or warm enough."

For a moment, the prelate was shocked. Then he realized she meant exactly what she'd said: that and no more. He sighed heavily. Lying down together with any woman would tempt a priest. Lying down with a woman he'd long admired . . . He sighed again. "Let's get to that farmhouse," he said, his voice perhaps rougher than he had intended.

On they went. Here and there ahead of them, Rhavas saw other people also trudging through the snow, singly and in small groups. When he looked back to Skopentzana, he saw a few more. Maybe others had escaped from different gates and gone in other directions. Even so, the city that had been the pride of the north, the city that had stood second or third in all the Empire of Videssos, stood no more.

Skopentzana had fallen.

"There." Ingegerd pointed with a mittened hand. "That will be the path to the farmhouse." The wind that had scoured away some snow and the lie of the land made it easier to recognize than Rhavas had thought it would be.

The farmhouse itself and the nearby barn might almost have been snowdrifts themselves. No smoke rose from the hole in the roof. The buildings seemed intact, though. The plainsmen hadn't burned them.

"I wonder if anyone else has taken shelter here," Rhavas said.

They'd drawn to within fifty yards of the farmhouse when a low rumble filled the air and the ground began to shake beneath Rhavas' feet. Earthquake, he thought—he'd been through several of them in Videssos the city, though he couldn't remember any since coming to Skopentzana. Half a heartbeat later, he thought, This is a big earthquake.

Half a heartbeat after that, the quake knocked him and Ingegerd off their feet and into the snow. He knew he cried out. He thought Ingegerd must have screamed. But he couldn't hear his voice, let alone hers, through the great bass roar that surrounded them.

While it was going on, the earthquake seemed to last forever. Afterward, he supposed it couldn't have shaken for more than a minute or two. That was plenty. That was, indeed, excessive. He wondered if the ground would open and swallow him up. He had heard that sometimes happened. It didn't happen here. Sullenly, the shaking subsided.

Rhavas scrambled to his feet. Ingegerd was already upright, but her face was gray with shock. She said something in the Haloga language, as if forgetting that he didn't understand it. Only little by little did reason return to her eyes. "That was . . . very bad," she choked out.

"Yes." Rhavas had to force the word past his lips, too. Then he screamed again, and so did Ingegerd, for another earthquake started. This one was smaller than the monster they had just survived. It didn't knock them off their feet, and he could hear their cries of terror.

"Phos!" Ingegerd exclaimed when the second round of shaking eased. She sketched the sun-sign over her heart.

"It will do that," Rhavas said. "After a good-sized quake, the smaller ones will go on for months. After one like this . . ." He shuddered. "After one like this, they'll go on for years."

Ingegerd looked as if he could have said nothing more horrible. Some of the aftershocks from a quake like this would be big enough to shake down things that had survived the first jolt. They would do more damage. They would kill more people.

Rhavas stared at the farmhouse and barn he and Ingegerd had been approaching. Both had fallen into rubble. The house, which was built all of stone, was only a heap of stones now. If they'd sheltered there before the earthquake struck, the collapse would have crushed them.

The barn had been stone up to about the height of a man's shoulder, with planking above that. It had come through better than the farmhouse. It too was wrecked, but not so badly. Taking refuge in what was left of it might help shelter the fugitives. And . . . Rhavas started to laugh. Ingegerd stared at him as if he'd lost his mind.

He pointed to the timbers, some of which had been scattered like jackstraws. "We won't lack for firewood," he said.

"Oh." She managed a nod of sorts. "Yes, very holy sir, that is true. And no one will think anything special of fires now—not after that."

Another aftershock rocked them. Rhavas thought this one was stronger than the first. He didn't shout this time, though. Maybe all the terror had been knocked out of him. Ingegerd also stayed silent—grimly silent, if her expression was any guide. After a few heartbeats, the shaking and the roaring stopped—until they decided to start again.

Only after that did the prelate's stunned wits begin to work again, at least after a fashion. Of itself, his hand shaped Phos' sun-sign. "By the lord with the great and good mind!" he burst out. "What's happened to Skopentzana?"

He couldn't see well. Even though the earthquake had knocked the snow off the branches of the trees in the apple orchard, they still blocked his view. He went back the way he and Ingegerd had come to get a better look. She followed.

"Phos!" Rhavas whispered once he had it. The walls of Skopentzana had fallen to the ground, all except for a few stretches that stuck up like teeth in an almost empty jaw. Through the smoke and the cloud of dust the quake had shaken into the sky, the great gaps in the wall let him see how many buildings had fallen down. The bulk of the temple, which had dominated Skopentzana's skyline, stood no more. That felt like a knife in his heart.

He had to look away. If he stared at the place where the temple had been, he would start to weep. In this weather, the tears would freeze on his face and freeze his eyelids together.

It was, perhaps, not surprising that his gaze settled on Ingegerd's face. What did surprise him was that she was staring not at the ruination of Skopentzana but at him.

As he had a moment before, she whispered, "Phos!" With her, though, it was not a sound of horror or dread but one of awe. She went right on staring. "Truly, very holy sir, you do have the power to curse," she went on. "Look at what you just visited on the Khamorth!"

"Nonsense," Rhavas said. He'd said the same thing when Voilas accused him of causing Toxaras' death with his curse. Now, though, he sounded more uneasy than he had then. Dismissing two unlikely sets of coincidence was much more than twice as hard as dismissing one.

And Ingegerd shook her head. "No, very holy sir. You should not say such a thing. You should be proud. Phos has given you great power. See the vengeance you have visited upon the vandals. Relish the revenge you have worked."

Rhavas shook his head. Before he could answer, another aftershock rumbled through and rocked him. He had to fight to hold himself upright. So did Ingegerd. Seeing her swaying there made him wish she would fall into his arms. But the trembling stopped, and she straightened.

"It is not Phos' power," Rhavas said stubbornly. "I have prayed to the lord with the great and good mind, again and again, beseeching him on bended knee. Had he hearkened to my prayers, Skopentzana would stand yet, and the plainsmen would wander well away from her walls."

Like many people, he often spoke in the style of those who impressed him. When he heard himself alliterating like that, he realized yet again how deeply Ingegerd had got under his skin.

She said, "It is a great power. Surely even you will not deny that. If it comes not from Phos, whence comes it?"

"I do deny, and will deny, that it is anything past happenstance." Rhavas denied that more to himself than to the yellow-haired woman standing beside him. If he denied it, he did not have to think where that power might come from.

Ingegerd made an impatient noise—more than a sigh, less than a word. But she let it rest there, as she might have if Rhavas had insisted on talking about fashions in tunics and nothing else. She was very pointedly putting up with an eccentricity, not agreeing with anything the prelate said.

Instead, she looked back toward the battered barn. She said, "Will it be safe to shelter there, or is it likely to come down on our heads while we sleep tonight—if we sleep tonight?"

Rhavas eyed the barn, too, with more than a little relief. "I think we will need shelter tonight. Do you not agree? Also, even now I would not care to start a fire in the open so close to Skopentzana. It might bring us more company than we would care to have."

She thought for a moment, then nodded crisply. "Very true. There are risks of one sort as well as risks of another. Shelter it shall be."

The barn still smelled like a barn. There was no livestock inside. Had there been, the animals would have burst out during or right after the earthquake. But the Khamorth or Videssian stragglers had plundered the place after the owners abandoned it or were killed—or maybe the owners drove the animals into Skopentzana. In that case, the quake might have done what raiders hadn't.

A hatchet no one had bothered to steal lay almost at Rhavas' feet when he ducked into the damaged barn. It had probably been hanging on a wall and escaped notice in the gloom. He gladly grabbed it now and used to to chop up some of the barn's planking for a fire. That was when he realized he had nothing with which to start one. He had never made fire by rubbing sticks together. All he knew about the operation was that it required more patience than any three normal human beings possessed.

As if she camped out in battered barns every day, Ingegerd took flint and steel from her blanket-knapsack along with the food she'd brought from Skopentzana. "O pearl among women!" Rhavas exclaimed.

She didn't even answer that. She just gathered straw from the dirt floor of the barn for tinder and began striking the flint and steel together above it. Before long, sparks made the straw catch. She and Rhavas both fed first splinters and then real pieces of wood into the growing fire.

Except for what came from his own exertions, the heat from the flames was the first Rhavas had felt since escaping Skopentzana. He and Ingegerd toasted chunks of sausage over the flames, then ate them and some of the bread and cheese she had brought. She looked at what was left. "This will serve for tomorrow, and maybe the day after," she said. "Past that . . ."

"We are free of the city," Rhavas said. "We are luckier than most who were in it when the barbarians broke in and when the earthquake struck."

"When the earthquake struck . . ." Ingegerd shook her head. "Say rather, when your curse struck."

"I will say no such thing." Rhavas pointed to the flames. "I will say, with regret, that we should let this die out after all. If it shines through the night, it is only too likely to draw two-legged wolves this way. The barn does not shield the light well enough to hide it."

Ingegerd considered, then nodded. "Like as not, you are right. Well, it was not large enough to give us much warmth. Here in a partly closed space, we will do well enough in all our clothes and under the blanket."

"Yes," Rhavas said, though he was thinking, No. Lying down with a woman, even if they were both fully clothed, even if there was neither lovemaking nor any intention of it, bent his vows somewhere close to the breaking point. How close? He would have to discuss that with some other ecclesiastic one of these days. But if the only way to survive to discuss it was by lying down with the woman now . . . Then I will, that's all.

And he did. By then, the fire had already shrunk to embers that gave no more than a dull red glow. Under the thick, scratchy wool, he and Ingegerd turned their backs to each other. But they still touched. They needed to, to share each other's warmth. Trying to pretend it wasn't happening, trying to pretend everything was normal, he murmured, "Good night."

"Good night," she answered. They both started to laugh. It might have been the worst night either one of them had ever known—and things would get no better when morning came. But they stayed polite just the same.

Rhavas wondered whether he would sleep at all. Then exhaustion coshed him. Every Khamorth in the world could have paraded by the tumbledown barn in the next few hours. Every Videssian ecclesiastic in the Empire could have peered into the ruin, stared disapprovingly at the spectacle of a respected prelate under a blanket with a woman, and gone off muttering. Rhavas would never have known any of it. Every aftershock in the world could have . . .

But that turned out not to be quite true after all. No matter how weary he was, no matter what horrors he'd seen, endured, and escaped the day before, some of the aftershocks might have wakened a dead man. And one of them eventually succeeded in waking him.

Even after his eyes flew open, he wasn't sure they had. The fire was out, so he lay in darkness absolute, as if Skotos had conquered the world. The ground shook beneath him. The stones of the barn's lower walls groaned around him. The partly tumbled timbers creaked above him. For a long, horrid moment, he had no idea where he was. The eternal ice seemed the likeliest explanation.

To make things worse, or at least stranger, someone was breathing in his face from very close range. A hand and arm were draped across his shoulder. His own hand rested on a smooth curve under rough wool. He jerked it away with a gasp of horror—that could only be a woman's hip.

"It's all right, very holy sir," Ingegerd said softly. "I know you meant nothing by it. We twisted around while we slept, that's all."

Full memory returned to Rhavas at last. "Yes, so we did," he answered, and hoped his own voice sounded less shaky to her than it did to him. Another quake, a smaller one, made him put shaky in a new perspective. "The aftershock woke me."

"I know. You slept through two or three that roused me," Ingegerd said. "You must be more used to them than I am."

"I don't believe anyone ever gets used to them," Rhavas said. He wanted to roll away from her, but the only warmth anywhere was where they touched. She didn't roll away from him onto her other side, either. They were left with each other, and nothing else. He shook his head. This was not how things should have been, but he was powerless to change it. "We should try to go back to sleep." If he was asleep, he wouldn't have to think about what he was doing here.

He could not see her nod, but he felt the motion. "That is surely the sensible thing to do, very holy sir. In the morning, we can go on."

"Yes." Never had Rhavas longed for Phos' light as he did now.

What he had was darkness. Ingegerd began to breathe slowly and regularly. He wondered how she could drop off like that. She never had taken her hand from his shoulder. It felt warm. It felt more than merely warm, in fact. It might have been on fire.

Rhavas knew that was only his inflamed imagination, his outraged conscience. Knowing didn't mean being able to do anything about it. He lay there, not wanting to move for fear of disturbing her. Another small aftershock rattled the planking over their heads. Ingegerd stirred and muttered, but did not wake. Rhavas wanted to sign himself as he prayed, but he couldn't; she lay too close to him. He hoped the good god would take the thought for the deed.

He must have dozed off, though he never remembered falling asleep once more. When he woke the next time, gray predawn light was leaking down through the riven roof. But that was the least of his worries. He and Ingegerd lay breast to breast, her head on his shoulder, their arms and legs entwined as if they clung from love rather than cold.

He had never held a woman so. He had never thought he wanted to hold a woman so, not till he came to know Ingegerd. And now he could not free himself from the temptation she represented, not without disturbing her—and that, he told himself, would be unforgivable after the day they'd endured. Yes, so he told himself.

After somewhere between a quarter and half an hour of that sweet torment, yet another aftershock rattled the barn. Ingegerd's eyes flew open. "Only an earthquake," Rhavas said, to remind her where she was and what had happened.

She managed a shaky laugh. "Only an earthquake," she echoed. "Someday, maybe, I will be able to say that and not feel my marrow freeze when I do. You are a brave man, very holy sir."

Brave enough to fight what you do to me? I wonder. By the good god, I truly do. But Rhavas held that in, as he held in so much. He said, "Our marrow did not freeze in the night, despite earthquakes and snow and everything else."

Ingegerd nodded. "That is so. The blanket warmed us, and we warmed each other."

She had warmed him, sure enough. If he had warmed her the same way, she gave no sign of it. She disentangled herself from him. He turned a sigh into a cough and plucked at his beard. "Have I got straw in it?" he asked.

"Not much," she answered. Her hands flew to her hair. "What of me?"

Greatly daring, Rhavas plucked out one or two pieces. Instead of scowling, she nodded her thanks. He said, "There may be more, but your hair is so fair that it is hard to see."

"A drawback of Haloga blood I had not thought of until now," she said, smiling. But the smile faded as she went on, "One of my folk living among Videssians is seldom left unaware of other drawbacks for long."

"I hope I have not been one to give offense," Rhavas said.

"Oh, no, very holy sir. You are a true friend," Ingegerd said. The prelate would have been glad to bask in that for an eon or two, but she continued again: "And Himerios, of course, is far more than friend. But many Videssians are not shy about thinking me a barbarian and saying what they think."

"No doubt," Rhavas said tonelessly. He tried to keep his mind on the matter at hand, not on the hopeless memory of her pressed against him. She hadn't even known she was doing that, and had withdrawn as soon as she woke up. "We should eat, and then we should put as much distance between us and Skopentzana as we can. Later today, we will need to find another place where we can pass the night."

"What you say makes good sense," Ingegerd said. "But then, what you say generally makes good sense. Shall I start the fire afresh, or do you fear smoke too much?"

"We got away with it once. I am not sure we could hope to do it twice," Rhavas said after a little thought.

Cold, cold sausage sat like a lump in his stomach. Cold, cold bread proved not much better. He wished he would have risked a small blaze. By Ingegerd's expression, so did she. But she did not reproach him for the choice. With his scant experience of women, he thought them all scolds till proved otherwise. Her forbearance raised his opinion of her even higher.

After eating, they started south again. Rhavas had feared they would run into hordes of Khamorth swarming toward the fallen, the shattered, Skopentzana, but they saw hardly any plainsmen all that day, and those only at a distance. Maybe the earthquake had disrupted the nomads even more than he'd suspected.

Aftershocks kept making the ground shake under their feet. Some were barely perceptible, others considerable quakes in their own right. Each time the earth trembled, Rhavas knew a fresh spasm of panic. How long would the shaking last? How bad would it be? Even when he was in the open, where nothing could possibly fall on him, the unthinking terror would darken his wits.

And not his alone—after one of the harder aftershocks, Ingegerd said, "This is one of the hardest things I have ever borne. Hard winters I know, and likewise war. But when the very ground beneath my feet betrays me . . ." She shook her head. "Such a thing should not be possible."

"They do happen." Rhavas tried not to admit his own fear even to himself. "They are more common in the south, but they can come anywhere."

Ingegerd looked at him with awe in her eyes. "And this one came at your command, very holy sir."

"I do not believe that. You too would do better not to believe it." Even more than aftershocks, the prelate feared that what she said might be true. If his curse had stricken Toxaras, if his curse had called up the quake and crushed the Khamorth, what had his curse done to him? What would it do to him?

"Very well. Let it be as you say. I will not believe the earthquake came at your command," Ingegerd answered obediently. But mischief sparked in her eyes. "Only because I do not believe it, that does not mean it is untrue."

"Heh." Past the chuckle that came from him involuntarily, Rhavas didn't dignify that with a reply. Ingegerd looked smug, as if she knew she had won the point. Maybe she did. And maybe she had, too.

They trudged on. Rhavas had only a vague notion of where the next town would be. He hadn't gone far from Skopentzana all through his tenure. He was a city man both by birth and by inclination. Even Skopentzana hadn't been city enough to satisfy him fully, not when he'd come from the imperial capital. But he'd never seen any reason to leave it for the semibarbarous countryside—not till now.

The sun slid across the sky. Days were still short, though noticeably longer than they had been right around the time of the solstice. "We had better look for shelter," Ingegerd said as afternoon drew on toward evening. "I would not care to sleep in the snow tonight."

"Nor I." Rhavas' shiver was not altogether artificial. "That would all too likely mean our deaths."

"Oh, no." The Haloga woman shook her head. She looked surprised. "A man with only a cloak can pass the night well enough. Do you not know how?"

"I fear not," the prelate answered.

"Well, it is so." Ingegerd spoke with an assurance that compelled belief. "And with the warmth of two of us and with all we have, it would be easy." If sleeping in the snow meant no choice but sleeping in each other's arms, Rhavas suddenly hoped all barns and farmhouses would disappear. If he had to do it to survive, it could not possibly be sinful for him . . . could it? Ingegerd went on, "But, easy or not, it would not be so comfortable as a farmhouse, or even a barn."

"No doubt you are right." Rhavas hoped he didn't sound too mournful. Evidently not, for Ingegerd just nodded briskly and walked on.

When Rhavas spotted the farm off to the side of the snow-covered road, he pretended for a few heartbeats that he had not. It availed him nothing, of course, for Ingegerd saw the place, too. "If anyone dwells there, we can beg a place by the hearth," she said. "If not, it is ours to do with as we will."

"So it is," Rhavas said resignedly.

"Do we halloo?" Ingegerd asked as they drew near.

"I see no horses tied close by," Rhavas said. "Where there are Khamorth, there will be horses." He paused to see if she would disagree. When she didn't, he went on, "This being so, I think we may safely call."

They did. No one answered. Ingegerd found another question: "With these cursed quakes continuing, dare we shelter there this night?"

"You were the one who said you would rather not spend the night in the open. Neither would I," Rhavas replied. "The risk is worth taking. If the farmhouse hasn't fallen yet, it probably won't."

When they went in, they found the Khamorth had been there before them. The plainsmen had butchered the family that lived on the farm; only the winter weather kept the bodies from stinking. By all the signs, the nomads had amused themselves with the farm wife and her daughter before killing them. Rhavas and Ingegerd both sketched the sun-sign without realizing they did it. Neither said a word as they dragged the dead outside. As silently, Ingegerd set the woman's clothes, and the girl's, to rights before moving them.

Even after the corpses were gone, bloodstains made the place grimmer than Rhavas cared for. As much to herself as to him, Ingegerd remarked, "We do not what we would, but what we needs must."

"Just so," Rhavas said heavily. "Yes, just so."

The fire in the hearth was as dead as those who had kindled it. Unlike them, though, it could be brought back to life. Rhavas brought in wood from the pile behind the farmhouse. As twilight quickly faded toward night, Ingegerd fumbled with flint and steel. At last, she got a fire going.

"Shut the door, very holy sir," she told Rhavas. "It will hold the heat in and not let the light leak out. And no one in the dark is likely to see the smoke."

Rhavas obeyed. He and Ingegerd both sat close by the fire, eating of the food she had brought out of Skopentzana and letting the warmth soak into their bones. Whenever they moved, the flickering flames sent their shadows swooping along the rough stone of the walls. Two or three aftershocks brought straw sifting down from the thatched roof, but worked no worse than that.

Before long, they were both yawning. Rhavas rose and turned the peasants' wool-stuffed mattress over. That did not get rid of the stains on it, but did mean he and Ingegerd would not have to lie on them.

"I would have done the same, but you were there before me," she said.

As they had the night before, they lay down under the blanket back to back and, with odd formality, wished each other good night. As Rhavas had the night before, he fell asleep as if someone had hit him over the head. He could feel how soft he was. He'd lived too quietly for much too long.

When an aftershock woke him in the middle of the night, the fire had died back to embers. The farmhouse had got colder, and he and Ingegerd had responded by snuggling together and wrapping their arms around each other. She only half woke, and murmured something in his ear. He couldn't tell what it was; she spoke in the Haloga tongue. But the moist warmth of her breath on his skin kept him awake long after he should have slipped back into unconsciousness.

He didn't realize he had gone to asleep till he jerked awake, this time abruptly enough to wake Ingegerd, too. "What is it?" she whispered. "Is it trouble outside?"

"No," he answered, absurdly angry at the world. "A bedbug bit me." He needed a moment to remember to add, "I'm sorry I bothered you."

She shrugged against his shoulder. "You cannot be blamed for that. Like as not, the same will befall me next."

"You are charitable," he said. As long as she was awake, he scratched—it wouldn't bother her. A moment later, she did, too. She laughed about it. Rhavas didn't. He was not accustomed to bugs. He wondered whether the poor peasants had them or the Khamorth brought them. Either, he supposed, or maybe both.

He did some more scratching and then, bedbugs or no, dozed off. When he woke again, morning twilight was seeping through the slatted shutters in place over the farmhouse's windows. He and Ingegerd lay face to face again, and in each other's arms. He knew he ought to get away, if he could do it without rousing her.

Instead, of their own accord—or so it seemed to him—his arms tightened around her. That didn't rouse her, or not quite; she muttered, but then went back to breathing deeply and regularly. But it roused him, much more than he'd imagined it would. The soft pressure of her breasts against his chest, her belly against his . . .

Then there was pressure from him against her belly, and not soft pressure, either. She laughed softly. "Himerios," she murmured. She knew what that pressure was, all right, and was used to it, even welcomed it—from her husband.

Her eyes opened, bare inches from Rhavas'. For a moment, she plainly had no idea who he was or where she was. He waited for her to pull back in horror, even in disgust. And she did draw back, but slowly and deliberately.

She sighed and nodded. "I might have known this would come up," she said, more to herself than to Rhavas. And it had come up; it throbbed almost painfully. But that wasn't what she meant. She looked Rhavas in the face, her eyes still too close to his for him to look away. "You are a man, and I am a woman."

"Yes," he answered miserably. By the way she said what he was, he might have been a child. As far as experience went, he was a child.

Still as if he were one in truth, Ingegerd went on, "I am a wedded woman, and glad to be such. And you, very holy sir, you are a priest, and you know and I know what a priest's vows are."

"Of course," he said, and closed his eyes. That was the only way he could avoid her gaze.

But her voice softened as she went on, "I know what those vows are, and I admire you for holding to them. It cannot be easy for a man. I know of no Haloga who would willingly undertake them."

"There was the holy Kveldoulphios, a couple of hundred years ago during the reign of Stavrakios." Even in his embarrassment, Rhavas could no more help showing off his scholarship than a jackdaw could help stealing a bit of bright, shiny metal on the ground.

"Kveldulf." Ingegerd said the name in the northern fashion. None of the vowels stayed quite the same. "Well, you are right, very holy sir. I have heard of him, as who in Skopentzana has not?" She refused to let herself be distracted. "But we were not speaking of him, but of the two of us. I know your body will do what it will do. It cannot help being what it is. But by your vow—and by the promise you gave my husband—what it would do, you will not do."

Eyes still closed, Rhavas whispered, "You shame me."

"I do not mean to. If I do, I cry your pardon," Ingegerd answered seriously. "We need each other here.

Two together have a better chance than two ones apart. I am not angry at you. Your body said you wanted me. So be it. You did not try to work anything against my will. The one I can forgive—indeed, it needs no forgiveness. The other? That would be different. But it has not arisen, and I trust it will not. Shall we go on from there, then?"

"I think we had better," Rhavas answered. He spoke severely to what had arisen. He was a man of stern, almost ascetic, discipline, and did not anticipate how strongly it would answer back. Priests were taught that desire was a poison. Rhavas had always believed it. No one had ever told him what a sweet poison it could be.

For a moment, he wondered why not. But that was only too easy to figure out. Such teaching would weaken ecclesiastical discipline. Oh, priests succumbed to the lusts of the flesh all the time. But if the hierarchy did not admit as much, it could punish them or transfer them as seemed best, and otherwise ignore the question. It was so large—and so inflammable—that everyone judged it better ignored.

Rhavas always had—till it happened to him.

Ingegerd got out of the bed. She opened the shutters. Gray light filled the farmhouse. The bloodstains on the floor and the furniture seemed almost black, but gained more color as sunrise drew closer. Ingegerd scratched and made a wry face. "Bugs," she muttered, and then, "I wonder if the Khamorth stole all the food here, or if they came but for the sport of slaying."

"We have little left of our own, do we?" Rhavas said, and his stomach snarled like a hungry wolf.

"We will have nothing left of our own after we break our fast here, and a meager breakfast it shall be," Ingegerd said. "And we needs must have food. Tramping through the freezing cold wears one down faster than almost anything else."

She rapidly searched the house, and exclaimed in delight when she turned up four loaves of bread. The cold had preserved them against mold and insects. They were the last things the farmwife had baked before she became a victim of the nomads' lusts.

As Rhavas broke chunks of bread and warmed them in his hands before eating them, his gaze kept sliding to Ingegerd. I would have made her a victim of my lusts, he thought unhappily. But then he shook his head. He would sooner not have had her a victim. He would sooner have had her willing, even eager, even wanton.

He glanced at her again. And if she weren't willing, let alone more than willing? He was grimly honest enough to realize he wanted her anyway. But I didn't do anything, he reminded himself, and salved his conscience.

They each ate one loaf along with the last of the cheese she'd brought from Skopentzana, and set aside the last two for later. "We had best be off, and make what use we can of the light," Ingegerd said.

"Yes," Rhavas said, and laughed at himself. After another day struggling through snow, he would be too weary to threaten anyone's virtue by the time nightfall came.

They had just left the farmhouse when a strong aftershock staggered them. They clung together for a moment, not from lust but from fear. "I hate this," Ingegerd said when it ended. "Once something is over, it should be over."

"I wish it were so." Rhavas meant that from the bottom of his heart. "But it will go on. The quakes will mostly grow smaller as time goes by, and will come less often. Come they will, though."

He and the Haloga woman slogged south. She pointed to a dark smudge on the horizon. "I think that will mark a town."

"The good god grant that you be right," Rhavas said. "May he grant also that it still be in Videssian hands." If its walls had fallen in the earthquake, it would make easy meat for the Khamorth. How far had the barbarians spread through the Empire? Was anyone doing anything to try to hold them back? Rhavas pondered the blood-mad folly of his cousin and of Videssos' best and most famous general. If their war was not madness, what would be?

Quietly, Ingegerd said, "I fear me we have a problem, very holy sir." She pointed to the west.

Rhavas turned his head that way. As quietly, he answered, "Well, I'm afraid you're right." Four Khamorth on their ponies were trotting purposefully toward the two of them. They weren't within bowshot yet, but they would be before long. Without looking over his shoulder at Ingegerd, Rhavas said, "Run. I'll hold them as long as I can."

"Thank you, very holy sir, but there is no place to run," Ingegerd said. And she was right: there weren't even any trees close by. She went on, "As you have stood with me, I will stand with you. If I fail and you have the chance, kill me quickly at the last. And if even that cannot be"—her pause might have been a shrug—"sooner or later, everything ends."

Fury burned through Rhavas. Just when they had hope of safety, the barbarians came upon them. They were close enough now for him to see the snow spurting up from their horses' hooves, and to see them set arrows to their bowstrings. One let fly. The shaft fell short, but others wouldn't.

"Curse you!" Rhavas cried with all the rage he had in him. "Curse the lot of you!"

One by one, silently and without any fuss, the Khamorth fell off their ponies and lay motionless in the snow. The horses trotted on for a few paces, then stopped in what looked like confusion. Rhavas gaped at the dead bodies in astonishment and disbelief.

He slowly became aware that Ingegerd was gaping at him. "By the good god, very holy sir," she whispered. "You saved us."