Kushiel’s Dart

Chapter Fifty-One

At every step of the way I was certain an alarm would be sounded, that Trygve’s dead body would somehow shout our crime to the skies. We walked across the snowy expanse toward the heart of the steading, and the distance seemed to grow longer with every step. I have dreams, still, of crossing that space. The day was mercilessly clear, threatening the illusion of Joscelin’s Skaldic attire. He kept his head low, glowering under the wolf-mask, a harsh grip on my upper arm.

Surely, though, the White Brethren did not walk so fast; or did they amble, coming back this way? I couldn’t remember, I who was trained to note such things. My very wits felt frozen.

We stopped first at the lesser hall, where my presence was less known. A few stared curiously, and one of the housecarls came up gaping, touching his forelock to Joscelin, respectful of the insignia of the White Brethren. "What do you desire?"

Joscelin jerked my arm, nodding at me. "Tell him," he growled, sounding for all the world like an annoyed thane. Not the words I’d given him, but they would work; perhaps it would arouse less suspicion this way.

"Lord Selig has decided to make camp with Kolbjorn and a few men," I said. "He’s sent for a skin of mead, two sacks of pottage and a cook-pot. Bring them to the stable; my lord Trygve will ride to meet him."

"Only one skin of mead?" the carl wondered aloud, then gulped with fear, glancing at Joscelin.

"Three," Joscelin retorted, giving my arm another shake, turning away as if in impatience and drawing me after him. I wasn’t sure it had worked, until I heard the carl shouting for assistance.

My knees trembled as we made for the great hall. When Joscelin pushed me through the doors, I nearly stumbled, and found myself angry at him for it. It gave me strength enough to stand upright, glaring at him. He glared back, following close on my heels as I headed for Selig’s room.

Gerde was not in sight, Elua be thanked. In Selig’s room, I shut the door and pointed to the cupboard, which I’d not bothered to relock. Joscelin threw it open and gathered up his arms quickly, buckling his vambraces in place, replacing Trygve’s belt with his own, settling the daggers in their sheathes. He took off the wolf-pelt to put on his baldric, hiding his scabbard back under the pelt when he was done. I tangled the hilt of his sword with a length of his abundant hair, and prayed no one would notice a Skaldi warrior bearing Cassiline-style arms. Joscelin grabbed up the saddle-packs and nodded at the door.

"Melisande’s letter!" I gasped, struck by a sudden awful realization.

"I thought you had it." He stood waiting, leathern packs in one hand.

"I do." I tore the packs from his hand and wrenched open the one with the letter, rummaging frantically until I found it. "Selig doesn’t know we know his plan to betray d’Aiglemort," I said grimly. "If we take the letter, it will tip our hand. He’ll alter his plans accordingly, and any advantage will be lost. We’ll have to forego proof." I placed the letter back where I’d found it, on a high shelf in the cupboard. My hands were trembling, and I wiped them on my skirts, taking a deep breath. "All right. Let’s go."

We weren’t so lucky in leaving.

Halfway to the door, Gerde emerged from the kitchen and caught sight of us. "Where are you going now?" she asked querulously, walking toward us. "Trygve, you promised!"

"Selig’s orders." Joscelin muttered it, keeping his eyes on the door and towing me forward.

"/ never heard anything about it!" Gerde kept walking, hands on her hips, irritation in her voice. Another few yards, and she’d realize it wasn’t Trygve beneath the wolf-hood. I shook Joscelin’s hold off my arm and stepped between them.

"And why would you?" I asked, letting my voice fill with scathing contempt. "Does Lord Selig send for you, when he is minded to have pleasure? Does he send for any woman in his steading?" I swept my gaze across the hall, meeting gaping stares. At least no one was looking at Joscelin now. "No, he does not," I continued haughtily. "He is worthy of the name King, and he sends for one worthy of pleasing a King. And if it is his pleasure to make camp this evening and send for me to join him, anyone who would remain long in his favor would be well-advised not to question it!"

I spun on my heel and marched toward the door. Joscelin gave a disgusted shrug in the general direction of the hall, moved ahead of me and shoved the door open, following me through it. I could hear the furor rising behind us, like a kicked hornets' nest. If we were caught, there would be no mercy spoken anywhere in Selig’s steading on my behalf.

"Not so fast," Joscelin said under his breath when we were outside. I had been hurrying. I forced myself to slow to a more measured pace, grateful for his sense.

Selig’s stables, if they could be called such, were merely a long row of lean-tos erected against the wind in a large paddock. The Skaldi do not coddle their animals, reckoning to keep them hardy. A few horses remained in the paddock, huddled together for warmth; my shaggy pony was among them. One of the carls came running, seeing a White Brethren approach.

"The stocks were sent," he said breathlessly, "and we’ve your horse near saddled, sir. Is it true Waldemar Selig is making camp?"

"Selig’s orders," Joscelin repeated brusquely.

"Lord Selig has sent for me as well," I said imperiously. "You will bring my horse and see him saddled."

The carl glanced at Joscelin, who shrugged and nodded. He ran off shouting, and a couple of boys raced into the paddock to round up my pony. The carl returned, touching his forelock.

"Fodder for the horses." I looked at Joscelin. "How many did Lord Selig say? A dozen?"

He gave a glare under the wolf-mask. "Fodder for a dozen," he echoed.

"Yes, sir." The carl gave a nervous bob, and whirled off again. We watched in a kind of shock as Selig’s folk made ready the manner of our escape, loading the horses with supplies. They even led the horses out of the paddock for us. Joscelin secured Selig’s saddle-packs on his mount, lashing them atop the packs already in place. He swung himself into the saddle, snapping his fingers at me. It was a Skaldi gesture, but I saw the steel glint of his vambraces beneath the sleeve of his wool jerkin and held my breath. No one noticed. I mounted and took up the reins. My hands shook. They will put it down to the cold, I thought, waiting for Joscelin until I remembered that he’d no idea which way the hunt had gone. So many small details to give us away! I nudged my pony forward, leaning down to whisper in its ear. "Ride to the north end of the lake, and up the mountain trail," I murmured in D’Angeline.

It was enough. Joscelin gave a curt nod to the carl and said to me in Skaldic, his tone impatient, "Go!" He set heels to his horse, trotting briskly toward the verge of the lake, and I followed.

We had to ride past the tents of the other steading riders, where some few remained; only the favored ones had been invited to the hunt. I was thankful that Harald numbered among them. Alone among those encamped here, he knew Joscelin by sight, maybe well enough to pick out his seat on a horse, to know him in disguise by the glint of steel at his wrists, the twin daggers, the protruding hilt.

But Harald was with Selig, and there was no one else who would see, at a distance, that the White Brethren who rode with me was no Skaldi. A handful of thanes shouted greetings and cheerful obscenities; Joscelin laughed in response, and once responded with an obscene gesture I’d no idea he knew. Gunter’s men used to do it behind my back, and laugh like boys if I caught them out at it.

The day was perishingly cold, and the air made my lungs ache, stiffening my face to a mask. I thought of the night, when the temperature would drop, with terror. We should have procured a tent, I realized. The Skaldi would not have taken them on a hunting party or an overnight raid, but Selig might have sent for one, if he sent for me. If we freeze to death, I thought, it will be my fault.

We made it around the north end of the lake, and picked out the trail leading out of the valley, clearly marked by the passage of mounted men and dogs. It was steep, but at least the horses didn’t have to flounder through unbroken snow. We threaded our way up, both of us listening intently for sounds of Selig’s hunters in the distance. There was nothing but the sound of the forest, occasional birdsong and the faint noise of snowy branches shifting. I turned to look behind us at the top, and Selig’s steading lay far below, the lake like a blue bowl. Joscelin blew on his fingers.

"How shall we do this?" he asked.

I considered the view behind us again. "We’ll follow their trail a little further, until we’re well out of sight from the steading. Then we go west." I drew my fur cloak tighter around me and shivered. "Joscelin, this was as far as my plan went. I know where we are, thanks to Selig’s maps. And I know where home lies. How we get from here to there alive, I’ve no idea, except that we’d best get as much of a start as we can, before they find us gone. And I didn’t think to get a tent."

"You found us a way out. I’ll find us a way home." He gazed around the forest, his blue eyes familiar and strange beneath the hood of a White Brethren. "Remember," he added, "I was raised in the mountains."

I took heart at that, and blew on my hands as he had. "Let’s go, then."

We rode some distance along the hunters' trail, then veered off sharply to the left, heading westward. Joscelin made me wait, holding the reins of his horse, while he retraced our steps through the snow and erased them with a pine broom.

"They’ll not see it if they’re not looking," he said with satisfaction, hurling his pine branch away and remounting. "And not if they ride at dusk. Come on, let’s put some distance between us."

There was only one thing we had forgotten.

It happened not long afterward. We rode in silence, as best we could; only the creaking of leather and the blowing and snorting of the horses gave us away.

Enough for the White Brethren who guarded the boundaries of Selig’s territory to hear.

They are well concealed in snow, with their white pelts. Knud might have known they were there, but we did not, until they sprang up, spears ready to cast, crying out a challenge.

And seeing Joscelin attired at one of their own, fell confused.

"Well met, brother," one called cautiously, lowering his spear. "Where are you bound?"

I do not think Joscelin had any choice in the matter; there was no lie convincing enough to explain our presence here and gain us passage, even if they didn’t penetrate his disguise. I heard him murmur one anguished word, and then his sword was out and he clapped his heels to his mount, charging them.

The one who’d spoken barely had time to frame an expression of astonishment before Joscelin rode him down, sword flashing in a killing stroke. The other scrambled backward, cocking his spear, as Joscelin swung around toward him. His eyes flickered frantically, trying to decide: the horse or the rider? He flung his spear at Joscelin, aiming at his heart. Joscelin dropped low along his horse’s neck, and the spear passed cleanly over him. Swinging himself upright, he rode down the second of the White Brethren. This one got his shield up; it took several blows to finish him.

There is nothing redder than fresh-spilled blood on virgin snow.

Joscelin rode slowly back toward me, his expression stricken. His eyes, that had looked so young when first he gazed at the forest, looked sick and old.

"It had to be done," I said softly.

He nodded and dismounted, cleaning and sheathing his sword. Without looking at the man’s face, he went to the nearest of the White Brethren, the first one, who wore crude fur mittens on his hands. One still clutched his unused spear. Joscelin drew them off gently, bringing them to me. "Don’t say anything. Just put them on."

I obeyed him without question. My hands swam in them and I could scarce grasp the reins, but they were warm. Joscelin remounted and we set out again.

No one else challenged our path, and it grew evident as we journeyed that we were in uninhabited territory. We pressed the horses as hard as we dared, forging through snow that at times was nigh breast-high on my shaggy pony. For all that, he seemed hardier than Joscelin’s taller mount. Once we had to cross a quick-flowing stream, that ran with such vigor between its narrow banks as to render it unfrozen. We let the horses drink, holding them to small sips; it would have given them colic, Joscelin said, to fill their bellies all at once. He emptied out two of the meadskins there, filling them with clean water.

We paused only to rest the horses, and then only briefly. Our midday meal was a handful of pottage oats, chewed dry and washed down with icy water. From time to time, Joscelin would dismount and lead his mount, breaking a path and giving it a respite from his weight. He made me do it once too, when I was turning blue with cold. I cursed him for it, but the exertion warmed me. He was right, of course. If the horses foundered, we’d be caught for sure.

I had in my head a clear map of the route we must take to reach the lowest pass of the Camaeline Range. It was something else, though, to measure it against the vast, trackless expanse we traveled; and I was no navigator. When at last the sun began to sink in the west, throwing tree-shadows long and black toward us, I realized we’d angled off-course. We corrected our course, then, trudging westward toward the lowering orange glow.

"That’s far enough." Joscelin’s words broke a long silence between us. A scrap of light remained to be glimpsed through the trees, and no more. "Any further, and we won’t be able to see to make camp."

He dismounted, then, tying his horse’s reins to a nearby branch. I followed suit, trying not to shiver at the encroaching darkness. "Do you think it’s safe to make a fire?" I asked through chattering teeth.

"It’s not safe not to, unless you want to freeze in your sleep." Joscelin tramped down a patch of snow, then set about gathering dead branches, stacking them efficiently. I helped as best I could, lugging wood to the fire site. "We need to tend to the horses first," he said, digging out Selig’s tinderbox and kneeling to strike a spark. Once, twice, three times, it failed to catch. My heart sank. Unperturbed, Joscelin drew one of his daggers and carefully shaved wood from a dry branch, then struck another spark. This time, it caught. He nurtured it tenderly, feeding it with twigs, until a tidy blaze resulted.

"What do you want me to do?" I felt hopelessly inadequate.

"Here." Joscelin handed me the cook-pot. "Fill it with one of the skins, and water the horses. We can thaw snow to refill it. When you’re done, set the pottage to cooking."

Circumstance is everything. In Delaunay’s household, I’d have balked at eating a meal cooked in a pot from which horses had drunk; now, it couldn’t have mattered less to me. My hardy pony dipped his muzzle and drank deep, lifting his head when I drew the pot away lest he guzzle too much at once. Droplets of ice formed on the whiskers that grew from his soft muzzle, and he looked at me with dark limpid eyes under his forelock.

While I went about my assigned chores, Joscelin worked with a tireless efficiency that humbled me, removing the horses' saddles and rubbing them down with a bit of jersey-cloth, rendering makeshift hobbles from a length of leather he scavenged from one of the packs, giving each a measure of grain fodder-which smelled, in truth, better than our pottage-and erecting a windbreak from deadfalls and gathering a night’s supply of wood. He gathered more pine boughs, green ones, hacking them down with his sword while I stirred the pottage, and made a springy bed of them upon the snow. Rummaging among Selig’s clothing, which I’d taken, he found a woolen cloak which he spread over the boughs.

"It will keep the snow from stealing the heat of our bodies," he said by way of explanation, sitting on the pine-bed and drawing his sword. "We’ll…we should sleep close, for warmth."

There was an awkwardness in his tone. I raised my eyebrows at him. "After all we’ve been through, that embarrasses you?"

He bent his head over his sword, running a sharpening stone that had been among his things the length of the blade. His face was averted, fire-cast shadows flickering in the hollow eyeholes of the wolf-mask on his brow. "It does if I think on it, Phèdre," he said quietly. "I’ve not much left to hold on to, by way of my vows."

"I’m sorry." Abandoning my burbling pottage, I came over to sit beside him, wrapping both mittened hands around one of his arms. "Truly, Joscelin," I repeated, "I am sorry." We sat there together, staring into the fire. It burned merrily, melting a hollow into the snow and throwing dancing branch-patterns into the night above us. "I tried to kill Selig last night," I told him.

I felt the shock of it go through him, and he turned to look at me. "Why? They’d have killed you for it."

"I know." I gazed at the shifting flames. "But it would have been sure, that way. The Skaldi wouldn’t unite under another, he’s the one holds them together. And you wouldn’t have had to betray your vow."

"What happened?" His voice was soft.

"He woke up." I shrugged. "Maybe it’s true, maybe he really is proof against harm. It was that old priest made me think it, who called me Kushiel’s weapon. But he woke up. I was lucky, he didn’t know what I was about."

"Phèdre." Joscelin drew a shuddering breath, and loosed it in a sound almost like a laugh, but not quite. "Plaything of the wealthy. Ah, Elua…you put me to shame. I wish I’d known Delaunay better, to have created such a pupil."

"I wish you had too." I drew off one of my mittens and plucked a twig from his hair, toying with it to feel its fineness. "But in all fairness, when I first met you, I thought you were-"

"A dried-up old stick of a Cassiline Brother," he finished, shooting me an amused glance. "I remember. I remember it very well."

"No." I gave his hair a sharp tug and smiled at him. "That was before I met you. Once I did, I thought you were a smug, self-satisfied young prig of a Cassiline Brother."

He laughed at that, a real laugh. "You were right. I was."

"No, I was wrong. The man I thought you were would have given up and died of humiliation in Gunter’s kennels. You kept fighting, and stayed true to yourself. And kept me alive, thus far."

"You did that much for yourself, Phèdre, and for me as well," he said soberly, prodding the fire with the tip of his sword. "I’ve no illusions on that score, trust me. But I swear, I’ll do what’s needful now to get you alive and whole to Ysandre de la Courcel. If I’m to be damned for what I’ve done, I’ll be damned in full and not by halves."

"I know," I murmured. I’d seen his eyes when he killed the White Brethren. We sat in silence together, until I broke it. "We should eat."

"Eat, and sleep. We need all the strength we can muster." Heaving himself to his feet, he sheathed his sword and fetched our pottage from the fire. We had but one spoon between us, and took turns with it, filling our bellies with warm, albeit tasteless, food. When it was gone, Joscelin scraped the bowl clean and filled it with snow to melt, while I sat part-frozen, part-warm and drowsy with exhaustion, huddled in my cloak.

We laid down then together on the pine-bed, piling every spare bit of hide and wool upon us. I lay curled against Joscelin, feeling the warmth of his body seep into my limbs. "Sleep," he whispered against my hair. "They’ll not find us tonight. Sleep." After a while, I did.