Kushiel’s Dart

Chapter Eighty-Seven

"Yes my lord Selig." I forced the words out.

Dismounting and handing his reins to a waiting thane, Waldemar Selig stepped forward and struck me twice across the face. My head reeled. "That," he said calmly, "I owed you." Grabbing my forelock in his fist, he yanked my head up and stared at me. "What were you doing on the tower?"

I stared back at him and kept silent.

Twice more he struck me, hard and fast. "What were you doing?"

Touching my tongue to my lower lip, I tasted blood.

"She shouted somewhat," one of my captors said helpfully.

"What was it?" Selig asked, not relinquishing his grip.

They argued over it, puzzling out the words in phonetic D’Angeline. Swaying on my knees, I watched Selig’s lips move silently as he tried to put the words together. He spoke passable D’Angeline. I knew. I’d helped teach him. "Tell the…tell the Queen that Delaunay’s other…other…something…has done her…" The words were too badly mangled for his ear. Frustration seized him, and he shook my head like a rattle. "Send for one of the prisoners," he ordered.

It was the priestess of Naamah; she was closest. Summoning a measure of dignity, she wrapped her stained red robes around her as they herded her across the plain. Her gaze slid across my face as if without recognition as she stood listening to the garbled phrase the patrol captain repeated.

"Tell the Queen that Delaunay’s other pupil has done her bidding," she said coolly in D’Angeline.

I do not think she reckoned on Selig’s comprehension; it unnerved her, a little, when he smiled. I watched his smile fade, though, and knew bitter triumph. The words meant nothing to him. "Thank you," he said to Naamah’s priestess in curt D’Angeline, adding in Skaldic. "Take her back among the prisoners." She glanced back once over her shoulder, then I saw her no more. Selig considered me, still holding my head up-tilted. "It will go better for you if you tell me," he said, almost gently. "I don’t owe you a quick death, but I’m willing to give it you, if you’ll speak."

He was handsome, for a Skaldi; I have said as much. The torchlight born by warriors pressing round glinted from the gold fillet that bound his hair, the gold wire that twisted his beard into twin forks. My face ached, and tears stood in my eyes. I did laugh, then. I’d nothing left to lose. "No, my lord," I said simply. "I will take the other choice."

Cursing, he released his grip on my hair, thrusting me away. He turned to look thoughtfully at the fortress. "You claim to find pleasure in pain," he said. "Then let Ysandre de la Courcel see how well Waldemar Selig pleases her spies."

I have said, too, that Selig was a clever man. He knew well the merits of controlling the minds of one’s enemies. He had a vast space cleared in front of the fortress, just beyond the range of the archers, and had it ringed round with torch-bearers. The barbican over the gate of Troyes-le-Mont was full-lit by then, and no doubt the defenders were watching: I knew it; Selig knew it too. Two of his thanes walked me out into the middle of the space, forcing me to my knees. White Brethren, their pelts tied loosely around their necks in the warmth of summer, woolens exchanged for steel and leather.

Selig wore white wolf-hide too, snowy by moonlight, trimming the tunic beneath his armor. He stepped into the circle of torchlight and wrenched at the neck of my gown, tearing it open. I felt the night air moving upon the bare skin of my back.

"Ysandre de la Courcel!" he shouted, his voice carrying. "See what becomes of spies and traitors!"

I heard the sound of his belt-dagger rasping clear of its sheath, felt the point of it placed against the skin of my left shoulder blade. The White Brethren held my arms as he began to cut.

Waldemar Selig was known to be a mighty hunter. Unlike D’Angeline nobles, Skaldic lords do not have servants to perform distasteful chores. They skin and gut their own kills. When Selig scored a strip of flesh from my back and began slowly to pull it down, I knew what he intended.

He was going to skin me alive.

I have known pain; Elua knows, I have known it. But nothing had ever prepared me for this. I gasped aloud as he cut, and when he took the strip of flesh, slippery with blood, in a pincerlike grip and began to draw it down, I screamed.

And it would go on for a long time.

Pain burst red across my vision, staggering me. I knew where I was, and did not. Kushiel, I thought, and my blood roared in my ears, beating like wings. I have done all I could. It was a relief, to surrender at last, at long last. I could hear my voice still, whimpering, ragged with pain, and Selig’s whisper in my ear, tell me, tell me. These things happened, I know. And yet it all seemed distant and far beyond me, minor tempests on the outskirts of the maelstrom of agony I inhabited. The world lurched sideways through a bloodred haze, and hands dragged me upright. Pain blossomed all through me, finding a home at the base of my spine, radiating outward. Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present. I fell into it as if into a dark, bottomless well, seeing the bronze mask of Kushiel hanging before me, stern and compassionate, bronze lips moving, speaking words I felt in my bones. Pain redeems all. It is the awareness of life, a reminder of death. I saw faces, other faces, mortal and beloved: Delaunay, Alcuin, Cecilie, Thelesis, Hyacinthe, Joscelin…and more, flickering too fast to number, Ysandre, Quintilius Rousse, Drustan, the Twins, Phèdre’s Boys, Master Tielhard, Guy…some I didn’t expect, Hedwig, Knud, Childric d’Essoms, the old Dowayne, Lodur One-Eye…even, at the end, my mother and father, dimly remembered, and the Skaldi mercenary who had tossed me in the air and laughed through his mustaches…

Melisande.

Ah, Elua! I did love her once…

It was the cessation of pain that brought me back. Selig’s knife had halted in the course of parting my skin from my flesh, paused in an incredulous moment. A voice was speaking, one I knew, clear words ringing on the night air in heavily accented Skaldic.

"Waldemar Selig, I challenge you to the holmgang!"

They let me go, then, and I fell over, my cheek cradled on the dusty, trampled field. I bled into the dirt and blinked unbelieving at the figure that had parted the Skaldi ranks.

Stolen armor and a stolen horse for disguise-he had done it before-and Cassiline arms, summer-blue eyes behind the wild, desperate dare.

"Elua, no," I murmured against D’Angeline soil.

Waldemar Selig stood staring, then laughed; laughed and laughed. "It would have been too much to ask!" he declared joyfully, spreading his arms. "Ah, All-Father Odhinn, you are generous! Yes, Josslin Verai, let us dance upon the hides, and then…" He turned, roaring his words toward Troyes-le-Mont. "Then let Terre d’Ange see how Waldemar Selig deals with her champions!"

These are the things the Skaldi love, the stuff of legend. Twenty spears pointed at Joscelin as he dismounted and his stolen mount was seized. They stripped away his stolen armor, too, while a ripple ran through camp as they searched for a suitable hide to stake out for the holmgang. Hauled to my knees and held in place by the two White Brethren, I saw it all. Selig’s hazel eyes gleamed keen and bright as he tested the heft of his shield.

No one would lend one to Joscelin. He stood at ease in the Cassiline manner, only the steel vambraces on his forearms to protect him. I knelt bleeding, rife with pain, and cursed him in my soul. Whether Selig defeated him or no, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t fool enough to throw victory away on a game of honor. He would break Joscelin; or worse, use me to do it.

Joscelin, Joscelin, I thought, tears running unheeded down my face, You’ve done it, you’ve truly done it, and killed us all with your damnable vow.

They took their places at opposite ends of the hide. Joscelin crossed his arms and bowed. Waldemar Selig thrust his sword into the air, and the Skaldi shouted; one voice, thirty thousand throats. They began to pound their weapons upon their shields, a measured beat. Selig turned to the dark watching fortress and swept a mocking bow. I knelt, awash in pain.

And the holmgang began.

I would like to tell it in poets' words, this deadly dance they enacted on a few square feet of hide, before the whole of the Skaldi army and the silent defenders of Troyes-le-Mont. I would that I could. But they were fast, so fast, and I had come back a long way from Kushiel’s realm. I saw swords flickering in the torchlight, streaks of steel awash in ruddy light, the sound of clashing metal lost in the beating surge of spear-butts against Skaldic shields. I saw Joscelin’s hair, wheat-gold against the darkness, fan out in a tangle of Skaldi braids as he spun, evading Selig’s biting blade. Fast; not fast enough. I saw his sleeve darken with spreading blood as the edge of Selig’s sword slashed his arm above the vambrace.

The beating rhythm hesitated, waiting to see if blood would spatter the hide. Selig tossed aside his cracked shield and reached for another, knowing without looking that a loyal thane was at hand. Joscelin loosed the buckles of his vambrace one-handed, sliding it up and tightening it in place over the wound, using his teeth.

Laughing, Waldemar Selig attacked, and the beat resumed.

And I saw Joscelin deflect his blow with one sweeping gesture, ready for the attack, his other hand coming up to resume the two-handed grip on his sword-hilt, and his sword slid high across the darkness as Selig raised his shield to parry, the point scoring a line across Selig’s jaw.

It bled red rivulets into his tawny-brown beard with its gold-wrapped fork; bled red rivulets, that dropped fat red drops of blood onto the hide.

The Skaldi ceased their pounding.

In silence, Joscelin bowed and sheathed his sword.

Waldemar Selig wiped one palm along his jaw and shook it contemptuously, spattering blood. "For that," he said softly, raising his sword to point it at Joscelin’s heart, "I will let you live long enough to see what is left of her when I am done, and have given what remains to my men."

I knew the whiteness of perfect despair.

Joscelin lifted his gaze to Selig’s, and stood motionless, his blue eyes tranquil. "In Cassiel’s name," he said, in a voice calm beyond calm, "I protect and serve."

And he moved, flowing like water.

All the Cassiline forms have names: poets' names, lovely and serene, drawn from nature…birds on the wing, mountain streams, trees bending in the wind. It is how they name what they do.

Except for the one they call terminus.

There is a play, a famous play-its name was lost in white light of despair-in which a Cassiline Brother performs the terminus. I saw a player act it out, once, in the Cockerel. I knew it, then, swaying on my knees, held upright by my Skaldi guards. When Joscelin, spinning in my direction, tossed his right-hand dagger in the air and caught it by the blade, I knew. When he brought his left-hand dagger to his throat and set its point, I knew.

It is the last act the Perfect Companion may perform.

I met his eyes, the dagger in his right hand balanced to throw at my heart, the dagger in his left poised to cut his throat. I had judged him wrong. Truly, he had come to save us both, in the only way left to us. I had not known, until that moment, how very deeply I had feared my fate.

"Do it," I whispered.

Joscelin looked over my shoulder and froze.

And then moved like lightning, his right hand whipping forward to throw the dagger. It caught the White Brethren guard on my left in the throat and he fell backward with scarcely a gurgle, his hand leaving my arm. I swayed, unbalanced. Joscelin was coming toward me at a dead run, scarce pausing to snatch the hilt out of the Skaldi’s throat. My other guard released me, fumbling for his sword. Too late; the crossed daggers took him high too, opening gaping wounds on either side of his neck. Heedless of the pain it caused, Joscelin grabbed my arm unhesitatingly, hauling me to my feet and plunging toward the fortress.

Half-dragged, staggering in his wake and in agony, I saw it. The portcullis was being raised. The Skaldi army roared behind us as the drawbridge crashed down across the moat. We raced desperately across the ruined earth, my lungs burning for air, each step an agony of blossoming pain.

That was when the night skies lit on fire.

From atop the battlements, the trebuchet were loosed, and gouts of flame seared the night; feu d’Hellas, liquid pitch, ignited and burning. It soared in an arc over our heads, splattering into the front line of our Skaldi pursuers, sending them rolling and screaming to earth. I heard Selig’s voice, rising above it all. "Advance!" he roared. "Advance, and get ahead of it, you fools!"

How many listened, I don’t know; enough, I daresay. But then the earth shook, and from the dark mouth of the gate a mounted sortie emerged.

Four Siovalese cataphracts, riders and horses alike covered head to hoof with armor, gleaming silver and gold by firelight. They pounded past us on either side, slamming into the wall of the approaching Skaldi. And on their heels, twenty-odd light-armed riders, turbaned and helmed, uttering a fierce Akkadian ululation. One swooped by me like a mounted hawk, a deft hand plucking me up to sling me across the pommel of his saddle. Jouncing in pain, I dimly saw Joscelin take the hand of another, swinging up behind him in the saddle.

We wheeled, and turned. The cataphracts split off and surged back toward the drawbridge, heavy hooves pounding; the other riders roiled in a semicircle against the Skaldi, fingers plucking at horsemen’s bows. The trebuchet atop the fortress thudded dully, and more feu d’Hellas lit the air, glittering bright above the furious mien of Waldemar Selig, who stared unbelieving as his prize escaped.

Hoofbeats echoed as we fled across the drawbridge, the defenders of the gatehouse already working frantically at the winches. The last members of the sortie made it with desperate leaps, horses stumbling on the slanted planks.

The drawbridge shuddered into place, and they cut the ropes raising the portcullis, dropping it with a resounding crash. We had gained the inner ward. Slung across the saddle, limp and bleeding, I scarce heeded the commotion as the gatehouse guards rallied against the Skaldi who threw themselves in waves at the moat, driving them back coolly with a rain of crossbow-fire.

Safe within the stone walls of the fortress courtyard, the riders of the sortie dismounted, jesting with disbelief to find themselves still alive. My rescuer was among them, removing his conical steel helm and running a hand through his short-cropped, pale hair.

"Who would have thought," Barquiel L’Envers said ironically, "I’d risk my life for a member of Delaunay’s household?"

I met his wry violet gaze as he helped me down from my awkward position, but then my feet touched the flagstones, and my strength gave way. I kept going, crumpling to a heap in the courtyard of Troyes-le-Mont.