Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 3

Yet the moisture on his lips tasted not of some stale rag but of a girl's kiss. Perhaps she had meant to cleanse him, but decided to seek more enticing diversion, "I'll get you some help," she said, dropping her rag into the bucket. She half-turned from where she huddled.

Roland grabbed her wrist, quick as a mongoose taking a cobra. Because of his speed, he had been forced to give his, metabolism into the King's service.

"How long have I slept?" he begged. His mouth felt terribly dry, and the words made his throat itch. "What year is it?"

"Year?" the young woman asked, barely fighting his grasp. He held her lightly. She could have broken away, but chose instead to stay. He caught the scent of her: clean, a hint of lilac water in her hair--or perhaps it was the dried violets. "It is the twenty-second year of the reign of Mendellas Draken Orden."

The news did not surprise him; yet her words were like a blow. Twenty-one years. It has been twenty-one years since I gave my endowment of metabolism into the service of the King. Twenty-one years of sleeping on this cot while young women occasionally clean me or spoon broth down my throat and make sure that I still breathe He'd given his metabolism to a young warrior, a sergeant named Drayden. In those twenty-one years, Drayden would have aged more than forty, while Roland slept and aged not a day.

It seemed but moments ago that Roland knelt before Drayden and young King Orden. The facilitators sang in birdlike voices, pressing their forcibles into his chest, calling the endowment from him. He'd felt the unspeakable pain of the forcibles, smelled flesh and the hairs of his chest begin to burn, felt the overwhelming fatigue as the facilitators drew forth his metabolism. He'd cried in pain and terror at the last, and seemingly had fallen forever.

Because Roland was now awake, he knew that Drayden was dead. If a man gave use of an attribute to a lord, then once that lord died, the attribute returned to the Dedicate. Whether Drayden had died in battle or abed, Roland could not know. But now that Roland was one of the Restored, it meant Drayden was certainly dead.

"I'll go now," the girl said, struggling just a bit.

Roland felt the soft hairs on her forearm. She had a pair of pimples on her face, but in time he imagined that she would become a beauty.

"My mouth is dry," Roland said, still holding her.

"I'll get water," she promised. She quit struggling--as if by relinquishing she hoped he might let her go.

Roland released her wrist, but stared hard into her face. He was a handsome young man--with his long red hair tied back, a strong chin, piercing blue eyes, and a svelte, muscular body.

He asked, "Just now, when you were kissing me in my sleep, was it me, you wanted, or did you fantasize, about some other man?"

The girl shook with fright, looked to the small wooden door of Roland's chamber, as if to make sure it was closed. She ducked her head shyly, and whispered, "You."

Roland studied her face. A few freckles, a straight mouth, a delicate nose. He wanted to kiss her, just behind her small left ear.

To fill the silence, the girl began to chatter. "I've been washing you since I was ten. I...in that time, I've come to know your body well. There is kindness in your face, and cruelty; and beauty. I sometimes wonder what kind of man you are, and I hoped that you would awaken before I married. My name is Sera, Sera Crier. My father and mother and sisters all died in a mud slide when I was small, so now I serve here in the keep."

"Do you even know my name?" Roland asked.

"Borenson. Roland Borenson. Everyone in the keep knows you. You are the father of a captain of the King's Guard. Your son serves as bodyguard to Prince Gaborn."

Roland wondered. He'd had no son that he'd ever heard of. But he'd had a young wife when he gave his endowment, though she would be getting old by now. He had not known when he'd given his metabolism that she carried a child.

He wondered if this girl spoke aright. He wondered why she was attracted to him. He asked, "You know my name. Do you also know that I am a murderer?"

The girl drew back in astonishment.

"I killed a man," Roland admitted. He wondered why he told her that. But although the man had died twenty years ago, for him it had happened only hours ago, and the feel of the man's guts in his hand was still fresh on his mind.

"I'm sure you had good reason."

"I found him in bed with my wife. I slit him open like a fish, yet even as I did, I had to wonder why. Ours was an arranged marriage and a poor match by any measure. I did not care for the girl, and she hated me. Killing the man was a waste. I think I did it to hurt her. I don't know.

"For years you have wondered what kind of man I am, Sera. Do you think you know?"

Sera Crier licked her lips. Now she began to tremble. "Any other man would have lost his head for such a deed. The King must have liked you well. Perhaps he too saw some kindness masked by your cruelty."

"I see only waste and stupidity," Roland answered.

"And beauty." Sera leaned forward to kiss Roland's lips. He turned his head a bit.

"I've given myself," he said.

"To a woman who disavowed you and married someone else long, long ago...." Sera answered. Roland felt certain that she knew what she spoke of when she mentioned his wife. The news saddened him. The girl had been another butcher's daughter and she'd had a wit sharper than her father's knives. She'd thought him stupid, he'd thought her cruel.

"No," he answered, feeling that she did not see the deeper truth. "I'm not given to my wife, but to my king."

Roland sat up in his cot, gazed down at his feet. He was dressed in nothing but a tunic--a fine red cotton garment that would breathe in the moist air. Not the old work clothes he'd worn twenty-one years ago when he gave his endowment. They'd rotted away.

Sera fetched him some trousers and a pair of lambskin boots, then offered to help dress him, though he needed no help. He had never felt so completely rested.

Though today was the second time in a week that Roland had wakened to a kiss, Sera Crier's lips had been far more desirable than Baron Poll's.

As Roland ate, a young knight in splint mail came in through the front door. "Borenson!" he shouted in greeting. At the same instant, Baron Poll had just come down the stairs and stood at the landing. "And Baron Poll!" the fellow said in dismay.

Suddenly the room swirled in commotion. The two lords beside Roland dove to the floor. The knight at the door pulled his sword, ringing from its scabbard. The squires in the corner shouted variations of "Fight!" "Blood feud!" One of the lads flipped a table over and hid behind it as a barricade. A girl who was serving the peasants threw a basket filled with bread loaves into the air and ran for the b.u.t.tery shrieking, "Baron Poll and Sir Borenson are in the same room!" The innkeeper ran out from the kitchens, face pale, as if hoping to rescue his furniture.

Everywhere Roland glanced, he saw frightened faces.

Baron Poll just stood on the landing, studying the scene, an amused smile playing on his lips.

Roland enjoyed the joke. He furrowed his brow, drew the half-sword, and eyed Baron Poll menacingly. Then he chopped a loaf of bread in half and plunged the sword tip into the counter, so that it stood there quivering.

"It appears the stool beside me has been vacated, Baron Poll," Roland said. "Perhaps you will join me for breakfast."

"Why, thank you," Baron Poll said courteously. He waddled over to the stool, sat down, took half the loaf, dipped it in Roland's trencher.

The whole crowd gaped in wonder. Roland thought, They'd not look more astonished if Baron Poll and I were a pair of toads flying about the room like hummingbirds, chasing flies with long tongues.

Horrified, the young knight exclaimed, "But you're not to be within fifty leagues of each other--by the King's own command!"

"True, but last night, by mere happenstance, Borenson and I were thrust into the same cot," Baron Poll replied contentedly. "And I must say, I've never had a more cordial bedfellow."

"Nor I," Roland offered. "Not many a man could warm your backside as well as Baron Poll. The man is as big as a horse and as hot as a smithy's forge. Why, I suspect he could warm a whole village at night. You could fry fish on his feet or bake bricks on his back."

Everyone stared at them as if they were daft, so Roland and Baron Poll loudly discussed such mundane topics as the weather, how the recent rains had aggravated the gout that Poll's mother-in-law suffered from; the best way, to cook venison, and so on.

Everyone watched them warily, as if at any moment the truce might break, and the two men would go at it with knives.

Finally, Borenson slapped Baron Poll on the back, went outside into the early morning light. The village of Hay was aptly named. Hayc.o.c.ks stood everywhere in the fields, and black-eyed Susans grew huge so late in the summer. The margin of the road out of town was a riot of yellows and deep browns. The countryside was flat, and the gra.s.s had grown tall in the summer, but now was sun-bleached white and dying.

At the front of the inn, the pigs had wisely fled. A couple of red hens pecked in the dirt by Roland's feet. Roland waited while a stableboy went to fetch his horse.

He stood looking up into the hazy sky. The air was moist with wisps of morning fog. Volcanic ash drifted in the mist like flakes of warm snow.

Baron Poll came out, stood with him a moment, staring up and stroking his beard. "There's mischief in this volcano blowing, and powerful magic," he predicted. "Raj Ahten has flameweavers in his retinue, I hear. I wonder if they're mixed up in this?"

Roland thought it unlikely that the flameweavers had anything to do with the volcano. It had blown far to the south, and Raj Ahten's soldiers were converging on Carris a hundred miles north. Still, it seemed ominous.

"What is this about the King's command?" Roland asked. "Why are you not to get within fifty leagues of my son?"

"Ah, it's nothing." Baron Poll grinned with embarra.s.sment. "Old news. I'd tell you the story, but you'll hear some minstrel sing of it soon enough, I imagine. They get most of it right." Baron Poll sheepishly glanced at the ground and wiped some fallen ash from his cloak. "I've lived in mortal terror of your boy these past ten years." Roland wondered what his son would have done if he'd wakened in this man's arms. "But dark times can make even the worst of enemies into friends, eh?" Baron Poll said. "And men can change, can't they? Wish your son well for me, if you find him."

His expression begged Roland for forgiveness, and Roland would have been happy to give it to him, but he could not speak for his son. "I'll do so," Roland promised.

Far down the dirt road to the south, fifty knights were racing north, the hooves of their chargers thundering over the earth.

"Perhaps your road north won't be so dangerous after all," Baron Poll said. "But mark my word. Beware of Carris.

"Aren't you coming north? I thought you'd ride with me."

"Pah," Baron Poll spat. "I'm going the wrong way south. I have a summer estate outside Carris, so my wife wanted me to remove a few valuables before Raj Ahten's men looted the place. I'm helping the servants guard the wagon."

That seemed cowardly, but Roland said nothing.

"Aye," Baron Poll said. "I know what you're thinking. But they'll have to fight without me at Carris. I had two endowments of metabolism until last fall when some of my Dedicates got slain. I'm feeling too old and fat for a real battle. My armor fits me no better than would my wife's undergarments."

Those words had come hard. The Baron did want to go north and fight.

"We could skirt this battle at Carris," Roland suggested, "and find one more to your liking. Why don't you come with me?"

"Hah!" Baron Poll guffawed. "Eight hundred miles to Heredon? If you're not worried for your own health, or mine, at least you could show pity to my poor horse!"

"Let your servants haul off your treasures. They don't need you guarding them."

"Ah, my wife would give me such a tongue-lashing--the shrew! Better to anger Raj Ahten than her."

A maid came out of the inn and expertly grabbed one of the hens that had been pecking in the dust. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it by the neck. "You'll be coming with me. Lord Collins-ward wants your company for breakfast." She wrung the chicken's neck and was already pulling off feathers when she carried the hen round back.

In moments, the knights from the south reached the village, wheeled their horses toward the stable. Apparently they hoped to rest, get some news, and care for their mounts.

When the stableboy brought Roland's horse around, he mounted, gave the boy a small coin. The filly was well rested, frolicky. She was a huge red beast with a blaze of white on her hooves and forehead. She acted ready for a brisk run in the cool morning air. Roland took off along the road, through a field shrouded with mist that soon turned into a low fog.

Roland sniffed at the smell of volcanic ash, searching the scent for signs of danger. On the road north ahead was Raj Ahten's army--an army said to contain sorcerers and Invincibles and frowth giants and fierce dogs of war.

He could not help think how unfair life could be. That poor chicken back at the inn hadn't had a second's warning before it died.

Moments later, while Roland was preoccupied with such grim thoughts, the sound of a horse riding hard startled him.

He glanced behind, worried that it might be a robber or a.s.sa.s.sin. He was riding through a thick fog, and could not see a hundred feet ahead.

Spurring his mount off the road, he reached for his halfsword just as a huge shape came thundering from the mist behind him.

Baron Poll bounced up on his horse. "Well met!" the fat knight cried, sitting precariously on his charger. The beast looked about with a terrified demeanor, eyes wide and ears back, as if afraid its master would give it a good cuffing.

"Aren't you going south with your treasures?" Roland asked.

"d.a.m.n the treasures. The servants can abscond with them for all I care! Let them take that shrew of a wife, too!" Baron Poll bellowed. "You were right. It's better to die young with the blood hot in your veins, than to die old and slowly of being too fat!"

"I never said that," Roland objected.

"Pah! Your eyes said it all, lad."

Roland sheathed his sword. "Well, now that my eyes are so eloquent, perhaps I'll give my unruly tongue a rest" With that, he wheeled his horse into the mist.

CHAPTER 3.

HOSTENFEST.

Myrrima woke at dawn with tears in her eyes. She wiped them away and lay wondering at the strange sense of melancholy that had overwhelmed her each dawn for the past three days. She did not know for certain why she woke crying.

She should not have felt this way. It was the last day of Hostenfest, the day of the great feast--and it should have been the happiest day of the year.

Moreover, in the past few weeks, she had won several small victories. Instead of sleeping in her shack outside Bannisferre, she had wakened in her room in the King's Tower at Castle Sylvarresta. Over the past three days, she'd become a close friend to young Queen Iome Orden, and she'd married a knight with some wealth. Her sisters and her mother were here in the castle, living in the Dedicate's Keep, where they would be taken care of for life.

She should have been happy. Yet she felt as if the hand of doom weighed on her.

Outside her window, she could hear the King's facilitators chanting out in the Dedicates' Keep. Over the past week, thousands of people had offered to dedicate their attributes into the service of the Earth King. Though Gaborn was an Oath-Bound Lord and had sworn not to take a man's brawn or wit or stamina unless it was freely given, and those had been freely offered, he still had not taken a single endowment. Some feared that he had forsaken the practice altogether; yet he did not forbid his knights to take endowments.

King Gaborn Val Orden seemed to have an endless supply of forcibles, and for the past week, the chief facilitator had worked with his apprentices night and day, doling out endowments to Heredon's knights, trying to rebuild the kingdom's decimated troops. Still, the Dedicate's Keep was only half full.

A soft knocking came from Myrrima's door, and she rolled over on the satin sheets of her bed, glanced out through a window of the oriel. The morning light barely glowed through the stained-gla.s.s image on the window mourning doves winging through a blue sky, as seen through a screen of ivy. She realized that the low knocking had wakened her.

"Who's there?"

"Tis I," Borenson said.

Throwing back the sheets, she leapt up, rushed to the door, and yanked it open. He stood in the doorway, a lamp in his hands, its small flame wavering in the drafty castle. He looked huge there in the darkness, grinning like a boy with a joke to tell. His blue eyes twinkled, and his red beard fanned out from his face.

"You don't need to knock," she laughed. They'd been married now for four days, though he'd run off and spent the last three on a hunt. Worse, they had never consummated their marriage, and Myrrima had to wonder at him.

Sir Borenson seemed smitten enough by her, but when she'd thought to bed him on her honeymoon night, he'd merely said, "How can a man take such pleasures, while tonight he will hunt in the Dunnwood?"

Myrrima was inexperienced with men. She did not know if it was right to feel so hurt by his rejection. She'd wondered if he really was overexcited by the hunt, if that was natural, or if he had a war wound that kept him from showing affection. Perhaps Borenson had married her only because Gaborn had suggested it.

For days she had felt hurt and bewildered, and had longed for Borenson's return. Now he was home.

"I was afraid you'd be deeply asleep," he said.