Northern Stars Page 13

  Fromto sighed with relief. “My lord is gracious! And also an optimist, if he thought he could stop me. I trust you as I trust no other man, but you are taking my son over the passes in winter!”

  Again Thorta! But Jauro dare not leave her, and he would not gamble his daughter’s life as heedlessly as he would his own. He must have companions, and who better or more obvious than Fromto?

  “And Lallia,” the old man said, “and—”

  “Not Lallia!”

  Fromto frowned. “My Lord…”

  “No. She stays—I shall find another to replace her.” Lallia had been a terrible mistake. In the three days since he returned from the last battle, Jauro had barely spoken with his wife, and he had not summoned her to his bed—but the problem was now obviously solved. “The king will find her a husband more to her taste. As Thorta comes with us, we shall need some stalwart companions, and she should have female company. You must mount a whirlwind courtship! Is there any mature widow who comes to mind, who would agree to depart with us?”

  The frost-fringed lips smiled cryptically. “Most like.”

  Jauro laughed with relief, “That is good! I do not need a yattering elder to advise me, I need a strong sword at my side—a wife will keep you young, husband.”

  “Young? I am sixty-two!”

  “And virile as any hot-blooded forty-year-old!”

  Fromto smiled bashfully, then nodded. “As my lord commands.”

  How strange that felt! The positions of a lifetime were shifting and it was Jauro who must guide and comfort Fromto, as though the plow must pull the ox. Life was a constant drizzle of little surprises like that, reminding him that he was a man now.

  “Go and congratulate your son on her womanhood, and then see to your wooing! We have a least-month’s work to do before dawn!”

  The big man nodded, and rose. Jauro stood also, and for an awkward moment the two men hesitated. Then they embraced—briefly, and without words.

  The door creaked twice and closed behind the old warrior. The rushlight flared and then dimmed. The room stank of its greasy smoke.

  Exile! What future for a dispossessed earl, fleeing from his overlord? Jauro put the thought out of his mind, deciding he would deal with the future when it arrived. Lately he seemed to spend much less time worrying—was that another sign of manhood, or something purely personal, perhaps stemming from his rank?

  Now to dispose of his finery … He winced at a twinge of stiffness in his leg, where a Trinian sword had drawn his first blood. Wet weather always found that wound. He threw open the lid of the chest, and pulled off the skimpy gold chain that he had donned to impress the envoy. He unwrapped his sable robe and tossed it on the bed, unbuckled his sword and threw that after. He was reaching down to find his favorite old shabby bearskin kirtle, when the door creaked again and the room brightened. Shivering in the cool dampness of the evening, he straightened.

  Lallia closed the door and leaned against it, studying him. She had brought a lantern, and in its steady glow he was at once aware of his nudity, for his leggings hid nothing of importance. Trust the wretched woman to catch him at such a moment!

  Desire flared up in him instantly. This was what it was to be a man—slaved by passion, perpetually vulnerable to lightning strokes of lust.

  “You are leaving,” she said.

  “You have your revenge at last.”

  She smiled grimly.

  “You came to gloat, I suppose?” he growled. His body was reacting shamelessly to her calculating inspection.

  “Despite all the blood you have shed, your earldom is taken from you and you must flee?”

  “I should have been born under another moon.”

  She smiled again, but more cryptically.

  She had been Sando’s only son, and the wife of his chief thane, Chilo. Sando had died in battle, and his two daughters also. Fromto had put Chilo to death and had wanted to slay Lallia. That had been the first time Jauro had exercised his authority to overrule his former husband, the leader of his fyrd. Goaded by unfamiliar male impulses, he had fallen instantly and hopelessly in love with this gorgeous woman. He had called out to save her, proclaiming that he would take her as his wife—and his voice had cracked into an absurd soprano as he did so. He could still remember the titters of his men.

  And he could not forget his shame and her derision when he had first tried to consummate that enforced marriage. Since then he had matured, and things had been different—but never easy. And his desire had never faded. Even now it was making him giddy, after two great-months of lonely sleep in wet heather.

  Her braids hung dark as a raven’s wing, her eyes shone black like a moonless night.

  “Gloat, then!” he snapped. “Enjoy your victory. I hope Reggalo finds you a more satisfactory husband.”

  “That could not be,” she said softly. She hung the lantern on the other sconce and then raised her hands to the ties of her robe.

  Unbelieving, he watched as she shed the garment, letting it fall to the packed clay of the floor.

  “What trickery is this?” he demanded hoarsely. Was she trying to delay his departure to make time for some foul treachery?

  Lallia dropped the linen from her loins and stood naked before him, shivering. “I must attend my lord, as is my duty.”

  He opened his mouth to send her away, and could not do it. His heart beat ever faster as he stared at the pale perfection of her skin, of a body even lovelier than he had remembered. He had never borne breasts like those, save when suckling Thorti. Now his were shrunk to useless flat pads of muscle, hidden beneath a thickening yellow thatch. Other organs had sprouted from his groin to compensate for the loss, and a painful throbbing there betrayed his desperate need.

  She came close, peering up at him. “Husband?”

  He took her in his arms distrustfully. “Why?”

  “For love.”

  “Love? After all those kind words? The mockery? The hate?”

  She blinked sudden tears. “Could you not see? Must a man forget so soon how a woman thinks?”

  “I never thought as you do.” The room was cold, and he pulled her tight against him. He had grown taller since he first embraced her.

  “Act now,” she whispered, “and talk later.”

  He lifted her onto the bed and pulled a fur over them both. She came alive in his arms like a wildcat, and they coupled madly, frantically, gloriously. They cried aloud in the sharing of rapture.

  It was like nothing he had ever experienced, certainly not with her, nor even in his first youthful passion with Fromto. The joy of giving joy was familiar, the physical ecstasy more intense, but he also discovered echoes of every other gratification he had ever known—rage of battle, thrill of hunting, joy of conquest … the contentment of being needed as a babe needs its mother, of being wanted as his child had wanted him, the satisfaction of possession and the strength of a protector, of being gentle when he could be strong, and of might prevailing. It was everything to him, as love had never been before, at once a simpler, easier act and a more consuming response, a totality of many wants that had been separate for him in the past. And as his excitement crested beyond containment, he thought that this more than anything must be what made men what men were, what he was. Fromto had been right, his state was no longer in doubt. And finally thought ended as he gloried in the culminating proof of manhood.

  And in the long limp silence that followed, the damp astonishment, he realized that he was still wearing his leggings and boots.

  “Oh, my love!” he panted in the musty darkness under the furs. “My love, my love! Why now?”

  For a while he got no reply, then she sniffed, as though ready to weep. “I said unkind things, My Lord.”

  “Unkind? I never met a woman with such a tongue.”

  She sniffled more, then chuckled. “Thank you, My Lord! You did not see? And it did not work. I could never make you force me.”

  “Force you? Force you?” He threw back the hem
of the rug so he could see her face in the lantern glow. The rushlight had gone out. “Force a woman?”

  “Chilo did,” she whispered. “When he was drunk. When the time was wrong. Often.”

  “Moons preserve me! Lady, I swear … I was taught loving by Fromto, and in fifteen years he never tried to force me once.” He shuddered. Fromto was as strong as man could be, and as gentle as feathers with a woman. “You wanted that?”

  “Oh, my love!” She cuddled closer. “I did want you, even at the first. But you had slain my husband, my father, my brothers. To confess to love seemed like betrayal—yes, I wanted you to force me. To save my shame. Desperately I wanted that.”

  He was too stunned to speak.

  “And you never would,” she said. “No matter how I taunted you. So I had to yield, sacrificing my pride to my need for you.”

  “Oh, Lallia!”

  Was this what it was to be a man—hopelessly confused by women? He recalled arguments with Fromto on this very bed, with the big man being strangely obtuse and closed to reason. Lately his thinking had seemed much clearer.

  So Jauro had won his love at last, and must leave her. How cruel the gods!

  “When?” he whispered. “I loved you when I first set eyes on you. When did you first feel … feel that you did not hate me?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps when the women told me how gentle you had been as a woman, with Thorti, and then when I saw how your men worshipped you.”

  “And as a kid I could steal cookies better than any. Now the truth?”

  She sighed. “The first time you tried to bed me, my love.”

  He groaned as the embers of his shame blazed up anew.

  “You were so enraged,” she said, “and yet you did not blame me, you blamed yourself. That was when I knew I had found a far better man than Chilo. A better man than I have ever known, I think.”

  He snorted disbelievingly. “I was too young, too impatient.”

  “The change is easier when one is older, they say. The blood runs cooler. You will help me when my turn comes…” They kissed. After a moment, though, she whispered, “Is it true what they say?”

  “What do they say?” he asked angrily.

  “That you changed so young because you refused Fromto after you inherited the earldom? Celibacy is said to hasten the change.”

  “No, it is not true!”

  It had been Fromto who had refused Jaura. He had been away a long time on the first campaign, and when he had returned they had sadly agreed to try, so that the earl might sooner become a man, as was fitting. But Jaura had not been able to sustain their pledge. She had begged and entreated and tried all her feminine wiles. Fromto had been the steadfast one, sleeping night after night on the floor in lonely agony. Oh, what he owed to that man!

  “It is not true,” Jauro lied. “It just happened—perhaps the strain of Hagthro’s death…” He fell silent, thinking that she did not believe him.

  “When the king gives you to another,” he began, and she stopped him by putting her lips on his.

  “I will come with you.”

  “No! I will not allow it! I shall be an outlaw, a wandering fighter seeking to serve others for charity. You must—”

  “What of your son?” she whispered.

  “Son?”

  “I carry your child, My Lord, the child that will one day become your son, when it reaches menarche.”

  “Are you sure?” he demanded, thinking that every husband in the history of the world must have greeted that news with the same question.

  She chuckled happily. “Either that or I have reached menopause, and I never heard of anyone becoming a man at twenty-two.”

  Take a pregnant woman over the passes in winter?

  Or leave an unborn child behind to die by the king’s spite?

  Jauro ran strangely callused fingers over the smoothness of her belly and, speechless, turned his face away. Today he had lost a child to womanhood, and now was promised another to replace it. He would be a father as well as a mother, and this time teach archery and horsemanship instead of weaving and housewifery and …

  But today he had also lost his earldom.

  He was dallying in bed with a woman when he should be attending to his duties. In one sweep of motion he leaped to the floor, and the bed creaked mightily.

  “I must go!” he snapped to Lallia’s cry of protest. “What will they think of me out there?” They would think he was hiding under the furs, weeping! He rummaged to find his sword and belt it on him. The sword came first now, always.

  Then he heard voices raised, and his scalp prickled in sudden apprehension. He had been negligent. There had been too much noise outside, men and horses both, and he had not heeded. Dogs were barking. He draped his sables loosely about him and threw open the door, ignoring a whine of complaint from his wife—women! He stormed along the corridor, heading for the brightness of the hall and the shouting, yet remembering that he had been mightily annoyed with Fromto a few times when he had cut short love-making for business. Was being a boor a necessary part of being a man? Oh, well, he would certainly take Lallia with him now, and they had years ahead to indulge in that sort of thing.

  The hall was in disarray, a crowded, noisy confusion of torchlight and shadows. The meal had been interrupted, and there were tables and benches everywhere, half the men of the household stamping around flashing swords, and there were women and children mixed in with it all.

  Jauro headed for the apparent center of the confusion, while glancing vainly around for Fromto. His husband must be outside, organizing the fugitives’ departure, or possibly attending to his wooing.

  He bellowed, and the swords were sheathed. Big, shambling men moved hastily out of the way as their young earl bore down on them and arrived at the cause of the tumult, strangers.

  There were three of them, unarmed, white-bearded and frail, almost elders. They all looked shaky, red-eyed, exhausted by their journey. Their boots and leggings were thickly mudded, their furs dripped rain on the rushes.

  Jauro recognized the leader at once, and with a considerable shock. He bowed, wishing he had taken the time to make himself more presentable. “Our house is honoured to receive Your Holiness.”

  The old man shook his head sadly, appraising Jauro with eyes still bright, yet hooded. “I fear not, My Lord.” He raised a mittened hand as his host began to speak of chairs and warmth and wine. “I can not accept your hospitality, young man.”

  Only enemies refused hospitality. What new evil had inspired Reggalo to send his high priest? He had not brought the arrogance of the first envoy, although he was still regarding Jauro with priestly hauteur. “You spurned the king’s summons, obviously.”

  “Obviously. Did you not meet the envoy upon the trail?”

  “We must have missed him down by the marshes. We have followed him for many hours hoping to catch him before he arrived. We had more horses, but he drove his mounts hard.” The priest paused, glancing around, and then reached within his furs. “The summons he delivered is withdrawn.”

  That ought to be good news, but Jauro was sure it wasn’t, as he accepted the packet now offered him. “Your Grace—a seat by the fire, at least?”

  Even that small hospitality was refused.

  The hall had fallen silent now, men and women clustering in separate knots among the shadows. The fires crackled and some of the torches hissed. Children were sobbing, unnerved by the tension.

  Jauro broke the seal and read the warrant in the shaky light, holding it at arm’s length. Once upon a time he had stitched the finest hem in the household. Now his eyes were warriors’ eyes, which could see a hawk blink but fared poorly on a scribe’s crabbed hand.

  Still, the message was clear enough, and the meaning drifted in around his heart like snow. He looked up to the venerable messengers who had brought it, and the priest read the question on his lips.

  “Yes, I think you can trust that,” he said bitterly. “As much as anything can be trus
ted. It was the best we could do, My Lord.”

  Jauro nodded, not wanting to speak yet. Certainly the list of witnesses was impressive enough, men known for honour. As far as a king’s word went it was … well, it would be less treacherous than the mountains in winter, if not by much.

  His furs were being tugged by the gnarled hand of Mindooru, one of the elders—shrunken and bent, leaning on a cane and constantly mumbling and drooling, shaking a head that was quite hairless except for a white fringe at the back. Of course the elders would have sent Mindooru. It was Jauro’s father.

  “Tell me, son?”

  Jauro glanced around again for Fromto, and could not see him anywhere. Then he started to read the warrant again.

  “Out with it!” Mindooru mumbled. “What’s he say this time? It’s bad, but not as bad, right? Crab apple tastes sweet after wild cherry, mm?”

  Jauro nodded, repelled by the convoluted thinking. “The offer of marriage is withdrawn. Fromto can be regent and choose Thorta’s husband. No proscriptions. That’s about it.”

  The elder nodded, as though it had expected nothing else.

  Oh gods, but it hurt, it hurt!

  The high priest flinched before Jauro’s accusing stare. “I said it was the best we could do! He’ll not go for anything less, I’m certain.”

  “But why?” What had he done to deserve this?

  “Why?” Mindooru shrilled. “I’ll tell you why, son. Because he’s frightened of you!” It began to weep.

  The priest bit his lip, and then nodded agreement.

  Jauro felt stunned. For a moment he clutched at a crazy hope that this was all some sort of elaborate joke, the kind of hazing new men got from the fyrd—but he was long past his first whiskers, and they would not treat their earl so.

  No, it was real. Yet did his achievements really seem so impressive, so threatening? An unbeatable earl who might one day decide to move against tyranny? He had never dreamed that others might see him as such a man.

  “Where’s Fromto?” he demanded, looking around again.

  “He can’t help you,” croaked the elder. “I can’t. This one you do alone, son.” The hands on its cane trembled. Tears streamed down its wrinkles. Even the end of its nose held a drop, and its thin, bent shoulders were heaving with sobs. Children wept. Women wept. Elders wept. Men did not.