I dismounted, unsaddled Farna-leaving the armor on her-and saddled and mounted Wildfire instead. I thought Pervica might enjoy seeing her horse ridden, and the stallion was now well trained enough to manage about a farm, though I wouldn’t have taken him into a city, let alone a battle. I started him down the hill at a slow trot, with my bodyguard jingling after me.
We were about halfway to the farm when I heard a shout of terror to my left, and I glanced over to see a sheepskin-cloaked figure-surely Cluim-running frantically toward the farm. He jumped the wall, hurtled across the yard, and plunged into the house, still shouting. Then Pervica walked out onto the porch-even at a distance I recognized her grace, and the way she held her head. She stood there, directly before the front door, her arms crossed; as I drew nearer, I saw that her face was set in anger and a kind of proud desperation. I slowed Wildfire to a walk, then stopped him altogether at the yard gate, and sat still, looking back at Pervica in confusion.
The anger flickered, then suddenly vanished. Her face opened into a flood of an equally desperate joy. “Ariantes!” she shouted, and ran toward me.
I bent down in the saddle, unlatched the gate, and pushed it open; Pervica ran through, her arms stretched up, and I caught her, pulled her onto the saddle in front of me, and kissed her. Wildfire snorted in alarm and put his ears back, rearing, and I patted him hastily with my free hand. “It is only Pervica,” I told him. “You know her.”
“Ariantes,” she said again, holding me tight.
“Pervica,” I answered. “You are well? You are safe?”
“I’m fine,” she replied. “You’re riding Wildfire!”
“ We are riding Wildfire,” I corrected. The horse knew where he was, of course, and was eager to go back to his nice warm stall in Pervica’s barn: he danced impatiently beneath us. I clicked my tongue to him and made him trot about the yard in a circle to keep him steady, then, to show off, made him turn and circle the other way. Pervica laughed. She started to put her head against my shoulder, then pulled away again hastily.
“I can’t hug you,” she told me, smiling into my face. “You’re too scaly!”
There was an anxious shout from the doorway, and I saw Cluim again, standing in the doorway with a boar spear in one hand and my dagger in the other. Pervica waved to him. “It’s Ariantes!” she told him, and he slumped in relief and sheathed the dagger.
I suddenly understood, and stopped Wildfire. “Arshak has been here,” I said. “You thought I was him.”
Her smile vanished. She let go of me and slid to the ground, then stood there with one hand on the saddle, looking up. Her expression was unmistakably one of grief. “You both have the same kind of armor,” she admitted quietly.
I dismounted and faced her. “When did he come? Has he threatened you?”
She sighed and swept both hands over her face upward, pushing her hair back. “We can talk about it in a minute, inside,” she said. “Do your men want to stop in the back again? I’ll tell Elen and Sulina to get them something warm to drink.”
I put Wildfire in his stall, and left most of the men to build their fire; Cluim came to join them rather nervously, breaking into a grin when they made him welcome. But I asked Banadaspos to come into the house with me: I felt already that this would be something my bodyguard would have to know about.
Pervica led us into the dining room. The carpet I had given her now adorned the floor; she sat down heavily on the couch. I sat down on the floor next to her, leaning against the couch, sideways to allow space for my sword, with my arm on the cushion beside her.
“When did Arshak come?” I asked again.
“Two days ago,” she told me, very calmly.
“Was he alone, or did he bring his men with him? Did he threaten you?”
“I… no. He didn’t hurt me, and he made no threats. He came with about thirty men-his bodyguard, I suppose. He said he’d heard that I’d saved the life of his brother prince, and that you were going to marry me, and so, he said, he’d come to greet me. I think… I think he just wanted to know where I was.” Her face had closed up again.
“Then why were you so afraid, you and Cluim?”
“Nothing. Just what you said about him before. And I hadn’t realized. You’d said he was arrogant and dangerous, but I just hadn’t realized. He’s like some beautiful predatory animal, a golden eagle or a wildcat, which kills by nature. The way he smiled frightened me.”
And that was plainly true, but her face was still closed. There was something he had said or done that she did not want to tell me. “But what did he say to you?” I asked, putting my hand against her knee. The muscles tightened under my touch with a little shiver.
“Nothing.” The bolts were being shot home behind her eyes. “Nothing that bears repeating.”
I was silent a minute. “He insulted you?” I asked at last.
She gave a weak smile. “He was not polite.”
“What did he say?”
“Never mind. It’s my affair, not yours.”
“It is my affair,” I said. “If he insults you, he insults me. Please, tell me what he said to you.”
“It was only words! It was a ridiculous thing to do, to ride over from Condercum just to say a few insulting words to a woman he’d never met. People round here will only laugh at him for doing it. People don’t take it seriously.”
“My people and Arshak’s do.”
“No! Look, please! I don’t want to tell you because I don’t want you to fight him! He’s not like Cinhil; even I could tell that! In any fight with him, someone would die-and if it wasn’t you, you might still be charged with murder afterward. He did this to provoke you: don’t you see that?”
“Pervica,” I said, “this concerns my honor.”
“Oh, that’s the ultimate reason, is it? The one to which all other considerations must bow down!”
“Yes. If you do not tell me, I must go to him in Condercum and ask him what he said. His bodyguard will doubtless boast of it.”
“Oh, no! No!”
“He expects nothing less.”
“So you’ll oblige him? Just like that?”
“Yes. We are enemies now; that is beyond retrievaclass="underline" we have chosen different paths, and he watched while I was drugged and taken off to die shamefully. I would prefer to settle the matter between us like Sarmatian noblemen, and I think he would prefer to do the same, rather than allow his allies to kill me by sorcery or treachery, which is why he is trying to provoke me. I met him on the road to Eburacum and I let him understand then that I would fight him whenever he wished. But whatever happens, one or the other of us will be dead before this is over. You must understand why he came here. I am his enemy, and he wished to triumph over me in you, to dishonor me. In our own country he would have burned your wagons and driven off your flocks. But here he would have to account for his actions to the authorities-so instead he insults you, which is a thing the authorities will take no notice of, but which I cannot ignore. Without honor, I am nothing at all. My men are disgraced in me, and I am powerless to command them.”
She looked down at her hands, twisting together in her lap. “Maybe we shouldn’t get married, after all,” she whispered; then, “I know we shouldn’t get married, after all.”
I took my hand off her knee. “You cannot mean that. You know that I want you, and I thought you wanted me.”
Now her face twisted as well, fighting the tears, but she still would not look at me. “It’s not what I want that matters. I thought of this earlier; I didn’t want to say it, but I must. I see it now. We shouldn’t get married.”
“Even if you refused me now,” I said, after another moment of silence, “I would still have to fight Arshak.”
“Oh, no!” She pressed her hands to her face.
“Tell me exactly what he said, please. I would rather learn it from you than from him.”
She sat still with her hands over her face. “When I saw him coming,” she said, slowly, “I ran out to meet him. I thought he was you, and by the time I realized my mistake, his men had surrounded me. Nobody threatened me, but they sat there on their horses like so many steel statues and stared at me. He… greeted me. He was very polite at first, and said what I told you, that he’d heard you were going to marry me, and he’d come to pay his respects. Then he smiled and said that it was an odd thing for a king’s nephew to be paying respects to a common herdswoman. He said that in your own country, you’d married the daughter of a scepter-holder, a lady descended from princes and great warriors, famous for her spirit; while here, he said, you Romanized, and courted a soldier’s bastard out of gratitude for the tatters of your life.” Banadaspos caught his breath, and she dropped her hands and looked up at him quickly. “Please!” she said to him. “I don’t want him to fight Arshak. There’s no point. I am a soldier’s bastard, and it was gratit-”