“You rob me of every little thing we had together,” she said. “You must really hate me.”
“I don’t! I care — ”
She went out as quietly as she had entered.
Rix flopped back in the tub. What could he do for her? He couldn’t give her a new role — that would only make her position worse, and heighten the rumours that she was his lover.
As he sat there, brooding, an image of the raid came to mind, a moment he had not seen but had thought about constantly on the long ride home. Fifteen men climbing over the gate in the dark, only to have their throats slit as they reached the ground on the other side. Many had been thugs, even brutes, but Rix had trained and fought with them, and none of them had been wholly bad. They had all cared about someone, or something.
Fifteen fathers, sons or brothers who would never come home to their weeping womenfolk, their grieving fathers, their families who might now starve in this most bitter of all winters. And he had given the order that had sent them to their deaths.
It was an inevitable consequence of being a leader in wartime. The chancellor’s orders had led to tens of thousands of deaths — soldiers and civilians — and perhaps, after a while, the body count grew so high that one became numb to it. Rix had not reached that stage. He could see all their faces.
Hours later he was still sitting in the icy tub when Glynnie reappeared, wringing her small hands.
“What are you doing?” she said softly.
“Counting my failures and reckoning up the toll. Trying to make peace with all those men I sent to their deaths.”
“Well, stop!”
“The faces won’t go away.”
“They went willingly — for plunder.” She thumped him on the shoulder, hard. “Get out.”
“What?” he said dazedly.
“Get out of the tub.”
“Why?”
“I’ve got to tend to your wounds.”
“They don’t matter. Nothing matters.”
She slapped him across the face, a stinging blow with all her strength behind it. “Get. Out!”
He looked up at her, rubbing his cheek. “What was that for?”
“I liked you better as a good man who had failed than I do you wallowing in self-pity, Lord.”
“I’m not wallowing…” But he was.
“Get up and do something about your problems.”
She fetched the red towel and stood by, waiting.
He crouched in the icy bath. “I’ll get out when you leave.”
“I’m not a real person, just a maidservant here to attend your needs.”
Rix did not have the energy to fight her. He rose from the tub and allowed her to dry him, which she did with a servant’s thoroughness. Her cheeks were pink when she finished. He slipped into the fur-lined robe she held out for him.
“On the bed,” she said.
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Her flush deepened. “The enemy are going to attack us, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“How soon?”
“Too soon.”
“Then you’ve got to be in a fit state to take charge of the defences.”
She wrenched the robe down over his shoulders, slapped a handful of some foul-smelling paste into the long gash down his upper arm, and rubbed it in with furious strokes.
Glynnie climbed onto the high bed and loomed over him, using her weight to force the paste deep into a puncture wound in his upper chest, then a slash between his ribs, jamming it into the inflamed area with her thumbs. He bit back a groan.
“Something the matter?” said Glynnie.
“No.”
“It’d serve you right if you got infected and had to rely on other people for a change. I almost hope — ” She broke off, her cheeks crimson. “Lord, forgive me. Sometimes my mouth runs away with me.”
It was time for a truce. “Sorry. Didn’t hear what you said.”
“Garramide needs you sound and healthy, Lord. You’re its leader, its inspiration. Its hope, and Garramide can’t do without you.”
“All except you.” Rix took her hand. “I’m really sorry. I’ve treated you badly.”
“Yes, you have,” she said softly, staring into his eyes. Her green eyes were huge.
“But not because I don’t care about you…”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“It’s because I care too much.”
Tears quivered on her lashes. “You’ve got to look after yourself, Rix. You’re all I have now.” She turned away, turned back. “Don’t worry about my little problem with the servants. I can fix it.”
CHAPTER 38
“That mural is bad luck, Rix,” said Glynnie, several days later. “I wish you’d paint over it.”
He did not like it either, but Rix was constantly drawn back to the work, as if his crude dabs of paint could reveal the man within. Swelt had given him a book on Grandys and Rix now knew all the man’s astonishing achievements, though little about Grandys himself.
He had been everything Rix was not — a brilliant, charismatic leader who had pulled off one impossible victory after another. His troops would have followed him anywhere, but what had he really been like?
“Have you been listening to Astatin again?” he said, belatedly responding to Glynnie’s remark.
“It’s impossible not to. She stalks the halls by day and the battlements in the starlight, forecasting doom and disaster. And Blathy is worse. Is everything ready?”
Everyone in the fortress had been working night and day to ready the defences, and Rix and Glynnie were snatching a few minutes’ break up in the old dame’s observatory.
He went to the wall and looked down on the yard. The carpenters had almost finished strengthening the gates. Behind them the masons were raising a second line of defence, a wall of basalt blocks, but cutting and laying such hard stone was slow work and after a week and a half it was only shoulder-high. Better than nothing, if the enemy broke through the gates, though not much better.
“You can never be truly ready for war — there’s always more that can be done. But the walls are strong, the stores are in, the weapons ready and the new wall guards trained… At least, as best I could in the time.”
“And we’ve all had some training with a knife or a sword,” said Glynnie. “We’re ready to fight for our house and our country.”
If only servants could be trained to fight battle-hardened warriors that easily. If he survived the coming struggle, which seemed unlikely, how many more dead faces would he have to endure? And would Glynnie’s be among them? If only things could go back to the way they were… but that offered no comfort, either. House Ricinus’s wealthy, privileged life had been built on the murder of innocents and the near slavery of its servants and serfs.
“Is Oosta back yet?” said Rix.
The chief healer was a law unto herself and, without telling Swelt or Rix, she had taken both her assistants to a village on the far side of the plateau two days ago, to attend a serious outbreak of buboes. They had not yet returned.
“No,” said Glynnie, “but I’ve had the healery scrubbed down and a dozen beds moved into the recovery room next door, and I’ve used her recipes to make extra balms and healing draughts. The amputation saws have been sharpened and…”
What would I do without you? Rix thought. While I agonise, you just get on with all the jobs that need doing.
His belly was aching. He’d fought in various skirmishes before, but never a proper battle. War was a terrible business and, as Jadgery had shown, the most carefully laid plans could end in disaster. What if this great fortress fell, and all its people were put to the sword, solely because of his failures?
He turned his great-aunt’s field glasses towards the track that wound up the escarpment. Only glimpses could be seen from here, but anyone reaching the top of the track was immediately visible.
“How long until they come?” said Glynnie, beside him.
“No idea. Why did I make that foolish raid on Jadgery?”