Ota Qwan’s new wife was the daughter of the paramount matron, Blue Knife. Her husband was a quiet man – a gifted hunter and a deep thinker, but without apparent interest in the politics of the people.
The girl’s name was Amij’ha. She was very young – just exactly old enough to run through the corn, as the Sossag said. But she laughed well, she was prepared to ridicule her new husband like a proper wife, and she came of strong stock. She was well liked, and her marriage to Ota Qwan marked him for further advancement. And he surprised everyone by hunting deer, trapping, and even working beside his new wife in the fields. Their cabin was covered in drying hides, and when they had been home for a month from the war, he proposed to lead men to find honey – the great ponds of Wild honey that moved every year in the west, but could always be found by a party bold enough to look. When he made the proposition in front of the matrons who ruled the people in times of peace, his mother-in-law saw to it that he sounded appropriately humble, his wife supported him, and the matrons gave him the lead.
Peter had time to replace his breech clout and make tea in a fine copper kettle – almost his only loot from the summer campaign. He was still thinking how enjoyable his life was, and how much better than the fate he had expected when he was taken as a slave – when Ota Qwan’s shadow darkened his door.
‘Hello, the house!’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Hey, brother. May I come in?’
Peter threw back the deer hide and propped it open. ‘My wife says it lets flies in,’ he said. ‘I feel it lets them out.’
Ota Qwan gave him a quick embrace. ‘I suspect the Queen of Alba makes the same argument, and the King leaves the windows open anyway,’ he said, throwing himself on a bundle of furs. ‘You’ve been busy.’
‘I’m happy, and I want to keep it that way,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have a boy.’
Ota Qwan leaped to his feet and threw his arms around Peter. ‘Ah! Well done. Hence all the hunting.’
Peter shrugged. ‘I hear winter is nothing to laugh at,’ he said.
Ota Qwan was briefly sobered. ‘That’s no lie, brother.’ He made a face. ‘I mean to make a run west for some honey.’
Peter laughed. ‘Since I have a wife,’ he said, ‘I know all about it. And you know I’ll go. Not sure I was offered a choice.’
‘Honey trades well when the foreign geese come up the Great River – or even if we just trade it over the Wall.’ Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘But we get a better price from the geese.’
The wild geese, as the Sossag called them, were the great round ships from Etrusca that came into the river most years, in late fall, to trade. Sometimes there were only a few, and sometimes great fleets of them. They stayed to the east for the most part, but for the last decade, so the matrons had noted, the geese had come further and further up the Great River every year.
‘And beaver,’ Peter said. ‘I have more than thirty pelts.’
Ota Qwan made a motion that suggested that he thought beaver to be too much work. ‘If we’re quick, we can harvest as much as we can carry,’ he said. ‘I did it last year.’
‘And lost a warrior,’ Peter said.
Ota Qwan’s face darkened, but he and his brother had long since established their borders. Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘Yes.’ He looked at the ground. ‘In fact, it was my fault.’
Peter knew more about it than he wanted to know, so he remained silent. Wives talked. Husbands heard. Finally, he said, ‘I’ll be with you, anyway. You know that.’
Ota Qwan stood. ‘I’d take it as a favour if you’d say so at the fire,’ he said.
Peter nodded. ‘When do we leave?’ he asked.
Ota Qwan looked at the smoke from the hearth. ‘Water’s boiling,’ he said. ‘Two days, if I can get ten men to go.’
Peter slapped him on the shoulder, stooped for the pot, and made tea.
Harfleur and the Sea of Morea – Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus, the Black Knight
The three round ships towered over the quay, like towers over a castle wall.
The Black Knight towered over his fellows on the quay in direct proportion. He was a head taller than any Galle around him; his arm-harnesses had the circumference of a lady’s waist. He was fully armed and armoured, despite being in a merchant port in the very best-protected roadstead in Galle.
He was watching his warhorse swayed by a crane driven by fifty criminals as it carried the drooping equine up, up, up the ship’s side. But the dockmen knew their business, and, despite his curses, they got his horse aboard, and those of all his knights – twenty great horses, and ten more besides as spares.
At his side, Oliver de Marche looked up from a tablet. ‘. . . crossbows, mostly. They sell well among the Huran, or so the Etruscans tell me.’ He shrugged. ‘They’ve never dropped a horse, my lord.’
Ser Hartmut turned to Etienne de Vrieux, his squire. He raised an eyebrow.
De Vrieux bowed to the merchant captain. ‘I must remind you that Ser Hartmut does not speak with members of the third estate.’
De Marche cleared his throat. ‘But – That is – he asked me what we were carrying!’
De Vrieux shook his head slightly. ‘No, Master Captain, if I may beg to differ, he asked the air a rhetorical question. If you would care to inform me just what you have in lading, I will pass that information on to my knight, if it proves to interest him. Otherwise, it will best become you not to address him directly.’
‘And if we enter battle?’ de Marche asked the squire. ‘Does your Lord know I was knighted by the Lord Admiral himself?’
Ser Hartmut’s eyes never left his horse. ‘Battle ennobles,’ he said. ‘If we enter battle as companions, tell the man I will have no hesitation in speaking to him, nor even in listening to what he might have to say.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not know the Lord Admiral.’ His eyes passed over his squire and locked on the merchant captain. ‘Tell him that his unseemly staring will eventually anger me.’
In truth, the Black Knight was one of the handsomest men Oliver de Marche had ever seen. He stood a head taller than any other man on the dock, with blue-black hair and smooth, unscarred olive skin like the southerner that he was. His moustaches shone as if oiled. Perhaps they were, de Marche thought to himself. And his eyes were blue. De Marche had never seen a man with blue eyes and such dark skin.
They were also a very unlikely shade of blue – a dark blue, like lapis. Damn me, I’m staring at him again.
Maistre de Marche bowed to the squire. ‘Please tell monsieur your master that his wishes will be complied with. And please assure him that these men have never dropped a horse.’
Ser Hartmut’s eyes met his, just for a moment. ‘Best they not start with mine, then,’ said the giant. Rather than madness or arrogance, the dark eyes held amusement. ‘And ask our captain, Etienne, while we have his attention – how well armed are your sailors?’
‘I won’t ship a man who can’t fight,’ de Marche said, waving the squire aside. ‘The Etruscans are growing more outrageous every year. They won’t want us in the Great Huran River, either.’ He paused and bowed, again, to the squire. ‘That is, please tell your master that my men are all armed with a coat of mail and most have a breastplate of the new steel; everyone has a steel cap, a sword, and a pair of spears.’
Ser Hartmut managed a thick-lipped smile. ‘With three round ships and all my men-at-arms,’ Ser Hartmut said, with a slow smile, ‘I will endeavour to give these Etruscans an ill jest.’ He nodded. ‘We shall have some good adventures, Etienne.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Etienne de Vrieux replied, somewhat woodenly.
The Long Lakes – Squash Country – Nita Qwan
They left in the darkness, with dawn just a murmur of orange in the east. Each man had a pair of pails made of birch bark with spruce-root handles. They weighed almost nothing, and men tied them to their spears, put bows over their shoulders, quivers on their backs, five handfuls of pemmican in their pouches, tobacco for smoking while complaining about their wives, and one blanket per man. There were women who usually ran with the warriors, but not this time.