Mala said things expressing agreement, trying to sound encouraging. Closing her eyes, she hoped devoutly that it would be so. She told herself that when Jord healed he'd be a young man again, and he'd regain some part of his old strength. Being wed to a onearmed man would not be so bad if he were still a man of property… and now two small children, widower Jord's by his previous marriage, came out of the crowd to lean possessively against their father's legs, and distract Mala from her other cares by staring at her.
The hands of the small boy, Kenn, began to play absently with the rough cloth wrapping a long, thin object that stood leaning against his father's chair. Mala, without really giving it thought, had assumed this object was some kind of aid provided for the crippled man, a crutch or possibly a stretcher. Now that she really looked at the bundle she could see that it was certainly not long enough for either. Nor was there any obvious reason for a crutch or a stretcher to be wrapped up; nor, for that matter, did it appear that Jord would be likely to benefit from either one.
Jord saw what she was looking at. "My pay," he said. Gently he eased his son's small hands from the wrapped thing. "Not yours yet, Kenn. In time, in time. Not yours to have to worry about, Marian." And with a huge finger he brushed his tiny daughter's cheek. Then he grabbed the upper end of the bundle firmly in his large fist, and raised it in the air and shook it, so that the rough wrappings fell free except where his grip had caught them. People on all sides were turning to look. The blade was a full meter long, and straight as an arrow, with lightly fluted sides. Both edges keened down to perfect lines, invisibly sharp.
"What? Who?… " Mala could only stumble helplessly.
"Vulcan's own handiwork." Jord's voice was rough and bitter. "This is for me, and for my son after me. This is my pay."
Mala marveled silently. In the version of the story that she had heard in her own village, an obviously incomplete version, there had been nothing about a sword… Jord's pay? Even in the comparatively dim candlelight the steel had a polished look. Mala's keen eyes could pick out a fine, faint mottled patterning along the flat of the blade, a pattern that seemed to lead deep into the metal though the surface was flawlessly smooth.
The chain of dancers had slowed almost to a stop. Their faces wore a variety of expressions, but all were turned, like many in the crowd beyond, to look at the blade.
"My pay," said Jord again, in the same harsh voice, that carried through the sudden relative quiet. "So Vulcan told me, when he had taken off my arm." He shook the sword in his inexpert hand. "My arm, for this. So the god said. He called this 'Townsaver."' The bitterness in Jord's voice was great, but still impersonal, the kind of anger a man might express against a thunderstorm that had destroyed his crops. His hand was beginning to quiver with his weakness now, and he lowered the sword and started trying to wrap it up again, a job in which he needed Mala's help.
"I must get something finer than this cloth to keep it in," he muttered.
Mala still didn't know what to say or think. The sword bewildered her, she couldn't guess what it might mean. Jord's pay, from Vulcan? Pay for what? Why should the god have wanted a man's right arm? And why a sword? What would a blacksmith, or any commoner, have to do with such a weapon?
She would have to discuss it all with Jord later, in detail. Now was not the time or place. Now the dance and the noise around them had picked up again, though at a lesser level of energy.
"Mala?" Jord's voice held a new and different note.
"Yes?"
"The dance will be ending soon. I must stay here, they're going to do some more healing spells and ritual. But maybe you'd better be going along now." Jord was lying back weakly in his chair, letting his eyes close.
Mala understood. When a wake-dance like this one ended, there usually followed a final phase of the evening's community action: those mourners who were free to do so would pair off, man with woman, youth with girl, and go out into the fertile fields around the house or village, there to lie coupled in the soil from which the harvests came. Death would be, if not mocked, in some sense negated by that other power, just as old, of life-creation. Mala was still an unmarried woman, still free, in a strict interpretation of the rules, to join in the night's last ritual. But as her wedding was only two days off, it would be unseemly for her to do so with anyone but her betrothed. And Jord was still oozing blood, barely able to sit up in his chair.
She said: "Yes, I'll be going. Tomorrow, Jord, I'll see you then." Now she would have a long ride back to her own village, or else she would have to try to find some place in this village to stay the night. She didn't feel confident about Jord's kinfolk here, how well they liked her, how welcome she'd be made to feel in their houses. Perhaps, except for the two small children, they didn't even know yet that she'd arrived. In accordance with custom, the marriage had been arranged by family elders on both sides, and there had been no long acquaintance between families.
Mala had liked Jord himself well enough from their first meeting. She had raised no objection when the match was made, and had no real objection to going on with it now; in fact his maiming had roused in her a fiercely increased attachment. But at the same time…
The center of the hall, with its burden of dead and wounded, seemed to her to stink of death and suffering and defeat. Mala gripped Jord once more, by his hand and his good shoulder, and turned away from him. Other people who like Mala were unable or unwilling to stay were also leaving now. She went out through the hide-hung doorway with a small group of these. The group thinned rapidly, and somehow by the time she reached the hitching rack she was alone in the dark street. She took hold of her beast's reins to untie them.
"It is not over," said the calm, soft voice of the masked man, quite near at hand.
Mala turned slowly. There were only the massed stars to see him by, with the moon behind a cloud. He was alone, too, holding one hand outstretched to Mala if she wished to take it. Around them other couples passed in the dark street, moving anonymously out toward the fields.
Almost nine months had passed before Mala saw the dark leather mask and its wearer again, and then only among the other images of a drugged dream. She was traveling with her husband Jord to another funeral (this for a man who'd undoubtedly been her most eminent kinsman, a minor priest in the Blue Temple), and she'd got as far as a large Temple of Ardneh, almost two hundred kilometers from the mill and home, before the first unmistakable labor pains had started.
This being her firstborn, Mala hadn't been able to interpret the advance signs properly. Still, she could hardly have arranged to be in a better location no matter how carefully she'd planned. The Temples of Ardneh were in general the best hospitals available on the entire continent — for most folk they were actually the only ones. Many of Ardneh's priests and priestesses were concerned with healing, accustomed to dealing with childbirth and its complications. They knew drugs, and some healing magic, and in some cases they even had access to certain surviving technology of the Old World, enough of it to make possible the arcane art of effective surgery.
It was near sunset when Mala's labor began in earnest. And at sunset music began to be heard in that Temple, music that as it happened was not greatly different from what had been played at that village funeral eight and a half months earlier. It may have been the similar drumbeat that helped to bring that masked face back in dreams. The drumbeat, and of course Mala's fervent but so far utterly secret suspicion that the father of her firstborn was not Jord but rather that man whose face she'd never seen without its mask. Over the past few months she'd tried to find out what she could about Duke Fraktin, but apart from confirming his reputation for occasional cruelty, for occasional excursions among the common people in disguise, for wealth, and for magical power, she knew very little more now than she had before.