I went up to Dev when he had stopped talking. He looked grim. He and Ross'd been working together for years. They were nearly friends.
He'd just told the others that we would wait for them to come out, for he knew Old Man Merc would send a party at some point. I knew I'd sound like a coward, but like I said, all of a sudden I didn't give a fart for what anyone thought.
"Dev," I says, walkin' straight up to him, "you're right."
"About what, Cal?" he said. He sounded awful tired.
"About me bein' slow. I fired two knives at that feller and
neither one came close. And I was scared out my mind, and I ain't going back."
Dev just looked at me, then he did the damnedest thing— he smiled at me. He stood up and put bis hands on my shoulders and smiled. "Well, bless the Crooked One who looks on all thieves, there's somethin' good come out o' this. Cal-lum's off to find a girl, lads, and live a real life."
And as I looked around the fire they all looked as pleased as they were able that I was leaving. Not much good for my pride, that, but in the time since I've come to think maybe they felt like my living would mean something to their dying, and they feared that would come all too soon. Hask even said, "Kiss her for me, lad, whoever you find." I got up on my horse, and Dev give me a little money to get me to somewhere I could find work. I bade 'em all farewell that very moment, but never a soul among 'em said a single word to wish me on my way.
I've never killed a man, before that night or since, and I've never passed a butcher's stall in a market without hearing that knife cut Jaker's life from him. Old Man Merc was right. I wasn't never meant for that life.
V Endings and Beginnings
"Lady Rella!" I said, astounded as I recognised her voice. "What wind bloweth thee to this place, in this very moment of our need?"
"Later, Varien. You couldn't take one of their daggers and help me, could you? I'm trying to get the rest of these ropes off young Lanen and my fingers are damn near frozen."
By the time I had found a dagger, Rella had freed Lanen. My dearling was desperate to get back to the stead, for the sounds and the smells that came to us across the fields were terrible. We would have ran at mat moment, but Rella caught me by the shoulder. "A moment, master Varien," she said. "How's your arm? I thought I saw that big bastard hit you."
Her words recalled me to my hurt. "So he did," I replied. Now that my life was not threatened and I could think of it, the wound was indeed painful. "What must I do, Lady?"
"Wait here," said Rella. She ran off but was back in a moment with a dark lantern. She opened the panel and shone the light on my left sleeve, stained dark and damp. "In the
heat of anger I paid it no heed," I said. "What is to be done? I cannot flame it clean."
"Just hold still," said Rella. I was beginning to understand that tone of voice. It indicated forbearance under great strain.
She drew a long strip of cloth from her scrip, and a small pot. Lanen gently pulled back the sleeve of my tunic to reveal a deep cut that still bled. She held my arm still while Rella put a strange paste from the small pot onto the wound, which made it hurt worse than it had before; then she wrapped the strip of cloth around my arm to cover the cut. "Leave that there for at least two days," she said. "It looks clean enough, it should heal well."
"I thank you, Lady," I said, bowing to her in the strange human fashion. It still felt stilted and somehow wrong, but with practice I was becoming better at it.
"Thank me later. Lanen is going to kill us if we don't get back to the stables," said Rella.
"This instant," said Lanen.
We stumbled into a jog-trot as we hurried back. It took us only a few moments to come level with the paddock. As we drew closer I could hear the horses running out their fear, and there was a steady stream now of people—some leading out terrified horses from the other barns, some carrying blankets, some bringing warm water and hot mash, come to bring what comfort they could to the creatures out in the cold. I stopped someone—for the life of me I can't remember who—and told them to start moving the yearlings and the pregnant mares into the summer barn up the hill, it was drafty but it was shelter. They told me Jamie had already told them to do so and when I looked closer I saw a slow line of half-panicked horses being led farther away from the fire, the noise and the smell of the burning.
As we drew nearer to the stead the noise grew louder and the smoke grew thicker, and the smell—dear Goddess, the smell of burnt hair and flesh and hide, it was everywhere, thick and sickening, catching in the throat. My stomach roiled with it but I did not stop, in case there was anything I could yet do. Then above other sounds came what I thought for a moment were the shrill screams of a last dying horse trapped inside the stable. I started shaking, but Varien held me up and told me, "It is the wood, dearling. Believe me, it is the wood." He was right, the sound changed a little and I recognised it as the gigantic version of those strange high-pitched sounds that you sometimes get from a log on a fire. The thick beam of the rooftree cracked as we arrived and I could feel the sound in the soles of my feet. The timber made a terrible racket as it burned, sometimes high-pitched, sometimes low as a ramble of thunder, as if the wood itself were in agony.
I was in the lead when we entered the ordered confusion of the courtyard. It turned out later that my cousin Walther had run a ladder up to the roof of the tack room—the room nearest the fire—and had thrown off the roof tiles, cut a gap in the beams with an axe and thrown water on whatever he could see. He got himself pretty badly burned and the roof had collapsed at that end of the stable, but it was he who had stopped the fire from spreading to the other buildings round about. His lady Alisonde was tending his arms now as he stood in the courtyard shouting orders. The rest of the horses had been taken out and away, and the few of us who were left did what we could, but there was only so much to do. The surviving horses were as well taken care of as we could manage until morning, and the house was safe. We threw buckets and buckets of water on the nearby buildings and doused the sparks that flew in the blessedly light wind, but in the end we could only let the fire burn itself out. Mercifully the trapped horses had died long since, but no one even tried to sleep. Every soul from the stead stood there in the cold, watching until the last of the flames faded just before morning light. The blackened beams glowed demon red from within, and the hot stones cracked loudly as they cooled.
When the walls had grown cool enough and the last of the embers was put out, and we could bear to go inside the ruin of the stable, we found that we had lost eleven of the twenty-four horses. Yet again I felt bile flood the back of my throat at the sight and the smell, that acrid, hideous smelclass="underline" it hung in the air and clung to my clothes and my boots and the back of my throat, so that I feared I would never be rid of it. By that time, though, we were all so exhausted by sorrow and anger that it felt somehow as if it was happening to someone else, and even the sickness that threatened could not overwhelm.
Jamie was only a little better than me. I had seldom seen him so grim, but when he spoke he surprised me. "It could have been much worse, my girl," he said, standing in the ruin of the ashes, staring at nothing. "I've been through a stable fire before, many years ago, when I lived in the East," he said, and I knew the rough edge to his voice had nothing to do with weariness. "We lost a lot more than half of them that time. Damned if I know what it was, but just before the fire took over at the last, I'd swear that something drew a lot of them out of that barn last night."
Varien said quietly, "Let us be grateful for that mercy, at the least." I wanted to tell Jamie what Varien had done, but I knew my dear one was right to keep silent. How should he claim to have helped with truespeech when there was no proof to any but the two of us?