Fool’s Quest

“She started screaming before I even touched her. She fought so hard when I tried to strip her. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have . . . I did nothing to her that a woman is not meant to have done to her. Nothing that would have killed her! But she screamed and screamed . . . And someone brought Vindeliar to have a turn . . . I think. I don’t know. Something happened. Oh. A woman, older and fleshy, and we were going to have her. But then . . . And everyone went mad. We chased them and hunted them, and the blood . . . and then we turned on one another. Sword-brothers. We’d eaten together, fought side by side for the last four years. But that one that she brought with her, the one who could make the villagers not see us? He turned on us and made us forget our brotherhood. All I could remember were the slights, the times they had cheated me at dice or taken a woman I wanted or eaten more than their share of the best food. I wanted to kill every one of them. I did kill two. Two of my fellow warriors. Two I had taken my oaths with. One slashed my leg before I killed him. Chriddick. He did that. I’d known him for five years. But I fought him and killed him.”

The words were pouring out now, heedless of the pain it cost him. I did not interrupt. Where in that mad night had my little girl been? Where were Bee and Shine? Somewhere beyond the camp, fallen bloody in the snow? Captured and dragged off by the fleeing mercenaries?

“The ones who hired us, the pale ones, the white ones? They did not do this to us. They could never have fought us. They were weak, stupid with weapons, with little stamina for the march or the cold. Always, they begged us to go slower, to rest more, to find more food for them. And we did. Why? Why were warriors commanded by sniveling women and sapling men? Because of a dirty magic they put upon us. They made us less than warriors. They shamed us. And then they turned us upon each other.” He gave a noise between a sob and a cry. “They took our honor!”

Did he hope to win sympathy from me? He was pathetic, but not in a way that roused any pity in me. “I care nothing for your lost honor. You took a woman and a child. What became of them?”

He balked again. My knife moved, slicing his nose. Noses bleed a lot. He flung himself back from my knife and lifted his hands defensively. I slashed both of them and he shrieked.

“Bastard! You cowardly bastard! You’ve no sense of a warrior’s honor! You know I cannot do battle with you or you would not dare treat me so.”

I did not laugh. I set my knife to the base of his throat. I pushed and he lay back on the snow. Words came out of my mouth. “Did the women of my holding know your warrior’s honor when you were raping them? Did my little kitchenmaid think you honorable as she staggered away from your friend Pandow? When you cut the throats of my unarmed stablemen, was that honor?”

He tried to pull back from the tip of my knife but I let it follow him. With his lamed leg he could no more flee than my little kitchen girl had. He lifted his bloody hands. I dropped my knee on his injured leg. He gasped at the pain and found blurred words. “They were not warriors! They had no honor as warriors. All know women can possess no honor. They are weak! Their lives have no meaning save what men give to them. And the others, those men, they were servants, slaves. Not warriors. She was not even right as a woman! So ugly and not even right as a woman!”

He screamed as my blade bit deeper, opening a gash in his neck. Careful. Not yet.

“Strange,” I said quietly when he ran out of wind. I moved my knife up to his face. He lifted his hands. I shook my head. “My women gave this meaning to my life: I hurt those who hurt mine. Without regard for their imaginary honor. Warriors who rape and kill the helpless have no honor. They possess no honor when they hurt children. If it were not for my women, the women of my household, and my serving men, I would think it dishonorable for me to do this to you. Tell me. How long did it take you to rape one of the women of my household? As long as my knife has been playing with your face?”

He bucked away from me, cutting his own face as he did so. I stood over him and picked up Verity’s sword. He was squeezed dry of all information. Time to end it. He looked at me and knew it.

“That night, that night they all ran away. Kerf might know. He fancied the woman in the red dress, mooned about her like a baby that wants his mother. We mocked him. He watched her all the time. Sneaking around in the bushes to watch her pee.”

“Kerf.” One tiny bit of information. “The magic-boy and the woman who commanded him. What became of them?”

“I don’t know. It was all madness and fighting and blood. Maybe they were killed. Maybe they ran away.” He gave a sudden sob. “I’m going to die here in the Six Duchies! And I don’t even remember why I came here!”

Two things happened simultaneously. I heard a horse whinny and the picketed animals answered it. And the crow screamed, “’Ware your back!”