The Book of Earth (11 page)

The thin dogs sleeping in the lee of the wood yard raised their heads with interest as she approached, but Erde spoke to them in the language of hands and put their minds at rest. She unpacked her cloak and wrapped it shawllike about her head and shoulders, as she’d seen the prentice boys do, then struck out boldly across the cobbled rear court toward the inner gate.

The guards there were throwing dice and arguing. A mere passing prentice was hardly worth their notice when a month’s salary hung on the toss. Erde descended into the mud and ruts of the armory yard, head bent, her walk purposeful. Escape was beginning to seem ridiculously easy, when she rounded the corner of the forge and came face-to-face with the chicken-crone, hauling her basket of corn
to the bird pen. The ragged ancient peered at her and waved her irritably out of the path. Erde drew her cloak closer and stepped aside to pass. Suddenly the crone snatched at the cloak, spilling corn into the icy mud and raising a piercing squawk as if wolves were in the hen coop.

“Witch! Witch! Witch!” Her mad shriek echoed off the armory walls like a call to battle.

Erde jerked herself free and ran, doubling back toward the stables. She still had a few moments of grace before anyone thought to take the cries of the chicken-crone seriously. She let herself into the long wooden shed nestled against the middle ring wall. Most times, she knew, the horse gate leading from the stables into the outer ring was left unguarded, the animals themselves being touchy enough to give alarm. But the great shadowy forms flared their velvet nostrils and let Erde pass. She found her own horse Micha, bade him farewell, and hurried on.

Now there were the beginnings of commotion in the inner yard, and one gate left to pass, the massive Dragon Gate with its iron portcullis that was lowered every day at dusk. The wheel crank that raised it was inside the guardhouse, windowless but for an arrow slit that looked out on the gate. Its low entrance was barred by a door of rough planks. Erde put her eye to a crack.

Three men on duty: two fast asleep, the third huddled by the smoking firepit, drinking and staring into the coals. Erde knew this one—Georg, a lank and flat-faced fellow who was often on duty when she took an early walk. He’d stall the morning raising of the portcullis in order to hold her in conversation, going on about the long night and his sad lot and the abuses of his superiors. He smiled at Erde a lot, though this did not tell her whether he was her friend.

Back in the inner court, the dogs were barking. Soon the search would be on. Erde had no choice but to try and bluff it out. She gathered the cloak around her head, leaving as much of her boy’s clothing showing as seemed reasonable, then rapped manfully on the planks and stood back waiting by the gate.

Inside, Georg fumbled about, rose, and looked out the door. Erde gestured to him casually to open up. He nodded grumpily and turned back inside. The crank rope groaned as the gate inched up. Past the folds of her hood, Erde
could see George squinting at her through the arrow slit. A foot off the ground, the iron grille stopped.

“Hey, boy, where you headed in this devil’s weather?”

Erde was unsure whether it was better or worse that she could not answer him. She waved.

He left the crank and came out toward her. “You might have a civil reply for your elder!”

Erde shrugged, trying to look shy, even when he reached and grabbed a fold of her cloak. He frowned, rubbing the soft fabric between his fingers. “Who’d you steal this from, eh?” He snatched her hood back, stared a moment, then recognition came. “Well, well. If it ain’t the captain’s high-born whore. You don’t look so good without your hair.”

He might as well have slapped her. Erde blinked back tears and set her jaw. She inclined her head proudly at the gate.

Georg snorted. “You want out, your little ladyship? Little late for a walk isn’t it? What is it, a lovers’ tryst? The captain ain’t dead half a day and you’re lifting your skirts for another? Got used to getting a little, did you? My, I like a girl with spirit.”

Erde scowled at him indignantly and put her finger to her lips.

“Ssh, ssh, I know, don’t wake the castle!” He grinned, then seemed to get an idea, and moved closer. “Tell you what, missy. I’m happy to accommodate you if you do the same for me.”

Erde made the mistake of letting hope show in her eyes.

“Oh, that priest may say you’re hell-bait, but I ain’t afraid. I’ve always thought it’d be just fine to have a hot little witch-girl to snuggle up into when I come home. What d’ya say? You just give me some of what you gave the captain, and I’ll let you go wherever you want.” Georg folded his arms and smiled. “What d’ya say? It’s cold out here, so cold, and I got a joint needs warming.”

Erde finally understood. She shrank back instinctively and tried to bolt. Georg lunged and pinned her against the iron gate. His heavy wine-breath reminded Erde sickeningly of her father. The alarm raised in the inner yard had moved on to the stables. Horses neighed and stomped, and guardsmen shouted orders. But Georg was too intent on pressing his hips into her and working his hands through
the layers of her clothing. Erde had no voice to reason with him. She tried to shove him away.

“Oh, like it rough, do you?” He grunted nastily, sucking at her neck and tearing at her breeches. “Is this how the captain gave it to you? Did he give it to you hard?”

As his fingers groped for parts of her body that no man had ever touched, Erde knew another game had turned deadly serious. She hadn’t a chance of fighting him off. His weight pushing at her outlined the chill of Rainer’s sword against her back, and the shape of Alla’s dagger against her side. The reminder of Alla and what Alla had done to save her calmed Erde and told her what to do.

She forced herself to relax against Georg’s body, to let his rough hands find her skin and thrust themselves impatiently between her legs. While he sighed and groaned and fumbled to loose his own ties, she eased the dagger out of its sheath, slid her arms up as if to embrace him, and rammed the slim blade into him as hard as she could.

She felt the blood spurt, hot and reeking, and was glad it was too dark to see his face as he reeled back from her, clutching his neck, his thick hose sagging around his naked thighs. She held tight to the dagger until his spasms jerked it free, then shrugged her own clothes up around her and dropped to the ground to wedge herself into the cold mud until she could roll through the narrow space beneath the gate.

Free of the mud and iron spikes, she stood shaking, fighting nausea but determined not to give up an ounce of precious nourishment. She could not flee to the villages now. She had just murdered one of their own.

The wind tore up the mountain to stiffen her sodden clothing and hurl razor-edged sleet in her face. But to Erde, stumbling up the rocky path toward the uncertain shelter of the forest, it seemed only fitting that her body should be as numb as her heart.

S
he ran until she was well out of the dim light cast by the gateway lanterns, ran until she could blend with the trees. Her feet found their way by memory. She knew every pothole and rock ledge between the castle walls and the forest. But the mud was deep and treacherous, and the windblown sleet like a barrage of tiny needles. Her boots were full of icy water by the time she reached the first dark firs.

She halted there, gasping more from fear than lack of breath, and resettled her pack to ride her back more securely. A disorderly pursuit was forming in the stable yard. She heard men shouting and dogs barking, eager for the chase. The horses neighed and stomped, fearful of the wind and the dark. She had to think; she had to decide, and she had to do it quickly. Tor Alte’s half-dozen dependent villages were scattered among the alpine meadows a little way down the mountain. The biggest had its own parish church, and briefly she considered seeking sanctuary there. But she feared the long reach of Fra Guill. To take refuge in a church would be like walking right into his arms. She could not risk the villages now.

Then where could she go? She had food and warm clothing, but she was wet through with rain and the guardsman’s blood. Her feet were already numb. Without shelter, she would freeze before morning. Time enough to worry about the long term when she’d found a place where she could light a fire without being discovered. Rainer’s sword was a weight on her back but a goad as well, and Erde would not abandon it on the mountainside the way his poor body had been.

The baying and shouting in the castle yard grew louder and more organized. Numb as she was, Erde felt panic stir beneath her skin, like a torrent swirling below a fragile layer of ice. Only Alla’s instructions, murmured over and over in a soothing litany, kept her from bolting headlong into the night probably to brain herself on a low-hanging branch or fall off the nearest cliff. She guessed the riders would go first to the villages, so she headed upward into the trees, away from the path, away from the settled valleys, toward the caves above the tree line. Winter bears sometimes went to ground there but right then, she’d rather negotiate with a sleepy bear than with her father or Fra Guill.

She recalled a cave she’d found with Rainer when they were children. Or perhaps the baroness had showed it to them, on one of the long hikes she’d favored in their company. It lay deep in a barren jumble of rock. Its narrow crack of an entrance seemed to lead nowhere, but actually it camouflaged a descent into a system of tunnels and caverns that burrowed much deeper into the mountain rock than they’d had the courage to explore. Erde struck out bravely in that direction. When the sounds of pursuit passed below her on the road and receded downward, she slowed a bit and began gathering bits of deadwood as she climbed, as much as she had strength to carry, bundling it under her sodden cloak in the hope it would be dry enough to burn by the time she reached her hiding place.

It was near dawn when she got there, the thin gray light coming as sullen and cold as a morning in mid-December. It was oddly still, as if even the weather disdained this bare, unlovely height. The wind had died, and snow as fine as frost dusted the air. The cave was there as she remembered it, a jagged fissure like a sideways smile in a wind-smoothed rock that turned its back on Tor Alte and faced east.
Toward the Russias
, Erde thought,
the home poor Alla will never see again.
Suddenly her exhaustion seemed a weight too great to bear. She staggered through the slitted cave mouth and leaned against the rock wall to catch her breath. So easy to drop the load of wood that cramped her arms and bent her back, so easy to collapse right there in the entrance, cold and wet and shivering, where any pursuer could find her. But while Rainer’s sword lay cool and rigid
along her spine, she could not even sit. Moving like a sleep-walker, she dug out one of Alla’s candles, then crept farther into the cave to take a look around.

She passed through shallow chambers musty with old leaves and animal dung. She listened for the whisper of bats. Her small candle wavered fitfully, but without it throwing shadows all about, she would not have found the second narrow cleft hidden by an edge of rock. Pitch-black, with a cool stony draft that stirred her short-cropped hair and raised goose bumps on her skin. Her candle flickered, and she put up a hand to shield it. Her only refuge lay in that unexplored dark. Erde eased through the crack.

The tunnel led downward, sharply at first and slippery with rubble. Erde followed it haltingly, hand to the rough wall, and felt rather than saw it level out, just before the wall beside her ended and the flickering circle of her candle flame vanished into darkness. She knew she had come into some sort of cavern. The long dying echo of her step told her the cavern was enormous. Raising the candle like a beacon as high as she could did not reveal a ceiling. But it tossed long shadows across treelike pillars of rock that reminded her of the great-hall of Tor Alte. Ahead in the darkness, something glimmered, like the flash of light off a living eye. Erde froze, then let herself breathe again. A still pool spread over the cavern floor. She had spied the reflection of her candle dancing across the dark water like a sprite. She would have stumbled right into its depths, had she not stopped short, fearing the approach of some one-eyed cave demon. When her heart ceased racing, she bent to touch the glassy surface. The water was numbingly cold and tasted earthy, like the fresh dirt of her grandmother’s grave. But she palmed it up eagerly, then walked around its shore and lit her fire in a dry high-vaulted side-chamber, where a tiny shard of gray daylight showed far above when she extinguished her candle.