Blood of War (41 page)

Throughout his telling, he kept a sharp eye on Jurel. Apparently, what he saw made him happy. But frankly, though the story did dismay Jurel, it was something else that had his eyes popping from their sockets. Standing in the door, silver platter in hand, eyes as wide as his and as blue as he remembered, her hair flowing lush and full like fine-spun gold, wearing an apron and a dress of blue and red that was too tight, stood Erin.

Something inside, something dormant, stirred, uncoiled restlessly in the back of his thoughts and down to the pit of his guts. As he sat, too flummoxed to do more than stare, time seemed to reverse itself, to unravel the past year in a blur before his eyes faster and faster, through terror and boredom, rage and uncompromised bliss until it seemed he was standing in a farm's living quarters while fiddle music played, while good folk danced and laughed and dined. It seemed he was standing there, gazing into the sky blue eyes of this woman as she reached up. As he smelled her sweet scent and felt her soft tautness under his hands. As her lips brushed his...

It was she who broke the spell. She broke the contact, jerkily setting down her platter with a clatter on the long table, in front of Valik. Then she bustled from the room with not a sound.

Valik eyed Jurel, smiling a mysterious smile. He picked up a little bell that sat on the table beside him and shook a tinkling ring from it. Soon, the young man from the door reached his side and bent low as Valik whispered into his ear. Then he was gone.

“I suppose you were hoping to get a look at her, eh?” Valik gloated. His voice seemed to come from a long way off, down a tunnel, though his eyes were clear enough, sharp and calculating. “Well, she's the head maid now that old Marta's been sent out to pasture. She got too old did our dear old Marta. Couldn't pull her weight anymore. I had to send her on her way. A shame really. She made the best honey pies.”

He continued to ramble, continued to detail the suffering on the farm caused by his ruthlessness and his depravities—though he would see them only as the good works of a landowner—and Jurel stopped listening. Instead he turned inward, trying to follow that which had awakened in him, like following fox tracks through a dense undergrowth of briars and brambles.

He heard not one word that Valik said which was just as well. As a matter of fact, he saw and heard nothing until the dining room door opened again and, covered head to toe with smears of black soot, Darren stepped in.

“Ah Darren,” Valik said. “Pleased you could make it. Come in, come in. We have much catching up to do, we old friends.”

Darren stared at Jurel, trembling. Valik smiled. Jurel suppressed the urge to knock Valik's teeth out.

Chapter 34

He sat on the shore of his pond, staring at the water that rolled gently, that lapped quietly at the reeds and the rocks, and he mulled over all that had happened that morning, all that had been said. As he sat picking at a reed, peeling hair-like strands of green from the fleshy stalk, he tried to keep himself bottled up. No easy thing. There had been a lot of news. Some of it had had the same effect on him as a horse's kick.

The afternoon sun seemed dark to him though it was only just past its zenith; it was a white-hot ball that beat mercilessly at his shoulders. The air was heavy, oppressive, without any discernible movement so that the world was a great furnace. It seemed that, though the season was winding down toward autumn, summer still had some fight left in it.

He did not feel it, really. So much had happened, so much had been said at breakfast, that his entire being was focused on sorting it all out. Of course Valik had enjoyed it all. He would. Things had been going badly enough but after Darren's arrival, it had all spiraled out of control. Talk had centered more or less on Erin for a while, and Jurel had been hard pressed to keep himself from murdering Valik.

“
Oh she was good for a tumble now and again but she's a maid and I'm a nobleman. I can't marry a maid! But I could certainly get her to clean my pipe if you take my meaning.”

When Valik had said that, everything in the dining room had gone so very still, like a storm's eye. Jurel had glared bloody death at the bloody oaf, his fists clenched at his sides, Darren had lowered his head, glower in his lap, Ingirt's lips had pursed and two bright spots appeared high on her cheeks. Valik, well Valik simply smiled his infuriatingly smug smile.
You like that, don't you?
If it had not been for Ingirt's intercession,
“Please don't do this. Not here,”
Jurel would have jumped across the table and torn his head off.

“Jurel?”

Lost in the tumult of thoughts, he did not hear the approaching footsteps. He jolted upright and spun to face the newcomer.

“Hello, Erin,” he finally croaked when his throat unlocked.

“I'm sorry, Jurel. I wish you didn't have to find out that way.”

“What? No! It's fine.” He plastered a great big smile on his face hoping against hope that there was some part of it that was convincing. “As a matter of fact, congratulations. You and Darren. That's great. I should have said that earlier. I was just surprised. And Valik was being...well...”

“Valik was being Valik,” Erin responded with a brittle edge.

“What are you doing here? Won't his lordship,” he imbued that with all the scorn he could muster, “be angry?”

“I don't care about him. We're leaving soon anyway. As soon as Darren earns his masters papers from his father. We're certain it will be this winter some time. As soon as the first thaw of spring comes, we'll be gone.”

“So how have you been?”

Erin's back stiffened and incongruously, her eyes lowered. When she spoke, her voice was level. As level as planed wood. “It's been difficult. I'm certain Valik mentioned what he did to me.”

“Yes. Why was nothing done? Why wasn't he arrested?”

She sniffed and her glance was scornful. “He's a nobleman. A minor one but he's still one of them. What good would it have done? Besides it wasn't so bad. I just thought of someone else while he was...while...”

Before she turned away, Jurel saw the tear leaking from her eye and she shuddered. He thought she might fall over. Wrapping his arms around her, he pressed her cheek to his chest. As a floodgate opens to let a roaring deluge free, she began to weep with great heaving sobs, and she clutched his shirt, perhaps afraid that she would be washed away.

“I'm so sorry, Erin,” he said as she wept. “I'm so sorry.”

* * *

They sat together by the pond, staring into its depths, chattering idly. He skipped little round stones while she held her knees tight to her breast and rocked ever so slightly back and forth, back and forth.

“So how's married life treating you?”

“Oh he's a good man. He tries so hard to make me happy. I wish I could be, a little more. For him. It's just...”

“I understand.” And he thought he did but he did not see the quiet glance she shot at him.

“How's your father? Have you seen him since you left?”

He remained silent. It was something he did not want to talk about. It was something he did not want to remember. Besides, no one at the farm knew anything about him, about what had happened. What could he say?

“Jurel?”

With a sigh, he shook his head. “He died. Some time ago.”

“Oh! Oh god, oh Jurel. I'm so sorry.” Her hand pressed against his back. “What happened?”

Oddly, as the memory replayed itself in his mind,

the sergeant barked a command and without hesitation a soldier drew his sword and plunged it into Daved's chest. The tip tore through his back and up, glistening wetly in the light and Daved gasped in surprise

he felt very little. Not that he felt nothing. No, certainly not. It was like the sting of fingers numbed by cold. It bit deep but it was far away, almost ignorable.

But the question was out there. How would he answer? How
could
he answer?

“He was injured.”

It was an inadequate answer and he knew it. He hoped she would understand.

“What happened to you?”

There it was. There was the question that, above all, he really did not want to answer. There was the real reason he had tried to avoid seeing anyone during his visit. There was the reason he escaped to here in the first place.

“I don't understand. What do you mean?” he asked lamely.

“You seem...different. Changed.”

“Changed? Me?”

“Don't be dense, Jurel. Look at you. Dressed in fine silks like a nobleman yourself. And look, you've got a sword. You of all people. What's more, it looks like it belongs there. I watched you walk this way earlier. You looked like...you looked like a wolf on the prowl.

“There's something about you. A—oh I don't know, a presence. Like you're more here. Does that make any sense? What happened?”

He barked a laugh. Changed. Yes he supposed he was, at that. “It's a very long story.”

Her eyes pled, her entire bearing was that of a woman searching for salvation, looking for some reason to go on. “Please, Jurel. Can't you tell me any of it? I need to understand at least a little.”

He owed her that much. He owed her some reason why, just as they had become close, he had run off, leaving a trail of blood in his wake, only to pop back up a year and a half later, after...well after too much had happened. So he began, starting with how he had met Kurin in Tack, and how they had run when news arrived of Shenk. At that her eyes turned down.

“It
was
you then. I hoped it wasn't.”

“He attacked me. It was kill or be killed. I had no choice.”

He told more of his story, though he kept great big wads of it to himself. She did not need to know what he had discovered about himself. He ended with his escape from the dungeons—which he embellished a great deal, placing the brunt of the escape on Daved's shoulder. He told her a little more of how his father had met his end, but after that, he petered off, not wanting to say anymore, wishing that he could have what he said back.

“There's more.”

That was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place. Her mind was sharp.

“Yes, there is but there's a lot I still don't understand myself. I don't know how to explain it.”

There was a heavy silence, and Jurel had the distinct impression that she was weighing whether or not to press the issue.

“So what will you do now?” she said, seeming to settle on the innocuous question.

“I don't know.”

He was surprised when she leaned her head against his shoulder.

“I've missed you, you know. Your father told me that you had to go. Your father told me...what you said. I tried to be okay with it but I was so angry at you. Why didn't you ask me to go with you? I would have. Gladly.”

“Take you with me?” he gasped. “I didn't know where I was going. It was the dead of winter and it was freezing out. I didn't know if I would survive the day. I couldn't do that to you. Besides, I didn't think you'd want to run off with a monster like me.”

“Jurel Histane!” Her back went rigid and she straightened to face him with some of the fire that he had thought doused by Valik igniting in her eyes. “Never,
never
say that. We all thought of doing exactly what you did. We all wished that someone would but we were too afraid. That cad had it coming for years. Hells, most of us cheered when we heard what you did to him.”

He stared in numb surprise at her but he had no time to formulate a response. At the crest of the hill, there came a shouted, “Halloo!”

Both of them turned and watched as Darren descended the slope. He approached them with a wide grin and a sparkle in his eye. And Jurel knew it was forced.

“How did I know that I would find you here?” Darren asked jovially.

Jurel let a grin of his own shine through. “Oh I don't know. Maybe because this was always the best place to be?”

Darren laughed. “Hello dear,” he said to his wife and kissed her on the cheek.

* * *

It is an odd thing how sometimes life repeats itself so perfectly, so exactly, that even though the time is different and experience is a weight that changes everything, there is still that intense sense of doing the same thing over and over, or having seen something for the second time, even if there is an absolute certainty that it was the first time.

So it was as Jurel sat by the shore skipping little round stones and Darren sat beside him holding his knees to his broad blacksmith's chest as though they were ten years old again. They chattered idly about really nothing at all, both of them skirting the real issues, both of them dancing around each other like fighters in an arena.

But ultimately, they ran out of things to say as always seems to be the case when old acquaintances meet. After that first rush of excitement at seeing a familiar face from the past, and after all those things are discussed that are always discussed during the few heady moments after recognition (“How's the wife? How you been? Any kids yet? What are you up to these days?”), there is always that uncomfortable silence and for some reason Jurel began to expect Darren to say something like, “We should get together sometime.”

It would have been easier if that was all Darren said. Instead, after that awkward silence had fallen between them, with an expression like a wounded animal, and keeping his eyes averted, he spoke quiet words that wrung Jurel's very core.

“I love her, you know.”

“I know, Darren.”

“I have for years.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to take her with you?”

Jurel's heart nearly broke. Here was his one-time best friend, the boy who had protected him from the worst of Valik's bullying turned into a man that could likely break an ox in half, sounding like he was pleading for his life.

“No.”

“She would if you asked her, you know. It's you she loves. She only married me to keep Valik away from her. He's a complete ass but even he has enough sense to stay away from a married woman. His title wouldn't protect him then. We haven't even...uh...formalized our marriage yet, if you get my meaning. It's not that she doesn't care about me, it's just that it's you she's always wanted.”