Hounds of God (48 page)

Thibaut’s throat would not stop aching. He picked his way up
the last few lengths, grimly, trying not to think at all.

There was someone up there.

For a moment Thibaut’s mind was empty indeed. Then it
filled, with rage. This was his place. No man in the world had a right to be
there, and only one woman; and she was in Acre, being a baroness and maybe not
even yet aware that Gereint was dead.

Then Thibaut saw who it was, and his rage died.

He seemed unaware of Thibaut’s coming. He had folded his
long body into the curve of the parapet, check against the stone, eyes staring
away not eastward to Jerusalem as Thibaut might have expected, but north. The
sun was full on him, and yet it had not even warmed that impossibly white skin.
He should have been flayed alive. He looked as impervious as marble, and as
still.

Thibaut’s heart was beating hard. This was legend, sitting
there in Thibaut’s place, as Thibaut himself so often had sat, looking barely
older than Thibaut. But much taller. Thibaut, as his peers of the pure blood
were never loth to remind him, was a perfect little Saracen.

Gereint had never minded. “You’ll never win a battle by
weight or length of arm,” he had said on the training field. “But you have
grace and speed, and a good seat on a horse. You’ll hold your own.”

The prince looked like Gereint as a marble image looks like
a man. The same long limbs. The same fierce arch of nose. The same black hair,
thick and not quite straight. Even the same long pointed chin, though Gereint
had been no beauty, and this was beauty to stop the heart.

He never seemed so alien when he was with people. He
pretended. Maybe he cast a glamour, a semblance of human solidity. Alone, he
was himself, and that was not a man.

Then he moved, and he blurred a little. The keenness
blunted. The beauty shrank to handsomeness. The light on him was only sunlight,
thought powerless still to stain his pallor.

Thibaut tensed to bolt, found himself picking his way across
the narrow space. Aidan had left him Joanna’s place, the crenel that framed the
winding of the eastward road. He settled in it. Riders were coming, more
vultures to the feast.

“Templars,” said Aidan, “and a Hospitaller riding with them.
Is that a prodigy?”

It was not impossibly hard to match that light, easy tone. “It’s
unusual. The Military Orders must be speaking to one another this week.”

“They honor our kinsman.”

Thibaut almost choked.
Our
.
He had said that. But no, it was a manner of speaking. He was royalty, after
all.

Aidan was watching the riders. Thibaut had not seen him
move, and yet he was very close. Close enough to see the veins glimmering blue
under the moon-white skin; close enough to see what the sun did to his eyes.

Thibaut could not even be afraid. They had grown up with the
tales, he and Joanna. This was real, that was all.

It retreated slightly. It laid a hand on Thibaut’s shoulder,
warm and solid. “Yes,” said Aidan. “I’m flesh and blood. Were you expecting
living fire?”

Thibaut did not like to be mocked. “I was expecting dignity.”

Aidan laughed. “From me? Oh, come! Dignity is my royal
brother. Dignity is a synod of bishops, each more constipated than the last. I’m
a hellion from my cradle.”

“You want — ” Thibaut was having trouble getting it out. “You
want to seem... not ordinary. But — less than you are. Somehow.”

The grey eyes rolled like any ordinary man’s. But there was
a stillness behind them. “Oh, to be a legend! Youngling, I’m quite as solid as
the next man. If only half as human.”

Thibaut’s head shook. He did not know where his words were
coming from, but they would not stop coming. “You have to shrink and hide, to
be safe. But then you hide it again: you dress it in gold and scarlet and act
outrageous, and everyone is afraid of you, but it’s a useful fear. It keeps
them from thinking. That you are — what you really are.”

“And what, O sage, is that?”

Mockery again. Thibaut’s fault, for being so small for his
age, and his voice just broken, his cheeks still as smooth as a girl’s. He
glared at the prince, but he answered coolly enough. “I think you must be an
ifrit. Not a jinni, they are of earth, and you are air and fire.”

“Empty wind,” said Aidan, leaning back against the parapet
and grinning. His teeth were white and sharp. “I’ll tell you what I am. I am
king’s son and king’s brother of a kingdom in the west of the world. Half an
hour sooner from the womb, and I would have been king, for which blessing I
thank God at every day’s rising. My father was good solid mortal stock, clear
back to Ambrosius. My mother was... what she was. She raised my brother to be
king. She raised me to be whatever I wanted to be. Both of us were meant to live
in our father’s world. There was no other for us, she said. Though even then we
knew that we were like her, as our sister was like our father.”

He did not sound sad, or angry, or afraid. This was an old
take he was telling, and all its grief was worn away.

“You never asked her why?” asked Thibaut.

“She would never tell us. She was very old, though she
looked like a young maid. She had been alone for years beyond count. She was a
little mad, I think. She loved our father quite beyond reason. Enough to refuse
to be his wife, and to bear and raise us apart from him and his people and his
Church that hates our kind. But when he was crowned king and it was noted that
he had neither wife nor doxy, and never a bastard to prove his virility, her
selflessness found its limits. She could not bear to lose him to any mortal
woman. She came to him in his court, and she brought us with him, a pair of
yearling whelps with his face. ‘These are yours,’ she said, ‘as am I. If you
will have us.’“

“And he said he would,” said Thibaut, enthralled.

“It was a great scandal,” Aidan said. “But it was also a
marvelous tale, and she was supremely beautiful, and she was prompt to give him
a daughter with human eyes. And, to the priests’ disgust, she was quite unmoved
by either holy things or cold iron. She would never let them baptize her, but
us she sent coolly to the font, and it was no worse than water ought to be in
March after a long winter. Even when they sent us to a cloister to be educated,
she ventured never a protest. ‘A king’s sons should have learning,’ she said, ‘in
all that they may.’ My brother took to it. I,” said Aidan, “was less tractable.”

“In what? The cloister or the learning?”

“The cloister,” Aidan admitted after a pause. “The learning
was interesting, if sometimes more edifying than I liked. But the walls I was
locked in... I thought I would go mad.”

Even yet the memory could dampen his brow. He tried to laugh
it away. “You see. I’m no legend. I’m merely very odd.”

“Wonderful,” said Thibaut. He would never dare to touch, but
he could hug his knees and stare with all his heart. “You came here alone,” he
said. “Did you lose your servant?”

“I had none.”

Thibaut was incredulous.

Aidan looked down, shrugging. “Well. I had a few when I
began. Some I sent back. Some I set free. I wanted to see this country bare,
with no crowds tugging at me.”

“But now you’re here,” said Thibaut, “and it’s not fitting.
You are a prince. You should have an entourage.”

The prince’s eyes glittered. “I should? And who are you to
say so?”

“Your station says it,” Thibaut said with barely a tremor, “and
the dignity you won’t admit. You can’t demean yourself like a hedge-knight from
a Frankish byre. You have a name to uphold.”

For a moment Thibaut knew he would be smitten where he sat.
But Aidan’s glare turned to laughter. “God’s bones! What a priest you would
make.”

“I can’t,” said Thibaut. “I’m heir to Aqua Bella.”

There was no regret in that, but no horror at the prospect
of priesthood, either. Thibaut had thought once that he might like to be a Templar,
and ride about with a red cross on his breast, and be looked on with holy awe.
But he was three parts a Frank and one a Saracen, and that one was enough. He
was no longer bitter about it. He did not fancy sleeping in a stone barn with a
hundred other men, and never bathing, and growing his beard to his knees. When
he had a beard to grow, which did not look to be soon.

Aidan, like Gereint, seemed to know by nature what a bath
was for. And he did not seem to care that Thibaut’s mother was half a Saracen.
His own was all ifritah; or whatever they called her in her own country.

“I want to be your squire,” said Thibaut.

Aidan’s brows went up.

“I’m old enough,” Thibaut said. “I’m trained. I was Gereint’s,
before — ” He swallowed, steadied. “I have to be someone’s. It’s expected. I
need it. And since you are a prince, and alone, and the best knight in the
world — ”

“No,” said Aidan.

Thibaut had not heard it. Would not hear it. “You need me.
Your rank demands me.
I
need
you
. How will I ever make a knight, with my face
and my puniness, unless you teach me?”

“You did well enough before I came.”

“That was before,” said Thibaut. “Now I’ll never be
satisfied with less.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that that is impudence?”

Thibaut blushed, but faintly. “It’s true.” After a moment he
added, “My lord.”

Aidan smiled. For him, that was restraint. He laid his hands
on Thibaut’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes. Thibaut stared, fascinated.
Aidan shook him with a whisper of his true strength; even that was enough to
rattle Thibaut’s bones. “Listen to me, Thibaut. Listen well. I am honored that
you think me worthy of your service. I would be honored to accept it. But I
cannot.”

“Why?”

Aidan’s breath hissed. He seemed as much amused as angry.
But through it he was somber, and that somberness quelled Thibaut utterly. “Because,
Thibaut. Yesterday I swore an oath, and that oath binds me. I cannot — dare not
— allow another to share it.” He paused, as if he waited for Thibaut to ask,
but Thibaut could not. “I swore to exact payment for Gereint’s death. I swore
to exact it from the Lord of the Assassins himself, in his own person, and to
stop at nothing until I should have done it.”

His hands tightened on Thibaut’s shoulders. Thibaut gasped,
but he was strong. He did not cry out. “Now do you understand?” Aidan demanded
of him. “Now do you comprehend why I must be alone?”

“No,” said Thibaut.

Aidan let him go so suddenly that he fell against the
parapet. He righted himself, shaking, but trying to hide it. His voice came out
as a squeak, until it steadied somewhere between alto and high tenor. “He was
never of my blood, but he was my kin. He was all the father I ever knew. It is
my right to share in taking his blood-price.”

Aidan looked at him. Thibaut knew what he saw.

The prince’s face twisted. “You’ll make a man,” he said, as
if to himself. But then: “No, Thibaut. I have defenses against Assassins. You
have none. And they will strike you. Believe me, Thibaut. They will.”

“That’s so whether I stay with you or no. Mother won’t tell
me, but I know. I’m marked. They’ll come against me next. At least, with you, I’ll
have a little hope. Of defending myself. Of taking revenge for Gereint.”

“You should have been a scholar,” said Aidan. “You argue
like one.” He rose abruptly. “Your mother will have my hide.”

And Thibaut’s. But Thibaut was too rapt in bliss to care. He
had what he had wanted since he was old enough to understand Gereint’s stories.

He did not want to be alone any longer. He smiled at the
prince’s black scowl, and knelt there in the sun on the broken tower. He laid
his hands on Aidan’s knees; he said the words that made him the liege man of
the Prince of Caer Gwent. The Prince of Caer Gwent accepted them. He did it
roughly, without pleasure, but he did it. “And on your head be it,” he said.

oOo

It was true, Thibaut saw to his own satisfaction. Aidan
looked different when he was by himself, or with people who knew what he was.
In hall, among strangers, he seemed remarkable still, but humanly remarkable: a
tall young man with a strikingly handsome face. Even his pallor was dimmed,
that that would never be anything but startling in a country where every man
was burned either black or scarlet by the sun.

“He’s as white as a maid,” someone said in Thibaut’s
hearing.

“God knows, he doesn’t fight like one,” said someone else.

“Why, have you seen him?”

“Seen him? He’s knocked me clean over the crupper.” The man
sounded anything but ashamed to confess it. “Here, I forget — you’ve been mewed
up in court. We had a bit of tourney in Acre, a sennight back. Nothing of
consequence, merely a handful of challengers and a few wagers made. There’s
been the usual crop of tyros on the boat from Saint Mark, cocky as they always
are, and stinking to high heaven. But that one was as fresh as a girl, and someone
remarked on it as you did, and someone else took it up, and one way and another
we were all hot to muss his pretty curls for him.

“We had pity on his innocence. We matched the weakest of us
with him. You can imagine what happened.”

The other apparently could not. His eyes were on the slender
figure in black, bending over a lady’s hand, dwarfed beside her great
blond-bearded consort.

“It was,” said the knight from Acre, “surprising, if not
incontestable. Yet. It could have been blind luck. He was holding back, we
found out soon enough. And he kept on doing it. I dared to think I had him,
till I found myself flat on my back, staring at the sky.

“Then he lost his temper. I don’t know precisely what set
him off: I was still taking inventory of my bones. I think someone accused him
of mocking us, and challenged him to show us what he could do.

“Now, mind, we were limping and groaning and sweating from
the heat, but he was as fresh and cool as a flower in a lady’s garden. He’d
changed horses twice, taking offers of mounts more used to the climate than the
one he’d brought from the west. They were good horses, not nags or rogues: we
were fools, but we were honest fools. I remember, he had Riquier’s big grey,
and Riquier rides him on a bit-shank a span long, but our lad had the reins on
the beast’s neck and was guiding him with his shins. He rode down the lists
with his lance in rest, and though he had his helm on we knew he was glaring at
us. Then he lowered his lance at the one who’d armed to keep us company, but
who’d never meant to fight, and no one was minded to challenge him.”