The Saga of the Renunciates (52 page)

“Ask Jaelle, sometime, about her mother’s death,” said Camilla.

“She was born in Shainsa; but it is her story, not mine, and I have no right to tell it.”

Magda laughed uneasily. “My story is no tragedy,” she said, trying to speak lightly. “It is more like a comedy—or a farce!”

“Ah, sister,” Camilla said, “that is the true horror of all our stories, that some men, hearing them, would think them almost funny.” But there was no mirth in her voice. “You should go to breakfast. I will give no lesson in swordplay today.” She held out her arms and gave the younger woman a quick, warm hug. “Go and sleep,
chiya
.”

Magda would have rather stayed; she did not want to be alone. But she went obediently up to her room and to bed. An hour or two later she found herself awake, and unable to sleep again; she went to the kitchen and found herself some cold food; afterward, at loose ends—for the Guild Mothers had excused her from any duties today—she went into the library and read, for a time, the history of the Free Amazons. It crossed her mind that she should make careful notes, to file all this in the Terran records one day, but she did not want to think about that just yet. Later in the day Mother Lauria found her and asked her to take hall duty, the lightest of the assigned tasks inside the house. This meant only that she should go to the greenhouse and find flowers and leaves there for the decorations, which were beginning to fade, and afterward, stay in the hall and let anybody in or out, or answer the door if anyone came to the House on business.

Magda was learning simple stitches, but she still disliked sewing; she brought down a cord belt she was braiding, and sat working at the intricate knots.

Two or three times she got up to let someone in, and once brought a message to Marisela, which she gave at the door of the room where Byrna was sleeping, the baby tucked in beside her. She was half asleep, in the gray light of the hallway, when suddenly there was a loud and shocking banging on the door.

Magda jumped up and pulled the heavy door open. A huge burly man, expensively dressed, stood on the doorstep: he glowered at Magda and said, using the derogatory mode, “I wish to see the woman who is in charge of this place.” But the inflection he used made it obvious that his meaning was, “Get me the bitch who is in charge of this rotten dump.”

Magda noticed that there were two men behind him, as large as himself, both heavily armed with sword and dagger. She said, in a polite mode which was a reproof to him, “I will ask if one of the Guild Mothers is free to speak with you, messire. May I state your business?”

“Damn right,” growled the man, “Tell the old bitch I’ve come for my wife and I want her right now and no arguments.”

Magda shut the door in his face and went quickly to the Guild Mother’s sanctuary.

“How white you are!” Mother Lauria exclaimed. “What’s wrong, child?”

Magda explained. She said “I think it must be Keitha’s husband,” meanwhile glancing at the huge, copper-sheathed door commemorating the battle which had claimed their right to a woman who had, like Keitha, taken refuge here generations ago.

Mother Lauria followed her eyes.

“Let us hope it does not come to that, my child. But run down quickly to the armory, and tell Rafaella—no, Rafi is away with a caravan to the north. Tell Camilla to arm herself quickly, and come. I wish Jaelle were here, but there is no time to send for her. You arm yourself, too, Margali; Jaelle told me that you fought with bandits when she was wounded near Sain Scarp.”

Magda, her heart pounding, ran down to the armory and quickly armed herself with the long knife the Amazons did not call a sword—though Magda could not see the difference. Camilla, arming herself, looked grim.

“Nothing like this has happened for ten years and more—that we should have to defend the house by force of arms as if we were still in the Ages of Chaos!” She looked doubtfully at Magda. “And you are all but untried—

Magda was all too aware of this. Her heart pounded as they hurried along the stairs, side by side. Mother Lauria was waiting for them in the hall. There was a furious banging, on the door, and Mother Lauria opened it again.

The man on the doorstep began to bluster. “Are you the woman in charge of this place?”

Mother Lauria said quietly “I have been chosen by my sisters to speak in their name. May I ask to whom I have the honor of speaking?” She spoke with the extreme courtesy of a noblewoman addressing the crudest peasant.

The man snarled, “I am Shann MacShann, and I want my wife, not a lot of talk. You filthy bitches lured her away from me, and I want her sent out to me this minute!”

“No woman is allowed to come to us except of her free will,” said Mother Lauria, “If your wife came here it was because she wished to renounce her marriage for cause. No woman within these walls is wife to you.”

“Don’t you chop logic with me, you—” The man spat out a gutter insult. “You bring my wife out here to me, or I’ll come in there and take her!”

Magda’s hand tightened on her knife, but the Guild Mother’s voice was calm. “By the rules of this place, no man may ever pass our walls except by special invitation; and I am afraid I really have nothing more to say to you, sir. If the woman who was once your wife wishes to speak with you, she may send you a message and settle any business left unsettled between you, but until she wishes to do so—”

“Look, that wife of mine, she gets mad at me sometimes, once she ran away to her mother and stayed almost forty days, but she come cryin’ back to me again. How do I know you’re not holding her there and she wanting to come back?’”

“Just why would we do a thing like that?” asked Mother Lauria mildly.

“You think I don’t know what goes on in places like this?”

“Yes,” said Mother Lauria, “I think you do not know at all.”

“Keitha, she’s too much a woman to get along without a man!” Shann blustered, “You send her out here right now!”

“I’m really afraid, you know,” said the Guild Mother with great composure, “that you are going to have to accept my word: Keitha n’ha Casilda has expressed no desire to return to you. If you wish to hear this from her own lips, we allow visitors on the night of High Moon, and you are welcome to come, unweaponed, alone or with members of your immediate family, and speak to her either alone or in our presence, as she herself wishes. But at this hour and on this day no man may enter here unless he has business here, and you, sir, assuredly have none. I ask you now to take yourself and your men away from here, and not to create a commotion on our doorstep.”

“I tell you, I’m coming in and get my wife,” Shann shouted, whipped out his sword and started up the steps. Camilla and Magda, long knives drawn, quickly stepped forward and blocked the way.

“You think I’m not a match for a pair of girls?” He whipped the sword down, but Camilla, moving swiftly as a striking snake, caught his blade with hers and struck it from his hand. He missed his footing on the stairs and stumbled, almost falling. He shouted to his men “Come on! Let’s get in there!”

Magda braced herself for another attack. The white light of the snow in the street, the two huge men slowly advancing, Camilla at her shoulder, the knife-scars on her face white and drawn. For Magda the scant few seconds it took for the men to mount the first step seemed to last an eternity.

Then the men were on them and Magda felt herself thrusting, twisting the steel; the man’s sword clanged, whipped sideways, slashed quickly back, and Magda felt a line of fire slice along her leg.

It didn’t hurt, not yet, but while she blocked the next stroke— skills learned in Intelligence training, years ago, were coming back rapidly—what she mostly felt was shock.

You get this kind of training, it’s routine, but you don’t expect to have to use it, not really. You find you can do it
, her thoughts raced,
but you don’t believe it, not while you’re doing it, not even while you’re bleeding
. Her mind lagged behind but her body was fighting, driving the men back, down the steps. One slipped in the snow and Magda felt the sword go in under his breastbone before she fully knew it, felt the body sliding back off the blade, pulled by its own dead weight. She brought her knife up to guard against the next man; did not realize that Shann had gone down, bleeding, under Camilla’s sword; that Camilla had said, to the third man, “Had enough?”

Magda did not hear: she was going after the third man in a flurry of sword-strokes, forcing him back and down the steps. Her blood sounded loud in her own ears and there was a blurry haze, blood-colored, before her eyes. A voice inside her seemed to be screaming,
Kill them, kill them all
! All of her rage against the Darkovan men who had kept her from the work and the world she wanted, her terror of the bandits who had disarmed her and shown her her own weakness—it was almost a sensual frenzy, letting the sword move almost without volition, until she heard someone shouting her name. By now the sound meant nothing. She saw the man before her slip, stumble to his knees. Then another sword struck hers down; she whirled to face her attacker and in the moment before she struck, she saw Camilla’s face; it made her pause, just a moment, and her sword went flying with a violence that knocked her hand numb.

“No, Margali! No! He surrendered, didn’t you see him raise his sword in surrender?” Camilla’s hand bit into her wrist, a cruel grip that paralyzed her fingers.

Magda came up to her senses, shaking; she looked, in consternation, at the man she had killed, and Shann next to him, groaning in his blood at the foot of the stairs. The third man had backed off and was staring in dismay at a wound in his forearm, from which fresh blood welled up.

Camilla said furiously “You have disgraced your knife!” She pushed Magda down, hard, on the steps, and went down the stairs to the wounded man.

“I most humbly beg your pardon, sir. She is new to fighting, and untried; she did not see your gesture of surrender.”

The wounded man said, “I thought you women were going to kill us all, surrender or no! And this is no quarrel of mine,
mestra
!”

Camilla said, “I have honorably sold the service of my blade for thirty years, comrade. My companion is young. Believe me, we will so deal with her that she will not so disgrace her blade again. But are you not Shann’s sworn man?”

The mercenary spat. “Sworn man to that one? Zendru’s hells, no! I’m a paid sword, no more. It’s no business of mine to lose my life for the likes of him!”

“Let me see your wound,” Camilla said, “You shall have indemnity, believe me. We have no quarrel with you.”

“And I have no quarrel with you, and no blood-feud,
mestra
. Between ourselves, I’d say that if his wife left him he’d given her cause four times over, but my sword is for hire, so I fought while he fought. But he is no kin or sworn comrade.” Awkwardly, with his unwounded hand, he thrust the sword back into its sheath, and pointed to Shann. “I’ll go find his housefolk and his paxmen to haul him home; he’s nothing to me, but when I fight at a man’s side, I don’t leave him to bleed to death in the street.” He looked regretfully at the man Magda had killed. “Now
he
was a pal of mine; we’ve been hiring out our swords together for twelve years come midsummer.”

Camilla said gravely, “Who grudges his blood to a blade had better earn his living behind the plow.”

The man sighed, made the
cristoforo
sign of prayer. “Aye, he’s laid his burdens now on the Bearer of the World’s Wrongs. Peace to him,
mestra
.” He looked at his wounded arm. “But it goes hard to have blood shed after surrender!”

Mother Lauria came down the steps. “You shall have whatever indemnity a judge names as fair. Camilla, take him to the Stranger’s Room and bind up his wound.”

Camilla turned angry eyes on Magda. She said, with savage contempt, “Get inside, you, before you disgrace us further!”

Puzzled, feeling betrayed, Magda managed to stumble inside. The wound in her thigh, which she had hardly felt at the time, began to throb as if it had been burned with fire.

She had fought for the house. She had done her best—had the man truly surrendered before she struck him?

In the mountains I disgraced myself because I was afraid to fight, then when I fight I disgrace the Guild House… She felt sobs choking her, and braced herself against them; if she let herself cry now she would break into hysterical crying and never be able to stop…

“
Breda
—” said a soft, troubled voice, and Keitha’s pale, tear-stained face looked into hers. “Oh, how cruel she is! You fought for us, you are hurt too—and she cares more for that soldier’s wound than yours! And you have shed your blood for us! Come, let me, at least, look after your hurt—”

Magda let herself lean heavily on Keitha as they went up the stairs. Keitha went on, indignant, “I saw it all—how can Camilla be so unjust? So the man had surrendered—what of that? I wish you had killed them all—”

Magda’s leg had begun to hurt so badly that she felt dizzy. Blood was dripping on the floor. Keitha drew her inside the bathroom on their floor, pushed her down on a little wooden bathing stool and gently pulled off the slashed breeches. The cut was deep, blood still welling up slowly from the bottom. Magda clung to the stool, suddenly afraid of falling, while Keitha sponged the wound with icy water. While she was working on it, Mother Lauria came slowly up the stairs and stepped inside.

She looked coldly at the two women. “How badly are you hurt, Margali?”

Magda set her teeth. “I don’t know enough about wounds to know how bad it is. It hurts.”

Lauria came and examined the slash herself. “It is a clean wound and it will heal; but painful. Did you get it from a surrendered man fighting for his life?”

Magda said clearly, “I did not; it was the first man, the one I killed, and I was fighting myself for my life, since I suppose he would not have stopped at killing me.”

“Well, that’s something,” Mother Lauria said.

“How can you blame her so!” Keitha cried. “She fought to defend us, she is hurt and bleeding, yet you let Camilla bully her and call her harsh names, then you come and bully her further, before her wound is even bandaged—”