In the Red Lord's Reach Page 3

  The man nodded. His skill with the needle was limited, and he sewed an awkward patch on an already patchwork woolen shirt. He stabbed himself a few times and swore loudly.

  "Is there no woman to do that for you?" Alaric inquired.

  "Not for me," muttered the man, and he persevered until the work was done.

  "Has the Red Lord a lady of his own?" asked Alaric. "And sons, daughters, grandchildren? Tell me—I would know something of the man I sing for."

  The soldier squinted at him. "Why?"

  Alaric shrugged. "For my curiosity's sake, nothing more."

  The soldier threw down the mended shirt. "He is a great commander." Having said this, he retired to the far end of the barracks, ending the conversation.

  Shortly, Alaric went to the kitchen, knowing that soon he would be called to make music for his host. He ignored the soldier who trailed after him and instead sought out a grandmotherly woman he had seen among the cooks on the previous nights, a woman he had smiled at often in his attempts to win a friend or two, but who, like her countrymen, never smiled back. He found her at the hearth, drawing a spitted bird away from the flames, and she was not so proof against his charm that he could not wheedle a crisp brown wing from her… and its mate. "How will the creature balance on the platter with just one wing?" he said, and she gave him the meat on a wooden trencher.

  He seated himself atop an unused table and watched the kitchen workers. At any other castle, in spite of the presence of a stranger, they would be chattering as they moved about their tasks. All the gossip of the tightly knit castle society would float through the kitchen; no one would be spared, from the highest to the lowest. Alaric had seen this often enough that he always repaired to the kitchen to have his curiosity satisfied. Yet here was quiet save for a few cooking instructions or a curse if someone sliced a finger instead of a carrot. He wondered if they feared foreigners so much that they kept silence rather than reveal their petty secrets to him… or if they merely never spoke. A strange, dead kitchen it was, and the blaze on the hearth was cold in spirit if not in essence.

  He was called, as he knew he would be, and he found himself reluctant to go into the large, cold hall and face the large, cold man. He went, of course, in spite of that reluctance, for he owed the Red Lord songs in return for his hospitality, for the very meat he had just eaten. And there was nothing to keep him in that kitchen.

  As the afternoon waned, his decision formed itself: no longer would Alaric the minstrel remain in this land of sorrow. He had had enough—enough to last him well into the summer, enough to bring back his own sorrows, which he had hoped to put aside with travel. He sang the better for his decision, to give the Red Lord full measure, to leave him well satisfied and perhaps a bit wistful for more, to leave behind him the tale of a charming young minstrel with a silver voice. Though he wondered if they saw him so. He wondered if, wrapped in their own private winter, they perceived any breath of spring.

  At dusk, he saw the Red Lord shift in his chair, and Alaric left his stool to fall to his knees before his host could utter words of dismissal. "My lord," he murmured.

  "What is it, minstrel?"

  "Lord, I beg leave to continue my journey with the rising sun."

  "Your journey?"

  "Lord, I would see lands farther north while the season is fair, and then return southward for the winter. As I told you when I came, I seek the Northern Sea and as many other new sights as my life will allow. I never stay long anywhere."

  The Red Lord fingered his beard. "The northern passes are scarcely clear. The way is rugged. More mountains bar your path. You would be wise to bide awhile with us."

  Alaric bowed his head. "Lord, if my songs have pleased you, I am happy; yet the wild wind calls me and I would go."

  "Your songs have pleased me, minstrel. I had hopes that you would sing them longer than these few days."

  Alaric said nothing but only bowed lower.

  The Red Lord rose from his chair. "I would gift you, minstrel, before you leave. Come with me now, if you are bound to go, and receive a fit reward for your services."

  Alaric climbed slowly to his feet. "I need no reward beyond your kind hospitality, Lord," he said. "I have eaten and slept well. I ask no more of the world."

  "You must come," the Red Lord said in a voice that brooked no denial.

  Alaric slung the lute across his back. "If you insist, Lord, then let it be something small, for I prefer to travel light." He wondered: Gold? Jewels? What wealth could this isolated valley boast that would be easily portable?

  The Red Lord turned, and with a gesture bade the minstrel follow. Behind them, the ever-present escort trailed. At one end of the room was the stone stairway that curved upward along the wall of the keep; the Red Lord climbed, and the guards lit torches and held them high as they followed him. At the top of the steps, one of the men opened an iron-bound wooden door for his master, and the party passed through that into the upper chambers of the keep, a ring of small, wedge-shaped rooms about the central tower.

  In the first room, the Red Lord said, "Here we have silver." Chests of every size and shape were heaped upon the floor, wooden, bronze, brass, and iron, each with a massive lock upon its face. "Open these containers and you will find dishes and goblets, candelabras and mirrors and ornaments of many kinds. I count silver the least of my treasures."

  A soldier strode ahead to open a second door in the chamber and reveal another room. Here were more chests, though not so many by half as in the first.

  "More precious by far is gold," said the Red Lord, and he nodded at the coffers as he passed them, as if they were old friends.

  Another door, another room, and a single brass-bound trunk in the center of the floor.

  "Jewels," said the Red Lord. "We have few of these, yet their value is above that of all the silver and gold before them." He glanced at Alaric, who made no comment, and then he paused by the farther door in this chamber. "And beyond, the greatest treasure of them all." He turned the key in the lock and pulled the massive panel open with his own hands. The soldiers crowded behind Alaric, as if they, too, wished to see the greatest treasure, and he found himself leaning forward with their pressure, his heart beating expectantly.

  A woman.

  She was young and might have been comely before her face was bruised. Her skin might have been fair and flawless before it was torn. Her limbs might have been lithe and straight before they were broken. Naked, filthy, smeared and crusted with dried and drying blood, she hung slack in manacles bolted to the stone wall.

  Alaric shrank back involuntarily, but the soldiers were there and kept him from going far. This, he thought, this is the woman who screamed.

  The Red Lord approached her till he stood at arm's length, and then he stretched his hand out to stroke her cheek. The gesture would have been a caress in other circumstances; now it was a grotesque parody of affection. At his touch, she moaned and opened her eyes. No, only one eye opened—Alaric felt his stomach rising to his throat as he realized that the other eye was a newly empty socket.

  "No more, Lord," she whispered. Her feeble voice was loud in the small room, at least to Alaric's ears. "I beg you, let me die."

  He took the jeweled dagger from his belt and, as Alaric watched in horror, scraped the point across her bare shoulder, drawing a deep and ragged gouge. Bright blood welled out of the wound and ran down her arm and breast; on her torso it was quickly lost among the marks of other injuries.

  "Please," she moaned, her lips scarcely moving. "Please, my lord."

  The Red Lord turned to Alaric, his mouth curved into a cold smile. "Blood," he said. "The greatest treasure."

  Alaric found his voice after a long moment. "What has she done, my lord?"

  "Nothing."

  "Then… then why is she here?"

  "She is mine," said the Red Lord. "There need be no other reason." He touched the woman's blood-encrusted hair, wound his fingers in the strands, and pulled her head sharply upright.
A scabbed-over cut on her neck broke open at the jerk, and more crimson flowed across her flesh. When she moaned, he said, "Have you already forgotten how to scream?"

  The woman fainted instead of answering.

  He turned back to the minstrel. "Do you pity her, boy?"

  Alaric could see the soldiers from the corner of his eye. They stood erect, swords and daggers sheathed; they stood between him and the only door. A single, half-shuttered window admitted night air to the room, which now seemed too stuffy for Alaric's taste. A scant arm's length away, the Red Lord toyed with his dagger.

  "I would pity any wounded creature," said Alaric.

  "You shall have ample time to practice your pity," said the Red Lord. He nodded at the soldiers. "Shackle him."

  As they grasped Alaric's arms, snatched the knife from his belt and the lute from his back, he cried out, "My lord, I have done nothing to deserve this!"

  "When you entered my valley, you became mine," said the Red Lord. "I do with you as I will."

  Alaric let the soldiers chain him to the wall beside the woman, perceiving that they would offer him no violence if he offered none to them. Indeed, they were gentle, as if they fastened bracelets of gold to his wrists instead of iron. Alaric did not watch them lock the manacles; he knew no metal in the world could hold him without his consent. Instead, he looked to the master of the castle.

  "My lord, this is a poor reward for one who has done his best to please you."

  The Red Lord sheathed his dagger. "Your reward, minstrel, shall be that you will not be touched until this other one is dead." He slapped her face with the back of his hand, but she did not stir. Only her hoarse breathing showed her to be alive. "Tomorrow, perhaps, or the next day." He slapped her again, harder, and she moaned. "Do not sleep," he said to her. "We have an appointment later tonight." He gestured to his soldiers, and the entire party went out, shutting the door behind them and leaving Alaric and the woman in darkness.

  Beyond the window, the moon had already risen high, flooding the courtyard with its pale light, and even sending a shaft through the half-open shutter. Alaric's eyes adapted to the dimness quickly, and then he moved in his special way, only a short distance, leaving empty manacles dangling upon the wall.

  Lightly, he touched the woman. "I will take you away from here," he said. As gently as he could, he lifted her free of the floor and pulled her as far from the wall as her shackles allowed. She gasped, "No, please, no," and then he had freed her and journeyed, all in a heartbeat, to a niche on the mountainside. There he laid her on a grassy spot, on the spot where the goatherd had stopped him and he had waited so long for two men to answer the boy's horn. Her body trembled, and she clutched feebly at the air. He let her take his hands. Bending low over her face, he said, "He shall not touch you again." He could scarcely discern her ruined features, so softened were they by moonlight, yet they were graven in his memory; he knew that he would see them in his dreams for all the days of his life. Where can I go? She could not be taken to her own people, whoever they were—the Red Lord would surely look there first, come midnight and his pleasure spoiled. As a minstrel, Alaric had been welcomed into many houses, of high station and low—in his mind, the years unrolled, and the miles, as he selected among them. There had been kind hearts along the way, and good wishes for his travels; now he would have to bring some well-wisher the real tragedy and not merely the song.

  He began to slip his arms beneath her, to lift her for the journey, but she stopped him with a gasp. "Please don't move me."

  Gently, he pulled away. "Rest if you wish, before we travel on. We have a little time."

  She turned her head slowly, to fix him with her good eye. "Who are you?" she whispered.

  "I am Alaric, a minstrel. A stranger. I was able to free you. You are safe now."

  "He will find us. He will take us back."

  "He will never find us. I know a way to leave this valley that none can follow. Trust me. I will take you to a warm bed and kind friends who will nurse you back to health."

  For a moment she was silent, then her voice came so soft that he had to bend ever closer to hear her words, and the stink of her festering wounds turned his stomach as he listened. "No one has ever escaped this valley."

  "lean."

  "Travelers who come out of the mountains. Bandits and merchants alike. Whole caravans." Her breath came fast and shallow, as if the sheer effort of speaking exhausted her. "He takes them to the tower room. None survive."

  He touched her hair gently. "But you—you are one of his own people."

  "In a long winter… he becomes restless. Then we must serve his pleasure."

  "What sort of lord is this," cried Alaric, "who destroys those he is bound to protect?"

  "He pays for us. With wine."

  He remembered the cotter woman, and the jug of wine she smashed. Was the lamb a feeble replacement for some child lost to her lord? Alaric shivered, though the night air was warm enough. "Why have you not risen up and killed this man?"

  She sighed, a long shuddering sigh. "It is good wine."

  He looked back over his shoulder. In the moonlight, he could barely discern the castle, standing dark by the silver glimmer of the river. How long, he wondered, had it been going on? Why had no peasant assassinated this monster? Were his soldiers so fanatically loyal that they could stand by and watch their innocent countrymen—perhaps members of their own families—tortured to death?

  "We must not stay here," he said. Once more he slipped his hands beneath her body.

  Her arms fluttered weakly against his chest. "No, no," she begged. "Don't move me."

  "Good woman, I must move you a little."

  "No, no, I cannot… I cannot bear it." Her breath came hoarsely now, and it gurgled in her throat. "Stranger, please… just one boon."

  "I will do whatever I can for you."

  Her right hand groped toward him, so he caught it in his own; that seemed to satisfy her, for she let it lie limp in his grasp. "I am broken… inside," she whispered. "There is too much pain. Too much. Stranger, I beg you… kill me."

  Alaric could feel his heart shrink back in his chest. "Let me take you to friends," he said quickly, "to good and kindly help. You will be well again—-"

  "No. I will die. Let it be quick."

  "No, no, I cannot."

  "Please." Her head rocked slowly from side to side. "Please let it be quick."

  He clutched her hand tightly, his whole body trembling. No, he told himself. No. No.

  She moaned. "Would you let a mortally wounded creature suffer? Give me a knife and I will do the deed myself."

  "I have no knife!" he cried.

  "Then you must do it with your hands. Your strong hands."

  Hot tears spilled down his cheeks. His fingers had no strength. How could they lock about her slender neck? How could they squeeze until she breathed no more? He, who had never killed in anger—how could he kill in compassion?

  "Your strong hands," she murmured. "Oh please…"

  And then he remembered the sword. Wrapped in his knapsack, it might still lie on his pallet in the barracks. And if not, there were swords aplenty hanging on the walls. The sky was full dark, the men probably swaddled in their individual blankets and snoring. In the barracks he would be a shadow among shadows. He stepped back among the boulders, that his abrupt disappearance might not frighten her. Then he was within the castle walls once more.

  His pallet was gone, the space it had occupied empty, its straw probably redivided among the other beds. But in the corner lay all his property; he gathered it in his arms and vanished.

  On the mountainside once more, he drew the sword from its scabbard. Moonlight glinted off the polished blade; since he had owned it, the sword had never drunk human blood. He looked down at the woman, saw moisture sparkle in her single eye.

  "Strike," she said, and the word was loud as thunder to his ears.

  Standing above her, the sword clutched like a great dagger in his two hands
, he drove the point into her breast, felt the breastbone cleave beneath his weight, felt the heart yield and the spine snap… and then hard earth resisted him. His whole body shuddered for a moment, and he fought to clear his swimming head, his brimming throat; then he lifted the sword, and her whole body rose with it, till only her heels and hands touched the ground, and he had to shake the blade violently to free her from it. He would not touch her flesh with his own.

  Blood gushed from the wound, black in the moonlight. Alaric stabbed again, and yet once more, and at last he was satisfied that he had sent her beyond pain. He turned away then, the bloody sword a leaden weight in his grip, weighing down his heart as well as his arm, and he wept for her and for all her kind that had gone before her, and he wept for himself as well, for the loss of something that he could scarcely name.

  After a time, his eyes dried and he began to gather leafy branches to spread over her still form. It was only a gesture of honor for the dead, for leaves would not keep the scavengers away come morning and the warm sun, but he had neither time nor inclination to dig a grave. He had dug a grave once, for his beloved companion Dall, and he could not bring himself to dig another and, by that labor, to resurrect so many painful memories. He covered her, and that would have to be enough.

  He rose from his knees, still gazing downward, though her body was now no more than a heap of greenery in the light of the moon. A voice brought him to alert: "Hist! Minstrel!"

  He took a step backward, sword upraised, body poised for his own peculiar sort of flight, and then his brain recognized that voice. The goatherd. He saw the boy as a dark shape detaching itself from the darkness of a boulder.

  "Where are your goats?" Alaric asked softly.

  "Sent home. I saw you up here and decided to stay a little, and watch."

  Alaric glanced all around, and he listened carefully to the night noises. He saw nothing but the peaceful, moon-touched landscape, heard nothing but the scratchings of insects. "Will the goats not stray without your guidance?"

  "Once down the mountain, they go home happily enough," said the boy. He moved closer slowly, and Alaric could see that he carried his staff and his horn. There had been no bray of that horn, as far as Alaric knew… but he had been gone for a short while. He wondered if the boy had seen him vanish; probably not, from that distance and in the shadow-riddled night.