Draconus, that the Lord might choose them to mitigate his unease. But this man standing before him was not one to embrace delusions simply because they offered comfort. After a moment, Raskan said, ‘One might wonder, since we do not know, if she has never been a mother before. But to my eyes, Lord, hers is a body that has carried a child to term, and fed it at the breast.’
‘No doubt of that, sergeant.’
‘I would warn him, then, Lord. But he is only half the problem here.’
‘Yes.’
‘As her commander I can-’
‘No, sergeant. You show courage in assuming that burden, but it is not yours to bear. It is mine, and I will speak with her. Tonight, with darkness upon us. Take Arathan off, but away from this place here.’
‘Yes, Lord. Back along our trail, perhaps?’
‘That will do.’
Arathan could not take his eyes off her. She had become his vortex, around which he circled, tugged inward with a force against which he had no strength. Not that he struggled much. In her heated embrace he thought he could vanish, meld into her flesh, her bones. He thought that, one day, he might look out from her eyes, as if she had devoured him whole. He would not have resented the loss of his freedom, the abandonment of his future. Her drawn breath would be his; the taste in her mouth would be his taste, the supple movement of her limbs his own.
They would look for him, in the morning, and find no trace, and he would hide well behind her eyes and she in turn would give nothing away, content in a glutted, swollen way. He wondered if what he was feeling was the definition of love.
Unfurling his bedroll, Arathan collected up the weights and set them near his saddle. He had thoughts of Sagander, and how his tutor now fared. It would seem strange to be delivering gifts from a scholar who had been left behind, and all the knowledge the old man so desired would remain beyond his reach. Questions never asked, answers never offered — these remained somewhere ahead of Arathan, formless as a low cloud on the horizon. The weights, carefully stacked on the dusty ground, looked useless. Out here, nothing could be weighed, nothing could be measured out; out here, so far now beyond the borders of Kurald Galain, there was a kind of wildness, swirling through everyone.
He felt every current and at times seemed but moments from drowning, swept under into something animal, something base. Such a fate, when he considered it, amounted to little or no loss. All that he had known, all that he had come from, now seemed small, banal. The sky was vast overhead, the plain unending, and in moving beneath, in crossing it, they made bold their desires. This motion he felt, day after day, seemed to him far grander than any raised keep, any ruined house. He remembered playing in a heap of sand behind the workhouse, when he was much younger. It had been brought in for the potter who was visiting on her rounds. Something to do with grit in the clay, and moulds for firing and shaping. The sand had felt soft, sun-warmed on the surface but cool underneath, and he recalled lying sprawled across it, reaching out with one hand, watching his fingers sink deep, and then dragging handfuls close, as if to bury himself.
Travelling across this world felt much the same, as if by movement alone all could be taken hold of, taken in grasp, and thereby claimed as one’s own.
Musing on this, as he watched Feren building the fire for the night’s meal, Arathan thought he found an understanding of the nature of war; one that might impress even Sagander. When more than one hand reached out; when there was challenge over what was claimed: then would blood spill. There was nothing rational in it. The sand slipped through the fingers, sifted down and away from the hands that would hold it, and it remained long after the claimant had left. Nothing rational. Just desire, raw as a body’s release in the night.
‘Arathan.’
He looked up. ‘Sergeant Raskan.’
‘The light fast fades. Come with me.’
Arathan straightened. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Back up the trail.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it is my wish.’
Bemused, Arathan followed the man. Raskan walked as if in a hurry to leave the camp. He had removed his worn-out boots and now wore the moccasins Draconus had given him — but so precious were they in Raskan’s eyes that he had taken to wearing them only at day’s end. Arathan could not be certain that this was the reason, but he suspected that it was. A gift from his lord. There was value in that. It made Raskan seem younger than he was, but nowhere near so young as Arathan felt when in the sergeant’s company.
The track bore signs of their horses’ passage. Torn grasses, hoofprints stamped deep, a ragged line that did not seem to belong on this open, rolling landscape.
‘Did you drop something on the trail, sergeant? What are we looking for?’
Raskan halted, glanced back at the camp, but all that was visible was the red and orange glow from the fire. The smell of its smoke reached them, thin and devoid of any heat. ‘Your father wanted you to learn the ways of the flesh. To lie with a woman. He judged the Bordersword useful in that, without having to worry about anything… political.’
Arathan looked down at the ground, unable to meet Raskan’s dark eyes. He brought a finger to his mouth to chew on the nail, and tasted the past night’s lovemaking. He quickly pulled it away.
‘But the feelings that can build, between a man and a woman… well, these things can’t be predicted.’ The sergeant shifted about, muttered a moment under his breath, and then continued, ‘You’ll not marry her. You’ll not spend the rest of your life with her. She’s twice your age, with twice your needs.’
Arathan looked off into the darkness, wanting to run there, lose himself. Let Raskan utter his cruel words to empty shadows.
‘Are you understanding me?’
‘There should have been more women with us,’ Arathan said. ‘So you could’ve had one, too.’
‘Like a hole in the ground? There’s more to it than that. There’s more to them than that. It’s what I’m getting at. She ain’t a whore so she don’t think like a whore. What do you think coin pays, when it goes between a man and a woman? It pays for no hard feelings, that’s what it pays for. Your father thought it would serve you. A few nights. Enough to make you familiar with the whole thing. He didn’t want you to take on a woman, half lover, half mother.’
Arathan trembled, wanting to strike the man, wanting to draw his sword and cut him to pieces. ‘You don’t know what he wanted,’ he said.
‘I do. He sent me to you — he knows what we’re talking about right now. And there’s more than that — he’s taken Feren off, too. He’s telling it to her as plain as I am to you. It’s gotten too much, too important-’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘She’s taking your seed-’
‘I know.’
‘And when she’s got it, she’ll toss you aside.’
‘She won’t.’
‘She has to. To keep you from claiming that child years from now. To keep you from stealing it once it comes of age, or once you decide it’s time.’
‘I wouldn’t do that. I’ll live with her-’
‘Your father can’t allow that.’
‘Why not? What does it matter to him? I’m a bastard son and he’s throwing me away!’
‘Stop shouting, Arathan. I tried making you see. I tried using words of reason, but you’re not ready for that, not yet old enough for it. Fine. See if you understand this: if you two keep it up, your father will kill her.’
‘Then I will kill him.’
‘Right, you’ll want to, and he doesn’t want that between you. So that’s why it’s got to end here and now. You’re not to be given to a Bordersword woman just because you want it, and that’s not because she ain’t good enough for you or anything. It’s because she only wants one thing from you and once she gets it, she’ll hurt you bad.’
