Keturah tucked her hair back behind her shoulder and sighed. “I am the paragon of a dutiful wife,” she said. “While my husband lives, I think about him.”
“Well, we’ll see what we can do about that. Perhaps—”
“Your wife seems unhappy, Captain,” interrupted Keturah, softening the change of subject with a half-step towards him.
“She always is,” he said.
“Perhaps you should see to that?” she suggested sweetly.
“Not possible.”
“Well, then, you can help me—” she looked pointedly at the box of eggs and straw—“I have forgotten my cart.”
Uvoren grinned and gave an ironic bow. “My lady.” He bent to pick them up and she led him back towards Tekoa’s household. Under normal circumstances, Keturah would have moved from her father’s house to Roper’s upon marrying him. But these were not normal circumstances. Her mother needed care, her father needed the estate to be looked after while he was gone and Keturah needed some defence while her allies were out of the fortress. All were easier in Tekoa’s household.
She and Uvoren walked side by side for a time, Uvoren making jests, she providing a tart audience. After a time, she interrupted him again. “So what’s going to happen to my husband when he returns?”
Uvoren looked wry. “We both know that it depends on how he approaches the gates.”
“I’m not sure it does,” said Keturah. Both spoke as though the topic was amusing to them. To Uvoren, Keturah thought it genuinely might be. For her, it was only a lifetime of habit which kept her voice light. “You’re going to kill him whether he comes as a supplicant or a warlord.”
Uvoren just smiled, staring straight ahead, which Keturah took for confirmation.
“There are better ways to die than sticky-fire,” was all he said. She supposed that meant that if Roper came as an invader, he would be killed in a conflagration before the gates.
“Are there? I’m sure it’s painful, Captain, but for all that it’s quick. A few moments of pain is nothing next to the life you have lived. People get too worried about the act of dying itself: it is usually brief.”
“It’s better not to know that it’s coming,” said Uvoren.
Keturah tutted impatiently. “Why? You can prepare yourself and those around you if you know it’s coming. You can die as you’d planned; in the way the person you’d like to be remembered as would die.”
Uvoren raised his eyebrows. “You’ve experienced a lot of death in your twenty years, Miss Keturah?”
“Not as much as you, I daresay, Captain,” said she. “But I’ve seen it close and I’ve seen many of the faces it wears. It is better to know that it is coming.”
“If you say so.” They crossed over the running track that skirted the Hindrunn just before a pack of women ran by, wearing the black tunic of the Academy that marked them out as historians. Uvoren turned back, eyes following them. Most stared back and a few smiled, looking at the captain as they passed and sparing a glance for Keturah, wondering what they were doing together.
“Eyes front, Captain,” Keturah said. “And what about my father?”
“I hope your father will come round to my side when Boy-Roper falls.”
“He’s a stubborn man,” said Keturah. “A change of mind is not something that comes to him readily.”
“I respect your father,” said Uvoren, with a shrug that made the box in his hands heave. “He’s just chosen the wrong side. With a man like him, I could be generous. With Boy-Roper? He is no loss to anyone really.”
They had reached Keturah’s household. “Leave the box there, Captain,” said Keturah, indicating a spot next to the door, which she opened before turning back to Uvoren. “Thank you. Look after your wife: the poor woman just needs a little care.”
“You are ever wise, Miss Keturah,” said Uvoren. She raised an eyebrow, eyes humorous as she shut the door. Then her face dropped and she leaned against the wood.
Have I given him too much? She did not know, but she thought she knew him and that the push she gave him would barely have made an impression. He would remember the laugh and the caress that had preceded it. He would not remember the push. She had to give him a little more each time. Enough so that he would think that he might be able to win her by charm and not have to resort to force; not so much that she ran out of room before her father returned. She needed him back soon. Time was running out for her.
Keturah took a deep breath, tucked her hair behind her ears, straightened her back and walked to the hearth, by which her mother sat staring into the fire. “Mother,” she said, giving her a kiss, “what shall we do this afternoon?”
9Guard Him
Bellamus and Lord Northwic had taken their horses a little way up the side of the northern end of the valley. Spread beneath them was a butcher’s floor. A grisly carpet of corpses lay darkly at the valley base and the river, choked with bodies and shattered wagons, was beginning to swallow the surrounding land in glittering water. Some of their soldiers were picking over the remains, dragging survivors clear of the rising waters and furtively looting in equal measure. They did what they could for the wounded, but often what they could was as simple as a knife to the heart. The seagulls and crows had already descended and were picking out the eyes, lips and tongues from the fallen. They wheeled beneath the gathering clouds, resembling the specks of dust in a column of light.
Bellamus shivered. The wind was picking up and it felt as if more rain was on the way. He had been right, of course. Roper’s attack in the south was nothing but a diversion to draw their forces swarming away from the wagon park in the north. Then the Anakim cavalry had thundered into the valley,
