'So why the difference, master, in our stations? In the nature of things, in true things that count, our arses are much similar. Then why are you master and I man? It is a matter I think on from time to time.'
Blade smiled and cuffed him with a good-natured backhand. 'Then think on your own time, man, when I have no use for you. Thunor forbid that I have found a philosopher instead of a man and companion at arms. If you voiced such thoughts around Sarum Vil I do not wonder they gave you a dog's name.' He stood and pulled up his breeches. 'Thank you, Sylvo. I will ride easier now.'
'Master.'
Blade turned back, slightly vexed. 'What now? More philosophy?'
'No, master. This.' Sylvo extended the bulging purse to Blade. 'I am a liar, master.'
Blade kept a straight face. 'That I knew already. What else?'
'Look you in the purse, master. You will see. It was a great temptation. I have always been a poor man, and this time I thought to find my fortune. But you have been good to me and have treated me as a man and now I cannot lie to you. Take it all, master, and beat me afterward.'
Blade tumbled out the contents of the purse. There were scores of coins, large and small, iron and bronze, and a small leather bag with a drawstring.
'More than twenty mancus,' said Sylvo. He sounded pained. 'Enough for three farms, and cattle and horses, and as many servants as I could beat. A wife also— if I could find one to take me.'
Blade emptied the contents of the leather bag into his broad palm. There were twenty matched black pearls, as shining dark as the Devil's heart. Blade extended his palm to let Sylvo see. Faint sunlight broke through just then and the pearls glowed in tenebrous splendor.
'What of these? How came Horsa by such wealth?'
But Sylvo was not impressed by the pearls. He shrugged.
'I know little of such things, though I have seen them before. They are found on the far shore of the Narrow Sea and it is said that the sea raiders value them over all other things. No doubt Horsa took them as loot from a dead enemy. Am I to be beaten, master?'
Blade tucked the little bag of pearls into the waistband of his breeches. The money he scooped back into the purse and tossed to Sylvo. 'You will not be beaten. I do not beat honest men, though with you it is sometimes a near thing. The money is yours, the pearls mine. Now come— I would reach the forest before the sun goes.'
There was yet an hour of light when they left the fens and came into the forest once more. By that time Taleen's mood had changed, she being as mercurial as any weathercock, and during the last hour in the fens Blade rode at her side while they exchanged stories. Blade held back nothing, even to the bargain Lady Alwyth had sought to make with him.
Taleen's lustrous eyes sparked with anger, but her tone was grave. 'So you have scorned her, Blade, and because of her face she will deem it worse than that— as betrayal. She will not forgive. And she has long had a reputation for dark deeds. I pray Frigga that this Getorix routs Lycanto and puts all Albs to the sword, even though we be cousins. A sword in her heart is all that will quell the evil in Alwyth.'
Her face flushed and she used words that might have made Sylvo blanch. 'A fine fool she made of me! I admit it. I should have known not to match wiles with her, but I was weary and hungry and thirsty and off guard. She listened to all I said of you— and I spoke well, Blade, and praised you too much, because of the danger. I made you out a great deal more than you are.'
He nodded, unsmiling. 'My thanks, princess. I know you meant it well.'
She shot him a suspicious glance, then continued. 'So when she did offer me a broth I took it without thought.'
She made a face. 'Fool! I remember nothing until I came back to sickness in the fens.'
Blade looked ahead. The fens were ending and the dark arching forest, with caverns of shadows and dusky twilight, lay just ahead. A path led plainly from the fens into tall oaks and beeches and thick trunked yew wearing garlands of vine.
'Forget the Lady Alwyth,' advised Blade. 'Her fate will overtake her without our help. Neither she nor Lycanto can harm us here, but there may be other dangers. Know you anything of this country, Taleen? How far to the north lies Voth?'
She frowned. 'I know little enough, never having traveled this way. What of that low fellow of yours? He has gotten us through the fens without mishap— cannot he do likewise in the forest?'
Blade shook his head. 'No. I asked. Sylvo is a fensman and also knows something of the sea, but he will be as lost in the forest as ourselves. Which,' he added cheerfully to hearten her, 'will not be so lost if we have the sun. I am woodsman enough for that.'
'The Drus know of such things,' said Taleen. She shot him a sidelong glance and he knew her thinking. As for himself, he had not thought recently of the sacrifice in the glade. Rather had his mind, when he let it range, been full of the strange and compelling, the passionate, dream of the woman called Drusilla. Drusilla! Dru? Odd he had not marked it before. But what matter— it was all fantasy, a phantom play conjured in his unconscious mind.
'The Drus,' Taleen went on, 'can tell direction by stars, and how lichen grows on a tree, or by the set of the moon.'
'Forget the Drus also,' Blade said harshly. 'They cannot harm us any more than can Alwyth. I am more interested in what Sylvo can find to put in that pot of his— I am starving again.'
Taleen smiled again and laughed. 'I too. It seems we are always hungry, Blade! If that rapscallion of yours can find us food I may begin to forgive him his looks.'
When they reached a suitable clearing Blade called a halt. Sylvo, after cutting some vines for snares, went in search of a hare or two for their dinner. They had twice seen deer since entering the forest, but the axe was no weapon for deer and Sylvo had only his knife.
Taleen gathered faggots and Blade struck a fire with flints, using an iron striker Sylvo had given him. As twilight thickened around the merry little blaze, and Taleen warmed her hands, Blade thought he heard a sound in the
