Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [163]
It was too much Skaldic too fast; I saw Joscelin blink in consternation. "He wants your word that you'll not try to escape nor attack the steading," I said in D'Angeline.
Joscelin thought. "Tell him this," he said to me. "While he keeps you safe, I will protect and serve this . . . steading ... as if it were my own. I will do aught he asks, save turn on my own people, unless they be d'Aiglemort's men. This I swear, upon my oath."
I repeated his words to Gunter in Skaldic, slowly, so that Joscelin could follow the gist of it and nod agreement. Gunter scratched his chin.
"He has a mighty hatred for Kilberhaar," he said thoughtfully. "So much I fear he may choose vengeance over honor, no matter how he swears. What do you say, little dove? Will the wolf-cub honor his oath?"
"My lord," I said honestly, "he is more bound by this oath than words can compass. Mountains will fall and cattle will fly before he breaks it."
"Well, then." Gunter grinned at Joscelin. "It seems my dove has tamed the wolf, where all my dogs have failed. I will give you one night to say farewell to your new friends, and in the morning we will see what kind of servant you make."
The Cassiline followed the sense of his words, if not the exact meaning. He bowed again, then sat cross-legged in the snow, ignoring the dogs that milled around sniffing him. "I will wait my lord's command," he said in Skaldic.
"Is he going to sit there all night?" Gunter asked me curiously.
"I don't know." I'd had my fill of stubborn Cassiline honor, and despaired of understanding the logic that drove it. "He might."
Gunter roared with laughter. "What a man! Some prize I will have to show at the Allthing, if he will serve! The wolf and the dove, yolked in tandem at Gunter Arnlaugson's steading! Even Waldemar Selig might envy such a prize." In high good spirits, he urged his thanes back to the hall, singing loudly about the honor he would win.
I glanced back once. Sure enough, Joscelin sat without moving, watching us go.
FORTY-THREE
Boisterous and crude he might be, but Gunter was a man of his word, and he had Joscelin's chains struck the following morning. Knud, who harbored a fondness for me, took me to see it. I'd no doubt that Joscelin would keep his own word, but still, freedom was a heady thing to one who'd been kept in chains. He started briefly when the manacle about his neck was unlocked, muscles quivering with the urge to strike out.
But Cassiline discipline prevailed quickly, and he regained his composure, bowing obediently.
"Well, we will see, eh?" Gunter said. He jerked his thumb at one of his thanes. "Thorvil, you will stay with him today, and keep a watch. Let him do a carl's work. Only, give him no weapons, eh? If he need break ice on the stream to fetch water, let him use his hands. Mayhap when he's proved himself, we'll let him chop wood or somewhat."
"Aye, Gunter." Thorvil fingered the hatchet in his own belt and grinned, showing a gap in his teeth, knocked out in a friendly contest of strength. "I'll keep my eye on him, never fear."
From what I could see that day, Joscelin gave him no cause for concern. Indeed, he worked with a will, hauling buckets of water tirelessly from the stream to refill the cisterns of the great hall; no small task. Thorvil sauntered behind him, whistling and cleaning his fingernails with the point of his dagger.
And the women of Gunter's steading stared.
None of them had seen Joscelin, save for a brief glimpse that first night, when he'd been brought in at the end of a line, half-wild and snow-covered. They got a good look at him now. Filthy and disheveled, smelling of the kennels, Joscelin was still, undeniably, a D'Angeline.
"He must be a