Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [351]
I do not dare voice it, to anyone save Joscelin, but the Skaldi were the worst. Every time I saw fair hair bright with blood beneath a helmet, I thought it might be Gunter Arnlaugson. He had treated me fair, as best as was in him, and I had repaid him with ruin. I feared to face him, for that.
I never did find Gunter, nor any of the folk of his steading. I can only pray they were among those who had the sense to flee early, having gained some sense of the true depth of our fierce D'Angeline pride, having dwelt so long on our borders.
Waldemar Selig, I found; and d'Aiglemort.
They lay close together, those fallen, and Drustan's Cruithne surrounded them. Their horses nodded, heads low and weary. Drustan mab Necthana saluted me, staggering as he slid from the saddle and his lame foot gave way beneath him.
"Tell Ysandre . . ." he said, and caught at his pommel.
"Tell her yourself," I replied, catching him, gesturing frantically for Lelahiah Valais and her apprentices. They came, quick and compassionate; Eisheth's folk have a gift for healing, among other things.
As I had gifts.
Waldemar Selig, who had taken them unasked, lay upon the field, his body broken and twisted, forked beard pointing skyward and asking unanswered questions of the heavens. I could have answered them, if he'd asked, if he'd ever asked. But he had not asked me, reckoning the soul of Terre d'Ange lay within its warriors, and not its whores. I laid my hand upon his cold face, closing those asking hazel eyes.
"We are alike, my lord," I murmured. "We are all alike, in the end, and none of us to be had merely for the taking."
I heard laughter, then, faint and bitter.
Seventeen wounds, I have said. It was true. But Isidore d'Aiglemort was not quite dead of them when I found him.
"Phedre no Delaunay," he whispered, clutching at my hand. "I am afraid of your lord's revenge."
At first I thought he meant Delaunay; then I knew, through his clutching fingers, who he meant. Bronze wings of fear beat at my eardrums. I gave water to the dying, lifting the skin to his lips. "You have paid, my lord, and paid in full," I said compassionately. "And Kushiel sends no punishment that we are not fit to bear."
Isidore d'Aiglemort drank, and sighed; sighed, and died.
That, I kept to myself. It was no one's concern but our own; his, mine and Kushiel's.
Then I heard the wailing of the Dalriada.
It is an unearthly sound, high and keening, raising the hair at the back of my neck. I did not need to be told what it signified, that so many mourned at once. Releasing my grasp on d'Aiglemort's lifeless hand, I rose and turned. Some distance from me, Drustan shook off the healers' ministrations, standing awkwardly, his eyes dark with concern in the blue masque of his face.
We saw the Dalriada, clustered around one of the chariots, whose team stood steaming in the traces, heavy-headed. I could see the grief on Grainne's face, as she looked our way.
"Ah, no," I said. "No."
It was a long walk across the torn field, with the dead lying twisted in my path, blood seeping slow and dark into the dry soil and shredded rootlets. Drustan made it with me, his gait halt and painful; I daresay it cost him as much as it did me, pain flooding my body.
"Eamonn," I whispered.
They had taken him from the chariot and arranged his limbs so that he lay proud and straight on the blood-soaked earth of Terre d'Ange, and tugged at his armor so it concealed the terrible rent a Skaldi spearhead had made in his side. His hair, never as bright as his sister's, was stiffened to a white crest with lime, spiky against the dark soil.
Drustan seized his belt-knife and raised it unhesitating, sawing at a thick lock of his black hair. It gave way and he knelt reverently, placing the lock beneath Eamonn's cold hands.
"He was braver than lions and more stalwart than an oak," he said somberly to Grainne. "His name