The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [64]
“It was a long time ago,” Aspar said. “It doesn’t bother me. I just didn’t…” Now he was sure he shouldn’t say anything else.
But then he felt her mitten on his face. “I’m not jealous of her, Aspar,” she said. “That was before I was born, so how could I be?”
“Raiht.”
“Raiht. So where’s the hearth?”
“Ah, I reckon you’ve just laid your hand on it,” he said.
“Oh, well.” She sighed. “I guess it’ll be better than freezing.”
It was considerably better than freezing, Aspar reckoned when the morning gray woke him. Winna was nestled into the crook of his arm, her bare flesh still hot against his, and the both of them were cocooned in blankets and skins. They’d found some energy neither thought they had, enough that it was a miracle they hadn’t fallen off the platform during the night.
He kept his breathing slow and deep, not wanting to wake her yet. But he turned his gaze about, marveling still at what had struck him with wonder as a boy, all those years ago.
“There you are,” Winna murmured.
“You’re awake?”
“Before you were,” she said. “Just looking. I never knew there was anyplace like this.”
“I call ’em the tyrants,” Aspar said.
“Tyrants?”
He nodded, looking up at the spreading and interlocking branches of the huge tree they rested in and those all around it.
“Yah. It’s the biggest, oldest stand of ironoaks in the forest. No other trees can live here; the oaks shade ’em out. They’re the kings, the emperors of the forest. It’s a whole different world up here. There are things that live on these branches and never go down to the ground.”
Winna leaned to peer over the edge. “How far down is—eep!”
“Don’t fall,” he said, gripping her a little tighter.
“That’s farther than I thought,” she rasped. “A lot farther. And we almost, last night we nearly—”
“No, never,” Aspar lied. “I had us the whole time.”
She smiled wryly and kissed him.
“You know,” she said, “when I was a girl, I thought you were made of iron. Remember when you and Dovel brought in the bodies of the Black Wargh and his men? It was like you were Saint Michael made flesh. I thought that with you at their side, a person wouldn’t have to worry about anything.”
Her eyes were serious, as beautiful as he had ever seen them. Somewhere nearby a crow-woodpecker hammered at a tree, then vented a throaty warble.
“Now you know better,” he said. “Fend took you from me, right out from underneath my nose.”
“Yah,” she said softly. “And you got me back, but it was too late. I already knew that you could fail by then, that no matter how strong and determined you were, the bad things could still get me.”
“I’m sorry, Winna.”
She gripped his hand. “No, you don’t understand,” she said. “A girl falls in love with a hero. A woman falls in love with a man. I don’t love you because I think you can protect me; I love you because you’re a man, a good man. It’s not that you always succeed but that you’ll always try.”
She looked away, back down at the distant forest floor. It was a relief, because he couldn’t think of any reply to that.
He remembered Winna as a kindling, a bundle of legs, hands, and blond hair racing around the village, always bothering him for stories of the wider world. Just one of a hundred children he’d watched flicker through mayfly childhood to become mothers, fathers, grandparents.
Aspar wasn’t sure what love was. After his first wife, Qerla, was murdered, he’d spent twenty years avoiding women and the entanglements they brought. Winna had snuck up on him, masquerading as a little girl well after he ought to have known better. But in the end the surprise had been a pleasant one, and for a short time he’d surrendered to it as much as he ever had yielded to anything.
That was before Fend had captured her. Fend had killed his first love; he seemed destined to kill all of them.
In any event, Aspar had been more and more uneasy since then, less and less sure of his feelings. He knew they were there, but what it came down to was that as long as they were on the move, fighting, always in danger of death, it was easy not