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Hugh wrenched her arm tightly up against her back, trapping her. The servingman turned, his face indistinguishable in the darkness—but her position was silhouetted plainly by the fire.
“How fare you, friend?” the man asked. “Need you help?”
“Please—” Liath began, but Hugh pressed his free hand to her throat and suddenly she could not speak.
“Nay, brother,” answered Hugh sternly. “We need no help here. You may move on.”
Whether because he recognized the voice of a nobleman, the robes of a churchman, or was simply obedient to a tone in Hugh’s voice which he could not resist, the man turned away and vanished on his errand, abandoning her.
“No,” she whispered, finding her voice again when Hugh lowered his hand.
“Yes.” Hugh smiled. “You are mine, Liath. You will love me in the end.”
“I love someone else,” she said hoarsely. The feather, still hidden, burned like a hot coal against her free hand. “I love another man.”
She only knew how gentle he had been before because he now went white with rage and shook her viciously. “Who? Who is it?”
Unable to help herself, she began to weep. “Ai, Lady, he’s dead.”
“Any man you love will die, for I proclaim it so. I will make it so. Love no one, love only me, and you will be safe.”
“I will never love you. I hate you.”
“Hate is only the other face of love, my beauty. You cannot hate what you cannot also love. My beautiful Liath. How I love the sound of your name on my lips.”
She believed him. That was the worst of it. He spoke so persuasively, and his voice was so soft—except she knew what he was, she had seen that glimpse of it when she made him angry.
“I will always treat you well,” he said as if he had heard her thoughts, “as long as you obey me.”
She began again to cry. Seeing her reduced to weeping in front of him, her fear and weakness revealed utterly, he let go of her. Like a rabbit miraculously released from the clutches of a hawk, she ran.
“Where will you go?” he called after her, mocking her as she ran. “You will never escape me, Liath. Never.”
She ran to the stables where so many animals and stablehands crammed in together that breath and sweat made the air almost warm. But she would never be warm again.
3
ANNA shivered as wind wailed through the trees. Snowflakes spun down; a thin dusting made the ground bright, and the wind shuddered branches of trees and shook snow from them in sudden waterfalls of white.
It was so cold.
Here in the shelter of a fir tree, she had at least some respite from the constant cut of wind. But there was never any respite from fear or from the pit of hunger that yawned in her belly like the dreaded Abyss. Two horses also sheltered under the cave made by the fir’s branches; with reins wrapped loosely around a crook in one thick branch, they snuffled at the forest litter, trying to graze. “Watch the horses,” two of Lord Wichman’s soldiers had ordered her after finding her foraging in the woods. “Pull the reins free and flee if the Eika approach.”
She hadn’t known she was so close to Eika. She stayed within the cover of trees on her daily foraging expeditions into the forest, but every day she had to search farther away from the battered holding of Steleshame to find any pittance to add to the shared pot. In this way, with the young lord growing bored of Master Helvidius’ poetry and Mistress Gisela eager to exclude anyone who didn’t “earn their keep,” Anna staved off the cold knife of starvation. It would not have been like this if Matthias hadn’t died.
She shuddered. She could not bear to think about Matthias. Maybe it would have been better to have died with him, it hurt so much to be without him. But the old poet and the child relied on her as well; she had to go on.
She rubbed her hands and listened. She had been told to stay on the lee of the hill, to save the horses should things go awry. Yet, there was grass atop the hill, yellowed and dry under the winter sky and high enough to hide her. If she could watch the raid, wouldn’t she be better able to protect herself and the horses she had been put in charge of? What if the soldiers’ blades couldn’t penetrate Eika hides? What if Lord Wichman and his men were all killed and the Eika came searching for her and she didn’t know they were coming? What if she were unable to flee, or the reins wouldn’t unwrap from the tree limb? What if she fell from the horse? She didn’t know how to ride.
Maybe it would be better to wait here by the horses, to wait for the soldiers to return, driving captured cattle before them, but she couldn’t bear to wait as if she were blind and crippled.
And anyway, there was nothing she could see on this day that would be worse than what she had already seen in this past year.
She crept up the slope on hands and knees. Grass rustled under her weight and she froze, then slowly crawled to the crest, checking always to assure herself that the foxtails waved above her head. At the top of the hill lay a large gray rock with dry orange lichen clinging to it as if to a scaly hide. From behind this screen she dared to peer down into the vale.
A single ragged byre stood at the far end of the vale. Cattle grazed in their dull fashion, watched over by three slaves dressed in far less than what Anna wore. They leaned heavily on staves. Occasionally a cow lifted its head from the grass to low nervously. Goats strayed over one rise beyond which Anna could see copses of trees and the suggestion of floodplain; if she moved just enough she might be able to see the towers of Gent in the distance. A woman so weak that she frequently stumbled hurried after the straying goats and herded them back. Anna could not count very high, but there were plenty of cattle and goats just in this one sheltered vale where grass still covered the hillside. No doubt these livestock had been stolen from Steleshame or some other unfortunate village. According to the reports brought in by the mounted soldiers, many such herds grazed the lands around Gent now, good cropland which had gone to seed under the stewardship of the Eika.
Lord Wichman and his soldiers weren’t raiding, not really; they were just getting back what the Eika had stolen.
