Fool's Quest

He spoke quickly. “We had the soft man. The man who looks like a boy. Vindeliar. The one who can make you forget things. We’d separated him from the pale folk and convinced him to enjoy himself. To use his magic for things he might want to do. We wanted to make him like us and think we were his friends. And it worked. He was worth more to us than any of the others, more than anything they offered us. We were going to take them all back to Chalced, sell them in the market there but keep the magic-man.”

A bigger story here, but not one I cared about. “You were celebrating. Then what happened?”

“I wanted a woman. I should not have had to ask for one. They were plunder, I had a right to my share, and there were plenty of them. But we had not had them …” Again, his words dangled. With no Ellik to recall, he would not know why they were working for women, let alone why he had refrained from raping them. He scowled to himself. “I had to take the ugliest one. The one that most of us thought was probably not a woman at all. But that was the only one …” Again he paused in puzzlement. I let him try to gather his threads.

“She started screaming before I even touched her. She fought so hard when I tried to strip her. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have … I did nothing to her that a woman is not meant to have done to her. Nothing that would have killed her! But she screamed and screamed … And someone brought Vindeliar to have a turn … I think. I don’t know. Something happened. Oh. A woman, older and fleshy, and we were going to have her. But then … And everyone went mad. We chased them and hunted them, and the blood … and then we turned on one another. Sword-brothers. We’d eaten together, fought side by side for the last four years. But that one that she brought with her, the one who could make the villagers not see us? He turned on us and made us forget our brotherhood. All I could remember were the slights, the times they had cheated me at dice or taken a woman I wanted or eaten more than their share of the best food. I wanted to kill every one of them. I did kill two. Two of my fellow warriors. Two I had taken my oaths with. One slashed my leg before I killed him. Chriddick. He did that. I’d known him for five years. But I fought him and killed him.”

The words were pouring out now, heedless of the pain it cost him. I did not interrupt. Where in that mad night had my little girl been? Where were Bee and Shine? Somewhere beyond the camp, fallen bloody in the snow? Captured and dragged off by the fleeing mercenaries?

“The ones who hired us, the pale ones, the white ones? They did not do this to us. They could never have fought us. They were weak, stupid with weapons, with little stamina for the march or the cold. Always, they begged us to go slower, to rest more, to find more food for them. And we did. Why? Why were warriors commanded by sniveling women and sapling men? Because of a dirty magic they put upon us. They made us less than warriors. They shamed us. And then they turned us upon each other.” He gave a noise between a sob and a cry. “They took our honor!”

Did he hope to win sympathy from me? He was pathetic, but not in a way that roused any pity in me. “I care nothing for your lost honor. You took a woman and a child. What became of them?”

He balked again. My knife moved, slicing his nose. Noses bleed a lot. He flung himself back from my knife and lifted his hands defensively. I slashed both of them and he shrieked.

“Bastard! You cowardly bastard! You’ve no sense of a warrior’s honor! You know I cannot do battle with you or you would not dare treat me so.”

I did not laugh. I set my knife to the base of his throat. I pushed and he lay back on the snow. Words came out of my mouth. “Did the women of my holding know your warrior’s honor when you were raping them? Did my little kitchenmaid think you honorable as she staggered away from your friend Pandow? When you cut the throats of my unarmed stablemen, was that honor?”

He tried to pull back from the tip of my knife but I let it follow him. With his lamed leg he could no more flee than my little kitchen girl had. He lifted his bloody hands. I dropped my knee on his injured leg. He gasped at the pain and found blurred words. “They were not warriors! They had no honor as warriors. All know women can possess no honor. They are weak! Their lives have no meaning save what men give to them. And the others, those men, they were servants, slaves. Not warriors. She was not even right as a woman! So ugly and not even right as a woman!”

He screamed as my blade bit deeper, opening a gash in his neck. Careful. Not yet.

“Strange,” I said quietly when he ran out of wind. I moved my knife up to his face. He lifted his hands. I shook my head. “My women gave this meaning to my life: I hurt those who hurt mine. Without regard for their imaginary honor. Warriors who rape and kill the helpless have no honor. They possess no honor when they hurt children. If it were not for my women, the women of my household, and my serving men, I would think it dishonorable for me to do this to you. Tell me. How long did it take you to rape one of the women of my household? As long as my knife has been playing with your face?”