The one who’d spoken barely had time to frame an expression of astonishment before Joscelin rode him down, sword flashing in a killing stroke. The other scrambled backward, cocking his spear, as Joscelin swung around toward him. His eyes flickered frantically, trying to decide: the horse or the rider? He flung his spear at Joscelin, aiming at his heart. Joscelin dropped low along his horse’s neck, and the spear passed cleanly over him. Swinging himself upright, he rode down the second of the White Brethren. This one got his shield up; it took several blows to finish him.
There is nothing redder than fresh-spilled blood on virgin snow.
Joscelin rode slowly back toward me, his expression stricken. His eyes, that had looked so young when first he gazed at the forest, looked sick and old.
"It had to be done," I said softly.
He nodded and dismounted, cleaning and sheathing his sword. Without looking at the man’s face, he went to the nearest of the White Brethren, the first one, who wore crude fur mittens on his hands. One still clutched his unused spear. Joscelin drew them off gently, bringing them to me. "Don’t say anything. Just put them on."
I obeyed him without question. My hands swam in them and I could scarce grasp the reins, but they were warm. Joscelin remounted and we set out again.
No one else challenged our path, and it grew evident as we journeyed that we were in uninhabited territory. We pressed the horses as hard as we dared, forging through snow that at times was nigh breast-high on my shaggy pony. For all that, he seemed hardier than Joscelin’s taller mount. Once we had to cross a quick-flowing stream, that ran with such vigor between its narrow banks as to render it unfrozen. We let the horses drink, holding them to small sips; it would have given them colic, Joscelin said, to fill their bellies all at once. He emptied out two of the meadskins there, filling them with clean water.
We paused only to rest the horses, and then only briefly. Our midday meal was a handful of pottage oats, chewed dry and washed down with icy water. From time to time, Joscelin would dismount and lead his mount, breaking a path and giving it a respite from his weight. He made me do it once too, when I was turning blue with cold. I cursed him for it, but the exertion warmed me. He was right, of course. If the horses foundered, we’d be caught for sure.
I had in my head a clear map of the route we must take to reach the lowest pass of the Camaeline Range. It was something else, though, to measure it against the vast, trackless expanse we traveled; and I was no navigator. When at last the sun began to sink in the west, throwing tree-shadows long and black toward us, I realized we’d angled off-course. We corrected our course, then, trudging westward toward the lowering orange glow.
"That’s far enough." Joscelin’s words broke a long silence between us. A scrap of light remained to be glimpsed through the trees, and no more. "Any further, and we won’t be able to see to make camp."
He dismounted, then, tying his horse’s reins to a nearby branch. I followed suit, trying not to shiver at the encroaching darkness. "Do you think it’s safe to make a fire?" I asked through chattering teeth.
"It’s not safe not to, unless you want to freeze in your sleep." Joscelin tramped down a patch of snow, then set about gathering dead branches, stacking them efficiently. I helped as best I could, lugging wood to the fire site. "We need to tend to the horses first," he said, digging out Selig’s tinderbox and kneeling to strike a spark. Once, twice, three times, it failed to catch. My heart sank. Unperturbed, Joscelin drew one of his daggers and carefully shaved wood from a dry branch, then struck another spark. This time, it caught. He nurtured it tenderly, feeding it with twigs, until a tidy blaze resulted.
"What do you want me to do?" I felt hopelessly inadequate.
"Here." Joscelin handed me the cook-pot. "Fill it with one of the skins, and water the horses. We can thaw snow to refill it. When you’re done, set the pottage to cooking."
Circumstance is everything. In Delaunay’s household, I’d have balked at eating a meal cooked in a pot from which horses had drunk; now, it couldn’t have mattered less to me. My hardy pony dipped his muzzle and drank deep, lifting his head when I drew the pot away lest he guzzle too much at once. Droplets of ice formed on the whiskers that grew from his soft muzzle, and he looked at me with dark limpid eyes under his forelock.
While I went about my assigned chores, Joscelin worked with a tireless efficiency that humbled me, removing the horses' saddles and rubbing them down with a bit of jersey-cloth, rendering makeshift hobbles from a length of leather he scavenged from one of the packs, giving each a measure of grain fodder-which smelled, in truth, better than our pottage-and erecting a windbreak from deadfalls and gathering a night’s supply of wood. He gathered more pine boughs, green ones, hacking them down with his sword while I stirred the pottage, and made a springy bed of them upon the snow. Rummaging among Selig’s clothing, which I’d taken, he found a woolen cloak which he spread over the boughs.
"It will keep the snow from stealing the heat of our bodies," he said by way of explanation, sitting on the pine-bed and drawing his sword. "We’ll…we should sleep close, for warmth."
There was an awkwardness in his tone. I raised my eyebrows at him. "After all we’ve been through, that embarrasses you?"
He bent his head over his sword, running a sharpening stone that had been among his things the length of the blade. His face was averted, fire-cast shadows flickering in the hollow eyeholes of the wolf-mask on his brow. "It does if I think on it, Phèdre," he said quietly. "I’ve not much left to hold on to, by way of my vows."
"I’m sorry." Abandoning my burbling pottage, I came over to sit beside him, wrapping both mittened hands around one of his arms. "Truly, Joscelin," I repeated, "I am sorry." We sat there together, staring into the fire. It burned merrily, melting a hollow into the snow and throwing dancing branch-patterns into the night above us. "I tried to kill Selig last night," I told him.
I felt the shock of it go through him, and he turned to look at me. "Why? They’d have killed you for it."
"I know." I gazed at the shifting flames. "But it would have been sure, that way. The Skaldi wouldn’t unite under another, he’s the one holds them together. And you wouldn’t have had to betray your vow."
"What happened?" His voice was soft.
"He woke up." I shrugged. "Maybe it’s true, maybe he really is proof against harm. It was that old priest made me think it, who called me Kushiel’s weapon. But he woke up. I was lucky, he didn’t know what I was about."
"Phèdre." Joscelin drew a shuddering breath, and loosed it in a sound almost like a laugh, but not quite. "Plaything of the wealthy. Ah, Elua…you put me to shame. I wish I’d known Delaunay better, to have created such a pupil."
"I wish you had too." I drew off one of my mittens and plucked a twig from his hair, toying with it to feel its fineness. "But in all fairness, when I first met you, I thought you were-"
"A dried-up old stick of a Cassiline Brother," he finished, shooting me an amused glance. "I remember. I remember it very well."
"No." I gave his hair a sharp tug and smiled at him. "That was before I met you. Once I did, I thought you were a smug, self-satisfied young prig of a Cassiline Brother."
He laughed at that, a real laugh. "You were right. I was."
"No, I was wrong. The man I thought you were would have given up and died of humiliation in Gunter’s kennels. You kept fighting, and stayed true to yourself. And kept me alive, thus far."