She moaned deep in her throat like an angry cat. But she was not angry, and she writhed across him until she’d shifted her weight and put an arm behind his head.
The hand on her neck probed a little and found even more luxuriant softness-she shifted again, her lips changing from left to right across his, and her tongue-
Suddenly she sat up. “You are not dead!” she said. “The working!”
For the first time since he was granted powers, Mortirmir cursed all of hermeticism.
Chapter Five
The Albin
Amicia spent their first day on the road reassuring herself and her sisters that she was not leading them to temptation, or even humiliation and death. Riding with the Red Knight and his household-who were, however she might wish to describe them, sell-swords and mercenaries and not knights errant-terrified her two companions.
Sister Mary was a tall, quiet girl with a brilliant mind and a straight back and a fine voice, both in the aethereal and in the real. She was young to be travelling, just seventeen, and her day-to-day struggles with the temptations of the world were palpable-sometimes amusing, and sometimes terrible. She was pretty, and afflicted with a need to be seen as pretty that conflicted with her quiet, and very genuine, piety. She was a poor rider, a peasant born, and she suffered from the youthful urge to refuse help. Her straight blond hair and ice-blue eyes were widely admired among the captain’s men.
Sister Katherine was warmer, with curly red hair and a vicious sense of humor. She was the oldest of the three, a mature thirty, and she had born and lost a child as a young woman. She was noble born-and had worked away the pride of her birth on stone floors and a hundred forms of penance and laundry.
It hadn’t been entirely successful.
In truth, both women had been handed to Sister Amicia as supports, but also as projects. Sister Katherine had a reputation for arrogance, and Sister Mary for wantonness.
It was, Sister Amicia thought, as if Sister Miriam was challenging her.
Despite which, the three had gotten off to a fine start. Healing knights and clearing boglins and hearing confessions had all been adventures, and the three had shared enough adventures in their first weeks together to create a bond that gossip and the stresses of castle or convent life might never have allowed. When Sister Mary paused by a pane of glass to look at her reflection, Amicia made no comment, and Sister Katherine’s rosary of coral and gold drew no comment either.
The first day on the road had been difficult enough. Sister Mary usually walked or rode a donkey, but the column bound for the tournament was moving too fast for her, and she was mounted on one of the company’s spare horses, and suffered cruelly from the first halt on. As a trained physiker and a hermeticist, she had an arsenal of cures she could deploy, but as a young woman, she bit her lip and endured and muttered darkly until Sister Amicia put a hand on her to steady her, and pushed ops into her thighs.
“Am I so obvious?” Sister Mary asked.
Amicia laughed. “Yes,” she said.
Sister Katherine, on the other hand, was in her element-she was on a fine eastern mare, and she rode better than some of the soldiers.
“Tonight, if you’ll allow it, I’ll split my kirtle and ride astride,” Sister Katherine said. “I can do yours and Mary’s, too.”
Sister Amicia sighed. Katherine was always at the edge of the allowed, looking for a way outside. “I’m not sure the world is ready for nuns who ride astride,” Amicia said.
“By our lady, Sister-you say mass, they threaten you with heresy, and you are worried by riding astride?” Sister Katherine pouted.
The Red Knight, fully armed and wearing a scarlet surcoat of silk, shot with gold thread, trotted down the column with Toby, his squire, and Nell, his valet, at his golden-spurred heels. He was making his way down the column slowly-inspecting it. The three women had lots of warning.
The rain was sporadic. “Once your skirts are soaked, the thighs will hurt all the more,” Katherine said. “And astride will be easier on Mary. This is no way to ride.” She had to raise her voice to be heard. They were entering the great gorge of the Albin River.
Immediately behind the three nuns was the escort of Thrakian knights led by Ser Christos. He was smiling broadly when Amicia looked back. He had water dripping down his grey-black beard and he bowed his head. He called something in Archaic and his knights and stradiotes straightened up. A servant handed a linen rag forward, and all of them began wiping each other’s metal dry.
A watery sun emerged from the clouds as they turned east, climbed a low ridge, and suddenly the world seemed to drop away before them. Around them, the Brogat rolled away in a series of hilly landscapes-to the west, the hills rose towards mountains currently hidden in rain. But the hillsides were already lush and green in early April, as if to belie the last days of Lent.
But to the east, the great river rolled in its deepest gorge before emerging into the plains of the Albin. The gorges of the great river were spectacular, and thousands of years of spring run-offs as strong or stronger than this year’s had carved a mighty channel through the low hills of the central Brogat. Far below them on their left, the river charged along, muddy and green-brown with ice-cold snow melt and old leaves and new-swept loam all rolling along at the speed of a cavalry charge. The river was, in fact, so loud, and the walls of the great gorge echoed the river so well, that conversation was difficult.
It stunned the senses-the drop was two hundred feet and more to the channel below and the mad rush of the water and the wet grey rock and the white birches and the green of the leaves. Amicia found she had to remind herself to breathe, and when she turned her head from the drop, he was there.
He was smiling happily. He took a deep breath himself, looking out over the canyon and the river, and then he met her eyes. His smile didn’t change. Before she could stop him, he took her bridle hand, kissed it, and passed her.
The path along the gorge was too narrow for Amicia to turn her horse easily, and she’d only bring chaos to the column. She rode on, turning in her saddle to look. But he was pointing out something on Sister Mary’s saddle to his valet, and the young woman slid from her saddle and took Mary’s horse’s head.
He caught her eye again. His smile returned. He simply pointed and moved his hand-one of the company’s signals that she knew from the siege. Move.
She saw no reason to disobey, so she turned to face forward, to the immense relief of her mount. They began to pick their way along the most spectacular view she had ever seen.
Under foot, birch and beech leaves sodden with rain made a brown-gold contrast to the green leaves above, and even as she raised her head from her noon prayers, the sun, brightening, kissed her with its warmth and she rode easily, thanking God from her very soul for the perfection of the day and the beauty of the view.
They rode along the gorge for three magnificent miles, and then the trail re-crested the ridge to their right and went a little west and down slope, leaving the roar of the water far enough east that normal conversation could commence.
There was an old wagon circle, well used and with twenty big firepots recently cleared at the base of the ridge, where a fine stream hurried to meet the great river to the east. A pair of stradiotes was there with most of the squires and valets. The wagons were already parked, and the captain’s pavilion was already up.
It was only just after noon. But Amicia put a hand in the small of her back and was glad to stop. She found the captain’s squire giving orders and approached on horseback.
“Eh, Sister?” he asked. “Cap’n says to offer you and your sisters a cup o’ wine while the tents go up.” He waved to the pavilion, where Nell was pouring wine for what appeared to be a large party. Two long tables had been constructed, and places set for twenty.