“I wonder what the old ceremonies were really like,” she mused. “The divines scorn the animal sacrifice, but really…When I was a child at my father's Temple fort, I went a few times with…with a friend to the marsh people's autumn rites. The fen folk aren't of the same race or language as the Old Wealdings, but I could almost have imagined myself going back to those days. It was more like a grand party and outdoor roast than anything. I mean, they made some songs and rituals over the creatures before they slaughtered them, but what's the difference if we pray over our meat after it's cooked instead of before?” She added with an air of fairness, “Or so my friend said. The fort's divine disagreed, but then, the two of them disagreed a lot. I think my friend enjoyed baiting him.”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “that's true. Or at any rate, everyone ran about splashing each other and screaming with laughter. It was all very messy and silly, and rather smelly, but it was hard to see any evil in it. Of course, this tribe didn't sacrifice people.” She looked around the clearing as if imagining the ghostly image of some such evil slaying here.
“Indeed,” said Ingrey dryly. “That was the sticking point, between the Darthacan Quintarians and the Old Wealdings.” For all that both sides had worshipped the same five gods. “So when Audar the so-called Great slaughtered four thousand Wealding prisoners of war at Bloodfield, it's said he didn't pray at all. That made it a proper Quintarian act, I suppose, and not heresy. Some other crime, perhaps, but not human sacrifice. One of those theological fine points.”
That massacre of a generation of young spirit warriors had broken the back of the Wealding resistance to their eastern invaders, in any case. For the next hundred and fifty years, the Weald's lands, ceremonies, and people had been forcibly rearranged into Darthacan patterns, until Audar's vast empire broke apart in the bloody squabbles of his much less great descendants. Orthodox Quintarianism survived the empire that had fostered it, however. The suppressed animal practices and wisdom songs of the forest tribes had been lost and all but forgotten in the renewed Weald, except for rural superstitions, children's rhymes, and the odd ghost tale.
“I suppose we are all New Wealdings, now,” mused Ijada. She touched her Darthacan-dark hair, and nodded to Ingrey's own. “Almost every Wealding kin that survived has Darthacan forebears, too. Mongrels, to a man. Or to a lord, anyway. So we inherit Audar's sins and the tribes'. For all I know my Chalionese father had some Darthacan blood. The nobles there are a very mixed lot, really, he always said, for all that they carry on about their pedigrees.”
Ingrey bit, chewed, did not answer.
“When your father gave you your wolf,” she began, “how-”
“You should go eat,” he interrupted her, around a mouthful of cold roast. “It's going to be a long ride yet.” He rose and strode away from her, toward the wagon and its baskets. He did not want more food, but he did not want more of her chatter, either. He selected a not-too-wormy apple and nibbled it slowly while walking about. He stayed on the other side of the clearing from her, during the remainder of their rest.
AS THE CORTEGE RUMBLED ON THROUGH THE AFTERNOON, THE rugged angles of the hills grew gentler and hamlets more frequent, their fields more extensive. The sun was slanting toward the treetops when they came to an unanticipated check. A rocky ford, hock deep on the ride in, had risen with the rains and was now in full and muddy flood.
Ingrey halted his horse and looked over the problem. Boleso's wagon had not been made watertight with skins or tar, so the chance of its floating away at an awkward angle and yanking the horses off their feet was slight. The chance of its shipping water and bogging down, however, was good. He set mounted men at the wagon's four corners with ropes to help warp it through the hazard, and waved the yeoman onward with what speed he could muster from his tired team. The water came up past the horses' bellies, pushing the wagon off its wheels, but the outriders held it on course, and the whole assemblage struggled safely up the far bank. Only then did Ingrey motion Lady Ijada ahead of him into the water.
The cold water tugged at his knees as he urged his horse downstream. The dark head bobbed up by a trio of smooth rocks that stuck out of the spate boiling around them. An arm reached, caught…
“Hang on!” yelled Ingrey. “I'm coming to get you-!”
Two arms. Lady Ijada heaved herself upward, belly over the rock, wriggled and scrambled; by the time Ingrey brought his snorting horse close, she was standing upright, dripping and gasping. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her horse make it to the bank farther downstream, where it surged up, stumbled through the mud, and bolted into the woods. Ingrey spared it an unvoiced curse and waved one of his men after it.
He did not look to see if he was obeyed, for now he was within arm's reach of Lady Ijada. He leaned toward her, she leaned toward him…
A dark red fog seemed to come up over his brain, clouding his vision. Gripping her arms, he toppled into the stream, pulling her from her perch. Down, if he held her down…water filled his mouth. He spat, gasped, and went under again. He was blinded and tumbling. Some distant part of his mind, far, far off, was screaming at him: What are you doing, you fool! He must hold her down
The force of the water clubbed his head into something hard, and starry green sparks overflowed the red fog. All thought fled.
“Stop fighting me!” Lady Ijada's voice snapped in his ear. Something circling his neck tightened; he realized after a dizzy moment that it must be her arm. He must save her, drown her, save her-
She can swim. The belated realization slowed his flailing, if only in shock. Well, he could swim, too, after a fashion. He'd stayed alive through a shipwreck, once, admittedly mostly by hanging on to things that floated. The only thing floating here seemed to be Lady Ijada. Surely the weight of his blades and boots must drag them both down-his feet struck something. The current spat them into a back eddy, the river bottom flattened out, then she was dragging him up onto some welcome, blessed shore.
He twisted around out of her arm's grip, crawling up on hands and knees over the rocks onto the moss-covered bank. Pink water flowed from his hair, growing redder. He dashed it from his eyes and blinked around. The woods here were thick and tangled. He was not sure how far downstream they had come, but the ford, the wagon, and his men were nowhere in sight. He was shivering in shock from the head blow.
She stood up, water streaming from her clothes, and staggered out of the river toward him, her hand reaching. He cried out, a wordless bellow, and recoiled, wrapping his arms around a small tree, in part to hold himself upright, in part to hold…“Don't touch me!”
“What? Lord Ingrey, you're bleeding-”
“Don't come any nearer!”
“Lord Ingrey, if you will just-” His voice cracked. “My wolf is trying to kill you! It is coming unbound! Stay away!”
“Three times,” he gasped hoarsely. “That was the third time. Don't you realize, I tried to drown you just now? It's tried twice before. The first time I saw you, when I drew my steel, I meant to run you through on the spot. Then when we were sitting, I almost tried to strangle you.”
She was pale, thoughtful, intent. Not running away screaming. He wanted her to run, whether screaming or not made no matter to him. As long as she could outrun him…