~ 8 ~

A faint rustle of mail, which could have been wind in the brush, was the only indication that Faulk had returned. He slid through the trees and back into the clearing where Anlin waited with the horses. It was the fourth time he’d doubled back since leaving the bridge.

“No one’s following,” he said, sitting down on a large rock. He leaned forward to put his head beneath his knees and breathed deeply. The day was unusually hot for early spring and mist hugged the ground like a pale blanket for miles around the Tarsell River, making it damp as well as hot. They’d also been traveling uphill as they climbed out of the river gorge. The ground looked almost level, but the laboring of the horses told otherwise.

“That’s good news,” Anlin said, “but I rather expected it. The man with the three ritual scars on each cheek was a shaman. He scanned us for magic and was satisfied that we were both without Talent. Had it been otherwise, we probably would have been attacked when we entered. And, then, we did look pretty non-threatening when we crossed the bridge.” She smiled when she said this to take some of the sting out of her last words. But she still enjoyed the flush of embarrassment that darkened Faulk’s face. A laugh suddenly bubbled up, making Faulk frown. “I’m sorry, but once I was sure you hadn’t been hurt, it was funny.”

Anlin didn’t explain that laughter was a release of tension for her. Standing at the end of that bridge, alone, surrounded by Rennish men, she had been acutely uncomfortable. She had held her betrothal ring out, repeating over and over, “I belong to him.” And then, when her “owner,” her protector, looked like he was getting himself killed, the old, hated fear had seized her in its uncompromising grip. She thought she would die of fright as Faulk finally came shooting off the bridge and into their midst like a doll thrown around in a fair day puppet show. That had been terrifying, but when she knew that he was uninjured, her tension had dissolved into laughter.

“Yeah, funny.” Faulk rotated his shoulders as if working muscles that had been banged around on their crossing.

“There should be a stream off somewhere to the right,” Anlin said. “Why don’t we go on and make camp for the night. There’s no way that we can make it to Chirlon by nightfall anyway, so we might as well stop here.”

“How do you know about the terrain in this area? Was this near where you were held?”

“No, the closest I lived to here was on a steading near Chirlon, where we’re headed. I wasn’t allowed to wander more than an hour’s walk away from my master’s holding. My last owner, Martic, had some good maps of the border area, however, and I memorized as much as possible once I determined to escape.”

As much as she’d hated the man, Anlin was thankful that Martic had been an area commander and had maps of Rennic’s border with Fallucia. She’d poured over those maps every time Martic left the steading—planning, always planning, her escape.

Martic had been careless with his maps. He’d assumed no mere female slave could read them. Of course, he’d also thought no mere female slave would kill him. Unbidden, Anlin’s mouth turned up in a smile that had nothing to do with her previous humor.

“This might be a good time to stop, if you know of a likely spot,” Faulk said. When he’d mounted after crossing the river, he’d given a soft grunt. Anlin suspected his abused muscles were now stiffening, and he was carrying around a great deal of extra weight by wearing his mail.

She led the way off the trail and was gratified that within a few minutes she came to a rapidly flowing stream. She followed it until they came to a place where the trees drew back from the water, forming a small meadow. It was a good location, and they quickly made camp, accustomed to doing specific tasks in a coordinated manner.

When the horses were cared for and hobbled and a fire cheerfully burned to heat the rocks to use in making flatbread, Anlin retrieved her bow from where they’d stacked the supplies. “I’m going to walk the meadow and see if I can scare up some hares,” she said. “Fresh meat would be nice.”

Faulk looked up from where he’d dropped a load of wood. “I’ll go with you.”

“No, I’ll stay in the meadow where you can see me. There’s no one else around, so I should be fine. If you’re out tromping around too, rabbits will be popping up everywhere, and I won’t know where to shoot. It’s better if I go alone.”

He smiled deprecatingly. “I’ve done such a superb job of taking care of you up to now, haven’t I? But don’t leave the meadow.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’d appreciate it if you could help me get this mail off before you go. If nothing else, it would be cooler.”

Anlin walked to where he stood and tugged on the mail shirt when he leaned over. As it began to slip free, the weight amazed her. She was glad she could quickly drape it over a rock. “How can you wear this all day?”

Faulk laughed. “All day is easy. It’s sleeping in the thing that is sometimes difficult, but I’ve done it plenty of times. I guess the ability to sleep in discomfort depends on the level of exhaustion.” The gambeson under the mail was sweat-sodden, and he removed that as well with a contented sigh. He looked at his left shoulder and flexed it back and forth. “Yeah, a nasty bruise as I expected from that damned horse whacking me into the support pole.”

Anlin glanced at his shoulder, but her gaze focused on his back. Sculpted muscles flowed with his every movement, but the skin, Sweet Cheelum, the skin. His back and upper shoulders were a mass of welted scars, crisscrossing each other in odd angles, a map of destruction wrought on his flesh. She must have made a sound, a quick intake of breath, for he swung back to face her, gambeson still in his hands.

“I’m sorry. I forgot you’d never seen my back. Fortunately, it’s a bit of ugliness that I never have to look at.” He held his arms wide and glanced down at his chest. “But see, no scars on the front. I learned to defend myself and have done a good job of it, tussles with a recalcitrant horse notwithstanding.”

“What? How?” She couldn’t make a coherent sentence. Even on other Rennish slaves, she’d never seen such scars. It seemed impossible that anyone could have sustained such damage and lived.

“A scourge. The patterns on my back were made by a metal-tipped scourge. It’s an outward sign of my failure to hear the voice of Cheelum. The abbot at Jarburgh was convinced that the marks of blackness on my soul were much worse. I think he tried to erase those marks with ones of his own from flogging.” His voice was clam, dispassionate.

“But how could you let him…”

Faulk’s head came up and his eyes bored into hers. “Let him? I didn’t let him. I was a boy, a child; there was no ‘letting’ involved. I thought being beaten was the normal way of the world. I didn’t know what happened to me was unique. And the scourging itself wasn’t nearly as painful as when the brine was poured over the cuts to aid in healing. That’s when I screamed. I tried to scream the walls of Jarburgh down. There was no sweetness in the Cheelum that I called upon.”

He turned his back to her. “You can look at these scars all you want. I’m not ashamed of them. While the scars are on my body, I’m not the madman who put them there. You can touch them if you want. They don’t hurt. If anything, there’s a lack of sensation. Some women I’ve been with wanted to touch them, something I never really understood.” His voice took on a softer tone. “But I’m beginning to see the attraction. If I could see your scars, if I could touch them, maybe I could make them better.”

Anlin turned and fled, angry that the tears in her eyes blurred the meadow grass. She wanted to shout, “I have no scars!” But she knew this wasn’t the truth. Her own injuries were there, just hidden. So much of Faulk’s story had sounded similar to her own… I was a boy, a child; there was no “letting” involved.

She had been a child and knew not how to stop it when a man had violently spread her thighs and plunged into her, invading her body, injuring her soul. But unlike Faulk, she had scabs instead of insensate scars, and she feared their removal, knowing that the pain hidden beneath them would then come flooding out.

Wiping her eyes, she stopped to string the bow and continued into the meadow, ignoring the man who stood behind her.

* * *

“The rabbit was good,” Anlin said.

“You were the one who killed it, for which you have my thanks. I just made sure it didn’t burn over the fire,” Faulk said.

Yes, she’d provided the hare, but when she’d brought it back to camp, Faulk had surprised her by taking over the cleaning and cooking duties. No Rennish man would have done that. She was confident even her father and brother would have expected her to cook if there were no servants around to do so. Faulk’s behavior was just another piece of the puzzle that was the man she’d married. None of the pieces seemed to be making a decent whole, however.

She’d intended to tie herself to a callous man, to a fighter who would give no quarter. This is what she imagined she’d need on this trip into Rennic—the type of man who could make her feel safe. But Faulk didn’t seem to be brutal enough. She knew he was a marvelous fighter. That much was true. But he personally seemed to be nice instead of ruthless. The people of White Ford didn’t fear him; they liked him. Sweet Cheelum, she liked him, and that wasn’t something she’d thought could ever happen.

Faulk lay on his back, some distance from the fire, his head supported on his saddle. He seemed to be studying the stars. Anlin wondered what he thought about in the long moments of silence between them. Did he think of the beatings that left such horrendous marks on his back? She hoped not. She hoped he’d found a way to block the pain and ugliness as she had done. She thought of his scarred back now. Thought of all the times she’d lain just inches from him in the dark and had never known.

“If there are Rennish around, it wouldn’t do for you take over any chores that might rightly be mine. They wouldn’t understand why you treat your slave with such leniency and would probably judge you to be soft. It’s better they think you a hard man. They can understand this type of man.”

Faulk turned his head to look at her. His eyes seemed to be without color; they just reflected the firelight. “But you’re not my slave; you’re my wife. I’m sure the Rennish understand the concept of having a wife.”

“I’m sure they understand the concept, but, in all the time I lived here, I never saw anyone’s wife. Any women you see in public will be slaves, and that’s what the Rennish will be expecting me to be. Wives and marriageable girls over the age of eight are sequestered.”

“And never seen?” Faulk rolled to a sitting position.

“Never. The guards at the bridge assumed I belonged to you, as your slave. I used the betrothal ring as a sign of ownership. In Rennic I would have been collared, but the ring worked as well.”

“Anlin, you can use it to show ownership to fool the Rennish, but I hope you know it was never meant to signify that. I just…well… I thought when we married, a ring would be appropriate. I’m sorry I didn’t get around to having the ring sized to your finger before we left,” Faulk said. “I’d meant to, but it kept slipping my mind.”

Anlin thought he probably would have remembered it more readily had she actually worn the ring while they were at White Ford, but she’d put it in a small cask along with a necklace that had been her mother’s. It occurred to her to use it as a sign of ownership just before they’d left. She’d wrapped the back with thread so that it wouldn’t slip off. She unconsciously fiddled with the ring now as she said, “It wasn’t important. I’ve made it fit. I noticed that it has a nightpiper on it. You had it made for someone, didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer and Anlin wondered if she’d wandered into a personal area where she wasn’t supposed to go.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I had it made for Shay Landis when I thought we would marry. But when Lord Lealand fell, and I was left without a lord and without a fief of my own, her father wisely married her elsewhere.”

“You knew her, then. She wasn’t someone who was chosen for you. She was someone you wanted.” For some reason, the thought that there was a woman Faulk had wanted to marry bothered her.

“Of course, I knew her. Even when I was sworn to Lealand, I wasn’t in a position where fathers approached me to make a politically advantageous match. Shay and I met, we liked one another, and we thought we could make a life together.” He suddenly got up and added more wood to their small fire. “But that’s not what happened. You’re my wife now. I’ll get you your own ring when we get back to White Ford. One that fits you from the beginning.” He paced to the edge of the light. “I’ll go make sure the horses are set for the night.”

Then he faded into the darkness before she could say that she didn’t want another ring, that this one was just fine, that a ring made no difference to her.

But she did wonder about this woman who had attracted him. What had she been like? Obviously larger than Anlin was, judging from the size of the ring. In her mind, Anlin imagined that Shay looked like her maid Hilmar. Hilmar who watched Faulk with such concentration. They would have made an attractive couple.

Why did she care? Faulk could be attracted to anyone he wanted. It made no difference to her.

But it did.

* * *

It rained in the night and continued into the next day. Everything dripped and squished. While it luckily wasn’t cold, it was still uncomfortable. They broke camp with the minimal of talk, each eating some of the flat bread from the night before—damp flatbread with the consistency of congealed mush.

Anlin had not slept well even before the rain, awakening once from a dream in which someone who looked like Hilmar tenderly stroked the scars on Faulk’s back. She felt irritated and jerked the lead line of the packhorse harder than was necessary when she started off.

She could have used the miserable weather as an excuse for her foul mood, but she suspected her attitude was more likely caused by nerves. When they arrived in Chilton, she would again come face-to-face with her second owner, Nerth. By sunset, she would have demanded answers as to what had become of her son Telm. Or, more correctly, Faulk would have demanded those answers. She would simply stand back and look subservient. But regardless of who asked the questions, she would know what had happened to her son after he’d been pulled from her arms.

She’d gone over every possible scenario with Faulk so he’d be prepared to get the needed information, regardless of the reception awaiting them at Nerth’s steading.

“I don’t understand these people,” Faulk said after their discussion. “They hide some of their women and then misuse other women. I can’t grasp such inconsistency. And for a man to sell his own son is incomprehensible.”

“Telm wasn’t Nerth’s son,” she said. “When he bought me, I was already pregnant. Think of it as buying a cow already with calf. You get two for the price of one.”

“Sweet Cheelum. You sound as if you think this is normal.”

She paused for a moment. “I probably did come to think of some of my life here as normal. I hated Nerth for selling my son, but I understood his position. Telm was eating food and providing little labor. The child was worth money, however, and only a fool would spend coin on food when he could have been making more coin from a sale. So Nerth sold him.”

She could now calmly recite the bald facts. She’d come to accept what happened. But her tone gave no indication of the anguish that she had felt at the time. She had cried for weeks until Nerth, normally mild-mannered, had cuffed her frequently. It was probably her constant distress that had led Nerth to sell her to Martic less than a year later. Martic was a very different kind of man than Nerth had been, however. He was more than happy if she cried. It made him feel powerful.

“Do you want me to kill this man, this Nerth? After we’ve gotten the information, of course.” Faulk showed no emotion. The stark lines of his face seemed more prominent. Anlin realized he would kill Nerth for what had happened to her in the past without any compunction. She’d been concerned that Faulk might not be as hard a man as she’d anticipated, as she felt she needed. But only a merciless man could ask so calmly about murdering someone who had done him no personal harm.

“No, there’s no need to kill him. It won’t change the past. Did you kill the man who marked your back?” Anlin considered it a real possibility.

“No,” he said. “When it happened, I hadn’t the power to do so. And when I was older, I understood that the abbot was mad, that he truly thought he was doing Cheelum’s bidding.”

“It was fortunate that you were sent to Lord Lealand’s when you were.”

Faulk laughed. “I wasn’t sent. Lealand basically stole me from Jarburgh. He had come to visit his brother who was in orders there, and Lealand heard my screams. He simply wrapped my battered body up in a sheet and carried me to his keep. There his wife, Lady Patrice, tended me until I was healed. Had I stayed at Jarburgh,” he shrugged, “I would have been dead. Lealand being the good man that he was, his being at Jarburgh at just the right time—these are the workings of fate.”

Anlin hoped that fate was at work now, that Faulk would be the man who could save her son. She kept this hope before her like a bright flame and rode through the sodden day toward a steading near Chilton.