CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Elpet.

The tavern was crowded. The usual dockhands and sailors and other customers came in from the streets, and now, as well, soldiers on their way to Abustad. Hundreds of them crowded the large public room, bawling out orders for beer and beef and wine and bread and cheese, whistling at her, trying to grab her hips or slap her on the buttocks. And she hurried over here and over there, turning in every direction, and almost spilled the plates of food she was carrying, nearly tripped over the many legs, the boots, the long dangling swords. So busy, almost disoriented, and fighting the hot cough that was building in her chest, fighting the fever that flushed her face and was making her perspire.

She didn’t notice, at first, the two of them seated at the crowded table against a far wall. She was just setting down a plate of food at another table when someone drunkenly grabbed at her vest, wanting to peek inside; she jerked away, moving awkwardly, and as her eyes swept the room, she saw them.

Now they were standing up and pushing their way forward to get to her.

Gods, no, no! I’ve stayed here too long, they’ve found me!

She tried to run. Hands reached for her, voices grunted, the other serving women in the place yelled at her. Hurrying, she tried to get into the back rooms, into the kitchen, maybe she could hide there or run into the alley, get—

“Assia!”

“Gods, no!” She screamed it in a raw voice.

Heads turned—soldiers, sailors, rough men, some amused, others interested.

“Damn you! Here, come here!”

Tyrus grabbed her as she slipped into the short hallway that led from the tavern’s public room to the back rooms. She fought him, tried to break away from him, but he was simply too strong. He slammed her against a wall. Assia coughed and twisted in every direction—but Tyrus had her pinned.

She stared into his angry eyes and, beyond him, saw the fat man approaching them. His face was greasy, and his heavy jowls bounced as he smiled. His teeth were green.

“We’ve been hunting for you for weeks!” her father yelled at her. “Why did—”

She kicked at him and twisted, trying to move her head down in an attempt to bite his arm. Tyrus slapped her for that. Assia whimpered and pushed herself flat up against the wall. She stared at her father and at the fat man and looked into the public room, and no one cared. Why should anyone care? Why should this particular evening offer less drama than most other evenings regularly did?

“Now you’re coming back with us!”

“No, you can’t make me,” Assia moaned.

He shook her roughly. “I told you—”

“Leave that girl alone!”

Tyrus continued to grip his daughter by her shoulders but looked over at one of the tables. A young soldier, swarthy and dark-haired, handsome, was sitting in a relaxed pose, watching it all as though it were free entertainment. But his expression was one of contempt.

“Stay out of this,” Tyrus warned him. A glance at the other men around the handsome man’s table indicated that they were wholly unconcerned.

Assia whimpered. She recognized this soldier. He’d been in here every night this week, pestering her, attracted to her.

Tyrus yanked her toward him. “Now come on.”

“I thought I told you to leave her alone!”

A few patrons nearby turned in their seats to follow what would happen next, interested, but the fat man, standing behind Tyrus, said to the young soldier, “We told you to shut up, so do it. It’s none of your affair.”

“It is if you’re hurting that girl,” the soldier returned proudly.

Tyrus looked from the fat man to the soldier and at the same time dropped one hand from Assia’s shoulder and grabbed that arm by the wrist, twisting her arm to pull her beside him painfully.

The alert master of the house decided it was time for him to intrude.

“What’s all this?”

The fat man placed a careful hand on him. “Don’t be concerned. We’re—”

“Take your hand off me, you pig.”

Tyrus, pushing Assia ahead of him, tried to step between them.

“Hold on! She’s one of my—”

“And I told you to leave her alone!” yelled the young soldier.

The fat man looked at him. He started to say something to Tyrus. Then came the clatter of chairs and a table being knocked over, and loud cries from many men, and the young soldier throwing himself forward. The fat man pushed Tyrus in the chest to get him out of the way of their attacker. Assia screamed. Tyrus lost his grip on her and, as he stumbled, caught a glimpse of steel between him and his fat friend.

“Thought I told you—”

The rest of it was lost in grunts and the sounds of boots scraping on the wooden floor. Assia screamed again as Tyrus, backing up, fell into her and sent her once more against the wall. Jarred, she jumped away from him and moved down the hallway that led into the kitchen.

The fat man hissed and coughed. The knife blade dented his belly and swept out on a trail of wet blood that hung in the air, shining. Tyrus jumped forward with his arms out to grab the soldier, but the young man was quick.

“Arrest him!” the tavern keeper yelled, running out of the way, as his patrons whooped and pushed against one another to give the fighters room to be at each other.

Whipping his arms furiously, Tyrus caught the soldier on the side of the head. Now he reached behind him for his own knife, which he kept in a scabbard in his belt, but the soldier, reacting as he fell, sliced upward. His blade, still red with the fat man’s blood, caught Tyrus on the side of the neck and ran up along his face.

Assia, watching from the hallway, saw her father crumple to the floor. His fingers were red, and he was pressing at his throat. Blood dripped quickly from his throat and through his fingers and had already made the front of his shirt wet.

Someone lifted a chair and knocked a lamp hanging from the ceiling—

“Arrest him! Arrest him!”

—and brought the chair down, as heavily as possible, onto the unbalanced handsome soldier. He dropped instantly, and the wet knife jumped from his hand onto the floor.

Assia, sobbing, ran forward, then backed away. From behind her came the cooks and several other serving girls, attracted by the commotion. They pushed past as she turned and ran down the hall, hurried into the kitchen and through it, pulled the back door open, and made it into the alley outside.

On the floor, the fat man groaned and rolled back and forth, holding his hands over his belly. Long rolls of intestines moved out of him like fat brown worms, and he sobbed as he attempted to push his bowels back inside.

Tyrus, still with his fingers at his throat, was dying quickly. He had fallen onto one side and the blood coming from him was like wine, staining the dirty boards of the floor.

The soldier, now half awake, was dragged clear of them, and, while his table companions swore and yelled in protest, others in the public room tied his hands together behind his back and waited for the city patrol to arrive.

* * * *

She changed that night as she ran away, escaping into another night in still another city. Intending to return to the tavern to learn whether her father actually had died, intending to wait and think before going back, but nevertheless.…

He was already dead.

Had been, for years.

She changed that night as she wandered the streets, as she curled up, arms around her knees, in the alleys and the doorways to escape the cold, and to think.

Later, as she walked beside tall, dark stone-faced buildings, someone came by with a cart and horse; he paused and yelled at her—some farmer from the outlands—and invited her: “Little sweet one! Come up here and get warm! I have surprise for you! A big surprise!” Giggling like a fool.

And Assia, angry, dressed in her thin tavern-wear, her torn vest and wet skirt and damp shoes, with her bad memories and her cough and everything she had thought about still close by her, everything in her heart and pulling at her stomach, faced the man in the cart, threw her arms out, curled her hands into claws, and screamed at him, “Touch me and I’ll stab you, you dog, you piece of dog vomit!”

He laughed at her, laughed boldly at her.

Trembling from the cold and from rage, Assia screamed so loudly that her voice carried down the misty caverns of the long city streets. “Come on! Come down here! You want me so bad! I’ll yank it off for you! I’ll show you what it’s good for, you son of a whore, you rutting pig, you vomit piece of pig!”

Startled, he stopped. The woman was crazy. Crazy women in this city.…

“Come on, you son of a vomiting pig!”

He moved on. Coaxed his horse forward. Frightend. By a crazy woman.

“Come on, you vomit, you puking—whore! Come on!”

Screaming at him and screaming, screaming, losing her mind, even after he had gone, after she was alone on the street, in the mist, with one lamp in a window far behind her, someone’s window.

“Come onnnnnnnn!”

Finally she made herself dizzy and, sinking, sat in the road, sobbed and began loudly to cry, then picked herself up, got to her feet, and ran to hide in another alley.

I want to die, she thought.

Lying there, Assia curled up against a wall in the alley, coughed for a long time, and listened to the silence dripping in the mist. Then she sat up, tore open her vest and picked up a handful of cold mud from the alley floor. She intended to smear it all over her chest, make herself so cold with the mud and so ill that she would cough herself to death and die, die.

Die.

But she sat where she was, mud in hand, numb, incomplete, cold, broken, like some interesting mechanism that has suddenly burst a pulley line or slipped its chain. She looked into the darkness and the mist and slowly, half willfully and somewhat regretfully, let the cold mud slide from her hand.

Why can’t I let myself die?

What am I?

A whore?

A whore.

So why can’t I let myself die?

She groaned to herself, “Oh, Thameron, as long as I believe in myself.…”

I believe I’m a whore.

Men should piss on me, men should vomit on me, women should beat me and shove sticks in me, oh, Thameron, what am I, why am I here, I can’t believe in the truth anymore, I can’t believe anymore, I can’t believe, it was a lie, I’m a lie.

I shouldn’t be me but I am I am I am I am

She sat in the alley and became someone else, changed at last, lost at last that simple, noble, somehow wise and honest and innocent confidence in herself, the truth of herself. Changed and lost it and so disowned herself, and made herself ready to accept whatever life pushed at her without fighting back with belief, belief in herself, belief.…

* * * *

If she slept that night, she did not know it. As dawn came and as the sounds of people moving in the early morning awakened her, Assia left the alley and went into the street. There were already crowds, although it was hardly daylight, and shortly she understood why: the troops were gathering to board ships for their journey to Abustad. Assia followed the people who moved toward Elpet’s dockside mall.

There, mounted officers were keeping the throngs under control as the legions filed together in the frosty air. Already the first of them were marching down to the wharves; above the heads in the crowd Assia could see, far away, the blue pennants and golden flags of Athadian warships waiting to receive them.

She made her way through the press, attracted to the warmth of the fires, for stone troughs had been set around the wide mall and were filled now with burning tinder and firewood. At one end of the wide mall, away from the formations of troops and the collecting passersby, Assia saw the loose congregation of camp followers. She paused as she felt a knot curl in her belly.

For here was her chance of escape from the city, a chance for food and warmth, despite whatever humiliation might also come. Armies on the march meant that a cadre of followers marched with them—women, most of them, and young boys from the streets, looking for protection (those not already taken into the tents of some of the commanders), and the whole odd assortment of anyone who would do errands and tend to horses and weapons, the hangers-on needed to help with food in return for some of it, and all of the many who would act as nurses or surgeons one day, wine-getters the next, but eventually become human grease for war machines or fodder for catapults.

Yet it meant warmth and a chance for food. And the opportunity to get away from this city and the memories here of her father and his pig of a companion.

Assia walked ahead. Fearful yet acting fearless, she boldly joined the prostitutes crowded around one of the fire troughs. There were spits over the fire; meat was sizzling.

“What’s this?” yelled a hag. “Out of the way, you little bitch!”

“Oh, but she’s a darling little thing,” cooed another, next to her, wrapping an arm around Assia’s shoulder. She was an older woman, not much younger than the hag, yet well painted, with bright red cheeks and full lips. “And look at the size of them!” she exclaimed, pressing a bony hand against Assia’s vest. “She’s coming with me, I’ll take care of her!”

Assia stared at her with resentment. It was an old trick—assault by one, effusive friendliness by her partner, and both of them out to dupe the unsuspecting. Assia had done it herself at Ibro’s.

“You’ll come with me, won’t you, you darling little thing?” asked the friendly one, pushing her face close, poking her beak of a nose into Assia’s cheek.

Assia started to back away and bumped into someone else. She looked up into the features of a tall, gaunt man—skeletal, blond, with rouged cheeks and heavily painted eyes. He smiled at Assia and bent close to give her a kiss; Assia, caught between him and the cooing woman, couldn’t escape. He pressed his painted mouth hard upon hers, forced her lips open with his tongue, and slobbered something warm into her mouth—drool? wine? semen?—and down her throat. Then he moved on, cackling like a bird, laughing and laughing.

Assia sneered and wiped her lips with the back of one hand.

Trumpets blared across the mall.

“Don’t mind him!” fussed the cooing woman. “What’s your name, little darling? I’m Laril.”

There was nothing else to do. She might not get aboard the ship, otherwise. “Assia,” she answered softly.

If this company of women and followers were well known to the commanding officers, then she was guaranteed passage.

“Well, little Assia, you stay with me and you’ll be all right, you understand? We’ll take care of you, you just stay with me. I know all the right people, and you’ll be treated with some respect, my dear, you’ll be treated very nicely indeed.…”

Half the women and other assorted hangers-on were left on the docks when the last of the ships let out their sails toward midmorning. But Assia was aboard, in the company of fifty other prostitutes, quartered below decks. She was fed nothing but was, after all, assured of her transport to Abustad and assured, as well, of continued existence, howsoever be it a meager existence in the ragged train following the Athadian march toward the Low Provinces.