Kushiel's Dart

swallowed hard; it would be harder, a harder chore and temp tation than he'd been given before. He met my eye, and resolve hardened his features. "I have sworn it," he said. "Do you keep my lady Phedre no Delaunay safe."
    "Good." Gunter gave his shoulders another squeeze and shake. "Give him a cheer, eh?" he cried to his thanes. "The boy's proved himself a man this day!"
    They cheered then, and came around, clapping him on the back and boasting or bemoaning the bets they'd laid on the holmgang, while Evrard lay dead and cooling nearby. Someone began to pass around a skin of mead, and the singing began, one of the wits beginning to make a story of it: The epic battle of Evrard the Sharptongued and the D'Angeline slave-boy.
    I watched a while longer, still shivering, then went inside with Hedwig and the women to prepare for the boisterous carousing to follow. Whether things had just gotten better or worse, I could not have said.

FORTY-FIVE
    It was passing strange to see Joscelin attendant on Gunter in full Cassiline regalia; his mended grey garments, the vambraces on his forearms, daggers at his belt and sword at his back. Allowed a measure of freedom, he resumed the practice of his morning exercises, flowing through the intricate series of movements that formed the basis of the Brotherhood's righting style.
    The Skaldi beheld this oddity with a mix of awe and scorn. Their own combat skills were straightforward and efficient, reliant on might-of-arms, sheer ferocity and the fact that most Skaldi warriors are taught to wield a blade from the time they can lift one.
    Their attitude toward Joscelin's discipline was consistent with their feelings toward Terre d'Ange as a whole, and I will admit, it is something I never quite fathomed. It was a strange commingling of derision and yearning, contempt and envy, and I mused upon these things while the steading began to prepare for its journey to the Allthing, for my survival depended largely on my ability to comprehend the Skaldi nature.
    Would that I'd had a map in those days, to mark our place in the steading, and the meeting-place decreed by Waldemar Selig. Delaunay had taught me to read maps, of course, and I daresay I could do so as well as any general, but I had no skill to chart my way by the stars, as navigators do. I knew only that we were close to one of the Great Passes through the Camaeline Range, and that we would ride east to the Allthing; seven days' ride, Gunter said, or perhaps eight.
    That I would accompany them, he took as a matter of course, although he had still said nothing to me of being a gift for Waldemar Selig. Twenty thanes would go with him to represent the steading, and Hedwig and three others, to speak for the women. They had not the say of the men, but there was an old tale-there is always an old tale, among the Skaldi-of how Brunhild the Doughty wrestled Hobart Longspear and took him two falls out of three, to win the right for women to speak at the Allthing. I suspected Gunter was minded to travel without them, but even he was wary of Hedwig's wrath. I do not know if she wrestled, but of a surety she wielded a mean ladle, and had no compunctions about raising knots on the skull of any man to oppose her.
    As for Joscelin, it was simply assumed that he, too, would make the journey, as Gunter's body-servant. Gunter Arnlaugson had a fondness for the trappings of power, and it made him strut not a little to have the Cassiline attendant, with his deft bow and D'Angeline elegance.
    So we made ready to go, and I had my first taste of Skaldic augury. An old man, the priest of Odhinn, was fetched to the great hall, and led the steading in procession to a stand of winter-barren oak, their sacred grove. He spread a cloak of stainless white wool upon the snow, and mumbled over bits of rune-carved rods, casting them upon the garment. Three times he did this, then proclaimed in a loud voice that the omens were favorable.
    Gunter's thanes cheered at the announcement, banging their short spears on their shields. I, shivering as always in the Skaldic cold, prayed silently to Blessed Elua for protection, and to Naamah, and Kushiel, whose sign I bore. A raven lighted near me on one of the leafless branches, ruffling its feathers and cocking one round, black eye at me. At first it gave me fear, then I remembered that when Elua wandered through the Skaldic hinterlands, the ravens and wolves were his friends, and it heartened me somewhat.
    A false spring thaw had