Warrior of the Altaii Page 15

  “Wait, Wulfgar,” Mayra called. “What are you going to do?”

  “In the day past I let a woman live although she’d done everything short of killing me. I did it because I had to, I was fate-bound to her or her sister or both. There’s nothing to hold me this time. I’ll cut that traitor’s head off.”

  As I hurried toward the tents I was vaguely aware of Mayra hurrying after me, calling to her acolytes to bring this piece of paraphernalia or that. Elspeth was crying, yelling for Mayra to stop me. Between shouted orders to the acolytes I heard her tell the girl I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I tried to laugh at that, but it merged with the snarl and was more like the sound of a slavering wolf than any sound a man might make.

  I didn’t intend to dirty my own blade with Talva’s blood. I went out of my way to pass by Hai the Smith’s tent, and more especially his forge. As I passed I snatched a long, curved saddle sword, new, with no bonding of spirit and iron with any man. Hai saw my face and let me go. When the deed was done I’d pay the sword price and bury the blade where no man would ever have to dirty his hands by touching it again.

  A crowd built behind me as I walked, but I paid no mind to it. I had only one thought, and as fate made it, I arrived at her tent just as she came out to see what caused the commotion. I swept the sword back. Talva saw the blade and my face and fell back screaming against her tent.

  And Mayra stepped in front of me. “Women’s Justice.”

  “Mayra,” I said hoarsely, “not even you can claim Women’s Justice by yourself. This woman betrayed me to a prison and six men to their deaths. I claim blood right on her.”

  “Your blood-right claim is just, Wulfgar, but I have the ten.” She waved frantically, and ten Free Women moved to where I could see them. They were unconcerned, sure that I’d uphold a legal claim to Women’s Justice, but I wasn’t sure, and neither was Mayra. “Wulfgar, their claim supersedes yours. Any woman can be put under Women’s Justice on the demand of ten Free Women, and the men’s laws can’t touch her.”

  “There’s no need to lecture, Mayra. I know the Books of Safah.”

  “Then put down the sword, my lord.”

  Only then did I realize that I still held the saddle sword raised. I flipped it into the air and threw it point-down into the ground.

  The ten Free Women who’d made the claim looked concerned for the first time as they realized how close I’d been to violating law and custom. Only Talva seemed to be recovered.

  “Am I to be told what this is all about, Wulfgar,” she demanded arrogantly, “or do you intend simply to kill me?”

  Mayra turned on her. “He has no say in this, now. Or doesn’t if you accept Women’s Justice. You can reject the claim, and we’ll leave you to Lord Wulfgar.” She stressed my name to emphasize Talva’s omission of the title. There was a murmur in the crowd as they realized the lack of respect in the slave mistress’s words, but she didn’t notice.

  “Of course I’ll accept Women’s Justice.” She was supremely confident. “Whatever the charge, I’ve done nothing, but Lord Wulfgar”—her stressing of the word was the opposite of Mayra’s—“looks as if I’d be killed out of hand if he had his way. And what is the charge?”

  “In a moment.” Mayra was smiling when she faced me again. There were still several legal ways for Talva to escape, or at least escape punishment, but once Mayra said the words, they’d be beyond the laws of men, to harm or protect.

  “Ten Free Women claim Women’s Justice, by the laws of the Books of Safah, by the customs of the Altaii people, by their rights as women. The Free Woman Talva stands before Women’s Justice.” She paused to survey the gathering. “From this moment, for this time, in this place, the laws of men hold no sway. Let no man interfere in the customs of women.”

  There was silence, men shifting uncomfortably as they always did at such times, women nodding and smiling self-satisfied smiles. Women’s Justice was seldom claimed, for it wasn’t bound by the laws, but when it was claimed, the reactions of the watchers were always the same.

  Talva shifted impatiently herself. “Now will you tell me the charge?”

  “Treason,” said Mayra.

  For an instant fear flickered on the slave mistress’s face. Then it was gone as if it had never been.

  “I deny it. By any oaths you care to name, I deny it.”

  “Keep hold on your tongue, Talva, before you swear your life away.” Mayra’s voice was calm and level, but did Talva listen too intently? “The runaway girl Mirim has been recovered. She says that you promised her freedom and money if she would take the word of this camp’s movements to the Lantans.”

  Talva had relaxed when she heard the charge, I was sure of it. Some of the spectators were muttering among themselves, wondering why such accusations were made on no more than the word of a slave.

  “A runaway would say anything to escape her stripes. Of course she claims I told her to run. I’m surprised she didn’t claim Lord Wulfgar told her to.” She drew herself up to her full height. Though it was no more than chest high on any man, she made it seem impressive. “A girl lies, and I find myself charged with treason. I find Lord Wulfgar not only accepting the lie, but ready to kill me for it. Does anyone here think to ask why he’d accept such evidence? Does anyone—”

  “She was under a truth-spell.”

  Quiet words, but they made Talva flinch. She looked back at her tent entrance. Two of the ten Free Women stood there.

  “Under the truth-spell she said that other girls trained by you had been sent to carry similar messages.” Talva was visibly nervous, now, but Mayra continued, coolly but relentlessly. “When I discovered that, I made a vision to see if I could find who sent the message that betrayed Lord Wulfgar in Lanta. In the vision you, Talva, fastened a cylinder to the leg of a falcon and sent it on its way. A message of betrayal.”

  “I refuse a truth-spell,” Talva said quickly, then realized how that must sound to the women who sat in judgment on her. “I mean—”

  “You can’t refuse a truth-spell,” Mayra said, “if it was ordered by those you stand before. Remember, Talva, the laws of men, the Books of Safah, can’t touch you here, but they can’t protect you either. You won’t have to submit to a truth-spell, though. There are other ways to get the truth.”

  “Mayra’s in league with Lord Wulfgar,” Talva said desperately. “It’s well known how close she is to him. She’s concocted this to further some scheme of his.”

  It was a measure of her panic that she would accuse a Sister of Wisdom of lying. If she was frightened then, the burden eight men brought from behind her tent and deposited terrified her.

  “This is not permitted,” she insisted. “I’m a Free Woman. It’s not permitted.”

  The men set their burden down and quickly got out of the way. It was a simple thing to make Talva’s face pale, two uprights with a padded crosspiece, all on a heavy wooden base. The ten Free Women rose as soon as it was on the ground.

  “No protection from the laws of men,” Mayra said.

  “No!” Talva screamed, but the women were on her.

  She struggled furiously, screaming all the while that I plotted with Mayra to destroy her for some unnamed reason, that it was all part of a plot to reduce Free Women to the status of slaves. The women paid no attention. They stripped her clothes off and fastened her over the frame, feet corded tightly to the base. Two of them took up positions on either side of the frame, each with a long strap in her hands.

  The bound woman tossed her head wildly. “You’ll get nothing from me. Do you hear me, Wulfgar? You’ll get nothing.”

  Mayra nodded, and the two women began, taking turns, in a steady rhythm. At first Talva took the blows well, fists clenched, teeth gritted, refusing to surrender so much as a moan. At the sixth stroke, given with the full force of the strap wielder’s arm, she gasped. At the tenth she sobbed. At the fifteenth she screamed.

  From there she abandoned the attempt to fight the strap. She shrieked and howled. Her f
ingers clawed at the ropes that held her. Her toes scrabbled futilely at the stand. Her pleas and begging began to trip over each other, to become interspersed with screams in an unintelligible mass.

  I started to step forward, and Mayra stopped me with a hand on my chest. “You have no say here, Wulfgar. Besides, you were going to kill her. Why should this worry you?”

  “Kill her, yes, Mayra. Beat her to death slowly, no.”

  “If she could die from being beaten there,” Mayra said, “there wouldn’t be a slave alive in the tents. It’s a part of her punishment, Wulfgar, the part that satisfies all the people she’s offended. Because of this she can be accepted afterwards.”

  Elspeth leaned against me. Her attention was all on the frame and the woman futilely trying to writhe away from the straps. “I should be furious at this. In my world I signed petitions against the kind of violence you accept as an everyday part of life. I should be horrified, but every time they hit her I remember a time she hit me, and every time she screams, I remember a time I screamed. It’s as though she’s paying me back.”

  Mayra spoke. “You see, Wulfgar, it’s as I said. Her debts are being paid off so she can still live among us.”

  “After treason, Mayra?” I found the saddle sword and picked it up. “She’ll not survive anywhere.”

  She smiled. “Let’s wait until the Free Women pronounce their judgment.”

  Talva had been trying for some time to say that she was ready to talk, but the words were garbled and the women sitting in judgment were in no hurry. Finally Mayra motioned for a halt. Talva lifted a wide-eyed, tear-wet face.

  “C-cut me free, a-and I’ll t-talk,” she managed.

  “No bargains,” Mayra said.

  “I’ll talk! I’ll talk! I s-swear it!” The beating stopped, but Talva babbled on beyond it. “I sent the messages. I let the Lantans know where we would be and when. I sent them word that Lord Wulfgar was coming. The falcons were only to be used for an emergency. They couldn’t be replaced. But that was an emergency, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?” Her head dropped, shaking with her sobs. “I would have been given a position of power in Lanta. Women rule there. Nothing is denied a woman, no kind of power. I could have done anything, been anything.”

  Almost before she finished speaking she was unbound and brought to Mayra. She winced when they forced her to kneel and sit back on her heels. The two women stared at one another, one trembling, the other calm.

  “Has a judgment been reached?” Mayra asked.

  The ten Free Women broke from a group.

  “Kill her,” said one.

  “For treason, death.”

  “Death.”

  “Let her serve the man she betrayed,” said another.

  Laughter greeted that, and Mayra faced Talva with a smile. “How does that sound?”

  There was more laughter, louder, and Talva flushed.

  “I’m a Free Woman,” she said stiffly. “I cannot be made a slave except with my own consent for the payment of my debts.”

  “Under the Books of Safah. But, so there are no complaints later, you’d better do it anyway. After all, you do have debts to pay. Of course, we could consider death. There’s plenty of support for it.” Mayra put her head to one side. “Come along, girl. I’m sure you know the words.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Talva snapped. She locked gazes with Mayra. After a minute she shifted. In another she slumped as if defeated. “I renounce my rights as a Free Woman. I renounce my property and possessions. I renounce my freedom. I surrender my life and my will to the one who will own me. I”—for the first time she faltered—“I s-swear it b-by the b-bones of my m-mother, and of m-my mother’s mother, and of my m-mother’s mother’s m-mother.” Her head fell forward onto her knees, and her shoulders shook with silent sobs.

  For a moment Mayra watched her. Then she laughed. Talva jerked, and her shoulders stopped their shaking.

  “I expect you think you’ve fooled me, girl,” Mayra chuckled. “You’d have fooled a man, I suppose. You probably fooled him. A poor defenseless, defeated woman, ready to take her punishment, meekly agreeing to slavery rather than death.” She laughed again. “Two days to lull him, and you’d be gone, sooner if you thought you could.”

  “I made the renunciations, Mayra. I swore the oaths.”

  “And they near scalded your tongue in saying them. You knew when you swore you had no intention of keeping them. Perhaps you hoped that Sayene would find a way to free you of them. Well, there’ll be no freeing you from this.” Her acolytes came to stand behind her. “Let her serve the one she betrayed. Are there any who disagree with that?”

  The ten conferred among themselves, then settled back shaking their heads. None disagreed.

  I had to step in myself, though. “Mayra, I have a claim to her. You’ve admitted it, and she’s made it legal. She’s renounced herself. Stop all of this and let me have her. The only escape she’ll make is when I put this sword through her evil heart.”

  “You stop, Wulfgar. Stop, or I will stop you.” She raised her hands as if for a spell, and I stopped where I stood. “This is not yet of your concern. It is ours. And if you feel there’s been a slight to your honor or your manhood, perhaps it’ll ease when this one crawls on her belly to you.”

  “Him?” Talva whispered. “Him?”

  “The one you betrayed, girl. The others are dead. Of those your message betrayed, only Lord Wulfgar lives. Here I have the essence of him, sweat, hair, spittle, blood, and fingernail clippings. With the mixture they make, you will honor your oath.”

  Easily, for Talva seemed too shaken to struggle, they lifted her and painted the mixture in simple patterns on her skin. Arrows ran up her arms, and others up her thighs and down across her belly. Spirals circled her breasts. On her cheeks, and again between her eyebrows, were a three-point and a rod. Then they let her sink back to her knees.

  Once again Mayra produced the bone wand that she’d used on Elspeth. She touched it to Talva’s forehead, and the kneeling woman made a rising, inquiring sound of indrawing breath. The wand lifted, and Talva came with it, forcing herself up like an acrobat with only the strength of her legs.

  When she’d risen to almost her full height Mayra stopped the wand, holding her bent back in an arch, muscles straining. Suddenly the wand darted back, and a spark of fire leaped from it to the point on Talva’s forehead it’d touched. Talva began to drop, but the wand moved back to touch the tip of her breast, and she rose again to her backward-bending arch. The wand pulled back, and again the spark leaped. As it struck Talva groaned, and as she fell the wand moved to the other breast to pull her back again.

  “No,” she whimpered, “not him. Please, not him. Please.”

  Mayra’s wand moved again to Talva’s forehead and began its journey over, and finishing it began again, and again, and again. Now Talva’s hands moved, followed the wand, fingers stroking her cheeks as it touched her forehead, fanning across her belly, sliding along her thighs. At each journey of the wand her breath came faster. At each journey of the wand her eyes became farther and farther away.

  Mayra brought the wand up again to Talva’s forehead, and held it there. An ululating cry began deep in her throat, rising and falling as if she was on the edge of pain, but always getting higher, higher, until Mayra pulled the wand back, the spark leaped, and with a scream Talva sank to the ground.

  “You know it, now, don’t you, girl?”

  Talva lifted her head to look at Mayra, a questioning, wondering look.

  “In your head, in your heart, in your belly, you know it.”

  Sweat was running off Talva until she looked covered in oil. “Yes,” she whimpered.

  “You betrayed him, as you betrayed your people, sold him to torture for a chance of power.”

  Again the whimper. “Yes.”

  “Then go to him, girl. Abase yourself. Beg for his mercy.”

  Talva turned, twisted on the ground to face me. Another whimper was stifled in her thr
oat. And she crawled to me, on her belly, and put her head on my feet.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  I lifted the sword in both hands. A straight downward plunge and it would pierce the spine, end her treachery forever.

  “Please.”

  She pulled herself up to throw her arms around my legs. Her eyes seemed large enough and soft enough to fall into. One stroke would finish it.

  “Mayra, what’ve you done? Why do you thwart me in this?”

  “I’m not thwarting you, Wulfgar. She knows what she did, and why she did it. Inside her the same ambitions still burn, the same hatreds. But there’s something else added, something that supersedes everything else, outweighs all her hate and ambition put together. You. She worships you now, worships you like a god, only more than most people worship their gods. She hates you, but she’ll do anything to please you. Anything. Isn’t that punishment enough? To still have all of her hate and all of her ambition, and to know that she can’t do anything about it, because she’d rather please the object of her hate than breathe? If you want to kill her, she probably won’t try to stop you. If you want to kill her, go ahead.” She said it casually, casually enough in the circumstances for it to be important.

  Yet, if Mayra thought it important, so did I. Brion and Hulugai and the other four were there to remind me how important it was. The pit was there to remind me.

  The sword slashed down, and quivered in the ground a hairsbreadth from Talva. She fell forward on my thigh. She was shaking with relief. I was shaking with frustration.

  Once they led Talva away, the crowd began dispersing. Mayra stayed, though, and I waited also, until we were the only two there. There were things I had to say that I didn’t want to say in front of the others, but it appeared she also had something to say.

  “It won’t work, Wulfgar.”

  “What won’t work?”

  “Selling her to someone who’ll make her life a misery, someone cruel, perhaps, or vicious. It’s written clearly enough on your face, even if you don’t realize that’s what you intend, but it won’t work.”