The War, page 36
So Mordred was glad. It had been growing hard to hate a man who did not want to be hated.
~
Fiona took Fred’s hand, and a thrill coursed through her. For the first time she was sure that it felt different—the past two days she had wondered, but now she was sure. It was warm again.
She had not told anyone of that wondrous moment, two days gone, when his hand had pressed on hers. It was for her to remember, secret and joyful, for she knew all too well that though a sign of hope to her, it was no real promise.
But now—now—
A radiant smile of pure gladness broke free of her heart and parted her lips, and she laid Fred’s warm, living hand lovingly on her cheek. It made no movement against her, yet it felt as though it might at any moment; it was the pulsing, strong-boned thing she knew.
And then, as the love and excitement whelmed in her and took away her breath, the movement did come, and the fingers brushed in a gesture weak as summer’s wind across her cheek. Her head flew up.
Fred’s eyelids opened slowly, heavily, as if it were an effort to prop them up, and his gaze looked directly into hers.
“Fred, beloved, coenlag,” she cried softly, breathless, half in tears. “Do you know me?”
“Fiona,” he said, the word leaving his lips in a voice as weak as the movement of his fingers had been.
She pressed his hand to her brow and let her joyous tears fall on it.
“Fiona,” he said again, and those fingers moved gently in hers.
“It is well, Fred,” she assured him, lifting her eyes. “Nay, it is very well. Do not fear.”
“My love,” he said, and his eyes closed wearily with an expression of immeasurable peace.
“Rest,” she murmured to him, and rising she stooped to set a kiss on his brow. Then with swift, decisive steps she left the room.
“Irene!” she called, the serene authority in her voice strange to herself. It was a part of the gladness overflowing through her blood, it was hers to command for the moment. “Irene, Fred Thorne is awake. You must tell us how to tend to him.”
Irene’s mouth opened. She put a surprised hand to her head, and slowly acquiescence dawned. “Yes—” she muttered. “You are right.”
But it was Laufeia who ran across the ward and put her arms around Fiona, weeping and almost laughing for joy. “He is awake, Fiona,” she repeated again and again, half questioning, half marveling. “He is awake.”
“In truth, he was asleep again before I left him,” admitted Fiona.
This time Laufeia did laugh in earnest, blotting back the tears with a quick hand. “That is for the best, of course.”
“But he is awake.” Fiona looked up to a beam of sun falling through one high window, and it seemed the most glorious thing in the world. “And he will live.”
CHAPTER 34
THERELANE TRAVERSED THE CITY QUICKLY. It was a week since Sergeant Garin had last given him leave, and he was eager to visit the hospice again, for Mordred—and for the other reason that had nothing to do with Mordred.
Mordred seemed still listless, and Therelane could not easily restrain his distress at the sight of how tired and ill his friend was. Even so, his face no longer looked so death-white, and the taut lines of constant pain were eased. “Has it been better, Mordred?” he asked, coming to the bedside.
Mordred answered with an almost imperceptible shrug. “I’m fine,” he said, and Therelane wished he had not, because it did not seem true or even laughable. It seemed a mockery.
“Look,” he said quickly, setting on the bed the thing he had brought. “It’s your sword. I took it after we saw you off to Orden City, and used it in the battle because I’d lost mine.”
Mordred was not interested, and it showed in his face; he looked so unimpressed it almost hurt. “Why don’t you keep it?” he said tonelessly.
“Oh, I was given another. I don’t need it,” Therelane explained stumblingly, wishing he had not brought the sword at all.
“It’s all right,” said Mordred. “Put it by the bed. I don’t—care.”
Therelane stared at Mordred’s face, wishing, not for the first time, that he could see beyond that impervious wall. The wall was not always up—last time it had not been. And it came to Therelane: was it his own words that had thrown up the breach? Was Mordred fearing that he would speak of the leader again?
I won’t, Mordred, he wanted to say. Not now that I understand it hurts you. But deep within he was afraid to; he was afraid to be wrong, and to be cut off again with sharp words.
He said nothing. And the silence lingered fragile and twisted between them until at last he left.
~
Laufeia was the one to put a stop to Inspector Dickson’s coming.
It was a hard day for Mordred, who was feeling sick and wretched with the pain, and did not want to think of Inspector Dickson, much less endure his presence. When he arrived, Mordred hated him more than ever, and the anger swept up in him like sudden flame, familiar but no longer satisfying. No, it had never really satisfied, but once it had buried the ache within, and that it did no longer.
He lay rigid under Inspector Dickson’s hands, as though it were fire touching him, loathing the helpless sensation. There were no words between them this day, as there sometimes were—only anger, vibrating thick in the air like thrumming harpstrings. Inspector Dickson removed the old bandage and wrapped the new one with painstaking care.
“Your fishwife’s tongue seems to have deserted you today,” said Inspector Dickson shortly as he rose to leave.
Mordred, who could not let him have the last word, flared back, “A fishwife’s tongue I may have, but at least it knows the faces that deserve its lash.”
He did not know why Inspector Dickson suddenly checked at the door, but when he had gone, Laufeia leaned there against the door-frame, her eyes fixed levelly on him. Her hand slipped slowly down from the frame, and clenched into a small fist at her side.
“What was that?” she asked.
He stared expressionlessly back at her and shrugged. Let her make what she would of it. He was not here to offer her explanations.
But Laufeia did not need explanations. “Talk to me,” she said, her eyes snapping with the same hot stubbornness as his own. “And I won’t take silence for an answer. How long has this been happening?”
“What?” he asked coldly.
“This—this madness of childish insults and scornful silence! It was like seeing you and Ahearn all over again.”
“He comes every day to see to my arm,” said Mordred. It was not the answer that she was looking for, but she did not know that.
“Oh?” Laufeia looked more indignant still, and he almost thought she would stamp her foot as she had when they quarreled days ago. “Well, it is going to stop at once. Why has no one taken notice of this before? Who put him in charge of you? And you, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Are you still angry at him about that, all those months ago now—”
“Don’t, Laufeia,” he said, low and frantic, panic choking off his breath, afraid of what he might say to her if she went on.
Her face fell and she touched his cheek with her light, firm fingers. “I’m sorry, Mordred. I was too quick to judge the situation.”
“No, you were right,” he said, shaking his head wearily. “But don’t—please, please do not speak of it again.”
She looked at him helplessly, in sadness, anxiety, and frustration. “Mordred, I fear to rake up what I do not understand. But I cannot bear to see you like this.”
“Like what?” He looked away from her.
“Bitter. Silent. Like the brother of mine who was consumed with guilt and grief after Fenris’ accident, the brother who did not trust the world—not the brother who teased and laughed afterwards.”
“Am I like that, Laufeia?” Stricken, sick at heart, he looked to her again.
This time it was she who glanced away, her lip trembling uncertainly. “No—and yes. You do not brood in the same tight shell you did before. You do not wall away every thought and feeling, and I am glad of that. Yet at the same time it is even worse, because it is deeper. You turn your face away from me with the look of—of one to whom joy means nothing. The only time you have smiled is when that man came, that strange man who scolded you like he would a child. You are not angry at the world; you are only dead to it. Indeed, the only person for whom you seem to have anger is that Inspector. It is as though you spend all your anger on him and have none of it left for anything else. No anger—and no joy, either.”
Mordred turned his face again into the bedclothes, dumb with the impact of the words; for cruel though they had not meant to be, cruel they were to him. This was what he was to Laufeia! Bitter, silent, not like he used to be. Not how she wished him to be. And he—he could change none of it.
His throat ached beyond endurance, and a cold ache pulsed in his chest, and dry eyes he pressed unseeing against the bed. He had tried to hide the truth. He had not wanted to burden her and Fenris with his suffering and his anger. But it was all no use, it had never been any use.
“Mordred.” Her small, fiercely strong hands shook his shoulders. He caught his breath and tears jolted to his eyes at the grating flash through his broken collarbone. “Come back. Are you awake? If you can only tell me all that is the matter—I understand that you bear pain from what happened in Delgrass, Mordred, I understand.”
“No,” said Mordred.
It came on him very quietly, with Laufeia’s words, that the pain of Delgrass was dead.
Not eradicated, not healed, but quite dead. Delgrass and the Claw, their very mention once a lash in open wounds, now deflected dully off a numb scar. He saw now that that was why the anger could no longer satisfy, no longer bury the hurt; for it was other hurts that tormented him now, having heaped themselves on the old one until it died out. When exactly it had happened, he could not say. He had run from the memories so long, yet for a long time, it seemed, it had been the leader shadowing his thoughts instead of the werevulture. The Claw seemed a world away, flattened and faded against the leering patchwork of the war, its horror spent.
“No, Laufeia,” he said again flatly.
All that was left was his anger. His useless, ravening anger.
And that he held, because he had held it too long. He knew, without daring to put it in so many words to himself, that it was destroying him, but he did not care. He did not know how or want to let it go.
~
“See how bright the sun is,” said Fiona, pulling aside the coarse drapes that covered the window and letting the lone shaft of light spill into a waterfall of glory that flooded the corners of the room. “And it is hot. The days of summer grow.”
Fred’s eyes turned to the light, and he smiled; but they looked more gladly on her. Speech came slowly to him still, and in great weakness; so though Fiona spent all the time she could by his side, often scarcely a word was exchanged between them. Only their gazes fixed on one another, hers with all the steadfastness and love in her heart—while his seemed often full of wonder, and he would look on her unfailingly as though drinking in the sight like a river of life, and not tire of it.
Yet now trouble crept across his features, and his lips parted as he struggled to speak.
“What ails you, my beloved?” she asked, resting her hand on his brow to soothe him.
“I know not . . . how I came here,” he murmured. “Where is . . . my brother, Daren? What happened to me?”
And Fiona could not give him the answers that he sought, at least not in the fullness that he desired them. She only touched his forehead again, and laid her hands on his.
~
“Aye, Marcus Segelas. What is it?” Sergeant Garin rose and looked inquiringly at the young soldier who had entered his private quarters. Marcus had sprung back resiliently from his brother’s death, though his face sometimes bore a grave look that it had rarely borne, and his laughter came a little less readily than before. But underneath he was much the same; and now his eyes were glinting with a conspiratorial light, and his whole face shone underneath with eagerness and mischief.
“I and some of the others have been talking, Sergeant,” he said and paused expectantly.
“Go on.”
“About Fenris, sir. He’s missing his brother terribly, and it’s hard on him not knowing how he is.”
“He hasn’t asked to see him,” said Sergeant Garin, raising an eyebrow.
“And he won’t, sir.” Marcus took an intense step forward. “He’s shy of asking favors at all, but now that, you know, he went missing after the battle—well, now he doesn’t think it would be a good idea to press you about leaving. Or at least, that’s what we’re pretty certain is the trouble. He didn’t tell us, but he can’t hide everything.”
“So you all—however many of you it was—schemed to come and ask me instead?”
Marcus squirmed but grinned unashamedly. “If—if it’s not too much to ask, sir, and if he can be spared, you might consider giving him a few days off.”
Sergeant Garin shook his head, not in immediate negation but in amusement. “You schemed that, too, did you?”
“He’ll be far better on the training ground and other work if his mind is set easy on Mordred, sir.” Marcus was almost quivering with anticipation of the answer.
Once more Sergeant Garin shook his head. “He has it,” he said. “Three days’ leave. And the next one of you that comes prying for the same trick gets kicked out the back door.”
Marcus sprang away delightedly, forgetting to say so much as “Thank you.”
~
Captain Rhodes dismounted from his horse and tilted his head up towards the wide front of the hospice, narrowing his eyes against the whiteness of the overcast sky. Though it had been a fortnight and more since he saw Mordred writhing in torturous pain, he was fearful of how he would find him.
But there were no moans, no stifled screams. Mordred lay quiet and calm, propped to a half-sitting position, and when he saw Captain Rhodes his eyes lit, and the shadow of a smile darted across his face. “Captain Rhodes,” he said in greeting.
“Mordred!” Captain Rhodes answered gladly. “You seem far improved indeed from when I last saw you.”
Mordred reacted with confusion. “When did you see me?”
“The night of the battle,” answered Captain Rhodes. “I was with you in the hospice.”
“Oh,” said Mordred, a little blankly, and was silent.
He was the next to speak, however. “Captain Rhodes, how go the matters of war?”
Captain Rhodes’ brow furrowed. He would not have discussed such things of his own wish, but Mordred had asked. “There is rumor that the leader’s injury was sore, and he has been laid by. The dragon battle was successful, and that, too, was a blow to them. But their forces are slowly gaining at the north border. I know not how this will end . . . but it is like to go on for many more months, at such a rate. And there will be small joy in the victory, no matter to whom it comes. War is an evil thing, Mordred Kenhelm.”
“I thought war was swift,” said Mordred softly, looking not at Captain Rhodes but away towards the window. “Swift, and terrible, and I feared and dreaded it. But now I see that there is evil in the slowness, too. It is a rot eating us away in an endless death, and that is worse than a quick flame that burns through and is gone.”
Captain Rhodes bent his head. “Food grows short, with so much of our trade cut off, and it will be shorter still; for with the men taken many fields lie unsown and in the autumn there will be scant harvest. Aye, and in the north, villages have been displaced by roaming bands of the enemy—houses razed, fields salted.”
Mordred’s eyes were distant. “None of it should have happened,” he said between shut teeth.
“Let us speak of better things,” said Captain Rhodes.
“Such as?” Mordred gave a strange shrug, and caught his breath in the middle of it. “In the end, there is nothing else to speak of.”
For a time they were both quiet.
“Mordred,” said Captain Rhodes at last, slowly and meaningly, “how goes it with you?”
Mordred’s quick upfling of the head showed that he understood Captain Rhodes’ question. Their eyes held in wordless intensity, and then with a small, detached sigh Mordred lay back and stared at the ceiling. “As well as can be expected,” he returned coolly.
“So you have not—” Captain Rhodes broke off, knowing the answer already.
“I have not,” said Mordred. “His name is gall in my mouth, he did me nameless wrong, and you expect me to make peace with him?”
“If you do not, you will never be at peace in yourself,” said Captain Rhodes, longing earnestly to help the young man before him. “The past is behind you and cannot be undone; you will only ruin your life by wishing otherwise. Cease the fighting.”
“You are one to talk so,” said Mordred sarcastically. “You are one to counsel me to put amity before enmity!”
He shut his mouth swiftly on the words. Pain, contrition, and panic swept across his countenance.
Captain Rhodes merely stared at him, struck speechless by the open truth slapped into his face.
“I should not have said it.” A shudder ripped through Mordred. “I should not have flaunted that at you. It was the act of—no true friend.”
Captain Rhodes came fully to himself. He hurried to the bed and put a hand on Mordred’s shivering shoulders. “No, Mordred. Do not alarm yourself. I—I truly do not hold it against you. They were true words.”
Mordred quieted under him and looked up. “But wrongly spoken,” he said simply.
“I forgive you, Mordred, nor do I think the less of you for them. I beg you, do not sorrow needlessly over the matter. But I must go now.”
He wheeled and left the room with urgent step.
CHAPTER 35
CAPTAIN RHODES STRODE INTO MITHEREN and through the narrow stone-paved halls. He confronted Captain Murray in a short, arched passageway where a second corridor cut through it a short way beyond them, and catching hold of the other man’s shoulder he pulled him around.
