Chapter 3 #2
The sky was brightening in colorless tones, the trees a black stamp along its belly.
At ground level, fog hugged the road, and the verge on either side where they’d set up their tents last night.
She’d argued with Connor at length about the location, wanting them to get deeper into the brush, out of sight; they’d posted scouts, he’d reasoned, and they had the drakes to keep watch.
If they stayed on the road, he said, they could get a faster, earlier start; and with the war on, there was no traffic besides.
She’d eventually relented, too exhausted to argue, and bolstered by the knowledge that the drakes would prevent any enemy from coming within a mile of their camp.
Even so, the dense fog turned her surroundings ghostly and uncertain. Anything or anyone might have been hiding in it.
She pulled her cloak tighter around herself, held her head up high, as a general and a duchess should, and strode toward the dim outline of the limp wolf banner atop a tent some fifty paces down the road.
The wolves never seemed to oversleep, all of them up and prowling the camp no matter how early Amelia rose.
This morning seemed to be no exception. As she left the road, and cut across the dew-drenched grass, the sounds of sparring floated toward her.
Low grunts of effort, and quiet swears. Instead of the bright ring of steel-on-steel, she heard the clacking of wooden staffs, less disruptive in the dawn quiet.
A wolf with loose, black hair sat at the open flap of the tent, sharpening a knife on a whetstone. He flicked a brief glance toward her, nodded in silent greeting, and bent back to his task without speaking.
Just as well. Amelia didn’t know his name.
She skirted around the tent, and halted at the edge of the makeshift sparring arena, which was nothing more than a wet, flattened patch of grass, trampled beneath the boots of the two combatants.
It could have been any of the wolves, circling one another, wooden staffs held at the ready, sizing one another up and searching for an opening. But, no: it was Leif and Ragnar.
Amelia was not the sort of woman easily-enchanted by a handsome face.
She’d grown up amidst all manner of fine-featured young noblemen, with perfect hair, and strong teeth, and all the latest fashions tailored to their trim physiques.
None of them had turned her head. She’d wanted Mal because he wasn’t powdered and pampered; because he was real, and funny, and useful.
And because he had strong shoulders and rough-but-gentle hands, and because he treated her like a flesh and blood woman, like his friend, and not a trophy to set upon a shelf.
When Mal died, Amelia assumed her ability to feel that way about someone died along with him. And she certainly didn’t feel that way now…
But she could no longer deny that she’d developed a certain admiration for the Prince of Aeres, and his bound thrall, cousin…lover. She had no proof of the last, but there seemed no other way to explain the sounds she’d overheard that night at the manor.
They were raw and real in a way that reminded her of Mal, unpretentious, unpolished in contrast to the Southern lords.
Granted, given the march to war, none of the Southerners around her were all that polished anymore.
But there was something vital and enchanting about Leif and Ragnar: the sheer size of them, the sharpness of their gazes, and their teeth.
The feral, mannerless tilt of Ragnar’s grins, and the cool reserve of Leif’s attention at council meetings.
“They’re handsome and powerful,” Leda had said with a shrug. “Don’t overthink it, dear. Wanting to roll around on a campaign cot with one of them is more than enough reason for dreaming.”
Perhaps it was as simple as that.
This morning, both were stripped to the waist, bare chests and arms steaming in the chill.
Ragnar’s hair was tied back in a messy knot, tendrils of deep gold hair clinging to his neck and shoulders.
As she watched, he darted forward, staff lowering, aimed for Leif’s collarbone.
He was the faster of the two, his movements less predictable.
But Leif was broader by an inch in every dimension, and there was a power behind his block that left Ragnar’s teeth clenched in discomfort.
His hair was loose, save three tiny braids over each year, fastened at the end with ivory chips of bone.
Sight of them brought to mind Oliver’s worked silver beads studded with jewels, and her stomach twisted funnily when she realized Leif must have had beads such as those…
but that he was wearing the simpler bone beads that Ragnar had threaded into his own hair.
What would his uncle say about that? And would Leif care?
What did she think of it? She didn’t know, save the sight of them put an odd fluttering in her belly.
“They’re impressive warriors,” someone said beside her, and it was an effort not to startle.
The voice was masculine, the accent soft and lilting, and that told her the speaker’s identity before she turned her head.
It was still somehow shocking to see Cassius the Selesee prisoner standing at her elbow, the silver cuffs on his wrists glimmering in the predawn light.
How had she not heard his approach? The chain that hung between the cuffs, long enough to allow him to tend to basic human needs, but not so long as to allow him to wield a sword, was held in both his hands, preventing it from jangling as he’d walked.
The ankle bracelets and their chain were altogether absent.
Amelia waited for a surge of alarm that didn’t come.
Thus far, Cassius had been the most accommodating of prisoners.
Quiet, polite, uncomplaining, and as helpful as anyone could have asked when it came to providing information on Sel tactics, troop movements, and fighting style.
He’d been so helpful, in fact, that Reggie had exploded just two nights before, where they all stood around a table spread with maps in Amelia’s tent.
“Have you all gone mad?” he’d demanded. “Why is he here? Why have we not slit his throat and dumped him in a ditch along the roadside?” Veins had stood stark in his throat, his nostrils had flared, and his eyes had glittered with a wild, terrified light that not even a consummate performer like him could have faked.
Due to the warmth of the afternoon, he’d unlaced his leather jerkin and the shirt beneath; the scar at his throat had looked dark as a fresh bruise in the dimness of the tent.
Connor had taken him by the arm, and murmured something too low for the rest of them to hear.
“No!” Reggie had hissed, face growing redder, and snatched his arm free.
But Connor had persisted, and guided him outside the tent.
When Amelia saw Reggie later, his face had a distinct tight, shiny look to it she recognized all too well, but he’d been calmer, and hadn’t said another word about Cassius.
She knew Reggie’s outburst was the result of his personal, deeply disturbing history with the Sels.
But he wasn’t wrong about the risk even one of their number posed.
Given the Selesee penchant for magic, he could have been hiding any number of booby traps, or been in constant contact with some powerful lord or general who was even now planning to attack them.
But she’d had men strip search Cassius, and pore over his clothes and his weapons and the few supplies he’d carried on his person before dressing him in good Southern clothes, no weapons provided.
She’d had Leif and Ragnar question him as a means of getting near enough to sense the presence of magic – which Ragnar had assured he would be able to “sniff out” if he had been bespelled or could manipulate magic himself.
Their conclusion was that he was entirely mortal, and entirely normal.
He traveled in the back of one of the supply wagons, rather than on horseback, monitored by guards round the clock, bound at ankles and wrists.
His ankle shackles were gone, now, and there wasn’t a guard in sight. Still, once Amelia’s initial startle reflex settled, she found that she wasn’t alarmed by his presence.
He turned to face her, his narrow, pale face and silvery hair bleached further by the early hour.
Though limp and trending toward greasy from a lack of proper washing, his hair was combed and tied neatly back at the crown, highlighting the sharpness of his cheekbones and jaw, the narrowness of his chin.
He was so startlingly different from the flushed, sweating, steam-breathing men sparring before them that Amelia felt an odd surge of kinship: both of them had been drawn across the dew-soaked grass to witness a spectacle of masculine, Northern warfare beyond their ken.
“They are,” Amelia agreed, and turned back toward the action in time to watch Leif send Ragnar staggering back with a series of forceful underhanded blows.
Clack, clack, crack. “In the South, in my lifetime at least, the men are raised as nobles first, and knights second. It appears to be the other way round in the North.”
He hummed in agreement. “Warriors first, nobles second.”
She thought of what he’d told her the night she first questioned him: that he’d been raised as nothing but a soldier, housed with other orphan boys who’d been bred and trained for a singular purpose. His composure, the soft, thoughtful timbre of his voice, clashed with that idea astoundingly.
Perhaps he truly was a spy.
Ragnar ducked, sprang back, and then surged forward with a quick backhanded strike that Leif didn’t manage to block.
He grunted when the end of the staff smacked off his bicep with a heavy sound, then twirled his own staff around and swung a hard downward swipe at Ragnar’s head.
He dodged it, but barely, laughing and swearing.
Cassius drew breath and said, “I suppose you’re wondering where my guards are this morning.” Casual, but with an undercurrent of guilt.
“The thought did cross my mind.”
A sideways glance proved he was frowning, a small, downward curve at the corner of his mouth that made him look thoughtful and serious. Again: if this was an act, it was a convincing one. “Lords William and Henry were tasked with guarding me overnight.”
“They aren’t lords, Cassius. ‘Misters’ will suffice.”
“Lords William and Henry,” he persisted, “began playing a dice game of some sort to pass the time. Each of them had a flagon of wine, and they began drinking, and, well…they’re rather indisposed this morning.”
“They’re unconscious, you mean.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Amelia nodded, and made a mental note to stick William and Henry with latrine duty for the next fortnight. “That sort of thing can happen, on campaign. But I’m afraid it doesn’t explain your lack of ankle shackles.” She lifted her brows, expectant.
“Ah. Yes. Well.” It was hard to tell, given the silver morning, but his cheeks were so pale she thought she saw him blush. The near corner of his mouth tugged to the side, not really a smile. “I may have availed myself of the key, which was hanging quite helpfully on Lord William’s belt.”
Make that latrine duty for the rest of his life.
Amelia swallowed down a swell of alarm, relieved and surprised when it didn’t resurge. She was concerned, but not frightened. Not panicking.
“So,” she said, “you waited until they passed out, then nicked the key from William’s belt, unlocked your shackles, and, what, went for a little dawn walk?”
“Only the leg shackles. I left these.” He hoisted his wrists in demonstration.
She felt a ridiculous urge to laugh. “I see. A prisoner with principles, then.”
He frowned. “My apologies. I know I shouldn’t have—”
She waved him to silence. “No. I should never have left those dunderheads in charge of you.” She turned to the sparring cousins—where Leif had gotten Ragnar down on his knees while she wasn’t looking, bearing him backward where their staffs were crossed and braced—and called, “Prince Leif? A word?”
Leif froze, tendon, vein, and muscle standing in stark relief, gleaming burnished gold as the sun’s first rays broke like the spokes of a wheel through the clouds above.
It was a sight so striking she nearly forgot why she’d called out to him in the first place.
But then he jerked as though struck, and stepped back from Ragnar, staff propped on his shoulder, heaving for breath.
Amelia felt Cassius’s attention on the side of her face, and ignored him. “The guards I left in charge of our Selesee guest are quite literally sleeping on the job. Have you a man or two to spare to get him back to his tent?”
Leif looked at Cassius, and the resultant scowl was of the sort that would send men stumbling over themselves in their haste to retreat.
To his credit, Cassius held still and unflinching.
Then Leif turned to Ragnar, who was climbing back to his feet and brushing road dust from his trousers, and the two of them had a silent conversation of lip twitches and eyebrow quirks.
Ragnar titled his head and made a low chuffing sound that couldn’t have been made in a human throat. Leif shook his head.
When he turned back to Amelia, it was with his jaw set tight, the harsh line of it throwing shadows down his throat. “Leave him with us.”
Ragnar grinned, and Amelia rethought her inquiry.
“I want him to be closely watched,” she said, “but I want him to stay alive. And able to provide information.”
Leif frowned. “Of course.” He sounded offended that she suspected otherwise.
Ragnar’s grin, though, was dangerous.
“I can find someone—”
“No,” Leif said, firm. “Leave him here. We’ll watch him.”
She had the sense she would regret this, but didn’t want to walk back her decision in front of Cassius. “Very well. Thank you.” She nodded, Leif nodded back, and she turned to leave.
One last, darted glance over her shoulder proved that all three of them watched her departure.