Chapter Eight
JURA CORRECTLY ASSUMED that her husband was using Thal’s old room as his own, but when she pushed open the door, he looked up from a table with a startled expression.
“Why are you here?” he snapped.
“You ordered me here,” she said patiently. “You had your insolent Englishmen take me from the women’s quarters, with my belongings, and bring me here. I assumed I was to take on the duties of being queen—for as long as I am such,” she added under her breath.
He looked at her for a long moment. “I guess I must keep you,” he said with resignation. “Go and sit over there and be quiet.” He turned back to the table, which was littered with books and rolled papers.
Jura wondered if he had brought the books with him or if they had been taken from Thal’s meager and mostly unused library. She had no intention of obeying him, so she went to look over his shoulder.
He whirled on her. “What are you doing?” he snapped.
“Looking,” she answered, then nodded toward the map he was holding.
“That is wrong. The Vatells’ border is farther north.
Thal seized a good bit of the land when I was a child.
My father was killed in the battle.” She turned away to sit on the edge of the bed and began unwrapping the garters on her legs.
Rowan turned toward her. “What do you know of the borders?”
“More than you do, it seems.”
He stood, picked up the map, and put it on the bed behind her. “Show me how things have changed. This map was made by Feilan over twenty years ago. Who else has my father slaughtered in order to take their land?”
Jura pushed off her boots and wiggled her bare toes. “Thal did what he had to do. Half of the Vatells’ land is in the mountains where nothing grows, and they were raiding the Irials to steal our grain.”
“So my father put an end to their raiding,” Rowan said thoughtfully. “How did the Vatells fare through that winter?”
“Not well,” Jura said. “Do you plan to hate everything about us?”
Rowan looked surprised. “How can I hate my own people? Here, show me the new borders.”
She leaned closer to him and, with her finger, showed him the smaller Vatell territory. “They are reasonable people, at least fairly so,” she said, “not like the Zernas or the Ultens. The Vatells—”
“Yes, I know,” he said impatiently. “Now show me where the Irials’ grain fields are.”
“If you know so much, why don’t you know that?”
He pointed to a place on the map. “If they have not moved, the fields are here. Protected by three rivers and guarded at regular intervals by Irial guards. The crops are barley, wheat, and rye. Sheep are raised here on this plain. The horses they have are descendants of those stolen from the Fearens, and still the young Irial men raid the Fearen camps at night. They cross Vatell country here in the dense forest then go along a goat path here until—”
“How do you know this?” Jura asked.
“When other boys were chasing a ball in the courtyard, I was hidden away with old Feilan learning the Ulten language.”
“Ulten?” Jura asked. “No one speaks that guttural mess of theirs. It is not a language but merely grunts and moans.”
Rowan leaned back on the bed, his hand under his head. “It may sound so but it is actually a form of Lanconian. For instance, your word for woman is telna while theirs is te’na. It is just a quicker way of saying the same thing.”
Jura drew her feet up under her. “A lazier way. They are lazy, slimy people. All the tribes hate the Ultens.”
“Then all the better to interbreed the tribes. The Ultens stay up in the mountains and they interbreed with each other until their brains are mush.”
“Another reason your plan of uniting the tribes will not work,” Jura said. “Who would want to marry an Ulten woman?”
Rowan looked at her with merriment in his eyes. “A Zerna man,” he said.
Jura laughed and stretched out on the bed. The map was between them as they both lay on the bed.
“During the Honorium I had nightmares about Mealla winning,” Rowan said. “The problem I have with intermarrying the tribes is wondering who will marry the Zerna women. Are they all like Mealla and the other women who entered the Honorium?”
Jura lifted her head onto her elbow. “The Fearen men might like the Zerna women. Fearen men are small, short, thin little men, and Thal always said they were angry about their size. Zerna women might appeal to the Fearens. Their children would be larger.”
Rowan grinned at her as he also lifted onto his elbow. “And the Poilens? Who shall we marry to them?”
“That’s not easy,” Jura said thoughtfully. “The Poilens believe thought is more important than food or pleasure.”
“Then we should give them some of those feisty little Fearen women. They would turn a man’s thoughts from books to more earthly delights.”
Jura was watching him. He was very good-looking and the candlelit room made that golden hair of his glow. She had an urge to touch it and even lifted her hand.
Rowan abruptly got off the bed. “You may sleep there,” he said, pointing to a seat formed in the thick stone walls. It would be barely long enough for her.
Jura started to protest the absurdity of their sleeping apart, but then she thought that this arrangement might be better.
When he was killed—as he surely would be—it would be better for her not to have become attached to him.
And it would be better for the succession if there was no child of his who might want to be king.
And Jura didn’t know if she could deny her child a throne that would rightfully be his.
No, this was better. She would stay a maiden with this man until she was widowed, then Geralt would become king and she would marry Daire and have many children.
She rose from the bed. “You say that we travel tomorrow?”
He had his back to her. “Yes, we start for the Vatells’ land, but first we stop at the Irial villages and get men and women.”
“For what?” she asked as she untied her loose trousers and slipped them off.
He turned back to her. “For marriages to—” he began but broke off at the sight of her half-nude body. He turned away again. “Go to bed,” he said in a deep voice. “Cover yourself.”
Jura smiled at his back and climbed beneath the sheepskins that were thrown across the window seat.
She watched him as he undressed, his face turned away from her.
He removed the tall boots and exposed his big, blond-haired calves.
His embroidered tunic, which reached to just above his knees, came off next, and as he slid it over his head, Jura saw again that big, muscular body that had made her forget her senses, her present and her past, on that day at the river when she had first seen him.
The muscles in her legs began to feel as if she had just exerted them to their limit, and her breathing was deeper and slower.
Without looking at her, he blew out the candle by the bed and plunged the room into darkness.
“Rowan,” she whispered into the darkness, using his name for the first time.
“Do not speak to me,” he said loudly. “And call me ‘Englishman.’ Do not use my name.”
Jura clamped her jaws shut and cursed the stupid foreigner. With his vile temper and his unreasonableness, she gave him only a week before someone put an end to his life. Good riddance, she thought. Lanconia would be better off without him.
She turned to her stomach and thought of Daire. It would be good to be a virgin on her wedding night to Daire.
· · ·
“Get up!”
Lazily, Jura turned over in the warm bed. It was still dark. Rowan was standing ten feet away from her, fully dressed and glaring at her.
“Are all Irials as lazy as you?” he snapped. “The wagons are already gathering below.”
“Are all Englishmen as vile-tempered as you?” she answered, stretching beneath the covers.
He watched her intently and his pale skin seemed to grow paler. “Get your belongings and come below,” he said, then left the room.
It didn’t take Jura long to get her few pieces of clothing and her weapons together. The courtyard was loud with prancing horses and shouting men. Geralt, wearing black and on a black horse, was ordering men about. Daire sat on his horse to one side and near him was Cilean.
Jura smiled at her friend but Cilean turned her head away. Jura’s smile faded as she accepted bread and watered wine from a servant.
Rowan was in the midst of the men, his horse ready to go, and Jura had to admit that he seemed to be capable of organizing the expedition and the men seemed to recognize his leadership.
There were wagons filled with goods and Jura saw Lora and the boy Phillip sitting on one of them beside a driver.
“Jura!” the boy called, and smiling, she went to him.
“Good morning,” she said, offering him a piece of bread.
“Do Lanconian warriors eat bread?” he asked solemnly.
“Always,” she answered just as solemnly, and turned to Lora to smile, but the Englishwoman put her nose in the air and turned away. Jura went to her horse, falling in beside Xante as they began to ride.
It took all day to reach the Irial villages.
There were other, smaller villages scattered about the Irial land, but these were inhabited by peasants, the lowest class of people, people who fought among themselves, whose family feuds were centuries old.
These people had no idea whether they were Irial or Vatell or English for that matter.
But twenty miles from the walled city of Escalon lived the main population of Irials.
When a guardsman or woman chose a mate, he/she came from these people.
The guards were chosen from these people, and after they were trained, they were sent back to the village to watch and protect the Irials from invasion.
In these few square miles was the only serenity an Irial was likely to know.
Here children played and women sang and crops were harvested.
Here fabric was woven, garments embroidered, and here the sick and old were given comfort and peace.
Thousands of the Irial guard had died to protect this place.