Chapter 4 #2
As they approached the mountains, the air turned crisp and the sharp wind brought the scent of snow from the peaks.
The six border forts lay like a long necklace along the mountains, guarding the passes and the roads that led from them.
The stories Melia heard as a child had turned them into legendary places in her mind.
She expected huge castles with massive walls and tall towers, but instead the first one she saw was an ancient rectangular fortress, crumbling under the relentless attacks of ice and wind, garrisoned by the tired men whose uniforms were so worn out she couldn’t tell their original color.
They all seemed to remember Amron, though. They opened their gate with welcoming cheer, and their captain hugged Amron like an old friend.
She dismounted in the small courtyard. The deep shade of the late afternoon was so cold she shivered.
She thought she knew what spare meant, but she’d never seen such austerity in her life.
A wooden shed that could hardly be called a stable.
Bare, freezing corridors poorly lit by smoking rushlights.
One large room with a massive fireplace and straw on the floor that was used by everybody for eating and sleeping.
A few women crossed her path and scurried away like mice when they saw the prince and his retinue.
Maids, wives, bed-warmers—who knew?—none of them deemed appropriate to be introduced to her.
The dinner was old, chewy mutton, stale rye bread, and sour wine.
Melia sat through it with downcast eyes, her hands folded in her lap.
She could feel the men gazing at her; she could read their thoughts without lifting her head.
On her right, Amron talked with the captain about the peace treaty, the size of the garrison, and the idea that the mountain passes will be open to everybody one day, and she pricked up her ears, knowing that her father would have wanted her to listen.
“How soon?” the captain asked.
“This autumn, probably,” Amron said. “Most of it is already negotiated and drawn up. We’re waiting for the emperor to sign.”
Overwhelmed by the whole day of riding and the dull pain in her muscles and joints, Melia had to force herself to focus, staring at the congealed fat on her chipped plate.
“The border tribes won’t know that and won’t care about it,” the captain said. “We’ll still have to be here to stop them.”
More fighting, more blood. The captain knew nothing ever changed.
“The Empire tolerates the tribes for now, even supports them, because it suits them to have endless skirmishes on our border,” Amron said.
“But after the treaty, they’ll stop sending help.
And once the caravans start crossing the border again, do you think the Empire will tolerate the passes to be unsafe? ”
The captain paused before he answered, laying down his knife on the table. “No. They’ll protect their own.” He dragged his words. “The merchants will pay for armed escort, and the imperial army will patrol the imperial roads.”
“To protect trade, yes.”
Melia pushed her chair away from the table, tired of listening to men, tired of their endless talks of weapons, armies, conflicts. “Excuse me,” she said.
Amron turned to her. “You didn’t touch your food. Are you unwell?”
“No, I just need some fresh air.” She rose and all the men jumped to their feet.
“I’ll come with you,” Amron said.
“No, please, I’m sorry I interrupted your dinner.” Her cheeks burned under the weight of so many eyes. “I’m capable of taking a walk on my own.”
She fled the hall before he had the time to stop her. The corridors were cold and deserted, but she knew where she’d find more people, the people who hadn’t been invited to sit at the table with the prince. The women of the fort.
The kitchen was a badly lit place in the bowels of the castle, with a low, vaulted ceiling, long shadows, and the enduring stench of boiled cabbages and old grease, but it was blissfully warm.
A dozen women moved around it, scrubbing the pots, eating, feeding small, squirming children. They all froze when she walked in.
“Good evening,” she said, hoping that the shadows hid her intense discomfort.
The few women in Syr were used to her presence, they’d known her since she was a girl.
Here, she was the lord’s daughter, the prince’s wife, a highborn intruder.
“Please, carry on,” she said, but they remained still, staring at her.
The awkward moment was threatening to stretch into eternity when one woman, gray-haired, gaunt, gathered the courage to address her. “Is there anything you need, m’lady? Can we help you?”
Melia shook her head. “I don’t need anything. I just.…May I sit with you? I’m tired of being surrounded by men all the time.”
There were blank stares and there were smirks, but no one objected.
She found a free spot on the bench at the corner of the long table.
Someone poured her a mug of beer; she wrapped her hands around it to stop them from shaking and watched the woman sitting across from her feed a small boy with morsels of bread soaked in milk.
“How old is he?” Melia asked.
“Sixteen months, m’lady.”
The other women had gone back to their tasks. Melia sipped the beer, trying to look casual. “And you live here with him?”
“Yes.”
The boy seemed healthy and well-fed, but the young woman looked haggard.
“And the boy’s father? Is he garrisoned here?”
“Dead,” the young woman said, not lifting her eyes from her child.
Loss was something Melia could understand, something they shared. But the young woman remained focused on her son, unwilling to look at Melia.
“Half of us are widows here, m’lady, and the other half are waiting for the axe to fall.
” An older woman with a plate full of something hot and unappealing sat beside Melia.
“Those who have family to go to when their husband is killed, leave. Those who don’t, stay here and find another man to take care of them.
There’s a shortage of women, I’m sure you noticed, m’lady. ”
Melia stared at the woman in awe. She looked shriveled and hard like a smoked fish.
“He was Danka’s first, so she’s still grieving.” The woman nodded towards the young mother. “I’m on my fourth now.”
Melia swallowed another sip of beer. “And do you hate the Seragians for killing them?”
“The Seragians?” the woman asked, and several heads turned to them. “What do they have to do with us?”
“I thought…” Melia paused, unsure. “Seragians and Elmarrans, we fight each other, don’t we?”
That caused a few snickers around the table.
“M’lady, there’s just the garrison men and the bandits here,” a fair-skinned woman that didn’t even look like a Southerner said. “The men choose their path and we follow them.”
“But…the border?” Melia stammered and provoked some deep chuckling.
“We all have family on both sides of the border,” another woman said.
“I was born on the other side.”
“I have a sister married there.”
Melia sat in silence, feeling outrageously dumb, while the women’s words battered her beliefs. When she couldn’t tolerate it any longer, she rose. “Thank you for your company,” she said. “I must go before my husband comes looking for me.”
· · ·
It was unseasonably cold in the small circular chamber she shared with Amron in the tower, as if the stones oozed the icy fog of winter.
It whirled around Melia’s feet, slipping under her skirts, touching her bare skin with its frosty fingers.
The fire in the fireplace looked as if it were painted on the logs, a blob of orange and yellow emitting no heat.
Goosebumps rose on Melia’s arms, and for the first time in her life, she envied the soldiers and women sleeping in a thick cluster of warm bodies in the great hall.
“I’m so cold,” she said, sitting on the edge of a narrow bed with a straw mattress. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
“I can’t,” he said. “We’re leaving tomorrow and I still have questions for the garrison.” He unclasped his fur-lined cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders. “This should keep you warm. I’ll try to be back soon.”
Melia had no talent for divination, but as the coldness filled her from the inside despite the warm fur wrapping her body, she was absolutely sure something bad was coming.
Death passing by once more, white flowers of frost blooming where her robe touched the ground.
Melia opened her mouth to utter a warning, but she and Amron were still strangers, there was no trust between them, no intimate language of couples that could transmit her fear without sounding dramatic and ridiculous.
In the end, all she managed to say was a feeble “Take care.”
She mulled over the kitchen conversation, wondering if the women had reason to lie, until sleep defeated her.
She dreamed of cold watery depths where no ray of sunlight ever pierced the darkness.
She struggled to move through it, her limbs leaden, her lungs screaming for air, until the pressure abated and she found herself in an unfamiliar courtyard.
The flagstones were slick with blood, the people around her pushing, fighting, crying for help in the flickering light of the burning buildings.
Amron stood before her, smeared with blood and ash, with a bemused expression on his face.
Her eyes slipped down to his hand pressing his belly, black blood pouring through his fingers, soaking into the blue silk he wore, dripping on the flags.
He opened his mouth to tell her something, but no sound came out as his legs folded and he fell.
She screamed and woke up. A lonely bell was tolling outside. At first she couldn’t recognize the freezing room with the fire burnt down to ashes, but then she remembered the fort, the border, their journey. She was alone in the bed, Amron hadn’t come back.
The bell tolled again: a cold, desolate sound in the dark. Whatever she’d feared earlier that night had reached them now.