lois Bujold - The Hallowed Hunt

The wraps on his wrists and right hand were holding, although stained with brown blood. He stretched and clenched his fingers. So. Last evening had been no dream, for all its hallucinatory terrors. His stomach tightened in anxiety-painfully-as the memories mounted.

Hinges squeaked; a clatter of crockery was overridden by Rider Gesca's startled swearing. Ingrey squinted at the door. Gesca, grimacing in bewilderment, picked his way across the dislodged barrier of tumbling beakers and plates. The lieutenant was dressed for the road in boots and leathers and Hetwar's slate-blue tabard, and tidied for the solemnity of the duty: drab blond hair combed, amiable face new-shaved. He stared down at Ingrey in dismay. “My lord?”

“Ah. Gesca.” When the noise of rolling saucers died away, Ingrey managed, “How is pig-boy this morning?”

Gesca shook his head, seeming caught between wariness and exasperation. “His delusions passed off about midnight. We put him to bed.”

“See that he does not approach or annoy Learned Hallana again.”

“I don't think that will be a problem.” Gesca's worried eyes summed the bruises and bandages. “Lord Ingrey-what happened to you last night?”

Ingrey hesitated. “What do they say happened?”

“They say you were locked in with that sorceress for a couple of hours when suddenly a racket rose from the room-howling, and thumping to bring down the plaster from the ceiling below, and yelling. Sounded like someone being murdered.”

“The sorceress and her servants went out later as though nothing had happened, and you left limping, not talking to anyone.”

Ingrey reviewed the excuses Hallana had called through the door, as well as he could remember them. “Yes. I was carrying a…ham, and a carving knife, and I tripped over a chair.” No, she hadn't said a chair. “Upended the table. Cut my hand going down.”

Gesca's face screwed up, as he no doubt tried to picture how this event could result in Ingrey's peculiar array of bandages and bruises. “We're almost ready to load up, out there. The Red Dike divine is waiting to bless Prince Boleso's coffin. Are you going to be able to ride? After your accident.” He added after a reflective moment, “Accidents.”

Do I look that bad? “Did you deliver my message for Lord Hetwar to the Temple courier?”

“Yes. She rode out at first light.”

“Then…tell the men to stand down. I expect instructions. Better wait. We'll take a day to rest the horses.”

Gesca gestured assent, but his stare plainly questioned why Ingrey had driven both men and animals to their limits for two long days only to spend the time so gained idling here. He picked up the crockery, set it on the washstand, gave Ingrey another bemused look, and made his way out.

Ingrey had scrawled his latest note to Lord Hetwar immediately upon their arrival last night, reporting the cortege in Red Dike and pressing for relief of his command, feigning inability to supply adequate ceremony. The note had contained, therefore, no word of the Temple sorceress or hint of the later events in that upstairs room. He hadn't mentioned the incident of the river, or, indeed, any remark upon his prisoner at all. Uneasy awareness of his duty to report the truth to the sealmaster warred now with fear, in his heart. Fear and rage. Who placed that grotesque geas in me, and how? Why was I made a witless tool?

His own anger frightened him even as his fear stoked his fury, tightening his throat and making his temples throb. He lay back, trying to remember the hard-won self-disciplines that had stilled him under the earnest holy tortures at Birchgrove. Slowly, he willed his screaming muscles to resistless quiet again.

His wolf had been released last night. He had unchained it. Was it leashed again this morning? And if not…what then? For all the aches in his body, his mind felt no different from any other morning of his adult life. So was his frozen hesitation here in Red Dike just old habit, or was it good sense? Simple prudence, to refuse to advance one step farther toward Easthome in his present lethal ignorance? His physical injuries made a plausible blind to hide behind. But were they a hunter's screen or just a coward's refuge? His caged thoughts circled.

Another tap at the door broke the tensing upward spiral of his disquiet, and a sharp female voice inquired, “Lord Ingrey? I need to see you.”

“Mistress Hergi. Come in.” Belatedly, Ingrey grew conscious of his shirtless state. But she was presumably an experienced dedicat of the Mother's order, and no blushing maiden. Still, it would be courteous to at least sit up. It would.

“Hm.” Her lips thinned as she stepped to the bedside and regarded him, a coolly capable glint in her eye. “Rider Gesca did not exaggerate. Well, there is no help for it; you must get up. Learned Madam wishes to see your prisoner before she leaves, and I would have her on the road home at the earliest moment. We had enough trouble getting here; I dread the return trip. Come, now. Oh, dear. Let me see, better start with…”

She plunked her leather case down on the washstand and rummaged within, withdrawing a square blue glass bottle and pulling out the cork stopper. She poured a sinister syrup into a spoon, and as Ingrey creaked up on one elbow to ask, “What is it?” popped it into his mouth. The liquid tasted utterly vile. He swallowed, afraid to spit it out under her steely gaze.

Ingrey swallowed medicine and a surge of bile. “It's revolting.”

“Eh, you'll change your mind about it soon enough, I warrant. Here. Let's see how my work is holding up.”

Efficiently, she unbound his wrappings, applied new ointment and fresh bandages, daubed the stitches in his hair with something that stung, combed out the tangles, washed his torso, and shaved him, batting his hands away as he tried to protest his own competence to dress himself. “Don't you be getting my new wraps wet, now, my lord. And stop fighting me. I'll have no delays out of you.”

He hadn't been dressed like this by a woman since he was six, but his pain was fading most deliciously away, to be replaced by a floating lassitude. He stopped fighting her. The intensity of her concentration, he realized dimly, had nothing to do with him.

“Is Learned Hallana all right? After last night?” he asked cautiously.

“Baby's shifted position. Could be a day, could be a week, but there are twenty-five miles of bad roads between here and Suttleaf, and I wish I had her home safe now. Now, you mind me, Lord Ingrey; don't you dare do anything to detain her. Whatever she wants from you, give it to her without argument, if you please.” She sniffed rather fiercely.

“Yes, Mistress,” Ingrey answered humbly. He added after a blinking moment, “Your potion seems very effective. Can I keep the bottle?”

“No.” She knelt by his feet. “Oh. Your boots won't do, will they? Do you have any other shoes with you…?” She scavenged ruthlessly in his saddlebags, to emerge with a pair of worn leather buskins that she jammed onto his feet. “Up you come, now.”

THE SORCERESS-PHYSICIAN WAS ALREADY WAITING IN THE TAP-room of Ijada's inn at the other end of Red Dike's main street. Learned Hallana eyed his bandages, and inquired politely, “I trust this morning finds you much recovered, Lord Ingrey?”

“Yes. Thank you. Your medicine helped. Though it made an odd breakfast.” He smiled at her, a trifle hazily he feared.

“Oh. It would.” She glanced at Hergi. “How much…?” Hergi held up two fingers. Ingrey could not decide if the twitch of the divine's eyebrows was censure or approval, for Hergi merely shrugged in return.

Ingrey followed both women upstairs once more. They were admitted to the parlor, a little doubtfully, by the female warden. Ingrey looked around surreptitiously for signs of his late frenzy, finding none but for a few faint bloodstains and dents on the oak floorboards. Ijada stepped from the bedchamber at the sound of their entry. She was dressed for travel in the same gray-blue riding costume as yesterday, but had put off her boots in favor of light leather shoes. Uneasily, Ingrey searched her pale face; her expression, returning his gaze, was sober and pensive.