Black Rose

(Bit of a transitional episode, this one: three people, on the run, trying to get over the fact that they're not sure if that they can stand the basic sight of each other.

Solveig is a lot of fun to write when she's exasperated. I would like to talk more about how they were originally written but I think it'll spoil them for new readers. They've changed a lot. This weird sense of comedy always seems to be lurking beneath their episodes, now, even when things are going really dire. They weren't like that before.)

***

Chapter 13

The Cooking Pot

The Wild

Southern end of Benign Mountains

'That smells good,' said Owyn.

Solveig glanced up at him and then went back to her book.

Owyn had had a look at it. It was The Book, just a small copy with tiny print, too small for him to make out, but he'd a good fifteen years on her, so his eyesight wasn't what it had been.

He'd never read it. Owyn hadn't even really believed in the old gods, let alone the new one. A girl, a beer, a bowl of something tasty, a fistful of cash; those were the things that made sense out of life.

At least, they'd made sense of it for a long time. Things had changed a bit, towards the end of the war. Got meaner and nastier. You'd get hired for a job and, and it wasn't exactly like you weretoldto do anything, but hints would be dropped:Don't be too much of a stickler about taking prisoners. We can't afford to feed useless mouths.

And you went along, because if you kicked up a fuss, you weren't hired again.

But it was a bit shit, kind of. It was messy. People didn't know what they were doing. It wasn't professional.

Owyn had been pleased when the word came down from high up:Belay that, take prisoners like before.It made more sense.

The bookman, meanwhile, was stirring a stew.

They'd bought a chicken and a few vegetables off a farmer. Owyn knew how to hunt, but the others didn't, and they were all too unsure of each other for any one of them to have gone off and done something alone. Owyn was also aware that he had the money he'd been paid to protect them, and the girl, at least, was not likely to let him out of her sight, as long as he was under contract.

She made a small noise of irritation, and shifted.

'All right?' he said.

'It's nothing,' she muttered.

'Didn't know you could cook,' he said to the bookman.

The bookman did what he tended to do with conversation-starters that took the form of ordinary sentences: he nodded, to acknowledge that he fully understood Owyn's meaning, and that he was now aware that Owyn had not previously known that he, Paul, could cook. Talking to him, Owyn found, was like tossing a ball to someone who didn't understand that he was supposed to toss it back.

'I mean,' Owyn said, 'is that a bookman thing, men cooking, or...'

'There is nothing in the Book about how cooking is the preserve of only one sex,' Paul said.

'I see,' Owyn said. 'Got any favourite recipes? Is there, like... bookman cuisine?'

'Our preference is for food that is both flavourful and nutritious,' Paul said.

'Another thing that marks you out from the great masses of folk who prefer food that doesn't taste of anything and is bad for you,' Owyn said, and watched as the joke landed like a wounded duck.

Solveig muttered a curse. Owyn saw Paul glance at her, frowning slightly.

She was probably 'reading the book in the wrong mood', or something. So many bloody rulings about everything.

'Well, I'm glad one of us can cook, anyway,' he said. 'I can just about fry a sausage. Never really got any further than that.'

Paul tasted the soup and added a little salt. Owyn was very hungry.

'Can you cook?' he said to Solveig. She behaved as though she hadn't heard him, though they were seated four feet apart.

'Hey,' he said, 'can you cook?'

After a long moment she raised her head, looked at him for a long moment, nodded twice, looked at him for another long moment, just long enough to convey how little she thought of him, and then went back to the book.

Owyn decided that he'd done quite enough to maintain good cheer, and sat back. He looked surreptitiously at Solveig; even if she had one of the worst tempers in the world, he liked looking at her.

She seemed to wince slightly and her eyebrows drew together and then apart again.

Maybe it's the Book, Owyn thought. So boring that it's painful.

*

Solveig tried to concentrate on the Book, but the cramps she was feeling were getting hard to bear, and the tiny print and the difficulty of making out the intelligible text from the cloud of unintelligible nonsense were conspiring to give her a headache.

On top of which, they were a week out from the inn, and in all that time she'd drunk nothing but water. Even a glass of ale would have been a treat.

But I am not going to be the weak and stupid girl. Done more than enough of that. I have to be strong.

Another stabbing pain in her lower belly. All I need, for my body to betray me. Rock hard, Solveig. Ice cold.

Then she felt the cloth different on her nethers. Chafing.

Damn.

She unbuttoned the jacket and unbuttoned the trousers and pulled them down and peered into them, at herself. Sure enough, there was blood.

Shit.

'What are you doing?' said Owyn.

She looked up at him. They were both staring at her as if she'd...

... well, as if she'd done what she'd done, lower her britches in front of them.

'What,' she said, annoyed. 'You've both seen me naked.'

'Yeah, but that was,' Owyn said, looking away from her, 'that was, that was, I mean, shit was going down. You were a hostage, whatever. You don't just take your britches off in front of people.'

'I'm having my bleed,' she said, and opened her trousers wider so he could see. 'It's going to happen.'

'Fuck!' he said, holding up a hand. 'I don't wanna see that!'

'Well, I don't want to bleed,' she said, 'but women do.'

'It is unclean,' Paul said, also very pointedly not looking at her.

'In, what,' she said, 'in... a god way, or a food way?'

'Well, both, really,'

'Tonner's dick,' she exclaimed, 'you're travelling with a woman. Get used to it. I normally have wadding for times like this, but I had to leave it in the inn, so I could use some bandage, assuming we have some. And a clean pair of britches.'

'You are wearing my second pair,' Paul said.

'Yes, and I've just got blood all over them. Sorry about that.'

She looked at Owyn. He sighed and reached for his pack.

Solveig took off her boots and socks and stood up, and pushed the britches down her legs.

'Name of the Right,' Owyn complained. 'I don't want to see your bits all close up and covered in blood.'

'I don't exactly welcome you seeing them either,' she said, 'but I think we're a bit past normal modesty, at this stage.'

Owyn tore a length of bandage and handed it over, with a spare pair of britches.

'Thank you,' she muttered, and rolled up Paul's britches.

'I'll wash these myself, don't worry,' she said, scowling. 'You don't have to get all unclean with my ladyblood.'

'What fucking Hargest barn were you raised in,' Owyn said.

'I made my brother and I hide up to our necks in shit from Hargest soldiers, when we were five years old,' she said, wrapping the bandage around her parts.

He considered this.

'That sounds like a good story,' he said.

'I'll tell it to you when I like you,' she said, and finished tying off the bandage. Then she pulled the britches on, fastened them, sat down and pulled her socks and boots back on.

She closed her eyes for a moment.

Still the pain. But at least I won't get another pair of britches dirty.

I would kill for a glass of wine. A bottle of wine.

Wine makes it worse, though. Dries you out. Perhaps it's better this way.

'You, uh,' Owyn said, '... you got the pains?'

'Yes,' she said, keeping her eyes shut. 'I've got the pains.'

'Right,' he said. 'Well... sorry.'

*

She opened her eyes again and stared at nothing.

She was definitely one of the strangest people he had ever met.

The bookman was strange, but he was strange in the way bookmen were usually strange, with his literal mind, and his need for rules for everything.

She, though. Beneath the outward surface of the haughty young lady there was something snarling and feral, but something else as well, something more elusive, something he'd only glimpsed a few times, in certain soldiers, only once before in a woman: ahungerfor something worrying, he wasn't sure what. Glory or death or madness, but something that was not the polite life of an athletic young noblewoman. She was somebody you'd dread going on a march with, because of her foul temper, but he had the feeling that if you found yourself cornered with Solveig Stopbern Jornsdottir, she would claw her way out with her teeth and hands, if she had to.

But first you'd have to earn her trust. And he knew that that was a long way off.

'Look,' he said, 'I can't quite believe I'm gonna say this, because they're four words I never like to have said to me, but... we need to talk.'

'About what,' she said.

'I did you wrong,' he said. 'At the inn. I know that.'

She kept on staring at nothing.

'Mmm,' she finally said.

'If we're gonna travel together, we can't not talk to each other,' he said, looking for affirmation to Paul, who averted his eyes and went back to stirring the stew.

'You'd be surprised,' she said.

'Oy,' he said. 'I'm not just making conversation. You've got to admit, you've a sharp tongue.'

'I have a sharp tongue,' she said.

'Yeah.'

'Yeah. And that caused problems, back at the inn.'

She finally looked at him.

'So it was my sharp tongue that caused me problems,' she said. 'Not three drunks who decided to rape me.'

'But you said you'd do the deed with them,' he said. 'So, explain to us where it all went wrong.'

'The boy wasn't interested in merely doing the deed. He wanted to hurt me.'

'And he got what was coming to him, if you ask me,' Owyn said. 'But I seem to remember, from the bit that I saw, that the merchant wanted to call the whole thing off.'

'You missed the part where he was trying to keep me in the room,' she said.

'I did. But, things change. By the end, he was trying to walk away from it all. Now, I never meant for you to let him just walk free. That's why I gave you the sword. To, you know. Fuck him up a bit. I meant you to, like... split his nose, or something.'

She nodded.

'Not kill him.'

*

Damn.

She looked at him.

It was one of the most painful things about hanging around the swordsman. The fact that he wasn't always wrong.

'You doknowthat you shouldn't have killed him, right,' he said.

'Yes.'

'You do know why?'

'Because it exposed us to too much risk,' she said.

He looked startled.

'Oh,' he said. 'Well. Yeah. I suppose.'

'Why,' she said, puzzled. 'Why do you think I shouldn't have.'

'... Because he didn't deserve to die?' Owyn said.

'You yourself noted that he was a man who sold rotten pork as soldiers' fare.'

'Still, it wasn't for you to kill him.'

'Why not? As well me as another.'

'But,' he said, 'you're a woman.'

She stared at him.

'I don't follow.'

'You should be at home. You know, making a home for someone.'

'I don't have anyone to make a home for.'

'Why not?'

She was silent for a moment.

'Where I come from,' she said, 'I was a valued member of my lord's household. I could outfight my brother.'

'Your brother?' said Owyn. 'That the one you hid in shit with?'

'Yes. Don't worry, though. He won't be seeking revenge for any injury to my honour.'

'Why? What happened to him?'

'He's dead,' she said, and it struck her that it was the first time she had talked to anyone else about Siegfa.

'Killed in battle, then?'

'He took his own life. He was dishonoured.'

'What?'

'My brother was very beautiful, and I think someone forced himself upon him. I found him soon afterwards. He was naked and beaten. He cut his own throat, sooner than accept help from me.'

'Shit,' said the swordsman. 'To do that to a young bloke... that's a bloody outrage, that is.'

She looked at him. He looked genuinely upset at the whole idea.

She was about to say something when the bookman said quietly, 'Why is it a bloody outrage when it is done to him?'

'What you mean?'

*

'Why is it so outrageous when it is done to a man, but presumably less so when it is done to a woman?'

Paul watched the mercenary to see if he had an answer.

The mercenary looked like he was caught in some sort of trap.

'Well,' the man said, 'it's unnatural.'

'So,' Paul said, 'it is natural for a man to violate a woman, but not for a man to violate a man?'

'I'm not sayin' it'sright,' the mercenary said, 'but it's just what men do, am I right? I mean, the natural tendency of men is to want women, not other blokes.'

'Observation of nature shows us that creatures of many species will couple with other creatures of the same species and same sex,' Paul said.

'Yeah,' the mercenary said, and then he paused, and said, 'What?'

'Observation of nature shows us that creatures of many species...' Paul said.

'You just said that,' Owyn said.

'Because it has been borne out by observation,' Paul said.

'What are you talking about?'

'Male ducks will attempt to copulate with other male ducks. Male porpoises will attempt to copulate with other male porpoises. Male...'

'Really?' the mercenary said. He looked terribly disappointed with the world.

'Yes,' Paul said.

'Well, but they're animals.'

'So what they do is "natural".'

'Well... yeah.'

'Yet you object to it between men because you say it is unnatural.'

'My brother was not a pervert,' Solveig said coldly, looking at him.

'How do you know?'

She paused.

'I think I would have known,' she said.

'But you assume that he was violated,' Paul said. 'How can you be sure. Perhaps he was not. Perhaps he was naked because he had been engaging in consensual sex with another.'

Paul looked at them both, and experienced, not for the first time, the feeling that folk, not of the Book, resented his mere presence.

All because he used logic and evidence to point out the flaws in their reasoning.

It was exasperating, how folk not of the Book so often reacted this way to the calm reasoning of people of the Book.

I suppose, he thought, this is the price we must pay, for being right, time and time again.

*

Owyn waited until the bookman had obviously shut up, and then turned back to Solveig.

'Look,' he said, 'I'm not saying what they wanted to do to you was right or proper, all right? Obviously, it was shit.'

'What "they" wanted to do,' she said softly.

'Whatwewanted to do,' he said. 'Fair point, fair point. I'm just sayin' that, men wanting women, that's normal, but men wanting a man, that's, that's wrong. Just wrong.'

She stared at him.

'I mean,' he said, 'isn't it?'

She continued to stare at him.

'I mean, come on,' he said, exasperated. 'You see my point, right?'

*

She thought for a moment.

What are we even talking about? Why are we still here? Why don't we break up all our agreements and split up? We must be known, now, as three people who killed a boy and a man in an inn.

It is stupid that we are still together.

... But I can't leave the bookman. He must be miles out of his way, and unlike me, he is totally defenceless.

'The merchant would have been content to fuck me,' she said. 'Yes, I would have been all right with that, at least, at the time. You decided that you didn't want to force me, so you walked away. Well done, you.

'But the boy wasn't content for me tolethim fuck me. He wanted to wound me.'

The mercenary was silent.

'Explain to me how that was "normal",' she said.

*

She had a look in her eye that made Owyn pause.

'So,' he said, 'maybe I'm just a wanker. Maybe that's the explanation.'

She had stopped staring at him and was staring at nothing again.

'Maybe you're one, too,' he said, 'did you think about that?'

Her eyes swivelled around until they met his.

'The merchant,' he said, prompting her. 'The sword.' He made a gesture of hitting himself in the neck with the flat of his hand, and stuck his tongue out, and rolled his eyes upwards.

'The more I think about it,' he said, 'that night, the more I look at it, I just think: what a colossal, iron-bound, ten-wheeled, armour-plated fuck-up. Five people. Four of us were more or less pissed, and the other one was about as much use as a three-day-old mackerel in a plank-sawing competition.'

He turned to Paul.

'No offence, mate,' he said.

Paul merely frowned, in a puzzled kind of way.

'We could go over it and over it and over it,' he said, 'and we'll still find a reason to blame each other. But we're missing the bigger thing.'

'Which is,' she said.

'Us,' he said, and looked around. 'Us three. We're now a merry little band. Cause we killed two men between the three of us. And the question has to be, what are we gonna do about it. Are we gonna continue on, or do we split up?'

*

Solveig looked at Paul.

'I can't leave you alone out here,' she said. 'You helped me and you suffered for it.'

She looked at Owyn.

'I am bound to try to protect him,' she said. 'And he paid you to protect he and I. I fail to see why this is even a question.'

'All right,' Owyn said. 'So, now you're thinking. So if that's the case, we've got to... you know. Be a group.'

'How do you suggest we do that.'

'All right,' he said. 'You don't like me, and you don't trust me, because I was gonna, do the thing, and then I let them go ahead and do it and I didn't do anything until you offered me money. Right?'

'Yes.'

'So, fine. I need to show you that you can trust me.'

He sat and drummed his fingers on his knees.

'Any ideas,' he said.

'Why did you not stop them,' Paul said.

'What?' said Owyn.

'That was where it all began,' Paul said. 'They decided to move on... on her. You knew they were doing it, but you declined to take part, but, crucially, you also declined to stop them. For that alone, I would see you pay a forfeit.'

'Oh, you would?' said the mercenary.

'Yes,' said Paul, looking straight at him. 'For your failure to take action, when you could have.'

*

For fuck's sake, Owyn thought.

'Don't try to be a hero, bookman,' he said. 'You haven't got the bottle. None of your sort do.'

He had a swig from his flask and when he put it down he realised that the bookman had stood up.

'You may call me weak,' said the bookman, clenching his fists to keep himself steady. 'And it would be no less than truth, for I am. But you will not ascribe to my people the weaknesses that are mine alone. In short, sir, you will take that back.'

Owyn stared up at him, trying to figure this out, and eventually gave up.

'...What?' he said.

'I am weak of frame, and I have no skill in combat, it is true, but with all my faults I do not stand for all my people, and I will not have them slandered, however you menace my own person. Take back what you said.'

'Or what?' said Owyn. 'Or you'll let me beat you up?'

Solveig looked at them both with a kind of exasperated disbelief.

Owyn stood up too, and he saw the bookman flinch, but the bloke remained where he was and even attempted to square his jaw underneath that big beard.

'If necessary,' said the bookman, 'yes.'

'No, no, no,' Owyn said, 'fair's fair, that's...'

He grinned at the bookman. He was pleased.

'You're all right, mate. You're all right. I take it all back. I'm sorry what I said about your people. I let me mouth run off, all right? I was wrong.'