A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 23

She looked narrowly across at him. She suddenly understood, all the times she had been impatient, wishing he might help her with this or that, be less nervous and irritable, he had had things of this kind on his mind. Clair's narrowed slanted eyes looked across at her. "Where have you been?" he asked.

"D-down in the wood," she answered. "Has't seen Flada?"

"Flada?" He lifted his head, suddenly fearful. "Uncle Flada?"

"I am sorry for it, my Lord," she said. She gave him the title she was used to calling him by without thinking. "Flada Clathan has been wounded, although I think he will live."

"Why did he come!" Clair moaned. "Could he not resist it, one more military operation, he has put his whole family in danger for it! Diodr serving in Second will be hung for his foolishness if we do not get him out in time. If only he had just let us have the cannon he could have pretended we had forced him give it us but now he has put his children in danger by making it so evident he has joined us." Then his head lifted, he looked at her hands and the skirt of her dress. "You have been in the wood?" he repeated. "Where Ninth Vail ..."

"Someone had to go with Pava," she answered. "Let me go and change, I prithou. Has't seen the boys?"

"They are with Ria," he answered. "They have been asking for you but she has explained that you have work you must do with the wounded. Anna, why did you go there? My darling ..."

"No!" she hissed fiercely at him. "Not now! Call me your Lady for now so I may do this work! Cans't not understand, surely you of all people understand! I have so much to do, I cannot stop to be your darling now. Loisir is dead."

He took a step back, looking into her eyes with sympathetic grey eyes. "Who?" he asked.

"Pava's youngest Lieutenant. Tashka knows him, I thought mights't too."

"Ah, Hell," he said softly. "You have seen the poor boy dead. I am very sorry, my ... my Lady. Where are Pava and Tashka?"

"They are washing and eating then they will go and help the Ninth Vail soldiers to write home," she answered.

He looked into her eyes with such a warmth of love and affection that she could not bear it, she turned her head away. "You have done this - you thought to give them that task which will help them, in the midst of everything else you must think of," he murmured. "Go, you must wash and change yourself. And I must go and make sure the lines of supply are being respected. Then I will meet you here. I'll send Lisette to you and ask them to bring us all some food here, will that suit you, my Lady?"

"Yes," she said through her gritted teeth. "I thank you."

When she came back down to the sitting-room, Tarra el V'lair was lying on one of the sofas, propped on some cushions, his leg heavily bandaged and a bowl of soup in his hand. He had been at the front of Tenth Athagine as they charged out the gates into the ranks of Sietter soldiers, his troop had not sustained such heavy losses as Ninth Vail and as the Sietter troops but Arianna knew he too must have lost people whom he was used to work alongside every day. He looked at her, his sad eyes sunk bitterly in mourning. She crossed to him and pressed his arm, his dark-haired head swung away unable to bear the gentle sympathy she offered.

Hanya and Vadya were helping themselves to bowls of soup and some bread and cheese that had been laid out. Tashka and Pava came through the long windows as she went up to the table, clean and tidily dressed in civilian clothes. The four of them looked at each other but did not speak. Tashka went over to el V'lair. Her face was expressionless and she waited until he lifted a hand, when she clasped it hard in hers. el V'lair gripped her hand then continued sullenly to eat his soup while she went to stand at Vadya's elbow to collect her food. She followed Vadya across to sit on a sofa with Pava.

Clair came into the room and went straight to Tarra. He pressed something into his hand, saying: "My dear friend. You have often thrown yourself behind me to second me when I flung my life in the hazard. I never would have expected you to put yourself in the field of battle to defend my whole family and I hope that you know what I feel for it." Tarra turned his louche head to look at the bundle of papers in his hand and opened his mouth in protest. "Shut it!" Clair said roughly. "Take the silly money and spend it how you will. I cannot give you back Stargazer because I have already given him to Tashka but take back the vineyard and cash at the least of it."

He crossed to Tashka and Pava, sitting angrily on their sofa, and knelt before them. "Listen," he said softly. "Of course it hurts now, it is terrible now but it was a good plan, well-executed and it had to be done. It has been done not for our selfish sakes but for the sakes of our family, our regions and our country. My brother, my brother officer, my dears. Do not rack your hearts out with it. You must have the strength now to go and help Pava's soldiers write home so eat well and remember: it is van Sietter brought this death and horror on all of us while he hides in his palace a long way from the front line." He gripped a knee of each of them. The tears dripped down Pava's nose, Tashka gritted her teeth and nodded curtly. They began to eat, lifting their heads more easily.

Vadya watched Clair go to fetch himself a bowl of soup. He could see Clair's eyes abstracted, he knew Clair was thinking of the lines of supply for all the different troops now quartered within and outside his walls, of political issues which would need to be managed, of how different Sietter troops might react now that war had been declared but that Commander-Lord el Maien, formerly of Fourth Sietter, had declared that he would be going to the Generals' strategic staff in Port H'las. Clair had suffered as Tashka and Pava suffered, as he had not, watching friends and brother officers fall beneath the cannon and sharp steel. Vadya understood suddenly why it was that Tashka had laughed when he had asked if Dar Vaie would be on their side. He knew that if he had ever been led by his hot-hearted brother by marriage, who hid behind a cool arrogant demeanour the ability to move rapidly between grand strategy and attention to the smallest of details and a heart of extreme tenderness and care for his friends and dependents, he would never have been able to refuse any thing that Clair asked of him.

There was a cough at the door, they turned and saw Petra the steward there. The old man looked at Clair nervously.

"My Lord," he said. "Commander-Sir Darien is asking to see you."

Clair flinched and took a step back into the sitting-room. Tashka leapt up, spilling her bowl of soup over the floor. "Is that rat calling on us from outside the walls?" she hissed. "Has he not gone back to Arventa yet? What does it take to rid us of those scum?"

"Commander-Sir Darien was brought into the castle with the other Sietter wounded," Petra said in a wooden toneless voice.

Clair clutched at his hair. Tashka stepped forward, absolute rage incandescent on her face and blazing in her blue eyes. "What do you mean?" she growled, "the Sietter wounded have been brought in here? What, are we taking them prisoner? What dishonourable dog has done this to them!"

"I ordered it so," Arianna answered, coming forward. "I have undertaken the care of the wounded, that means the Sietter soldiers too. They were your brothers in arms when you were in Fourth Sietter. How cans't bear to let them lie and die outside our castle walls. Time will be, they will swear to Clair's fingers. How can they do that if we have left them in agony outside our walls? They are not prisoners, although some will be well advised no doubt to remain here as such after being torn apart by our cannons!" Her face was marble white, her blue eyes blazed as fiercely as Tashka's in her fury at the violence she was having to witness.

"It is against the code of honour!" Tashka hissed. "They know the code, they would swear to Clair's fingers whatever in time but how can they now after being dragged in here against the code?"

Pava had stood up and come forward to take Clair's arm. "Anna," he said, "cans't not ask Clair to go and talk to Darien. Does't not know ..."

"Of course I know!" she ground out. "I know everything of you officer-aristocrats with your code of honour that means only death and injury and pain. Even you, Hanya, I suppose have sometimes thought of throwing a glove in someone's face over some silly quarrel!" Hanya looked up and across at Clair, Clair turned his frightened head and shook it at Hanya. Arianna suddenly said: "What! Has't thrown your glove in my husband's face! What for?" they could almost see her quick brain figuring it out. "Has't done it in my name! For some imagined slight to my honour! Without even telling me!"

Clair started forward out of Pava's loose protective grip. "Anna!" he said angrily. "You cannot expect him to have stood by while there was so much talk at court. He is your brother and loves you! He is not like Prianne who does not care a copper coin's curse if you are happy or unhappy in your marriage, whether I beat you to my will or imprison you or what I do so long as I stop you from engaging in politics. Why do you look at me so. Do you think Prianne has not come to speak to me sometimes; not to remonstrate with me for the gossip about my affairs but to ask me to rein you in! He made it plain that I would not have trouble from him if I mistreated you so long as I reined you in. You stare at it, do you? Do you not know what kind of man Prianne is?

"Hanya did try to give me a glove; it was when we heard you were with child. He thought ... but I would not take your brother's glove. I assured him, I swore it on my juniors' lives, I have never forced a favour from anyone. I asked him to write to you, to come visit you and find out for himself from you. I represented to him the scandal it would mean for you if it were known we had duelled over such a matter. He took the glove back. But do not think it meant he disrespected you. He did it for love of you, Anna."

Her scarred brother with the limp that restricted his walk so badly, who could not possibly have defeated her agile husband, expert with the rapier and constantly in and out of duels at that time of his life, looked deprecatingly at her from the table of food where he stood. He held his hands out, not in apology but in appeal.

"I will go and deal with Darien," Tashka announced, her face writhing with impatient anger at this irritating distraction from the issue at point. "I will throw that damned dog out the gates and back to the field of battle where he can die in what agony he like, for what his brother did to mine!"

"No shall't not," Arianna said in a freezing cold voice. "Has't killed his brother, has't forced he himself to submit to you already in a duel. Is that not enough for you but musts't now abuse my hospitality to throw my guest out of my doors? There must be an end to this violence and hatred. Perhaps a war is not the best place to start that work but start it I will." She turned to the steward, who was looking as blank-faced as he could manage, staring with intense concentration at the bookcase by the side of the door. "Petra, take me to Commander-Sir Darien."

"You cannot go alone!" Clair cried in agony.

She turned around and surveyed them all with her blue eyes raging in her marble white still cold face. "Who among you can come with me?" she demanded in tones dripping with scorn. "Who among you has not killed a man over some matter of 'honour'? Who can go and speak to Darien and not risk him provoking you to offer him a glove, or provoke him to offer you a glove? I thought so." She turned with a whisk of red skirts and stormed out of the room in Petra's wake.

They stared after her. Tarra suddenly said, "el Maien, she is a storming lovely but you know, I think I will leave her to your management!" Hanya gave a quick snort of laughter. Tashka kicked her soup bowl and Vadya got up and gripped her arm, gave her a hard glare to say she was behaving badly and must stop it.

Clair stared after his wife, his eyes were still clouded with fear. He could not bear to go after her even though he knew she was not safe in the rooms full of soldiers who had sworn allegiance to van Sietter's fingers.

Arianna went seething with rage down the corridor, Petra scuttling before her. The servants all backed aside as they saw her face, white with temper and the blue eyes blazing out of it, coming down on them. Rarely did they see Lady el Jien in a temper, ordinarily she was over-indulgent and allowed them too much latitude but when her face was like it was now they all jumped suddenly to it and acted on her orders immediately and without question.

Petra led her to the corridor off which the formal reception rooms were situated. There were some of the Castle Guard standing on duty there, she had ordered that it be so, to make sure that there was not trouble between the different groups of soldiers in the castle rooms. At the entrance to the corridor, she paused. Petra hesitated by the Guard, looking nervously back at her, she took a deep breath and tried to calm her over-stretched nerves, to get a grip on her temper. It would never do to try and go to negotiate with yet another angry and frightened officer-aristocrat while in a temper with a different set of the stupid romantical inhumanly cruel ... That would never do. She jerked her head in a nod to Petra and he led her forward into the corridor.

Even the corridor was full of nervous dirty wounded soldiers in torn red felt uniforms. Those who could move were hovering there as if frightened of being struck down if they sat down to rest. Some who could not move were sitting up on bedding in the reception rooms, calling to their comrades in the corridor, desperate to ask what was happening. Others lay between life and death, still on their spread out bedding. Surgeons and servants moved between them, attempting to offer them assistance, food and water. Some warned others that it must be poisoned. Arianna gave a big sigh as she followed Petra down the corridor.

The Fifth and Eighth Sietter soldiers recognised the authority in her face and fell away before her but began to cluster behind her and follow her in a frightened bunch. Arianna's heart began to thump in her chest. There were many of them, they were rough troopers, tired and scared. They had gone to war because she, a woman who was walking through them alone apart from an elderly servant, had tried to suggest there could be a council of merchants to advise the King and the Privy Council.

Petra was showing her into the big reception room. The sofas and armchairs were full of wounded men, men lay spread out on the floor on bedding, under the irritating black and red circles and lines of Battle 1 and Battle 2 and the lovely joyous gentle colours over the fireplace in the painting of the harvest coming home by Hyaline.

He was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace in his red felt tunic, huddled close to the blazing fire. He was a typical Sietter Knight and officer: tall and rangy and blond like Hanya Vashin, although not handsome like Vashin had been. He stared at her from furious pale blue eyes in a lean and angry face with a long scar cutting down and across it. She realised it must be Tashka who had marked his face so cruelly. There was a bandage around his head and his leg was bandaged up, his long brown army boot had been cut away and the red felt breeches of his uniform had been cut from the thigh to the ankle and hung loosely about his leg. Like many of his men, he had clearly not had time to get into his battle gear when the fighting began.

"Commander-Sir Lial Darien of Fifth Sietter," she said politely. He glared at her as she moved so statuesque in her red dress towards him, her flaxen head held high and proud with the hair dressed elegantly up on it, her pale face veiled with a cold expressionless look. "Lady el Jien van Sietter," she said formally.

He stared, his mouth dropping open. He looked behind her. "Where is Lord Clair?" he asked.

"The arrangements for the care of the wounded are my responsibility," she answered. "I know it is not the custom but I cannot see you lie wounded outside my walls so I have brought you and your men into the castle. I beg you to tell it them, the medical help that is offered is offered in good heart and the food is good."

"We ... we are prisoners?" he demanded. "el Maien has determined to make us prisoners for obeying his father, our sworn Lord, against him? Or is it Lord Tashka who has done this to us!"

"It is me!" she insisted. "You are not prisoners. I cannot bear it, to see you wounded outside my walls. When they send back for you, those who are able may go back to Arventa. I thought ... we might agree that those who are not able could take a vow to keep out of the war then I will allow them to remain here and be cared for here."

Darien began to look desperate. "Will Lord Clair not come?" he asked, turning to Petra, who stood to the side of them with his old white head bent down. Petra lifted his head and looked at Arianna.

"Lord Clair will have none of you," she answered. "I think knowest why."

His eyes flickered, he said: "Lord Tashka? Does Lord Tashka know I am here? Will he not come to me?"

"By all means," she answered. "Lord Tashka has expressed great willingness to come and throw you out of my gate to die in a lot of pain while waits't for them to send back for you. I imagine it will be about two days before they can do so, they suffered heavy losses. I have forbidden Lord Tashka to do this but so wishs't it, mays't send for him and I will allow him to throw out you alone - not your men, for that is not taking them as your care, is it?"

He stared into her pale cool face with the veiled look in the round blue eyes. "Is it ... that you are on van Sietter's side in this war?" he asked in puzzlement.

"Of course not!" she showed the first sign of emotion, her eyes snapped with irritation then cooled back down to the shaded pools of blue that told him nothing of what she felt. "van Sietter and I are completely at odds. I am the one wishes to resolve the poverty of the people through enlisting the merchants' help. He wishes to increase his power and influence. I understand that has't sworn a vow and must fight to support van Sietter. Musts't understand that my vow is to the betterment of the people. That also means you and your soldiers, I will not allow you to suffer pain and death on my doorstep when I can prevent it."

Darien said: "You swore a vow to your husband, is it not? How can you be going against him in this way? He surely did not wish you to bring us in here, especially me."

She tilted down her veiled blue eyes and stared at him. "I was bestowed on him," she acknowledged, "and in return he bestowed all he owns on me. That includes the region. Sietter will be mine when he is the sworn Lord. Shall't be mine too since ar't a Sietter officer. I will take you as my care." Darien stared at her, the proud Lady using the words from the military vow with confident knowledge. Her round expressionless blue eyes looked back at him. She was not a pacifist out of naive girlish sentiment, she was a scholar who had considered in detail the life which the menfolk around her led. "Ar't truly content?" she asked him, "to take arms on behalf of someone like van Sietter? Knowest it well, he does not have the good of the region in his mind in this war. Is it truly van Sietter's road that your heart tells you to go down?"

His head swung away, staring to the side of the room where the carpets were rolled up off the floorboards so that they would not be ruined with blood and the dirt of battle dripping on them. "My heart is buried in my brother's grave," he murmured. She had to lean forward to hear what he said. "And I have sworn a vow."