Williams, Walter Jon - Woundhealer

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Woundhealer

by Walter Jon Williams

The horn echoed down the long valley, three bright rising notes, and it seemed

to Derina-frozen like an animal in the bustle of the court-as if the universe

halted for a long moment of dread. A cold hard fist clenched in her stomach.

Her father was home.

She went up the stone stair by the old gatehouse and watched as her father and

his little army, back from the Princes' Wars, wound up the mountain spur toward

her. The cold canyon wind howled along the old flint walls, tangled Derina's

red-gold hair in its fingers. The knuckles on her small fists were white as she

searched the distant column for sign other father and brothers.

Derina's mother and sister joined her above the gatehouse. Edlyn carried her

child, the two of them wrapped in a coarse wool shawl against the wind.

"Pray they have all come home safe," said Derina's mother, Kendra.

Derina, considering this, thought she didn't know what to pray for, if anything,

but Edlyn looked scorn at her mother, eyes hard in her expressionless face.

When Lord Landry rode beneath the gate he looked up at them, cold blue eyes

gazing up out of the weatherbeaten moon face with its bristle of red hair and

wide, fierce nostrils. As her father's eyes met hers, the knot in Derina's

stomach tightened. Her gaze shifted uneasily to her brothers, Norward the

eldest, gangly, myopic eyes blinking weakly, riding uneasily in the saddle as if

he would rather be anywhere else; and Reeve, a miniature version of his father,

red-haired and round-shouldered, looking up at the women above the gate as if

sizing up the enemy.

Derina's mother and sister bustled down the lichen-scarred stair to make the

welcome official. Derina stayed, watching the column of soldiers as it trudged

up to the old flint-walled house, watched until she saw her father's woman,

Nellda, riding with the other women in the wagons. Little dark-haired Nelly was

sporting a black eye.

Mean amusement twisted Derina's mouth into a smile. She ran down the stair to

join her family.

Nelly was halfway down the long banquet table and her eyes never left her plate.

Before the campaign started she'd sat at Landry's arm, above his family.

Good, Derina thought. Let her go back to the mean little mountain cottage where

Lord Landry had found her.

The loot had been shared out earlier, the common soldiers paid off. Now Landry

hosted a dinner for his lieutenants, the veterans of his many descents onto the

plains below, and the serjeants of his own household.

The choicest bit of booty was Lord Landry's new sword, won in the battle, a long

magnificent patterned blade, straight and beautiful. Norward had found the

thing, apparently, but his father had taken it for his own.

"In the hospital!" Landry called. His voice boomed out above the din in the long

hall. "He found the sword in the hospital, when we were cutting our way through

their camp! It must have belonged to one of their sick-well," bellowing a laugh,

"we helped their shirkers and malingerers on to judgment, so we did!"

Derina gazed at her untouched meal and let her father's loud triumph roll past

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unheeded. This war sounded like all the others, a loud recitation of cunning and

twisting diplomacy and the slaughter of helpless men. Landry did not find glory

in battle, but rather in plunder: he would show up late to the battlefield,

after giving both sides assurances of his allegiance, and then be the first to

sack the camp of the loser. Sometimes he would loot the camp without waiting for

the battle to be decided.

"What does Norward need with a blade such as this?" he demanded. "His third

campaign, and as yet unblooded."

"M-my beast fell," Norward stammered. He turned red and fought his disobedient

tongue. "T-tripped among the, the tent lines."

"Ta-ta-tripped in the ta-ta-tents!" Landry mocked. "Your riding's as defective

as your speech. As your blasted weak eyes. Can't kill a man?-I'll leave my land

to a son who can." He gave a savage grin. "I was a younger son-but did it stop

me?"

Reeve smirked into his cup. Lord Landry had been loud in the praise of his

younger son's willingness to run down and slay the helpless boys and old men

who'd guarded the enemy camp.

Reeve was strong, Derina thought, and Norward weak. What had her own feelings to

do with it?

Landry put the sword in its sheath, then hung it behind his chair, above the

great fireplace, in place of his old blade. He turned and looked over his

shoulder at his family. "None of you touch it, now!"

As if anyone would dare.

The banquet was over. Lord Landry's soldiers dozing in their chairs or stumbling

off into dark comers to sleep on pallets. Only the lord's family remained-they

and Nellda-all frozen in their chairs by his glacier-blue eyes, eyes that darted

suspiciously from one to the next-weighing, judging, finding everyone wanting.

Derina looked only at her plate.

Landry took a long drink of plundered brandy. He had been drinking all night but

the effects were slight: a shining of the forehead, a slow deliberation of

speech. "Where is the son I need?" he said.

Reeve looked up in surprise from his own cup-he had thought he was the favored

one tonight. He swallowed, tried to think how to respond, decided to speak, and

said the wrong thing.

Anything, Derina knew, would have been the wrong thing.

"I'll be the son you want, Father."

Landry swung toward his younger son, every bristle on his head erect. Slowly his

tongue formed words to the song,

"See the little simpleton

He doesn't give a damn.

I wish I were a simpleton -

By God, perhaps I am!"

Reeve's face flushed; his lower lip stuck out like a child's. Landry went on:

"Perhaps I am such a fool, begetting a child like you. You? D'you think killing

a few camp followers makes you a man? D'you think you have the craft and cunning

to hold on to anything I give you? Nay-you'll piss it away in a week, on drink

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and gambling and girls from the Red Temple."

Reeve turned away, face blood-red. Landry's eyes roved the table, settled on his

older son. "And you-what have you to say?"

Nothing, Derina knew. But the old man had him trapped, obliged him to speak.

"What d-d'you wish me to say?" Norward said.

Landry laughed. "Such an obedient boy! Bad eyes, bad tongue, no backbone. Other

than that-" He laughed again. "The perfect heir!"

"Perhaps-" Kendra said, and made as if to rise.

Landry looked sidelong at his wife and feigned surprise. "Oh-are you still

alive?" Laughing at his joke. "Damned if I can see why. I'd kill myself if I

were as useless as you."

"Perhaps it's time to go to bed," Kendra said primly.

"With you?" Landry's eyes opened wide. "God save us. God save us from getting

another son such as those you gave me."

"It isn't my fault," Kendra said.

She had been pregnant with a dozen children, Derina knew, miscarried five, and

of the rest all but four had died young.

"Whose fault is it, then?" Landry demanded. The red bristle on his head stood

erect. "Blame my seed, do you?" He beat his looted silver flagon on the table.

"I am strong," he insisted, "as were my sires! If my children are milksops, it's

because my blood is commingled with yours! You had your chance-" He gestured

down the table, to where Nellda, unnoticed, had begun quietly weeping. "And so

did yon Nelly! She could have given me a son, but she miscarried-damnation to

her!" He shouted, half-rising from his seat, the powerful muscles in his neck

standing out like cable. "Damnation to all women! They're all betrayers."

Edlyn's little girl, startled out other slumbers by Landry's shout, began to

wail in Edlyn's lap. Landry sneered at the two.

"Betrayers," he said. "At least your worthless husband won't be siring any more

girls, to eat out my substance and shame me with their snivelling." Edlyn,

cradling her child, said nothing. Her face, as always, was a mask.

Landry lurched out of his chair, tripped over a sleeping dog, then staggered

down the table toward Derina. Her heart cried out at his approach. "You haven't

betrayed me yet," he mumbled. "You'll give me boys, will you not?" His powerful

hands clutched at her breasts and groin. She closed her eyes at the painful

violation, her head swimming with the odor of brandy fumes. "Ay," he confirmed,

"you're grown enough- and you bleed regular, ay? We'll find you a husband this

winter. One who won't betray me."

He swung away from her, back toward his brandy cup. Derina could feel her face

burning. Landry seized the cup, drained it, looked defiantly down the table at

his family- frozen like deer in the light of a bull's-eye lantern-looked at

Nelly weeping, at his soldiers who, no doubt roused by his shouting, were

dutifully feigning slumber.

"The night is young," he muttered, "are all feeble save myself?" Edlyn's child

shrieked. Landry sneered, poured himself more brandy, and lurched away, toward

the stair and his private chambers.

Kendra turned to Reeve. "I wish you hadn't provoked him," she said. Reeve turned

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Williams, Walter Jon - Woundhealer

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