“The king’s quartermasters have given the soldiers an extra ration of wine,” Lord Ranald said, “but not enough to make them drunk; they will sit round their fires and sing in the moonlight, that is all.” He offered Romilly his arm. “Shall we join them at their fires? There are three or four men in my old unit who have fine voices and sing together in taverns; they sing well enough to get all the beer they want, and more. And be assured they will offer a Swordswoman no discourtesy, but be pleased to know you have come to hear their music.”
“They sound not like such fine voices,” said Romilly, listening to the discordance of the faraway song, and Ranald laughed.
“They are but amusing themselves; it would not be worth the trouble of the Windsong Brothers – for so they call themselves, though they are not brothers but four cousins – to sing before all are assembled and calling for entertainment. We will be in plenty of time to hear them, and the soldiers like it if the gentry come to their fires to hear their amusements.”
Put like that, Romilly could not refuse, though she felt dull and headachy and wished she could go quietly to bed. But with the camp filled with song and laughter she knew she would not sleep anyhow; perhaps Ruyven had the discipline for quiet meditation in such a racket, but she did not. She took his offered arm.
The moonlight made it almost as bright as day – well, perhaps a grey and rainy day; she did not think she could have read print, and the colors of Ranald’s garish cloak and her own crimson tunic, were indistinct, but there was plenty of light to make out where they were going. A part of Romilly, unawares, was cropping grass in the meadow with Sunstar, and yet she was filled with a strange restlessness. As they neared the fires they could hear the soldiers roaring out a song whose words were far from decorous, about some scandalous goings-on among the nobility.
“O, my father was the Keeper of the Arilinn Tower, He seduced a chieri with a kireseth flower; From this union there were three; Two were emmasca and the other was me…”
“That song,” said Ranald, “would have them torn to pieces if they sang it anywhere on the Plains of Arilinn. Here it is different, there is an old rivalry between Arilinn and Neskaya Towers …”
“Curious goings-on for a Tower,” said Romilly, whose picture of a Tower was still colored by what she had seen in Ruyven’s disciplined and austere thoughts.
He chuckled. “I spent a few years in a Tower – just enough to learn control of my laran. You must know how it is. When it began, when I was thirteen, I sometimes could hardly tell myself from a crtdmac in rut, or from going into heat with every bitch on the farm! It was very upsetting to my governess – I was still in the schoolroom then. Of course, she was a frozen-faced old viper – I won’t insult my favorite dog by calling the lady a bitch! I am sure she often wished she could have had me gelded like the pack chervines, so she could go with my lessons!”
Romilly giggled uneasily. He sensed her unease and said kindly, “I am sorry – I had forgotten you were a cristoforo and brought up to their ways. I had thought girls were different, but I had four sisters, and if I had ever entertained any feelings that girls were different and more delicate, I got over them soon enough – and I won’t apologize, you are a woman from the mountains and I know from your work with the birds that you have been around animals enough to know what I mean.”
Romilly blushed, but the feeling was not unpleasant, and she remembered the high summer in her own hills near Falconsward, the world flowing with life, cattle and horses mating, so that she too had unashamedly shared the flow of nature all round her, even though, with her child’s body, it had been an undifferentiated awareness, sensual but never personal. She knew he was teasing her, but she did not really care.