White Jenna Read online

  The Anna for this turning. Will-less, she stood beside him as the chants continued.

  “ANNA! ANNA! ANNA!”

  The horizon behind them was stained with first light. The birds, unable to compete with the cries of men, had taken flight and the sky was peppered with them. Even Carum joined the shouting chorus that echoed back and forth across the ruined walls. Only Jareth, who could make no sound, and Piet, who was still holding Catrona’s body against his chest, were still.

  THE BALLAD:

  Death of the Cat

  The trees were growing high

  And the wind was in the west

  When a hunter aimed his arrow

  Into the Cat’s broad chest.

  And she died, she died

  Against her lover’s breast

  And we laid her in the earth

  So long and narrow.

  It was early, so early

  In the graying of the morn,

  When we sang of the days

  Before the Cat was born.

  And how from her mother

  She was so swiftly torn,

  As we laid her in the earth

  So long and narrow.

  So, come all ye young fighting men

  And listen unto me,

  Do not place your affections

  Upon a girl so free

  For she’ll take the mortal wound

  Another meant for thee,

  And you’ll lay her in the earth

  So long and narrow.

  THE STORY:

  They buried the two guards by the broken gates, but Jenna and Petra insisted that Catrona’s body had to lie in state between two great fires until they could find the Hame’s burial cave. Piet agreed. When the second fire was lit, Katri’s body appeared by Catrona’s side and Marek, who had not wept before, suddenly broke into loud, embarrassing sobs which even his brother could not stop.

  By evening the boys had found the cave, and they accompanied Jenna and Petra and Carum who carried Catrona’s body up on a wooden bier. The king and Piet stayed behind, drinking toasts to the dead warriors with the rest of the men.

  “Toasts to Lord Cres, the God of Fine Battles,” Carum explained as they trudged up the hill with their bitter burden.

  Remembering what he had once told her about those toasts, Jenna added, “May you drink his strong wines and eat his meat forever.”

  “And throw the bones over your shoulder for the Dogs of War,” Carum ended.

  Petra shivered. “What a horrible prayer.”

  “Is it any wonder I prefer none,” Carum said.

  They placed the bier before the entrance to the cave, and Jenna went ahead to light torches in the wall. The cave was cool and dry and there were many shrouded bodies lying about. She had to be careful where she stepped. When she lit the great torches, the bodies of the dark sisters in their careful wrappings appeared, crowding the cave further.

  Leaving the cavern, she took a deep breath. The shrouded bones of the dead sisters had not frightened her.

  She had been to burials in her own Hame and she knew that the bodies were just the cast-off homes of the women who now lived, suckled against Alta’s breast. But those were just bones and what lay at her feet in its bier, wrapped tightly in a torn shirt and blanket, was Catrona: her sister, her teacher, her friend. And the victim of Jenna’s conscience.

  Kneeling, Jenna put her hand on the corpse’s breast. “I swear to you, Cat, the Bear will know my vengeance. I swear to you, another Cat shall die as well. That may or may not be written in any prophecy, but it is written clearly on my heart.”

  She stood. “Petra and I alone will take her into the cave. It is a holy place and a holy time.”

  “We understand,” Carum said.

  The other boys nodded.

  Jenna picked up Catrona’s body and, with Petra following, went in.

  When they left again, it was dark. There was no moon.

  They rode out of the ruined Hame at first light, a silent army. Petra rode Catrona’s horse, which left only Marek and Sandor doubled up, though they did not seem to mind.

  The king, Carum, and Piet rode at the head of the troop, but Jenna refused a place at the front. Shaking her head, she guided Duty to the middle of the pack. The men smiled when she rode among them, thinking she did it for love, never guessing she did it in order to push away the memory of Catrona’s lifeless hand in hers.

  One thrust, Jenna. She heard Catrona’s voice at every turning. One thrust … and now all that training for naught. Her face was grim with the memory. She took Catrona’s death as the death of her own innocence. What did it matter that she had already killed one man, maimed another in the heat of battle? What did it matter that she had buried a hundred dead sisters? It was this death that gnawed and fretted her. She felt herself growing old, the years like a cold river rushing past, and she unable to stop the flow.

  Jenna spoke to no one as they rode relentlessly down the road, but her mind rehearsed what had been. One thrust … one thrust, dead Catrona continued to rebuke. One thrust.

  As they galloped, Jenna flexed her right hand as if feeling the sword again, pommel tight against her palm. Her fingers retained the weight of Piet’s heavy blade. She longed to take the moment back, thrusting surely, finally, into the Bear’s burly chest. What satisfaction it would bring her now, the slipping of the sharp edges through his flesh, past bone, to strike at last the bloody, pulsing heart. One thrust. She could feel his heart’s blood spurt up the sword to her wrist, run along the blue branchings of her veins, race past the crook of elbow, across the muscles of her forearm, and snake under her right breast to lodge in her own ready heart.

  Lifting her arm at the thought, she watched, fascinated, as if she could actually see the Bear’s blood traveling along the route of her arm, as if she felt the jolt of it entering her heart.

  She dropped her arm to her side. One thrust. Yet it was not in her. She was not such a killer. Even to bring Catrona back she would not kill a bound man. She could not. The Anna could not. And she was the Anna. There was no question of that now. It was not prophecy that told her. Nor Carum’s impassioned belief. Nor Alta’s soft persuasions in the Grenna’s grove. Nor the king’s wily importunings. Nor all the shoutings of the men. It was simply this: the blood running from hand to heart rejected the wild hatred of the Bear and his brothers. She was the Anna. For this time and this turning and this now.

  Jenna urged Duty forward. The other horsemen parted to let her through and she galloped to the lead of the riders, taking her place between the king and Carum, only slightly ahead.

  THE MYTH:

  Then Great Alta drew up the dead warriors with the ladders of her hair, dark warrior by the golden hair, light warrior by the black. She set them to her breast, saying, “You are my own dear babes, you are my own sweet flesh, you are now my own bright companions.”

  BOOK FOUR

  GENDER WARS

  THE MYTH:

  Then Great Alta struck the light sister on both cheeks, first one and then the other, for the deaths she had caused. Then she struck her on the back for the deaths she had not caused. Then she faced her toward the sun saying, “Now you must ride long and ride hard and ride well till you start again what has been ended here.” She set the light sister upon a great gray horse and blew a wind at the light sister’s back that she might have speed on her journey and no memory of sorrow.

  THE LEGEND:

  It was in Altenland, in a village called The High Crossing, that this story was found. It was told to Jenny Bardling by an old cook woman known only as Mother Comfort.

  “My great aunt, that would be my mother’s mother’s sister, was a fighter. Fought in the army as blanket companion to the last of the great mountain warrior women, the one that was called Sister Light. She was almost six feet tall, my great aunt said, with long white braids—not gray, mind—and she wore them tied up on the top of her head. Her crown like. She kept an extra dirk there and, when quiet was needed, w
ould strangle her foe with them braids. She fought like a Fog Demon, all silence and whirling.

  “’Twos known no one could best her in battle for she carried a great leathern pack on her back and in it was Sister Dark, a shadow who looked just like her but twice as big. Whenever Sister Light was losing—not often, mind—she would reach into that pack on her back and see the shadow fighter free. Sister Dark could move faster than the eye could see and quiet as grass growing. They used to say of her:

  Deep as a spell

  Cold as a well

  Hard as a hate

  Brutal as fate.

  That was Sister Dark.

  “Of course she only used that shadow when she was desperate because using it ate away at her, from the inside out. Like all such magicks. From the inside out. My great aunt never saw it proper, mind you. No one did. But everyone knew of Sister Dark. They did.

  “Well, Sister Light died at last, in a big fight, a month long it was and the sun refusing to shine all that time. And where is a shadow without the sun, mind. It could only creep out of that pack with the sun bright overhead. Did I forget to tell you that?

  “After the month was gone, someone found that pack, resting on the bleached bones that had been Sister Light. Long-boned she was, too, my great aunt said. That someone opened the pack, searching for treasure to be sure, and out crept the shadow. She looked around, eyes dark and nothing to be read there but hate. The land was blasted; what had been green was dust. And Sister Light nowt but bones, mind. She put back her head and howled, a sound they say still heard on that desolate plain.

  “My great aunt told me—afore she died—that Sister Dark can still be seen, sometimes, when the sun beats down full over the land. Looking for her mate, maybe. Looking for someone else to carry her. Someone she can fight for, someone she can eat away at.

  “You have to be careful, up there on the high moors. Especially in the mid of the day. That’s where the saying Never mate a shadow comes. They’ll eat away at you if they can.”

  THE STORY:

  The first day of long riding tired them all except for Jenna who rode with Catrona’s restless voice in her ear. The road passed through small woods of birch and alder alternating with large stands of old oak, across the tops of gently rolling grassy hills, and over two streams. The fords had deeper pools on either side that hinted at trout stoking their fins behind dark granite boulders, but the king did not let them stop. As there was no wind to whisk away the dust of their riding, behind them, for a long way, their passage could be read as a gray sentence up against the blue of the sky. When they stopped at last for the sake of the weary horses and to cook a quick meal over small fires, the king sent three scouts on ahead.

  “Catrona would have rested earlier,” Jenna murmured to Petra and the boys.

  “And be sending scouts afore time,” Marek added, shaking his head. Clearly he thought little of the king’s woodsense, his own so newly developed.

  But an hour later, the three men sent out returned with little to warn against. The road ahead, they said, was clear of Kalas’ men, the small farm holdings undisturbed by soldiers or rumor of war. In fact, one shepherd, newly returned from the great market town of New Steading—a good day’s ride to the north—reported to them that even the usual company of king’s troop had departed before he had left there. If the Bear had gotten back to his master, he surely had not ridden this way, or else he had not mustered them out with his story.

  The king thanked them with a drink from his own leathern flask and an embrace that Jenna noticed came strictly from his arms. His eyes and mouth were not smiling. Returning to the smaller circle that consisted of Jenna, Carum, Piet, Petra, and the boys, the king pursed his lips.

  “I expect Kalas will wait, choosing the Vale of Cres for a final battle,” he said. “It’s the gateway to the castle and there his numbers could overwhelm us on the field.” He stood with his hands clasped behind him, a line furrowing his brow. “He will wait knowing that if we are to win anything, we must go to him. He will not expend himself over the whole of the Dales.”

  Piet nodded. He was squatting before a small cookfire, staring into the flames. He had not eaten, but simply looked into the fire as if discovering some wisdom there.

  “He would be a fool to wait so long for us,” Carum said, running his fingers through his hair. “And a fool to give us time to gather strength. We might be years coming to meet him.”

  “I agree,” Jenna said. “Surely he will strike at us when he knows he has superior numbers. He has nothing to gain by letting us find more women and men for the fight. He is no fool.”

  “I agree he is no fool,” said the king. “Still, he believes that a troop of his horse can beat any numbers of my men. My untrained Dales men.”

  “But you just beat the Bear with that untrained force …” Petra began.

  “And that, my dear, is why we are racing so fast, stopping only to keep the men and horses from revolting—or dying. To gather as much brute strength and numbers as we can while we have our lure still fresh and enticing,” said the king.

  “The lure?” Sandor asked.

  “The Anna, my young friend,” said the king, gesturing casually at her. “The Anna!”

  “Me!” Jenna said at the same time, her right fist over her heart.

  “And then we be marching onto the Vale?” asked Marek, eager for the fight now.

  “No!” Piet said. For the first time he stood and looked at them all.

  “Piet is right,” the king said smoothly. “We will go in a great circle around the Vale, recruiting more and more to the Anna’s banner. And when we are large enough and strong enough, we will march on Kalas from all sides, a great bloody circle of us, like a noose, tightening around his ugly neck.” He closed his fingers slowly into a fist.

  “And while we bide our time, Kalas kills more women and fires the rest of the Hames.” Jenna’s voice was as bitter as if Catrona spoke from her mouth. “We cannot wait. We must not wait.”

  “By saving a few, we would lose the many,” the king warned. “You are too young to understand it.”

  “I am near as old as you,” Jenna retorted.

  “Not by ten years—or a hundred,” the king replied. “War means that some must die that others might live. A king is no certain age, for he is made up of all those hard judgments. The king—and not his wife or his brother or his war chief or his friend. The decision is mine alone. We ride north to New Steading to start our recruitment.”

  Jareth grabbed Gorum’s arm, spinning him halfway around and Jenna had to hold onto Piet’s arm to keep him from striking the boy. Strangled sounds came from Jareth’s throat, more animallike than man. When it was clear no one understood, he tried to beat that same message on the king’s sleeve with angry fingers.

  “He knows something,” Jenna whispered to Piet. “We must listen to him.”

  “He says nothing,” Piet said, shrugging away from her grasp.

  The king brushed Jareth away from him. “He knows nothing and says less.”

  “He knows we cannot let more die just for the sake of an argument.” Carum’s voice was deep with passion.

  Smiling the sly smile Jenna had come to fear, Gorum said, “My brother, there is no argument. There is only the king’s decision. You have studied too many old texts. I have studied men’s hearts. We will go from town to town gathering a great army to us and word of it will reach Kalas. He will try and warn us off by his killings. They will become even more brutal. He will be sure to let us know of them. But with every ugly act, he will win us more men to the Anna’s side. And when we can match him man for man …”

  Carum stared at his brother. “Then you do not care how many more die or how horribly?”

  “I welcome it. Does that shock you, brother?” Now the king looked grim. “They say in the Dales, Longbow, that You cannot cross the river without getting your feet wet.”

  “You are no better than Kalas,” Petra said. She turned away and stared at
the little groups of men chatting quietly together all down the road.

  “I am much better than Kalas, because I do what I do for the right. He is only for himself. I am for my people.” The king’s voice was very quiet. “My people, not his.”

  Carum cleared his throat. “Gorum, in those texts you so despise, there are many stories in which a small force beats a large one by cunning and guile. Do not forget cunning and guile and rely only on the gathering of brute strength. Do not forget the tale of the mouse and the cat my mother told us the day that bully Barnoo bloodied your nose.”

  The king smiled again. “Barnoo is dead.”

  “And Jenna killed him.”

  “And I am alive. I am the one with cunning and guile, dear brother, not you. Do not forget it. Such stories of the little overcoming the great are only wishes devised by a conquered people. Your mother was of the Dales. You are half her blood. I am wholly Garun.”

  “You are …” Carum began angrily.

  “No, brother, you are … an open book. I have made those books my chiefest study. When I am returned to the throne, you can be my court philosopher, my teller of tales, my fool, dispensing scholarly wisdom. Then you can remind me of the stories your Dalian mother told us and the stories in your pretty books, all interlined with pictures of pussies and mice. But now we are soldiers. The stories we want to hear are of our great victories.” He patted Carum on the shoulder as one would a scolded pet or a small child. Then he turned and called out to his men: “Mount up. Mount up. We ride to New Steading where we shall show them the Anna.” He waved his right hand.

  “THE ANNA! THE ANNA!” The call came back to him, continuing under the orchestration of his uplifted arm until he was satisfied. Then he nodded at them, turned and winked at Carum as if to underline his possession of the men, and dropped his arm down with a decisive chop. The men all mounted.