Free To the High Redoubt by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

raise her child as his own if she would marry him. Her face had been tragic, for she had told him that the father had forbidden her to marry anyone, and would not or could not marry her himself. In vain Arkady had pleaded with her to change her mind, insisting that if the man treated her thus, he had no rights in the matter. Mira had heard him out, refused him then and later said he was not to visit her anymore. Three days after, they had found her body in the river, and the priest had excoriated her memory in church .
    Surata’s hands continued to work.
    There was a boy in Sól who had been bitten by a mad dog and had taken the madness himself. Several other children had been terrified and had followed the miserable boy with stones. Arkady had been with them, but his thrill of overcoming his dread ended when he saw the boy lying on the ground, jerked and wracked by convulsions, bleeding from the stoning. The largest of his tormentors started to hurl a rock at the rabid child’s head, but Arkady had tried to stop him, and a bitter, useless fight had ensued .
    When he started to double over with shame and grief, Surata gently stretched out upon him, holding him and warming him.
    Arkady saw his father, still young and vigorous, riding off to do the bidding of his Margrave. He had made Arkady promise he would not waste his time, and had specifically warned him that his boy was not to spend more time playing the lira da braccio than practicing with his sword. He had patted Arkady on the shoulder, embraced him and had not come home for more than two years. And when he did return, he was a ruined, surly fellow, given to sudden outbursts of violence and long days of drunken recriminations .
    His sister, so young and so pale, with strength that was easily sapped, every day growing weaker, sat in the door of the cooking house, weeping over a starved puppy .
    The first time he had been wounded it was a pleasant spring day. He had fallen a little way out of the line of battle, an arrow in his thigh. He had lain, stunned, in the new grasses, with three tiny, blue-veined flowers, like stars, not far from his eyes. He had watched the flowers, and the life in the grass, and had wept for the beauty of it .
    It was his turn to serve the priest, and he had come to the church to prepare for the Nativity celebration. In his zeal, he had decided to come early, to show that although he was only eight, he was devout. He had caught the priest with the wife of one of his father’s officers, and for that he had been whipped and told he would never be permitted to serve in his parish church again .
    â€œOh, God, Saint Michael, what have I done?” he moaned, thrusting at Surata’s shoulder to move her away. “I can’t…I truly do not—”
    Surata did not move. She appeared to use no might, but she kept him still, and when she spoke, her voice was low and untroubled. “You need not blame yourself, Arkady-immai. You have been alive, that is your only error. See that. Be awake to it.”
    â€œNo. Please, no, no.”
    â€œYes,” she told him.
    Deep snows had slowed the hunters, but they kept on, hunting boar. The Margrave was coming the day after tomorrow, and he and his retinue would expect a proper feast and reception. Arkady, the youngest member of the hunt, kept near his father, worried that he might attempt something dangerous, for he had been sipping wine since before dawn. Arkady knew his father was in an angry and capricious mood, reckless and impatient. He was concentrating so much on his father that he did not see the boar until it broke cover, already racing. Arkady’s father had swung his spear around, but not quite quickly enough; he caught the animal, but the point entered the shoulder, not the chest, and by the time Arkady could cover the little distance between them, the hooves and tusks of the boar had done their work, and Arkady’s father was cursing as he died .
    The bishop