Firethorn by Sarah Micklem

he’d bruised himself on her bones, and so he’d sent her home, saying he preferred his hand or a boy’s buttocks. By the afternoon there was a song about it.

    When I went to mount Thole in the morning, the saddle was loose and I ended by sprawling on the road. Sire Rodela laughed and said to Flykiller, “You should take better care of Sire Galan’s sheath.” With a frown so fierce his black brows nearly met over his nose, Flykiller said, “The girth was tight when I put on the saddle.”
    In the afternoon Sire Rodela condescended to ride along and gossip with Spiller on the subject of Sire Galan’s wife, with his voice pitched to carry back to me: how her skin was like cream, her eyes like a doe’s, her lips two rose petals, her breasts round as apples and so on; how Sire Galan had married her last year, and with what ceremony; how the bride had worn a gold mask of the Sun and a robe of cloth-of-gold, and her unbound hair hung down to her knees.
    Marriages of the Blood are consummated during the rites, before witnesses, so that the match will be beyond question. Shyness and constraint are to be expected, and the deed is quickly done. But sometimes a god blesses the bride and groom with holy abandon. Sire Rodela said there was no mistaking that Crux had seized Sire Galan, for he was tireless.
    Spiller had been in the crowd outside the temple; he wanted to know all about it.
    I turned Thole’s head to the side of the road and slid off her back. I lifted her hoof as if I checked for a stone. But I was the one with the stone, a fl int lodged behind my temple, sharp as a memory: Sire Galan leading his naked bride to the marriage couch, her skin golden in the light of a thousand candles, her body everywhere soft, everywhere round and ripe. Her nipples gilded.
    That was a year ago; they had a son already three months old.
    Of course he was married, and she was fertile. The Blood do not send their sons to war before they’ve sired an offspring or two. Sire Pava hadn’t waited for his wife to bear, but then he was known to be overhasty.
    My curiosity had failed me when I needed it most. There were so many questions I’d neglected to ask, so much willful unknowing. But why should it matter to me? It didn’t change where I stood one whit; I was ever at the bottom.
    I leaned against the mare’s shoulder, blinking. An old beech hedge lined the road, the leaves already turning copper. They would cling all winter, color against the smooth gray branches. Someone had planted the hedge before I was born, and it would outlast me too.
    Sire Galan was such a wastrel with his charm that he had lavished it even on me. He’d turned in his saddle once or twice every league to search me out with his eyes, and smiled when I saw him looking. How easily he could roil me! I cursed him for it, and yet I waited for him to bestow his look and smile, which both promised and remembered. That very morning he’d ridden back to cull me from among his men and take me into the woods, and by the time we were done, the baggage train had passed us. We’d galloped to the front again, and the cataphracts had howled and jibed. They understood his attentions well enough.
    And I must have misunderstood, thinking there was something more—for I felt as if a rope tied me to Sire Galan by the keels of our ribs, it must tug under his breastbone as it did under mine. But I’d been a fool to believe it. Surely it was folly to believe it.
    Flykiller rode back and asked, “Is she lame?” It was the first he’d spoken to me.
    â€œI thought perhaps she favored one leg, a little hitch is all. But it’s nothing.” And I vowed nothing would show on my face.
    He dismounted to see for himself, lifting each of the mare’s feet in turn.
    â€œShe has a smooth gait,” I said.
    Flykiller checked the girth to see that it was tight. “She does. She has heart too,” he