Read Online The Dagger and the Cross by Judith Tarr - Free Book Online Page A

down
from the poll, and the profile curved inward, and the nostril half a handspan
wide when it flares. They drink the wind, these horses.”
    “They are beautiful. So light as they move; so fiery. Alas
that I’m too tall for their smallness.”
    “They could carry you easily,” she said.
    “If I didn’t mind trailing my feet behind me.” Gwydion was
laughing, though his face was quiet. He ran his hand down his mare’s neck,
smoothing her mane. “This lady will do for me. Such a gift she is, and half an Arab,
too, like her cousin who carries my brother. She would be greatly prized in our
country.”
    “So she would,” said Morgiana. “Aidan talks of taking a
small herd back with him when he goes: a stallion or two and a few mares of
Arab breeding, to cross with your own horses. Your mare is one of his testings,
as his gelding was Gereint’s.”
    Gwydion’s bright mood darkened at the name of his sister’s
son. Whom she had killed; for whose death she had paid, and would pay down all
the long years.
    He did not say it. For that, he won her approbation, if not
yet her heart. He gazed ahead across the wide plain of Acre, with the hunt in
exuberant cry upon it and the ridge of Carmel blue beyond. The land was losing
the green of spring, going dun and brown where there were no people to till it.
The orchards, the fields of cane, the cattle in their pastures, were fenced and
bordered with desert. Rich land, but dry and forbidding, if one was born in the
west.
    She, whose first memory was of the desert of Persia, would
never perfectly understand a country where rain fell, sometimes, every day.
Sometimes even for days on end.
    “It’s very green,” said Gwydion, following her thoughts as
she allowed, “and often grey above it with clouds and mist. But the bones of
the land show through on the moors and the headlands. There’s strength enough
there, for all the water that runs over it.”
    “Water can be as strong as any force that is.”
    Gwydion’s mare slipped the rein and began to graze. The
stallion was not hungry, except for her. Morgiana persuaded him to halt. He
tossed his head and stamped, but surrendered abruptly and snatched mouthfuls of
grass between eye-rollings and yearnings toward the tall grey beauty.
    “I am glad,” said Gwydion out of nowhere that she could
discern, “that you suit my brother so well.”
    “Do I, then?”
    “Perfectly.” He leaned on the pommel of his saddle, at ease,
so much like Aidan that she blinked. “I admit, I had my fears. You were the
hunter, after all; and he has a penchant for trapping himself in oaths which he
will not, or cannot, break.”
    “Yes,” she said, amused. “I did trap him, didn’t I? In front
of the whole High Court, with King Baldwin himself called upon to make the
judgment. Whether a bargain we struck, that I should settle his account with
the Old Man of the Mountain, and he should give himself to me until he
satisfied me, was in fact fulfilled by a night of his...service; or whether
satisfaction should encompass more than a few hours’ pleasure. Whether he had
sworn to be my night’s lover, or my husband.” She smiled and shook her head. “It
was hardly wise of him to strike a bargain with a Muslim, and he a Frank and a
prince, and no merchant at all.”
    “All Muslims are merchants, he tells me.” Gwydion ran his
fingers through his mare’s mane, idly, eyes lowered. “He should have known
better. He knows enough of kings and princes.”
    “No king in the world can outmaneuver a good trader.” She
looked to see if he was offended. He was not; not at all. The corner of his
mouth curved just visibly upward. “He did well enough by the bargain. He’s a
wealthy man, as wealthy as any in Outremer; and much of that is Assassin gold.”
    “And he has you.”
    She shrugged, one-sided. “I’m no advantage in this kingdom.
I breed rumors, but no children.”
    His compassion rocked her almost out of the saddle. “That
will come as God