White As Snow

Book 0: Fairy Tales

by Tanith Lee

Genres: Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

Once upon a time there was a mirror. . . .

So begins this dark, unusual retelling of the story of Snow White by the writer reviewers have called "the Angela Carter of the fantasy field"—a whole novel based on a beloved story, turning it into a dark and sensual drama full of myth and magic.

Arpazia is the aging queen who paces the halls of a warlord's palace. Cold as winter, she has only one passion—for the mysterious hunter who courts the outlawed old gods of the woodland. Coira is the princess raised in the shadow of her mother's hatred. Avoided by both her parents and half forgotten by her father's court, she grows into womanhood alone . . . until the mirror speaks, and blood is spilled, and the forest claims her.

The tragic myth of the goddess Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, stolen by the king of the underworld, is woven together with the tale of Snow White to create a powerful story of mothers and daughters and the blood that binds them together, for good or ill. Black queen. White maid. Royal huntsman. Seven little folk who live in the forest. Come inside, sit by the fire, and listen to this fairy tale as you've never heard it told before.

Once upon a time there was a mirror, and a girl as white as snow. . . .

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Release date: December 1, 2000

Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Print pages: 304

Sample

WHITE AS SNOW

BOOK ONE
Tam Atra Quam Ebenus Black as Ebony
The Mirror: The Maiden
I.
ONCE UPON A TIME, IN WINTER, there was a mirror.
It had been brought from the East, where the sun rose, and the moon; that always-rising place of curiosity and brightness.
The mirror was made of glass, which, in the lands it had been brought to. was not usual. And so, to protect it (but also because those who looked in it were sometimes very startled hy the monstrous clarity of the reflections), it had a lid, which could be closed. And often then, the mirror stood shut by its silver lid, like a sleeping--or a dead--eye.
However, today the mirror had been opened.
What did the mirror see, looking in?
A young girl, slender, clear and bright herself with youth. She stared at the mirror, which she knew must be sorcerous, and then swiftly away.
But the mirror continued to mirror her as she went to a high window and, instead, looked out.
"What can you see?" asked the blind old nurse in her turn.
"The snow," said the girl, "and the black trees stretching up their arms to the sky. Nothing else."
The nurse sang in her cracked voice:
"Black is the wood, white is the snow, Red the roses that under it grow--"
The girl paid no attention. She had observed something flickering, shifting through the avenues of the winter forest--was it a group of riders? A pack of wolves? Then nothing was there, only the wind thrusting by the trees. (War was bounding over the snow's book toward this castle, but the girl had not seen this. And the old nurse, witch enough once to have done so, was half blind too, now, in her psychic vision.)
"Black is the wood--"
"Hush," said the girl, irritated. She spoke to the nurse as, seven years before, the nurse would have spoken to her.
Without protest the old woman withdrew herself, a snail, into the shell of her thoughts.
And the girl went on staring at the forest. Her name was Arpazia. Her hair was black as the woods, her pale skin better than the snow. Her eyes, though, were a light, water-gray. She was fourteen years of age. She longed for change, not knowing the change of all things was almost upon her, nor what it could mean.




Draco the war-leader, soon to be a king, led his army through the forests. In his rough way, he had studied strategy, and was well aware few battles were fought by choice in winter. So, he had chosen it.
His men no longer grumbled. They were warmed by spoils from the last three stone towns, and all the villages they had sacked.
Up there, through the trees, stood the last castle on the board. But it would be easy to take. The lordling was old, and his battalionslax. Few were left to come to his help. Draco doubted if even a spy had reached this spot with the news of an army's approach.
He had dreamed of that castle. In the dream it had been iron and obdurate, but nevertheless he smashed it like an egg. Then they all acknowledged him, gave in. He rode to the palace at Belgra Demitu, a king.
As dusk began, deer roasted on the red fires. They ate them, and drank wine. Near midnight, Draco went to the priest and prayed.
"God favors you, my son."
"I know it, Father. How else could I have come so far?"
"When you are raised high, do not forget God then."
Draco thought the priest meant he must not forget the Church and his gifts which must be made to the altar, piling on the gold. But there would be plenty, and besides he was devout.
"Amen, Father."




They had dressed Arpazia in the carmine dress, braided her hair, and placed on her head a slim golden circlet with a white veil. She was being taken to see her father.
Arpazia had no memory of her mother. She had died, they told Arpazia, at the child's birth. From the beginning, too, she had not had a father, only this remote figure called a father, old to her even when she was an infant, who now and then acknowledged her, gave her some strange inimical present, like the emerald ring too big for her, or the Eastern mirror.
He sat in his library, and below, down the stair in the hall, there was a lot of noise, the clashing of the men in their mail, and sometimes women crying. ("What is it?" she had asked her maids, hearing these sounds at first distantly. "Has someone died?" The maids looked frightened. It was the old nurse who said, rocking herself slowly, half smiling--but without joy--"Most will.") They were at war, it seemed. A horde marched toward them. Arpazia, too, became afraid, but only a little, for it was beyond her understanding.
The library was a small room, its stone walls hung with carpets, or else shelves and great books heaped on, some large as a three-year-old child, or long tubes of wood or metal in which lay scrolls of yellowed paper.
Arpazia's father glanced up from a map he had been studying with some difficulty--his pale eyes, too, the girl had learned, were no longer much use to him.
"Is it you, Arpazia?"
"Yes, Father."
This question was not due to his eyesight, only his indifference, she suspected. He had other daughters in the castle, though none legitimate. Her own waiting-women were two of these.
"Have they informed you?"
"Yes, Father."
"I expect you're fearful. It is a terrible thing." The elderly man raised his gray face and looked at everything, the room, his books, her, with a ghastly resignation. "This one who springs down on us is barbaric. And cunning. His symbol is a hlack hull sporting fire, but his name's Draco--the dragon."
Arpazia felt a new, more positive fear. And yet, the gale of change blew in her face and never had she sensed her life or her youth so strongly.
"What shall we do?" she cried.
"Resist," said the remote father. "Rut fail. I judge there's little hope. Presently you should go to pray. Confide in the Blessed Marusa. The priest will shrive you. Wait meekly. When the hour comes, I'll find you. I will see to it you suffer nothing at their hands."
Arpazia blinked. Was this magic he spoke of? He was very clever, she had always heard, intellectual and mentally powerful, if physically a poor specimen.
"The nurse says," she blurted, "you'll give me wings to fly away--"
He laughed. It was a horrible laugh. Not cruel, but nevertheless quite pitiless. "So I shall. She spoke well, the old woman. Tell her,I'll give her wings, too. She has been faithful, and why should they have her, these brutes, to make a slave of? Tell her, Arpazia, she too shall have wings."
But as he said this, he did something at odds with the words, a piece of body theater that, without instructing the girl, yet forewarned her. He drew a long thin dagger and placed it, shining, on the table.
I must be shriven and then will be pure for Heaven. Angels and the souls of the dead have wings.
Arpazia backed a step away, but her father had already lost interest in her, taken up as he was with preparing his own self for death, and his castle--that no one should have the benefit of it after him.
When the girl had returned to her own apartment, she found her nurse still sitting at the fireside.
"He means to kill me!"
"Your father? Oh yes." The nurse was vague and dispassionate. Her abject fatalism might have bloomed for this moment. "He won't want the barbarians to get you. They'd rip you in bits with their dirty ways. It is a favor to you. None of the other girls will get any assistance, they'll have to see to it for themselves."
Shocked, Arpazia hissed, "He said he would kill you too."
"Good, good. That's kind of him."
The girl screamed. But all over the castle women were doing that, screaming and weeping, just as the men shouted and cursed and drank, and the priest kissed images of the Christ and moaned long prayers.
Arpazia ran to the window. There was a mark in the distance, above the forests, a sort of cloud. Something was burning, from the breath of the bull, from the fire of the dragon.
But she must get away.
She stood, irresolute. Nothing had ever happened to her. Unpracticed, she did not truly believe in this, and so, maybe, it would pass.
II.
THE HORDE ARRIVED. IT WAS INCREDIBLE, awesome as any natural disaster. The woods turned black and the snow vanished beneath the darkness of many thousand men, their horses, their fighting engines. Here and there danced a flick or lash of flame, the fires of the encampment, for which they felled the forest trees, or the scarlet of the evil banners.
There was no discussion, no terms were offered or asked. Within three hours ballistas let loose huge rocks against the outer gates, and once something snorted fire. Night fell, and then they sent a rain of burning arrows across the castle parapets.
The castle began to stink, not only of fire but of wretched fear and hate.




A man guarded Arpazia's door, then, near sunrise, when the lord of the castle dispatched his force, this man, too, was gone.
The nurse slept, sitting in her chair, silent as one already dead. Arpazia marveled she had ever run to that shriveled breast for comfort, to that idiot's face for guidance.
Instead it was her second maid (the other was also gone) who crept close in the cold, diluted light.
She was the bastard daughter of the lord, but had a look not of Arpazia, or her father, but of her own mother, a narrow-boned woman with coppery hair.
"You're icy. Here's your fur. Arpazia--you won't let him murder you?"
Arpazia glanced at the girl. "Oh, Lilca--what can I do?"
Years after, this foolish wail would haunt Arpazia, infuriating and shaming her. But by then she would have lost her patience with youth, as in youth she had no compassion for old age.
"Couldn't you run away, Arpazia? Who'd see, in the fighting? It's better to chance the snow and the forests. God says it's a sin to die, unless He allows it." Arpazia huddled in the wolf-pelt. Lilca said, "I don't want to die here. I'll go with you."
As they slipped across the room, the sound of fighting began beyond the walls and woke the blind nurse. She turned her head like a statue given dreadful life. "Where are you going, Arpazia?"
"To see--what they do."
"Stay here. It isn't right you watch the battle."
"Just for a moment."
"Black is the wood," sang the eyeless statue, blanched stone in the deadly ghost of dawn, "white is the snow--red the bloods that under it flow--"
"Leave the wicked old beldame," snarled Lilca, and pulled Arpazia away through the door.
There was a narrow stair, well known. In the past it had led to a little summer garden with peaches and apple trees. The door was locked, but Lilca, revealing new talents, undid the lock with a paring knife.
Outside, the garden was piled with snow and the trees were bowed white humps beneath it. Lilca drew her through a knot of these trees, and black claws reached from under the snow to scratch them. They were pressed now against the mass of the outer wall.
"Shall we hide here?" Arpazia asked--stupidly, as she ever after thought.
"There's a door," said Lilca.
It was difficult to discover, the door, hidden in bare twisted creeper and the limbs of trees. A peculiar door, very low, the height only of a child--or a dwarf. Perhaps it had been guarded, too, but again the guard had vanished. Arpazia saw with dull astonishment that Lilca had, to this door, a key.
Beyond was a devious passageway, in darkness. Above it hulked a roof of earth and roots. The path stumbled down, snowless but deathly cold. It became totally black, then a faint light returned.
Lilca reached up and began pushing at some slab above. It shifted an inch. Suddenly assistance came.
To her amazement, Arpazia saw the slab, the top of some antique cistern, dragged away, and grinning men leaned through and drew her up, and Lilca up, into white daylight.
Arpazia stood now in the forest. Glancing behind her, she could see the dim towering of the castle walls. There was no movement anywhere but for the soft drifting of smoke, yet she could hear the battle, grown thick and muddy, except when sometimes a wild shriek pierced through.
Here, there were four strangers. They wore mail like her father's soldiers, and for a moment she took them for castle men.
One of them had pushed Lilca back against a pine tree, bundling up her skirts. The others laughed, encouraged him, and as he forced her, Lilca did not struggle, only began to sob, but in a sullen, uncomplaining way. And when a second, and a third man replaced the first, still she made no protest. Obviously it was the price she had known she would have to pay in order to elude death.
The other helpful man said to Arpazia, "Don't concern yourself. That's all she's worth. We won't do you, lady. You're for a higher table."




Because Lilca had betrayed the castle, allowing Draco's army in by the secret door, Draco in fact had her hanged. He did not like faithlessness, and in those days sought always to make vivid examples of his moral stance.
But to Arpazia, seeing she had been an innocent in the matter, he subsequently gave back several of her "treasures," as he termed them, a reward for allowing him to sack the castle before her father Could burn everything. He even initially forgave her attempt to escape and curse him--evidently neither had worked. He told her, her behavior was not surprising. She was a virgin and virtuous. However, all that was later, in the palace by the sea.




Arpazia knew nothing about the act a man performed with a woman, although she had sometimes heard of it. It was a sacredritual intended to invoke pregnancy--or a dirty deed. Something delicious--or disgusting. So shrouded in mystery--and in mysterious, contrary chatter had it been--it meant nothing to her. It had no connection to any feeling she herself might ever have had, in dreams, or alone.
What she saw the men doing to Lilca that morning she had not understood, and through their hurry, and Lilca's acquiescence, Arpazia was not enlightened.
The castle, her home, fell in the hour after she left it.
Arpazia by then had been put into a tent of the war-camp, a makeshift leather thing that was full of baskets, bundles, and shed pieces of weaponry. They tied her hands together, and her feet; these quite loosely, at the ankles. And there were two old women there in the tent, sorting through the bundles and other stuff, who cackled at her, but nothing else. They were unlike the nurse, being sharp-eyed and lively. There was a brazier which kept them all quite warm.
The girl was afraid, of course, but aware she did not now have to face her father with his implacable murdering dagger. What did she think would happen to her? In the after years, when, again and again, all these scenes returned in abrupt harsh flashes, like bitter lightnings, she would strive with her younger self, asking her what she had expected. Something nice?
Probably nothing. The callow girl (that she would come to despise and separate from) had no imagination. Since she knew nothing, she had nothing to burn as fuel for thought. She had been taught to read and write a little but had not bothered with books, from the use of which she had been discouraged--learning was a male pursuit. Instead her head was packed with social songs of the castle, with fragmented myths, with the shadowy rhymes and chants and spells of the nurse, who had been reckoned a witch.
Arpazia fell asleep finally, sitting there in the tent, as the scavenger crones picked through the incomprehensible muddle of odds and ends.
Then mad shouting woke her, the noise of things crashing, and a wild victory paean ringing round and round.
This filled her with alarm, but also, not knowing what to do, incapable of anything, as soon as it died down she fell asleep again.
I should have chewed through the binding at my wrists. I should have done it so the women never saw. Untied the rope from my ankles. Crept away. Even if they had killed me--
At last she woke and it was dusk. The hags were gone, and a man was pulling her to her feet. She found they had cut the tie at her ankles..They let her walk across the camp, through the churned snow.
Campfires and braziers burned, and the banners which also flickered like flames. She saw the emblem, the bull which blew fire.
Men dragged things, some of which were carts loaded with their spoils from her castle, or simply cartless spoils--carpets, furniture, chests, objects she had seen often, but never like this. Some men dragged the bodies of other men, she did not know why. Horses restlessly trampled at their pickets, shaking their heads. A few were running about riderless, calling. A woman went by in a necklace of gold, crying her eyes out. There was the smell of roasting meat, beer and death-kept-cold. And there was still some occasional screaming, from the surgeons' area. But generally the atmosphere was jolly.
The dusk changed from blue to steel to firelit red, as she crossed the camp. No one paid Arpazia much attention.
The man who escorted her was one of the four from earlier, the very one who had assaulted Lilca first. He said nothing.
Draco's tent was like a great golden bulb, and outside was planted the largest bull banner, fringed with silver, and next to it the image of a dragon in gilded iron, on a pole hung with crimson tassels.
The war-leader, soon to be a king, was sitting on a table, drinking wine. He was black with soot and splashed colorfully with a lot of fairly recent blood, but none of it was his own. This had been, for him, a lucky day.
They had to stand and wait some while until he noticed them. Arpazia was used to waiting, though, on the whim of men.
"Oh, Cirpoz--splendid. Is that the girl?"
The soldier, Cirpoz, said, "Yes, sire."
"I'm not king yet," said Draco, coyly. (Did she hear how coy he sounded? Would she have known to recognize such a thing?) Cirpoz grinned. He was apparently talented at grinning. "Well and good, then. His legal daughter." Draco shot a look at her. He did not seem interested, and at that moment was not. She was used to that, too; possibly it was reassuring. "Don't put her with the rest of the taken women. They'll hatch some plot, like that other girl, the faithless bitch. Oh, put her in the back tent."
So Arpazia was escorted out again and put into the back tent, part of Draco's traveling apartments on campaign. Here a slave woman presently came, undid the tie on her hands, and gave her a bit of greasy half-roast meat, which Arpazia did not want, and some goat's cheese crumbled in wine, which she ate and drank. She was young, a fool, and hungry.




For three days they traveled. Arpazia was in a wagon drawn not by horses but by bullocks, though their horns were gilded.
She saw only a couple of female slaves, who attended to essentials. Sometimes she looked out between the leather flaps of the wagon, but the driver unnerved her, a big man who never spoke. There were soft rugs, and she slept a great deal. Asleep, she missed Lilca's hanging.
On the fourth evening after they had stopped, a bath was arranged in the wagon. Normally indifferent to bathing, she found it refreshing and hot. After she had dried herself, and put on again her carmine gown, someone came and took her once more across the camp.
She had seen forests as they traveled, and once, miles away, a glimpse of mountains on the white sky, which she had taken for clouds, at first. Now she saw the forests had thinned. There was avast, white-gleaming road below, which no one explained was a frozen river. She heard wolves keening in the distance. Out of doors, this would have upset her, but there were so many people here she was not afraid. The fool, the poor fool.




Through its closed lid, still the mirror watched:
"I'll find you a husband," he generously said.
She looked at him blankly. He accepted her lack of response as thrilled astoundment.
"Don't be troubled, Arpaida."
"Arpazia," she corrected him. She should not have done so, and mumbled, "Forgive me. I'm sorry." He was a man and a lord ... even she had gathered that much.
But Draco was only amused.
"Try this fried cake. It's got berry juice in it."
She was too nervous to enjoy any of the dinner. If she had been at the castle, she would have liked it. There was roast mutton, and warm bread, and roots cooked with spices. Two or three of his captains were there with Draco, and they sailed, glancing at her, knowing something she did not.
He was dressed well, a linen shirt and velvet mantle trimmed by sables. And many rings, even an earring of gold.
The captains started to talk and play a game with figures on a board. He drew her aside into his arm. Despite the clothes, he had not washed, or shaved. He was like some uncle from the past, a brother of her father's; Draco, too, looked old to her then, she fourteen, and he in his twenties.
Arpazia made no resistance. Why should she? She had been fondled by masculine relatives before, hugged, kissed. Even her father had once run his remote hands across her body, alerting her neither to excitement or unease, for she was indifferent and her father only analytical--there had been no sinister development.
"You're young," Draco said. His voice was slurred, but she knew all that, too, the way men became silly when their breath was flavoredby alcohol. "You're a pretty little thing. Don't mind it, I'll see you safe, at Belgra. Give you a dowry, why not? You can have some of your own treasures back. Maybe not that mirror over there. I might keep that. It's a fine thing. Glass. I've heard of them but never seen one like it. They say they're magic. Best to keep the lid shut. Did you look in it and speak a spell to learn who your lover would be?"
Primly, ignorantly, Arpazia said nothing.
Half an hour later, by the water clock in the tent's folded corner, he took her into another tent, which budded off from the end of the dining area.
"You're so young," he said again. "I'll swear you never had a suitor. I tell you what, little snowdrop, I'll give you this ring--do you see?--with the pearl to match your skin--if you let me take a look at your breasts."
Draco meant to be canny. He had had countless willing girls, uncountable girls who were unwilling. This one he tried to woo. A woman of any age was acquisitive, so he had learned. And the Church constantly warned that laval rages of Hell smoldered between their legs.
But this one, she stared at him as if he had gone insane.
"Come on, pretty narcissus flower. Come, come on. Just a peek. You won't mind, I promise."
And when Arpazia took a step away, just as she had from her father with the knife, Draco went after her, caught her to him, and lavished on her mouth a wet drunken kiss that had a wet drunk snake-tongue in it. And as he smothered her with his face, his free hand pulled the buttons off her dress, and felt its way in over two small full soft satin things, whose central points sprang up under his touch like startled hares.
It was more than his intrusion, his maleness, which terrified Arpazia. Then again, her body had its own instincts.
She fought him, and when she did he clasped her more closely. He was huge to her slightness, he sweated and blazed with heat and she could not breathe. If she noticed the genital dagger thatpressed now, greedily, at her belly, was debatable. All of him was too big for her, too close, and too insistent. As well ask a girl not to run from an avalanche.
"Come now. Here, have a taste of this wine. I'd never want to hurt you, snowdrop. Don't make me do it--be my gentle girl?"
She nodded into his neck, and so he partly released her, and began to push the wine cup instead against her lips.
She struck the cup aside and jumped from him.
"God in Hell!"
She was away.
Arpazia rushed out through the little tent, and across the main tent, and the captains came to their feet, ribald with mirth, and then Draco came pounding after her.
"Shall we get up a hunt and run your rabbit down?"
"Stay where you are." His face was swollen with fury, and their laughter died.
"She's a dunce, Draco."
"Draco?" he said. "I'm to be your king." And then he was out of the tent.
He strode through his camp, which Arpazia bolted through.
Men and women fell back from both of them, turning from her with an oath or derisive snigger, but from him with anxious fear.
He let her run, allowing no one else to stop her. She would not get far. Let her wear herself out. He had done this before, knew it all. He put on a grim smile for those who watched, and now they began to salute him, wish him well in this latest enterprise. "There goes your fleet deer, sire!" And some girl cried, "Would it were I, Draco-king. I'd run that slow."
But she broke from the camp, Arpazia. She had darted up into the open edges of the woods.
The lights were behind him. Here the luminous white uncrushed spaces, the black columns of the trees, the indigo sky with its fretwork of cold stars.
"You little cunt, every step you've made me take you'll pay me for."
He wanted her.
The freezing air had fired him up more than the wine. His weapon hurt, and his whole groin, as it had not since he was a boy, and his first woman teased him.
But she, this one, would hurt worse.
In the end she stumbled and fell down, and then he ran. He was on her like a wolf. He flung her over and pressed her to the ground by his weight.
"Now--"
He tore her dress open and showed her white body to the heavenly stars. Her map was perfectly marked, and the dark forest citadel he must storm.
Holding her hands above her head on the snow, he tore her open like her dress, in three ramming thrusts. She screamed and her eyes were wide, but she stared at the sky as he plunged within her, until his body arched, he called her foul names, and burst in glory. She had by then stopped screaming.
"You little dolt. I would have been kind if you hadn't resisted. There, there. You'll live. And I'll have got you with a boy. I'd bet on it. Every woman I've had, she bears. Bears boys."
Arpazia dizzily, crazily searched the sky. What was she looking for? Some rescuing angel?
She did not even know what he had done. Only that he had damaged her. Only that this appalling event had definitely happened.
"Here." He hauled her up. "Take this ring. It's gold. The camp isn't far, you won't come to harm."
Draco was tired. He had had enough.
Arpazia turned, dropping the ring, and saw her own shape marked gravelike in the white snow, and her brilliant blood running over it from the hem of her broken dress, between the black trees.
"Go on now," he said. "And expect a boy."
When she saw her blood, this moment was when the rape occurred to her. She felt it, for it was not the pain or the fear. It was some other thing. It turned her inside out, and she fell again, andkneeling in the snow, and the blood, she cried, in a voice she heard and which was not her own: "May it be bloody on you as that blood, and black on you as the wood. May it be cold white as snow."
Draco paled. He signed himself with the cross.
"You little cunt. Shut your slit. I can have you hanged, like the other dross. What are you, some witch?"
She did not know what she had said.
She did not know where she was, or who she was.
"Black as the wood, white as the snow," she shrilled, her face white, her eyes all black, "red as your blood that under it flow--"
"You filthy bitch, shut your row." He slapped her hard across her raised face, bent and retrieved his ring, and turning, walked off toward his camp. "Stay there and let the wolves have you."
Her nurse's rhymes, heard all her years, writhed like tangled weaving in her head. But also cautionary tales of the forests--wolves. This idea must have been what eventually drew her from the ground and sent her down to safety, such as it was.
Try as she sometimes, perversely, would, she never after recalled her return journey to the camp. Only the words ringing round and round, her curse on him which came back instead to her, black as wood, white as snow, red as blood.
III.
SHE KNEW THE CURSE HAD MISSED him and struck her when her belly began to grow hard and round. Despite never having had the act of reproduction detailed to her, she had often seen its result. She was terrified, of course. Yet again, ridiculously, she did not believe in this. At every waking, she would examine herself in frantic, hopeful fear, thinking the affliction must have gone.
By then, actually from the moment she found herself once morein Draco's victorious war-camp, Arpazia was no longer being cosseted.
Through the winter daylight she walked with other women. Not those from the castle, it was true, who were all by then either dead or slaves. These free females were the followers of Draco's army. They, with their men, had trudged for half a year up and down the land, through the thick forests, over wild grasslands, even in mountain country among the boulders and the ice. They were hardened women, and Arpazia unhardened. They chivvied and mocked her, but not much else. Nor did any of the men molest her. Some edict had apparently remained concerning her, the sole legal daughter of a castle lord.
Her cloth shoes wore through in a day. Her feet were blistered and bleeding when she sat down dazedly on a prone tree trunk. A woman came and handed her, wordlessly, a pair of ugly boots that were too big and had been stuffed with straw. Now and then she was given a ride on a cart, among the loot, and among women temporarily weakened--for a day or so--by childbirth. At these Arpazia, as her own condition became known to her, gazed in morose, disbelieving horror. Those sucking things clinging to their breasts, like parasitic grubs--
The landscape altered. The forests spread away. The mountains curved, a motionless cumulus which had dropped from the sky and frozen into granite.
The opaque frozen rivers came and went.
Sometimes there were towns and villages where Draco had established his garrisons, crow's-nest fortresses or long houses built of logs. Here his army was welcome