Destroyer - Master's Challenge Part 16

"Oh, gar," Emrys lamented.

She was the same woman Remo had spent the night with in London, but radically different. She was dressed in a loose gown of sea green, fastened at her shoulders by two large gold medallions. In her belt were a small ax and a knife. Her golden hair hung to below her waist and moved like water with each step she took. As she drew nearer, the sun caught the thin gold circlet around her forehead, making her look like a barbarian princess. Her eyes, green and gray and blue, regarded him somberly. She did not speak.

"It's you," Remo said.

She picked up the spear. Without a word, she hurled it into the forest and followed it.

"Is she real?" Emrys whispered, afraid to turn his head.

"Yeah," Remo said, then thought better of it. "Maybe."

She returned with the still warm carca.s.s of a rabbit, a red wound where its eye had been. Silently she offered it to Emrys.

The Welshman accepted it, swallowing hard. "Well, I 150.

suppose we could all do with a little dinner," he same lamely. He cleared his throat.

She turned to Remo, her head held high.

"Sam." He said it so softly it was almost a sigh.

"I am Jilda of Lakluun," the woman said. "Here for the Master's Trial." Then, slowly, the strange eyes twinkling, she inclined her head to Remo in a formal bow.

Chapter Sixteen.

"I prayed," Griffith said, staring into the hearth. The cottage was filled with the warm, smoky aroma of the rabbit cooking over the open fire.

Roasting meat was not one of Remo's favorite smells, but he'd learned through the years to hold his tongue in a world full of carnivores. He stayed neaf the window and tried to breathe shallowly.

"I asked Mryddin and all the ancient G.o.ds and the spirits to bring you both back safe, and they did. The Lady of the Lake herself brought you home. And a good fat hare, too."

"Uh," Remo said, feeling nauseated. He leaned out the window. Outside, Jilda was stalking the forest, spear in hand. "The High Executioner of the animal kingdom, you mean."

Griffith gasped. "Remo, take it back, quick. What you said was a sacrilege."

"Don't be bossing our guest, boy," Emrys said. To Remo's dismay, he was nailing the rabbit skin up to dry on the cottage wall. "Jilda's no spirit. She's a friend of Remo's."

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152.

"But she is! 'Tis the Lady of the Lake."

"Griffith!"

The boy crouched. "Yes, Da."

"Leave us now." Griffith slinked outside. "He holds to the old religion more than most," Emrys explained. "Sometimes I worry about him. Too much like his ma, all air and dreams. I don't know how I'll get him ready."

"For what?" Remo said.

Emrys put down his hammer and stepped back to admire the b.l.o.o.d.y pelt on the wall. "Why, for his turn at the Master's Trial, don't you know."

"What? I thought that was all over."

Emrys looked surprised. "Between us? How could it be over? 1 like you, Remo. Don't get me wrong now. But both of us are still alive. That's against the rules."

"Nei skynugur," Jiida muttered, bursting into the room with another rabbit hanging limply between her fingers.

"What's that you say, missy?"

"It is a Norse expression describing what I feel about the precious Master's Trial. Translated, it means 'bull-dookey.' "

She cleaned the rabbit expertly, tossing the intestines out the window, inches from Remo's face.

"Do you mind?" he said testily.

"Mind what?" Jilda asked.

Remo prepared himself for an explanation of the social unacceptability of slapping one's a.s.sociates with animal organs, then waved the idea away. Even the most rudimentary forms of etiquette would be wasted on Jilda. He winced as she pulled off the rabbit's skin with a jerk and tossed it to Emrys, who nailed it happily to the wall.

"The Trial was originally begun so that our people would not make war on one another," she said. "1 believe that was because someone thought that one day we might all need to band together.''

153.

"Live with a bunch of bloodthirsty Vikings?" Emrys said, genuinely surprised.

Jilda's dagger was out of her belt in a flash.

"Whoa," Remo said. "No murders till after dinner, okay?"

Jilda replaced the knife scornfully. "Anyway, I was saying we ought to be friends."

"Great start you've made," Remo said.

"But abolis.h.i.+ng the Trial," Emrys protested.

Jilda thrust the rabbit onto the spit over the fire. "It's a stupid tradition. Maybe it served a purpose a thousand years ago, but it's time we ended it. I have given this thought, and I, for one, will not kill strangers who have done me and my people no harm."

"Bingo," Remo said. "I've reached the same decision."

"But my father was killed by the great Chinee," Emrys said.

Jilda cut him off. "So was mine. That doesn't change anything."

"Well, I don't know. I'll not be called a coward."

"Don't you see?" Jilda said, waving Griffith inside. "If all three of us refuse to fight, it won't be a question of cowardice. And your boy will be spared from having to do battle."

Emrys jutted out his chin. "You talk like you think Griffith would lose."

Griffith walked in, laughing lightly. His hands were cupped. He opened them to reveal a tiny green tree frog, which bounded out the window to the boy's cries of joy.

"Well, look at him," Jilda said, obviously annoyed. "He's a kind and clever boy, but even you can't think he'd make a decent warrior."

"I'll not have you speaking that way in my house, missy."

"That's all right," Griffith said gently. "She's right."

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"You keep your peace."

"But I'm not a good fighter. I'll never be. I'm small, and my hands aren't fast."

Emrys threw down his hammer with a crash. "By Mryddin, I never thought I'd live to see a member of my family call himself a coward."

"Hey," Remo objected. "He's not a coward. He was willing to take * me on himself to keep me from fighting you. That might be what you call a coward, but I'd rather have one guy like him on my side, alive, than a hundred terrific fighters who've gone to their reward during this asinine Master's Trial."

Emrys deliberated, his glance s.h.i.+fting from Jilda and Remo to the boy. Finally he said, "Well, I suppose you're right. Seeing as how we're about to share a meal together, there's not much reason to fight."

"Oh, Da," the boy said, hugging him.

Jilda nodded. "Then it's settled," she said. "Now we eat."

Remo sat a little apart from the others, contenting himself with a bowl of roots and wild gra.s.ses from the forest while they stabbed hungrily at the roast rabbits.

"Will you not have any?" Griffith asked.

Remo shook his head.

"Is that part of being a Chinee, eating no meat?"

"Sort of."

Jilda laughed, her eyes changing from blue to bright green. "Don't ask the Chinese to claim our Remo. He's an American. But his soul belongs with us."

Remo spoke to the dancing green eyes. "I feel as if I do belong with you . . . all," he added, fl.u.s.tered.

"We know," Emrys said.

Remo felt sleepy. The warm cabin, the safety of the woods ... It all seemed so homey, and yet in the same room with him were a man who could hold him in a 155.

hammerlock for half an hour and a woman who could drop two men with the broadside of a spear.

He smiled lazily as he watched Jilda eat. The sight of her tearing off the pale meat with her fingers filled him with strange pa.s.sion. She was at the same time a lady and a wild animal, beautiful and free. And he wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman.

"You look content, my friend," Emrys said. "Although how a man can be satisfied with birds' food I'll never know."

Remo set down his bowl, making an effort to tear his gaze away from Jilda. "I am," he said. "It's funny. I feel like I'm with my own kind. I always thought Chiun and I were the only ones like us."

"And so you are," Emrys said. "What the three of us have in common is that none of us belong to the world." He took in at once the unspoken intimacy between Remo and Jilda. "But we can never be part of one another's lives without giving up our own ways. That would be worse than death. For me, at least."

Remo fought down a sudden, irrational feeling of annoyance toward the Welshman. The moment had been perfect. No questions, no thought of the future. And now Emrys had voiced a possibility Remo hadn't wanted to face: What will 1 have to give up to keep Jilda with me? "Will you be going back to Sinanju?"

"Sinanju?" Since he'd found Jilda, he hadn't given a thought to Sinanju.

"To tell Chiun what we've done with the Master's Trial," Emrys continued. "I don't think he'll be happy with the news."

"No," Remo said. "I guess not."

"What I'm saying is, I'll go with you."

"Me, too," Griffith said. "I've yearned so to see the wild Chinee."

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"You'll be staying right here, and no argument. What do you say we go tomorrow, Remo? A partner will lighten the load on your journey."

"Tomorrow . . ." Remo said. It was so soon.

Jilda stood up and went to him. "We'll all go," she said.

Remo's heart quickened. "You, too?"

"We three have made the decision, and we three will stand by it together."

"And me too, Da," Griffith pleaded, sounding desperate. "I must go with you. I'll be needed. I can feel it."

Emrys gave him a black look, and the boy subsided.

"Come," Jilda said, laying a hand on Remo's shoulder. "There's no room for us here to spend the night. We'll sleep outdoors."

"I'd planned on giving up my bed for you, miss," Emrys said kindly. " 'T'isn't often we have female visitors."

"Not necessary," Jilda said. "I am accustomed to sleeping in the open. I like to see the stars overhead."

"Same here," Remo said quickly.

The night sky seemed to s.h.i.+ne with a million candles. In their liquid light, her long hair spread over the moss like a cape of gold, Jilda was almost terrifyingly beautiful.

Remo lay beside her, tender and spent. Their lovemak-ing had been even better than he'd remembered. Once again, he had felt as if he had come to her for the first time. Once again, their bodies had joined like two halves of a perfect whole.