Curse: The Dark God Book 2 (2 page)

Sugar motioned for the fist to keep down. A cloud passed over the moon and away again. The cattle moved away. And the fields fell silent as death. Sugar motioned the group forward, and they continued on, crouching low and following the streambed all the way to the village.

The fist slipped below the shuttered windows of a home standing next to the streambed. They slinked forward to a stone bridge, and then Sugar motioned them up.

They climbed out of the streambed, keeping themselves low and in the shadow of the bridge. The village was made up of about twenty homes strung along a road. They were surrounded by garden spaces and barns and sheds and other outbuildings. The streambed bisected the village almost in half. The ash ruins of Sugar’s old house lay two houses down the road from this bridge.

Sugar silently ran to the shadows of the first house. Talen followed, arrow nocked in his bow. They paused long enough to look about and hear a man snoring loudly on the other side of the wall. Then they scampered to the shadows of the next house. Inside, a dog gave a weak woof.

Talen and Sugar froze, but the dog fell still.

Behind them the others ran one by one from the shadows of the bridge to the shadows of the houses.

Then Sugar left the side of the house and stole across the open space that used to be her yard. Talen followed. Behind him River gave hand signals, and she and the others followed, spreading out and watching the village around them.

The villagers had burned the home, barn, and smithy completely to the ground. It was nothing now but ash and charred timber. Only the stone hearth and a part of the chimney rose into the night sky.

Talen followed Sugar into the ash, which slid soft as silk between the toes of his bare feet, and picked his way through a number of charred timbers until he stood next to Sugar by the hearth. She leaned in close. “It’s under one of these bricks,” she whispered. “Start there and work my direction.”

Again, the delicious scent of her washed about him, and he gritted his teeth and moved to where she’d pointed. She moved a bit in the other direction, knelt, wiped off a swath of thick ash covering the hearth with her arm, and pried at a brick with her knife.

Talen knelt at his spot, set his bow to the side, and wiped away a section of ash. He picked at the bricks there with his knife, found nothing, wiped another spot, and began again. Every move they made sent up puffs of dry ash that rose to waft about in the breeze, filling his nostrils and making him squint. He wiped another section with his arm, powdering himself, and tried another brick. He moved to another brick and wondered if the Fir-Noy had already found the cache.

A few houses down a dog barked. He froze. Another dog joined in, but then both fell silent. And Talen moved to the next section and wiped away more ash. They were out in the open here with plenty of moonlight. All it would require was some old grandfather who couldn’t sleep to come outside to take a leak and look their direction.

Then Sugar popped two bricks that were neighbors and removed them to reveal a hole. “Ha,” she whispered and reached her arm in.

Talen looked about the village, but all was quiet in the moonlight. He had expected this to be harder. They weren’t in the clear yet, but so far this raid had been a pie bake. Surely there was a military proverb in this. Something like “hard cider makes a poor defense” or “festival night is time to fight.”

Sugar retrieved what looked like a small box from the hole and reached back in for more.

It was then that a bow thwumped. The next moment Rooster cried out with an arrow buried in his arm. Another arrow snicked down, a dark flit in the corner of Talen’s eye, and took Rooster in the chest. Another arrow struck Black Knee in the leg.

“The roofs!” River cried. Two men with bows rose up on the shadowed slope of the rooftop closest to Talen. Another man rose from the roof across the way.

Talen went for his bow, but an arrow struck a timber in front of him. And then another. And another, and he dodged back to take cover behind the hearth.

River shot her bow at a man on a roof trying to get a better angle at Talen. The arrow took him in the chest. Shroud, one of the Shimsmen that had come with them, moved for cover and shot his bow.

Sugar crouched by the hearth, still fishing for something in the hole.

Talen needed his bow. He prepared to make another run to grab it, when yet another man rose from a house opposite him and shot. Talen ducked and the arrow whizzed past his head.

There was no way those men had just climbed up there. And even if they had seen him and Sugar retrieving the skull, there was no way they would know Talen and the others would circle around the village through the woods and come back to this very spot. These men had been waiting.

It was ambush. “We’ve been betrayed,” Talen said.

Another arrow whizzed past through the darkness, and Talen ducked down to where Sugar was. “Time to move,” he said to Sugar.

“Almost finished,” she said.

Across the way the double doors to the barn banged open. A number of men roared and rushed out, their helmets glinting in the moonlight. They carried swords, spears, and bows.

Fear shot through Talen. “There’s no time!”

The men spread out in a line on either side of the barn doors. Those with bows already had their arrows nocked. They drew their strings back. There were at least forty men, far more than a village militia, and all of them had been waiting.

A large man walked out of the pitch darkness of the barn into the moonlight. The upper half of his face was painted black, the lower half white. About his neck hung a leather cord festooned with a cluster of boar tusks, signifying the Fir-Noy clan. He did not wear a helm, but did wear a cuirass of brass scales that glinted in the moonlight. Over the cuirass was a leather harness that held the discs signifying his honors. In the middle of that harness, directly over his breast was the eye of Mokad. The paint, the cuirass, and eye—they were all the distinctive garb of a Mokaddian dreadman.

“The boy’s mine,” he shouted. “Slaughter all the rest. And keep the ears. There’s no reward without an ear.”

2

Dogs

SUGAR CROUCHED OVER the cache at the hearth. She’d already retrieved a small box and something else that felt like a codex. Both were in her bag. But Zu Argoth had told her to leave nothing behind.

“Come on!” Talen said.

Sugar reached back into the cavity. Her hand fell on one last item—something that felt like a necklace wrapped in soft cloth. She grabbed it.

“Now!” one of the Fir-Noy shouted.

“Lords!” Talen exclaimed and dove at her. Bows hummed. And Talen’s tackle carried them both behind a jumble of charred boards. He landed upon her, the impact sending ash billowing up, filling her lungs and eyes. A moment later arrows thudded into the wood about them.

Talen pushed himself off her, wheezed. “To River!” he said. “Now!”

Sugar sprang up, but her sack with her father’s skull and mother’s items yanked her back. It had been skewered by an arrow to one of the charred logs.

Across the way, the archers pulled their bows back, took aim again.

She tugged with all her multiplied might, and the arrow broke, allowing the sack to slide free. Talen shoved her forward over the charred heap of logs that used to be the outer wall, then dived after her.

She waited for the arrows to thud about her, but they didn’t, and she realized her mistake. The archers were waiting for them to rise again, and there was nothing but open ground for a good number of yards all around Sugar’s and Talen’s position. They were going to be easy targets, and when she and Talen popped up to run, the Fir-Noy would send their arrows flying.

An arrow buzzed from one of the house roofs toward them. It clacked off a log close to her head. The archer on the roof would be making an adjustment. If he was any good, the next arrow wouldn’t miss.

“So much for our dance about that pole,” Talen said.

“Go!” she said.

And they shot forward.

“We’re up!” Talen hissed. They took a few steps.

“They see us,” she continued. Another two strides.

“We’re down,” both of them said at the same time and dove to the dirt.

Bows twanged.

“Roll!” Talen said, and both of them rolled away from the spot where they’d just landed. She went right; Talen went left.

A host of arrows whistled around and past them like a swarm of angry insects.

They sprang to their feet again. They’d practiced this advancing movement in the face of arrows during their training these last few months. It only took a few seconds for a good bowman to mark you. Another second or three for the arrow to strike. And so you timed it as if you were the bowman yourself, shouting out what he saw. “I’m up,” a few strides, “they see me,” a few more strides, then down behind some cover. But there was no cover here, so they dove to the dirt again and added a roll.

Sugar lunged to her feet again. “We’re up,” she said under her breath again and ran for the gap between a barn and a house where River and two of the soldiers had retreated.

“They see us,” Talen said. Then, “Lords! They see us!”

He was looking up. On the steep roof of a house in front of them, a man rose up out of the shadow, his bow was drawn and pointing right at them.

Talen shoved Sugar away from himself, out of the path of the arrow.

The bow thumped. Talen cried out.

Sugar glanced back. Talen was running another direction, but she couldn’t tell if he’d been hit. An arrow at this range could easily slide clean through a man. She turned back. “They see me,” she said and threw herself to the ground and rolled. Arrows sank into the ground next to her, and she lunged up again, but with all the distraction, she’d missed her angle on the lane River had disappeared into. So she dashed toward a privy that stood on the other side of a short fence up ahead.

Off to her left Talen shouted, “I hear the Fir-Noy had a good crop of goats this year! A fine bevy of Fir-Noy wives!”

“They see me,” Sugar said to herself. The neighbor’s fence was only a few strides away. Multiplied, she covered the distance in a flash. “I’m down,” she said. But she hopped the fence instead and only then dove behind the privy.

“You’d think your women would complain!” Talen shouted again. “But maybe they’ve been lying with the billies.”

His insult rang across the village. What was he doing? He could never keep his mouth shut.

“Get that Koramite rot!” someone yelled.

Sugar thought they meant her, but a number of the Fir-Noy chased after Talen. Was he drawing their attention with insults, distracting them, giving her and the others time to escape?

A new appreciation for Talen welled up in her. If she made it out of this, she was going to kiss him. Over these last few months he had become a true friend. He wasn’t the massive bull his brother Ke was, but she decided at that moment maybe such things didn’t matter.

“Go back to your goaty beds!” Talen yelled and sped off behind a house.

Sugar peered around the privy corner to see if she was being followed. Back by the barn the Fir-Noy dreadman unsheathed his knife. “That one’s mine,” he roared and shot out after Talen. His strides were powerful, huge, and in a moment he disappeared behind the house where Talen had run.

A handful of Fir-Noy ran out to finish Rooster. Another group chased after Shroud who was running for the bridge. Someone a few lanes away shouted, “Here’s one, by Springman’s barn!” All about the village dogs barked.

In front of Sugar stood a fence, then the open fields and the woods beyond. She prepared to make her escape, but just as she chose her course, men rose in groups from the field where they’d been hiding.

She had to move. A few seconds more and dozens of those men would see her. She looked back toward the houses in the village. A lane ran between the Waterman’s house on the left and old Glib’s house on the right.

Black Knee was in that lane, axe held high, the arrow still sticking out of his leg. A Fir-Noy blocked his way. The soldier lunged with his sword, but Black Knee knocked aside the thrust and struck the man in the head with the axe, sending him sprawling. Black Knee hobbled off behind Glib’s house. The Fir-Noy stayed on the ground. It appeared Black Knee had also benefited from Talen’s insults.

She waited for arrows, but none came, which meant nobody had a clear view of her position. Nor did they seem to be focused on Black Knee, so she darted out from behind the privy and raced down the lane between the two homes after the big man. Back by the ash ruins of her house, some Fir-Noy were arguing over the body of Rooster and who got his ear. Beyond them, shouts of triumph rose from the streambed.

Her stomach curdled. Poor Shroud. Poor Rooster.

She darted for the corner Black Knee had disappeared behind, but before she reached it, shouts rose from the men coming in from the field.

“That’s her!” one shouted. “The sleth daughter. Get the dogs. The dogs!”

She rounded the corner and saw Black Knee at the other end of the house grasping his leg. He heard her and whirled around with his axe, then recognized her.

She ran to him. “Where’s River?” she asked.

“Running with half these whoresons on her tail.” A large blotch of blood darkened his trousers in the moonlight. He’d taken another wound to the head that was bleeding something awful as well.

Black Knee suddenly pulled her back into the shadows of the house.

Two houses down a Fir-Noy bowman clambered up the roof of a barn. He looked about, searching for targets, then turned his back to them and moved down the roof watching the lanes below him.

Very soon there would be men on every other roof and more in the lanes. She and Black Knee needed to get out, now. She looked about. Farmer Stout’s house and outbuildings lay just across the lane. Her heart leapt—Stout kept a fine riding horse in his barn. “Come on,” she said.

“You go ahead,” Black Knee urged. He wiped the blood from his brow. “I’ll watch your back and follow.”

He wouldn’t follow. He was going to make some fool-headed heroic stand. The memories of the terrible morning three months ago came back to her: Da hammering away in the smithy, the smell of the hay. When the mob came, she’d fled the fight instead of trying to help. Fled, and then watched as the murderers shot her mother with arrows and hacked her father’s head from his shoulders.

If she’d stayed, they would have probably killed her. But they might not have. She might have provided the little bit of distraction necessary to turn the tide, to allow her mother with her wicked speed to send that mob of sleth hunters into a panic.

Sugar took Black Knee’s arm. “You’re coming with me.”

Back on the lane by the privy, a man shouted, “Skirt around that way.” And Sugar knew he was sending men to cut off their escape.

“Go,” Black Knee said and turned to face the mob that would at any time come around the corner. “I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on a few Fir-Noy scum.”

“You won’t get your hands on anyone,” she said. Black Knee was a large man; she only came up to his chest, but she was one of Shim’s fell-maidens. Fire burned in her arms. She remembered Mother manhandling Da that awful morning, throwing him like a child across the room. Sugar bent down, looped her right arm behind one of his knees. With her left she grabbed his arm above. Before he could move, she hefted him up and across her shoulders.

He let out an exclamation of surprise. “What are you doing!” he demanded.

“Goh!” she said and adjusted his weight. “You’re as fat as an ox.”

“Put me down!” he demanded.

But Sugar just ran out from behind the house, him on her shoulders, and made for Stout’s barn. Black Knee was a boulder, but she carried him along well enough to dash across the space without being shot by an arrow. And then she was into the deep shadows of Stout’s fence.

Someone shouted somewhere off to her left, but she kept running, Black Knee bouncing on her shoulders. Just before she made it around the corner of Stout’s barn, the Fir-Noy that had been chasing her exited the lane where she and Black Knee had been standing.

“There! By Stout’s,” one of them cried.

She darted out of their line of vision, around to the front of Stout’s barn, and set Black Knee down in front of the doors. A horse neighed nervously inside. If she and Black Knee both hid in there, the Fir-Noy would know it, and the chase would end in Stout’s barn.

“In,” she said. “Close the door behind you. Stout keeps his bridles and saddles on the left. You wait until this rabble runs by. That will be your chance. And don’t be getting any ideas about making some pea-brained attack. If you don’t come back to the fort, I swear I’ll have the Creek Widow work up a sleth curse that will hound you into the world of souls.”

“No need to involve her,” Black Knee said.

“Then get,” she said.

Black Knee hesitated.

“Get!” And even though Sugar had no idea if the Creek Widow had any sleth curses, it seemed it was enough to cow the big man, and he slipped through the doors into the dark barn. She stepped back into the lane where the Fir-Noy could see her.

“There!” one of them shouted.

She ran away from the men. Just before disappearing behind another house, she glanced back. Black Knee was standing in the barn. He put his fist to his heart in salute to her, then closed the barn door. The Fir-Noy mob hurried up the side of the barn, unaware the big man was just a few paces away on the other side of the wall.

She turned away and darted into another lane and dashed along the house. In front of her the moonlight shone on the main road that ran through the village. At the edge of the village a large group of Fir-Noy hollered. She suspected that was where Talen and River were.

She hoped they made it. Ancestors, she prayed, let them make it!

She realized she should have said something to Talen about the dance. She’d actually wanted a dance with him, but the idiot had seemed impervious to all her hints and had waited so long others had stepped in. The fool.

Sugar burst from the lane onto the main road. River had planned escape routes and a rendezvous just in case something happened. If she could run down the road to the gate of the village, she might be able to make it to the woods and hopefully hook up with the rest of the fist at the rendezvous.

She turned and ran for the town gate, the dirt hard under her bare feet. All over the village men yelled and dogs barked. And she thought about the men who’d been hiding in the field. There could be more such men up ahead. She felt the candidate’s weave of might about her upper right arm. It was a thin copper braid that gave her strength but also limited her.

There were two ways to multiply your powers. The first was to wear a weave of might, a device that reached into you and controlled your powers for you. This is what the dreadmen controlled by the Divines wore. The Divines would start their dreadmen on less powerful weaves and as the dreadman’s body matured, they would move them to more powerful weaves until, after a year or two, the dreadmen were truly fearsome. The dreadmen marked their levels. Full dreadmen were usually of the second or third levels which meant they had doubled their natural strength and speed. The most elite and mighty were of the fourth or fifth, tripling themselves. But few could multiply their powers to that degree.

Using weaves, the dreadmen didn’t have to know any lore. And they didn’t have to worry about losing themselves to the firelust. Or using up their own Fire. But wearing a weave meant you were limited to the weave’s strength and the Fire within it. Once you depleted the store of Fire in the weave, your magic was gone until a Divine quickened the weave again.

The second way to multiply was to control your powers yourself, to wield the lore as Divines did. Using this method, you didn’t need an external source of Fire—you simply consumed your own Fire at a more rapid rate. Yes, you depleted your own stores and hastened the time of your death, but you could use it with more precision, multiplying and diminishing yourself to fit the need. And because a body had a much greater store of Fire and used it much more efficiently than a weave, you needed less Fire and did not need to worry about running out in the moment of crisis.