Magic's Price (45 page)

The lord threw something else atop the pile; white and shining, a cascade of silver hair—

A horse's tail; a white horse's tail, the raw end still bloody.

Before Damen could stir his wits enough to wonder what that meant, the rest of the men crowded in through the keep door, cursing and shouting, bringing the cold and snow in with them. Damen rubbed his nose on his sleeve, then scuttled out of the way. He stood as close to the fire as he could, for in his fourth-hand breeches and tattered shirt he was always cold. He counted them coming in, as he always did, for the number varied as men were recruited or deserted and may the gods help him if he didn't see that all of them had food and drink.

One hand‘s-worth, two hands, three and four hands—and five limp bodies, carried by the rest. One cut nearly in half; Gerth the Axe—

An' no loss there, Damen thought, with a smirk he concealed behind a cough.
One less bastard t' beat me bloody when ‘e's drunk, an' try an' get into me breeches when 'e's sober.

The others dropped Gerth's hacked-up body beside the door. Two more bodies joined his, bodies blackened and burned; Heverd and Jess. Damen dismissed them with a shrug; they were no better and no worse than any of the others, quite forgettable by his standards.

A fourth with the face smashed in was laid beside the rest, and Damen had to take account of the other faces before he decided it must be Resley the Liar. A pity, that—the Liar could be counted on to share a bit of food when the pickings were thin and there wasn't enough to go around, provided a lad had something squirreled away to trade.

But there was a fifth body, white-clad and blood-smeared; certainly no one
Damen
recognized. And that one was thrown down beside the pile of harness, not next to the door. An old man, he thought, seeing the long, silver-threaded hair; but that was before they dumped him unceremoniously beside the bench. Then the face came into the flickering firelight, and Damen blinked in confusion, for the face was that of a young man, not an old one, and a very handsome young man at that, quite as pretty as a girl. He was apparently unconscious, and tied hand and foot, and it occurred to Damen that this might be what Master Dark had set them all a-hunting these past two weeks.

He didn't have any time to wonder about the prisoner, for a few of the men set to stripping the bodies of their fellows and quarreling over the spoils, while the rest shouted for food and drink.

Damen gathered up the various bowls and battered cups that served as drinking vessels, and balanced them in precarious stacks in his arms. He passed among the men while they grabbed whatever was uppermost on the pile in his arms and filled their choice from the barrel atop the slab table in the center of the hall. Drink always came first in Lord Rendan's hall; sour and musty as the beer always was, it was still beer and the men drank as much of it as they could hold. Damen returned to the hearth, wrapped the too-long sleeves of his cast-off shirt around his hands and grabbed the end of the spit nearest him, heaving the half-raw haunch of venison off the fire. It fell in the fire, but the men would never notice a little more ash on the burned crust of the meat. He staggered back to the table under his burden of flesh, and heaved it with a splatter of juices up onto the surface beside the barrel, on top of the remains of last night's meal. Those that weren't too preoccupied with gulping down their second or third bowl of beer staggered over to the table to hack chunks off with their knives.

Now the last trip; the boy picked up whatever remained of the containers that hadn't been claimed as drinking vessels, and filled them one at a time from the pot of pease pottage he'd been tending. He brought them, dripping, to the table, and slopped them down beside the venison, saving only one for himself. He was not permitted meat until the last of the men had eaten their fill, and he was not permitted beer at all.

He sat on his heels next to the hearth, and watched the others warily, gobbling his food as fast as he could, cleaning the bowl with his fingers and then licking it and them bare of the last morsel. Too many times in the past, one or more of the men had thought it good sport to kick his single allotted bowl of porridge out of his hands before he'd eaten more than half of it. Now he tried always to finish before any of the rest of them did.

But tonight the men had other prey to occupy them. As Damen tossed his bowl to the side and wrapped his arms around his skinny legs, Lord Rendan got up, still chewing, and strolled over to the side of the prisoner. The man was showing some signs of life now; moaning a little, and twitching. The Lord kicked him solidly in the side, and Damen winced a little, grateful that he wasn't on the receiving end of the blow.

Then Rendan reached down and untied the man, who didn't seem to understand that he'd been freed. The man acted a great deal like Rendan's older brother had, after his skull had been broken. Lord Gelmar hadn't died, not right away, but he couldn't walk or speak, and he'd acted as if he was falling-down drunk for more than a week before Rendan got tired of it and had him “taken outside.”

“Careful, Rendan, he's like t' do ye—” one of the men called out.

“Not with that spell on ‘im,” the Lord laughed. “That powder Master Dark sent down with his orders was mag icked. This 'un can hear and see us, but he can't do nothing.” He kicked the man again, and the prisoner cried out, scrabbling feebly in the dirt of the floor.

“Just what
is
this beggar, anyway?” Kef Hairlip asked. “What's so bleedin' important ‘bout him that the Master wants 'im alive an' talkin‘? 'Ow come ‘e 'ad us an' ever' other bunch ‘twixt 'ere an' the mountains lookin' fer ‘im?”

Tan Twoknives answered before the Lord could, standing up with a leaky mug in one hand and one of his knives in the other. “Kernos' balls, boy, haven't you never seen a Herald before?” He hawked and spat a gobbet of phlegm that fell just short of the prisoner's leg. “Bloody bastards give us more trouble'n fifty Kingsmen ‘cross the Border, an' stick their friggin' noses inta ever'body's business like they got nothin' else t‘do.”

He shoved his knife back into his belt and swigged the last of his beer, then slammed the mug down on the table and strode forward to prod the prisoner himself.

Some of the others muttered; they all looked avid, greedy. More than half the band had long-standing grudges against Heralds; Damen knew that from the stories they told—though few of them had ever actually seen one. Mostly they'd been on the receiving end of Herald-planned ambushes or counter-raids, or been kicked in the teeth by Herald magic, without ever seeing their foe face-to-face. Heralds, Damen had reckoned (at least until now) were like the Hawkmen of the deep woods. You heard plenty of stories about them, and maybe even saw some of what they did to others that crossed their path, but if you were lucky, you never encountered one yourself.

Well, now they
had
one, and he didn't seem quite so formidable....

“So, what's the Master's orders about this bastard, Rendan?” Tan asked prodding the prisoner with his toe again. “He's gotta be alive and talkin‘, but what else?”

Rendan crossed his arms, and looked down at the man, who had gone very silent and stopped moving. “He hasta be alive,” Rendan said after a moment. “But the Master didn't say no more than that. The reward's th' same whether or not he's feelin' chipper.”

Tan smiled crookedly, his yellowed and broken teeth flashing as he tucked his thumbs into his belt. “Well, if
that's
all he said—what‘dye say t' gettin' some of our own back, eh?”

Damen nodded to himself, and tucked himself back farther next to the fireplace in the damp corner that he called his own. He knew that smile, knew that tone of voice. He blanked what had followed the
last
time he heard it out of his mind. He did
not
want to remember.

“I think that's a very good idea, Tan,” Lord Rendan replied with a matching smile. He hauled the prisoner up by the front of his tunic, and threw him to Tan, who held him up until he stood erect—

Then punched him in the stomach with all his considerable strength.

The man doubled over and staggered backward toward Rendan, who leaned back against the table and kicked him toward one of the other men.

This amused them for a while, but after everyone had a turn or two, the novelty of having a victim who couldn't fight back and couldn't really react property to the pain he was in began to bore them—as Damen had known it would, eventually. The only thing that actually did fight back was the thing the man had around his neck—it had burned whoever tried to take it, and eventually they left it on him.

Tan was the last to give up; he kneed the man in the groin and let him drop to the ground, limbs twitching. He stared at the Herald for a long time, before another slow smile replaced the scowl he'd been wearing.

He picked up a piece of the fancy horse-harness, a blue-leather strap embellished with silver brightwork, and turned it around and around in his hands. The prisoner moaned, and tried to crawl away, but succeeded only in turning over onto his back. He opened blind-looking silver eyes and stared right at Damen, though there was no sign that he actually saw the boy. There was a bruise purpling one cheekbone,
and his right eye was just
beginning to swell—but those injuries were nothing at all. Most of the blows had been to the vulnerable parts of the body, and Damen knew of men who'd died from less than the Herald had taken.

The Herald closed his eyes again, and made a whimpering sound in the back of his throat. That seemed to make up Tan's mind for him.

He reached for the man's hair with one hand, still holding the harness-strap in the other.

 

“Ah ... y‘sweet little horsey! Hah!” Tan rose from his knees, breathing heavily, refastening his breeches. “Who's next?” he asked, laughing. “Which o' ye stallion's gon' mount our little white mare? Little pup's's good's a woman!”

Damen couldn't watch.
He'd
been in that position before, when they'd first lured him out here, and away from another band, with promises of gold and feasting. Exactly the same position, except that he'd been forced over the bench, not a saddle, and he'd been whipped and brutally tied with rope-ends instead of harness. That was what he had tried hard not to remember—

He curled up in his corner, and buried his head in his arms, trying to block it all out. He could hide his eyes, but there was nowhere to hide from the sounds; the weak cries of pain, the rhythmic grunts, the soft wet sounds and throaty howls of pleasure, the creak of leather and jingle of harness.

It ain't me this time,
he said to himself, over and over.
It don't matter. It ain't me.
He rubbed his wrists and stared in frightened paralysis at the floor, remembering how the ropes had torn into his skin, and how the men had laughed at
his
cries of agony.

And finally, he managed to convince himself, though he waited with shivering apprehension for the ones who hadn't yet had a turn to remember that he was in the hearth-corner, and that the bench was still unoccupied.

Not everyone had a taste for Tan's sport, though—either they weren't drunk enough, or the man wasn't young enough to tempt them, or any other of a dozen possible reasons, including that they still secretly feared the Herald despite his present helplessness.

Or they weren't convinced that Master Dark would be pleased with the results of this little diversion.

They all forgot Damen was even there—those that joined Tan in the helpless man's rape and those that simply watched and laughed, then wandered off to drink themselves stuporous and fall into one of the piles of old clothing, straw, and rags that most of them used for beds. Finally even Tan had enough; the noises stopped, except for a dull sound that could have been the Herald's moaning, or the wind.

Damen dozed off then, only to feel the toe of a boot prodding the sore spot on his rib cage from the last kick he'd gotten. He leapt to his feet, cowering back against the wall, blinking and shivering.

It was Lord Rendan again. “Go clean that mess up, boy,” he said, jerking his chin at the huddled, half-clothed shape just at the edge of the firelight. “Clean him up, then lock him in the storeroom.”

Damen edged past the Lord, then fumbled his way across the drunk and snoring bodies to where the prisoner still lay.

He'd been trussed and gagged with the harness, knees strapped to either end of the saddle, and as a kind of cruel joke, the silvery-white horse-tail had been fastened onto his rump. He was very thin, even fragile-looking, and his pale skin was so mottled with purple bruises he looked like the victim of some kind of strange plague.

Damen struggled with the strange straps and buckles and finally got him free of the saddle, but even after the boy had gotten him completely loose, the prisoner wouldn‘t—or maybe couldn't—do anything but thrash feebly and moan deep in his chest. Damen tugged his clothing more-or-less back into place, but the Herald didn't even notice he was there.

Get ‘im inta the storeroom, 'e says. ‘Ow'm I s'pposed t' do that?
.Damen spat in disgust, squatted on his heels to study the situation, and finally seized the man by the collar and hauled him across the floor and through the storeroom door.

The Lord lit a torch at the fire and brought it over, examining the prisoner by its light. The Herald had curled upon his side in a fetal position, and even Damen could tell he was barely breathing.