Patricia Briggs (9 page)

The last
, he thought.
I am the last one left
. The thought left ashes of sorrow in his mouth, and he lowered his head and wept for his people, who had only a mountain to remember them.

W
HEN WE FINALLY GOT BACK TO WHERE THE HORSES
waited, Kith had them ready to go. He led the Lass to Wandel.

“Mount and ride,” he said, biting off the words.

It was hard to tell if he was still twitchy from the same unease that had gripped him earlier, or if there was something else worrying him. I hurried to Duck and, after a quick check to see if Kith had tightened the cinch (he had), I mounted, falling back into my usual place behind Wandel.

The area was relatively level, one of the shoulders of the mountain, almost a hanging valley except that the far side fell rather than rising in a peak. Kith led us into the grassy land at a brisk trot. Despite the rest, the horses were too tired to move quickly for long. As soon as we were on open ground, he slowed his horse and waved us forward.

I could see a slight tic by his eye. Torch was collected and ready to sprint, though Kith was holding the reins loosely.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought I saw something up above us. Might have been an animal…but it didn't smell right.”

“Didn't smell right,” I said neutrally.

“If you're on the trail for very long, you learn to use your nose as well as your ears and eyes,” replied Kith a shade too easily.

I happened to glance at Wandel at just that moment. He looked sad.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” the harper said after a moment. “With the magic free, things could change, no knowing how quickly. Old Merewich and our lass here”—I assumed from the context that he was talking about me and not his horse—“sound pretty certain that it will be sooner rather than later.”

Kith met the harper's eyes and said, “Yes, well, I've learned to trust…my instincts.”

I saw something pass between the two men that left Kith cold-eyed and stone-faced while the sorrow on the harper's face remained unchanged. I wondered what it was that I had missed. There would be time to extract it from them after we set up camp.

Kith fussed around for a while before he let us dismount at the place he'd originally planned on, a flat, rockless stretch of ground not far from a stream but a little farther from the wooded area. I couldn't tell if it was the place where we'd camped the time we'd come here. If it wasn't, it was very similar.

He'd reluctantly decided it was better to keep an eye out than to try to find cover where we'd not be seen. Muttering something about being so leery that his mother's womb wouldn't feel safe to him for a day or so, he stomped into the trees to find wood for a fire.

We hadn't brought tents, but Wandel and I laid down oiled cloth before we put out the bedrolls, and each of us had another piece to lay on top of ourselves if the rain held by the gathering afternoon clouds fell.

Having laid out my own bedroll, I took Kith's off Torch's back. War-trained he might be, but he knew me well enough not to object to my fiddling—I'd helped train him. I patted his hip as I left.

Now
, I thought,
try it first while you have Wandel alone
. If Kith decided not to talk about something, it was almost impossible to get it out of him. The harper, on the other hand, liked to talk. “Why does Kith's woodsmanship cause you to exchange sorrowful glances?”

He looked up from digging the fire pit and waggled his eyebrows at me. “Ask Kith. It's his story, not mine. I'd not last long as a bard if I were to tell other people's secrets to anyone who thought to ask, now would I?”

“Ha,” I said. “You'd tell the world what your best friend wore to sleep if you thought it made a good enough story.”

“Tell her,” said Kith flatly.

I started, not having heard him come back. He dropped a large pile of wood an arm's length from the fire pit and unfolded one of the smaller oilskins with a snap. He tucked it carefully around the pile.

He was all I had left of my brother…of my family, really, though we were not blood kin (at least not close kin). I wouldn't have hurt him for the world. This had all started as mere curiosity. As I looked at Kith, I realized that this was not a little secret, and Kith was already hurt by it.

I turned back to Wandel. “Tell me.”

“After we finish camp,” he said.

I
TOOK THE DIRT
W
ANDEL REMOVED FROM THE FIRE PIT
and mounded it in a circle around the pit, a further barrier against the flames spreading to the surrounding grass.

Wandel stacked the grass-sod he'd cut and set it near the pile of wood. When we left in the morning, we'd shovel the dirt back in the hole and cover it with the sod—after a season the place would look as if we'd never been there. Kith unsaddled the horses, hobbled them, and let them free to graze.

I washed the dirt from my hands at the stream. By the time I returned, the men were seated at the edge of the fire pit. Wandel struck flint to steel a few times, setting the small pile of tinder alight. Then he fanned and fed the growing flames. When at last the fire blazed merrily, the harper took up his harp and sat cross-legged on the end of his blankets.

He fingered the strings lightly, then set the harp aside, politely waiting for his audience to settle itself. I sat rather gingerly at the end of my bedroll. Duck was too wide in the barrel to be an easy mount. Once Kith, too, was sitting on his bed for the night, the harper began.

“Lord Moresh inherited his bloodmage from his uncle, his mother's brother. Moresh's uncle was the king's high marshal before the king had him beheaded for unnamed crimes. He stood off the whole of the king's army at a crofter's hut with nothing but fifteen bodyguards—bodyguards that his bloodmage had created for him. They all died there, along with fourscore of the king's men. If he could have, the king would have killed the bloodmage as well, but without a specified charge against the marshal he could not nullify his will. Jealousy is not a charge that can be lodged in the court, so the bloodmage went to Moresh”—Wandel looked at Kith—“where he continued to make warriors for Moresh's use.”

“Never too many, you understand, because the king limited the number he allowed Moresh, not wanting Moresh to gain too much power. The berserkers are scouts and Moresh's personal guard. One of the old marshal's men told me they can track like a hound and hear a bee sneeze in the next room. They fight as the old legends say berserkers did, not bleeding from their wounds until after the battle is over. Those who are maimed or sorely wounded are killed.” He looked at Kith. “Since Moresh can have only a few of them, he wants them whole.”

Kith laughed without amusement. “Moresh owed my father a life.” He looked at me. “Remember, it was my father who found our lord's heir when the boy got lost in the fog. So he sent me home last fall. Before the war turned so bloody, Moresh planned on being here for spring planting. Three months, he said, a fair payment for his son.”

He turned his gaze to the darkening sky. “It's not as if I can run: Nahag has his mark on me. One of us ran once. Silly fool fell in love.”

Nahag wasn't Moresh's bloodmage's real name, though I couldn't recall what it was offhand. A nahag was a night demon who consumed children while they slept. It said a lot about the mage that he'd been given such a nickname.

Kith turned to me with eyes lit with self-mockery and a message. “Nahag got to play with him, brought him out for our enlightenment every evening for two weeks. The bloodmage is as old as my father, and he's been a mage since his parents abandoned him to the mage guild when he was a child—whoever he was once, the madness has taken him now. The runner died—I think, I hope—at the end of the first week, but it was a little hard to tell. I didn't know until then that bloodmages eat their victims. Lord Moresh knew I wouldn't run when they came for me.”

For the first time I felt something about Lord Moresh's death other than the vague fear of a sheep whose shepherd is lost—satisfaction. Such a man should be dead.

I could feel my lips peel back from my teeth. “If,” I said softly, in a gentle voice, “he were not dead, I'd curse him that his kith and kin would know him not for the ague that would twist his bones. I would curse him that pain would make of him something neither human nor animal. I'd see to it that he lived forever knowing nothing, neither darkness nor light, for the agony of his transgressions.”

Wandel looked at me as if he'd never seen me before.

Kith gave a rusty chuckle. “That took me back. I haven't heard that curse since the last time your brother and I raided your grandmother's garden. Scared us silly.” He pulled up a blade of grass and played with it in his hand.

“Anyway, now you know.” Kith stopped playing with the grass and met my eyes again. “And if we find Danci, you can tell her why I'm not a suitable candidate for a husband and father.”

So that's why he told me. My eyebrows shot up. “Why? Because a bloodmage, who is now dead, was searching for you?”

“Because I'm dangerous enough to need him to do so.”

“Dangerous to whom?” I sputtered. “No one at the village seems to be suffering from your presence.”

He shook his head, the stubborn mule. “It doesn't matter. Just tell her what the harper and I told you.”

C
rouched in the gathering shadows, the hob held very still as he watched over the party. He'd always avoided the traditional task of following well-meaning folk whenever he could—his talents and interests lay in tormenting the wicked. But here he was. No wine to sour, or horses to loose, just the soft sounds of the humans' voices to drive away the loneliness. He hunkered down further and let the warmth of their camp wash over him.

K
ITH JUMPED TO HIS FEET, STARTLING ME
. “C
OME ON
, then,” he said. “We've got some time now. Why don't you get your knife, and I'll see what I can teach you.”

Grateful for a chance to put the last few revelations behind me, I took Daryn's knife from my borrowed saddlebags and scurried back to present it nervously to Kith. I'd spent a good bit of time yesterday sharpening it, but Kith was particular about things like that.

He took it and turned it over in his hand. “Good thing it's got an edge on it. I'm not much of a hand at sharpening things anymore.” He grinned at me unexpectedly. “Father's been putting the edge on my stuff, but it's not like doing it yourself.”

I smiled back. “I'd guess not.”

“Right.” He gave me back my knife and watched how I held it. His frown made me shift my grip several times, but the disapproving expression didn't change.

“The first thing to remember is that the knife is sharp,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “And I haven't been butchering pigs and cattle since I was old enough to crawl.”

He smiled, and, drawing his own knife, he continued talking. “It can cut you as easily as it will cut your opponent: keep it away from your fingers. The second thing to remember is that you can do a lot of damage with it by just holding it in your hand and punching.”

He closed his hand into a fist and demonstrated with an imaginary opponent. He moved with swift efficiency, and his imaginary foe's instant death was obvious.

“For now, forget you even have a knife,” he advised. “It will take care of itself—at least until you have more experience. You're at a disadvantage because you're a woman. A man will back off from another man with a knife, but he'll not do the same for a woman.” He watched me try to imitate his move several times. I couldn't tell if I'd done anything right or not. Probably not.

“Put that away for now,” he said, in sudden decision. “We'll practice with something else.”

When I got back from storing the knife, Kith was waiting with three sticks a little longer than his forearm. They were green wood, and very nearly equal in diameter.

He motioned for me to follow him to a flat area a little way from camp, then handed me two of the sticks and tucked the third under his arm.

He adjusted my grip, then took up his own stick with a clever little toss. “The sticks will teach you the moves without either of us chancing a cut. The additional benefit is that the sticks are a decent weapon in their own right. Around here, there are always sticks of some sort.”

Then he proceeded to teach me how to fight—at least that's what he said he was doing. I thought he was beating me with his stick. Shows what I know.

By the time he said “Enough,” I was so tired that I stumbled while walking back to the fire. I knew if I just sat down, I was going to have some really stiff muscles in the morning. Maybe if I walked it out, they'd only be very stiff.

“I'll get some more firewood,” I said, turning away from the fire. “What we have won't last the night.”

“Best do that, I think,” Kith said. “Wandel and I'll see about dinner.”

“I thought the woman should do the cooking,” said Wandel, teasing but still half-serious. He hadn't eaten what I could cook over an open fire.

“We'll cook,” replied Kith, who had.

As soon as I was out of sight, I stopped to tie my boots. I could hear them talking…about me. A well brought-up person would have left.

“She startled me when she spoke to your elders,” commented Wandel. “I've never seen her as a forceful sort of person. She's always in the back of the room, never speaking unless someone asks her something.”

“Not talking when the men talk,” agreed Kith. Was that sarcasm I heard in his voice? “Like a good little village woman.” Yes, it was sarcasm.

“I've seen your village women. Most of them don't act like that.” Wandel half-laughed, no doubt picturing Melly or the smith's wife.

“Hmm,” grunted Kith. “Let's say her father's idea of a good village woman. Or her mother's. I'd guess it goes back to when Quilliar died—her brother.”

“When you killed him,” said Wandel. It surprised me that he knew that; he hadn't been in the village then.

“He was my best friend,” replied Kith obliquely.

“I wondered about that.” The harper grunted, and I pictured him tossing a chunk of wood into the fire. “From what I know of Moresh's berserkers, I wouldn't have thought you could act against orders.”

“Neither did Nahag, or else I'd have been executed in Quill's place.”

“So you think Aren's been trying to hide what she is so she doesn't get singled out by the bloodmage or the villagers?”

Yes
, I thought,
it had been hide or die
.

“Hide from herself most of all, I think. It is hard to accept being different, hard to have people avoid looking at you, and still believe in yourself.”

Yes, you'd know about that, wouldn't you Kith?
I thought.

His voice changed a bit, becoming almost playful. “I
do
know that every time I saw her playing the grateful, submissive wife to that arrogant pup she married—”

Arrogant? I tried the word on Daryn. It didn't fit.

“I wanted to shake her. I kept waiting for her to wake up and put him in his place the way she always did Quill and me when we ganged up on her.”

Perhaps it was Kith's voice that told me. It was just a shade louder than it needed to be. Perhaps it was the “arrogant”—Kith had liked Daryn as well as the next man. Kith knew I was listening.

“Daryn was just nicer than you two were,” I said.

“If you'd waited on us hand and foot, we'd have been nicer, too,” called Kith without pause. I heard Wandel's snort of surprise.

I laughed and set off, pushing the moment of self-examination behind me. When I'd traveled a bit, I stripped off my clothes and washed off the trail sweat in the shallow water of the stream. I used my tunic to wipe off, then dressed again. I pulled the tunic over my shirt, disregarding the dampness. It would dry before I got back to camp.

I walked for a while without collecting any wood. The way back would be soon enough—no sense carrying it any farther than I had to. The late afternoon had the peculiar yellow tint that happens only in the spring when the afternoon clouds gather threateningly in the sky. The shadows were deep, but where the light touched down, the colors were dazzling.

For the first time since Daryn died, I felt at peace. I knew Moresh wouldn't be back to kill Kith. Time would heal him. With aid from Auberg, the raiders would be driven away.

I stopped in a small clearing and decided that if I went any farther, Kith and Wandel were likely to come looking for me. I turned around and stopped abruptly. Standing on a downed tree, only a horse length from me, was a…well, a creature.

I felt no fear, only a surprised kind of delight. If he had been standing on the ground, he would have come up to my shoulder. The wildling was a fragile-seeming thing, his feyness blending into the odd light as if he, not I, really belonged to this world. His arms and legs were slender, almost spindly. The bones of his ribs and shoulders were clearly visible, though his belly was round.

He had the proportions of a child, his head too large for his small body. His skin was the warm brown of stained oak. If there were claws on the ends of his fingers, those fingers were long and slender like those of a great lady.

He wore only a pair of roughly made hide shoes and a loincloth. His pale, ash-gray hair was braided in complex patterns with colorful beads woven here and there.

His eyes were large, even in the oversized, inhumanly round face. Wide gray irises gave a strange beauty to something that might have been grotesque. His mouth balanced his eyes, being wider than any I'd seen on a human face. As I watched, a smile lit his eyes and touched the corner of his mouth.

“Hob?” I asked softly, half raising my hand to him.

His smiled widened, exposing the sharp, interlocking teeth of a predator. Before the significance of that registered, he launched himself at me. His arms closed with viselike strength on my shoulders as his head darted for my throat.

Somehow I managed to get the arm I'd been lifting between his face and my neck. His jaws locked on my arm with vicious force. I heard the crack of bone, shock momentarily protecting me from the pain. I noticed that the corners of his mouth were still tilted up in a smile.

He smelled of musty leaves and damp earth. I tried to dislodge him, but for all his lack of size he was much stronger than I was. I'd left my knife back at camp, and there were no sticks within reach.

He wrenched his head, twisting my forearm to an impossible angle. I remember hearing a loud ringing in my ears—then nothing.

T
HEY TOLD ME LATER IT WAS
W
ANDEL WHO FOUND ME
. Kith had come across the creature's spoor and was tracking it when he heard the harper's shrill whistles. By the time I woke up, my head was propped on Wandel's leg and he was mopping my face with a wet cloth. I was quiet for a moment, more out of sheer surprise than anything else. I hadn't expected to wake up at all.

When a cold drop of water hit my ear, I batted at Wandel with my unhurt arm and struggled to sit up. Upright, I was lightheaded and dizzy.

“Who'd you meet out here, Aren?” called Kith from somewhere a fair distance to my right.

I opened my eyes, but it was nearing dark and my vision kept trying to black out, so it took me a while to find Kith. He was kneeling beside something a short distance away. After a moment I decided it was a dead body.

“Don't know,” I croaked, closing my eyes again. “What's it look like?”

“
This
looks like some malformed human child with teeth like a shark,” he replied. “But you met something else, too. No way you could break its neck like this. Whatever did this is stronger than I am—came near to ripping the head off while he was about it.”

“Whoever it was, they bandaged her arm,” added Wandel.

I'd been trying to ignore my arm. I had a clear memory of bone showing through flesh. I looked down and saw that someone had wrapped it with strips of my tunic. It still looked like an arm ought to, and I didn't think it should. It also hurt.

Kith swore softly. I raised my eyes from my arm and watched him pace back and forth, stopping here and there to examine the ground. My vision was better, but I was still dizzy.

“Look at the bruises. He snapped that thing's neck with one hand,” Kith muttered. “Then he used a stick to pry its jaw open. He tossed it from here”—he stood, as far as I could tell, where the creature had attacked me—“to there.” He pointed to where the body lay, some distance away. “Now it's not huge, but it weighs a good seventy or eighty pounds, and I don't know a man alive who could toss it that far—not even a magicked one like me.” He said some more, but I started seeing black again and only caught something about soft-soled boots.

“A Beresforder?” guessed Wandel. “Some of those mountain folk are big enough to take a bear and toss it into the next valley. But then why didn't he stay to meet us?”

“Not a Beresforder,” refuted Kith. “I don't think a human could do this. Certainly no one
I
know from Beresford.” He went on mumbling to himself about wildlings, but I was paying more attention to my arm than to what he said.

After a moment Kith stopped speaking and knelt beside me. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I don't know,” I replied, breathing through my nose like a winded horse. “I'm afraid to look.”

“So someone killed that thing and dressed Aren's wounds,” said Wandel, sounding fascinated—but then it wasn't his arm he was talking about. “I wonder who he was and why he didn't stay.”

Kith shook his head. “I think we ought to get back to camp. Where there is one of those things, there might be more. If you'll help me get her over my shoulder, I'll carry her, and you can collect the wood we'll need on the way back.”

“It'll be easier if I carry…,” began Wandel. I had my eyes closed again, and I didn't get them open fast enough to see what caused him to stop talking.

“I can walk,” I offered, squinting up at Kith.

Maybe the look that Wandel had gotten was similar to the one I received. It shut me up, too.