Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (22 page)

Flasch choked
and spluttered a moment, trying to regain his senses.

Garnet had
apparently finished his wrestling match, because he suddenly was standing
behind Anolla. Anolla was larger than an average woman, but nowhere near the
towering mass her brothers had inherited from their father. Garnet lifted her
up easily in his arms, showering them all with dirt. Anolla laughed musically
and twisted in her brother’s grasp so she easily slid out and landed on the
ground, already hugging him.

Garnet stared at
his sister in surprise, then grinned. He glanced over at Flasch, who still
stood dumbstruck and gaping.

“Well, little
Annoy-a finally grew into her own, eh?” Garnet said, rubbing one hand on her
head.

“Stop it,
rock-head, you’re getting me all dirty,” Anolla said, pushing his hand away.

“You’re dirty
every day of your life, Anolla,” Brad said. He was as covered in dirt as
Garnet, and grinning just as broadly. “Why you wanted to be all pretty today is
beyond me.”

“Hush, Bradley,”
Anolla said, but Bronk immediately chimed in.

“It’s because
that guy said Garnet and some friends would be coming by today,” the youngest
brother said. His voice cracked twice, and he turned crimson in embarrassment.

“What guy?”
Garnet asked, his eyebrows drawn together.

“He’s a weird
one,” Brad answered. “He and some woman showed up two days ago looking for
someplace to stay the night, so mom put them up in the barn.”

“Brad offered up
your room, well, his room,” Bronk chimed in excitedly, “even though he didn’t
want to, but they said no.”

Brad elbowed his
brother, conveniently pushing him back out of the way, and continued as if he
hadn’t been interrupted, “Then they asked if they could help out to earn their
keep for a couple days until you all showed up. I don’t know how they knew, but
he assured us you would be here today.”

“The old man’s
about a cracked as they come, but the woman’s something else,” Bronk said,
rubbing his side and glaring at his next older brother. “Brad here has been
trying to make friendly with her since she first showed up, but she won’t have
nothing to do with him.”

“Have
anything
to do with her,” Garet corrected his son sternly. Bronk grimaced.

“I have not,” Brad
protested angrily. “I’m trying to be polite to a guest.”

“I didn’t see
you offering to walk the old man back to the barn last night,” Bronk said
slyly.

“Why you
little,” Brad growled and launched himself at his younger brother. They
disappeared on the ground in a cloud of dust.

“Boys can be
such a pain sometimes,” Anolla said with a sigh.

“Anolla?” Flasch
suddenly exclaimed in surprise. They all turned to stare at the Violet paladin,
but that was apparently the extent of his verbal capacity at the moment.

Brican and
Perklet, who had been hanging back slightly taking care of the dakkans, walked
up and looked at them.

“What a lovely
young woman,” Perklet said in a soft, cheerful voice. “Can this possibly be the
little girl I helped deliver?”

“And here Garnet
told us you were as ugly as a Borin bear,” Brican said.

Anolla glared at
her eldest brother, who in turn glared at Brican. The denarae ignored the look
and instead nodded with his head toward Flasch.

“What’s with
him?” he asked with perfect innocence.

Garet came up
behind them all, one hand clasped firmly on the shoulders of Brad and Bronk –
who were thus held separated by their father’s broad body.

A woman’s figure
stood in the open doorway of the cottage, hands on hips. Based on Garet and Garnet’s
conversations of her, and just by looking at Garnet’s size, Danner was
expecting someone who would tower over any man not in her family, and he
wouldn’t have been surprised to see a large skillet in one hand being wielded
like a club.

Instead, he looked
at the woman in the doorway and estimated she would barely come up to his
shoulder, and Danner was far from being tall. Her heart-shaped face was simple
and angelically sweet, and she even wore a small flower on the bonnet she wore.
He nudged Garnet.

“
That
’s
your mother?” he asked incredulously. Garnet nodded.

“Mom’s a little
on the small side,” Garnet said with a shrug.

Brican turned to
look, and he was overcome by a look of complete bafflement. He looked back and
forth between Garnet and his tiny mother. “Wh…. Who… Okay, wait,
how
?”
he exclaimed, making vague sizing motions with his hands.

 “Well,
come on, all,” Garet said. “Your mother looks a little impatient. Let’s go get
some food.”

He cast a
considering eye on Flasch, who was still staring raptly at Anolla.

- 2 -

Kala watched the
group come in, sizing them up one-by-one. First was the father, Garet, and it
was immediately obvious where his sons had gotten their size and strength. He
was followed by the two sons she’d already met. The youngest was charming in a
boyish sort of way, but the elder of the two was quickly growing tiresome in
his painfully obvious advances toward her. Bronk was talking animatedly about
the wild drann that had taken up residence in the smallest barn and his plans
to catch and tame it.

Next was the
daughter, and Kala smiled slightly when she came in. Anolla was as obvious as
Bradley in her own way, and Kala had only a moment to wait to see the result of
her quiet campaign. A short, skinny, young man wearing leather armor with a
paladin’s breastplate and violet cloak walked in, and Kala was surprised his
tongue wasn’t lolling out like a panting dog. His eyes followed Anolla
constantly until the father deliberately stood in front of him with crossed
arms and a baleful glare.

“Ahem,” Garet
said, deliberately clearing his throat.

“Sorry,” the
Violet paladin said, his face rapidly turning crimson.

Next was another
sleight-of-frame paladin, this one wearing a blue cloak. Something about him
made Kala uneasy, like he was there but wasn’t – she shook her head at the
perception, trying to identify what was missing. Subconsciously, her hand
drifted toward the hilt of the small sword tucked into her belt. On this one’s
heels was a denarae, which made Kala frown. A denarae, walking equally with
humans? The elders in her village had always told her that never happened in
the outside world. Both were about her own age, which reassured her for some
reason.

Last came two
more paladins, an older, gentle-looking Green and a Red, who was obviously the
final son they’d been expecting. Kala eyed him carefully, and aside from his
size – which was exceptional anywhere but in this household – there didn’t seem
to be anything immediately impressive about him. Why, then, had Trames insisted
on coming here and meeting with him?

Try finding
the why in anything a madman does,
she thought with some asperity.

Just then,
Trames wandered into the room from the kitchen, so introductions were quickly
made. Danner, Flasch, Brican, Perklet, and Garet. And Garnet.

The denarae
Brican nearly jumped out of his skin when Kala kythed a greeting directly into
his mind.

“How does a
human come to have kything abilities?”
Brican asked, stunned.

“I am one
quarter denarae, from my mother’s side,”
Kala replied calmly.
“How does a
denarae in the outer world come to walk on equal footing with humans?”

Brican’s mental
voice chuckled.
“I’m still trying to figure that out myself sometimes.
Suffice to say, these aren’t your average humans. Nor are you, it seems.”

They shared a
secret smile as Garet’s wife Alessa finished introducing her guests to the
newcomers.

Kala nodded as
she was introduced. She was as tall or taller than all but Garet and Garnet,
and her body was lithe and tightly muscled as befitted a warrior woman. Her
dark hair was carefully bound in a thick braid that spilled down her back to
just past her shoulder blades. She wore tight but comfortable brown leather
trousers, sturdy riding boots, a white tunic, and a form-fitting leather vest,
one hand resting comfortably near the tsuka of the curved sword at her hip.

“And this is
Trames,” Alessa said. She gestured to where the crazy older man had been
standing only a moment before, but he was gone. Kala glanced around hurriedly,
but found her charge sitting at the dining table with a large pot of honey in
front of him.

Trames had
obviously left his youth behind long ago, but his face had not yet fully
creased with wrinkles of age. He was, however, completely bald, and for now at
least had a well-groomed moustache and goatee of thick, white hair. Trames had
a tendency to grow out his facial hair one week, then abruptly shave it off and
remain smooth-faced for a few days. He wore simple, loose-fitting clothing,
always in earth-tones of brown and off-white.

Kala withheld a
sigh as she saw what the old man had been up to. He had dipped a narrow, wooden
stirring spoon in and was happily swirling it around in the jar, then he shoved
the spoon in his mouth – miraculously without spilling any honey on himself or
getting it caught in his facial hair – and made chewing motions with his mouth
as he licked the spoon clean without it ever leaving his mouth.

“Trames,” Kala
said in exasperation as he removed the now-clean spoon from his mouth.

“I love honey,”
he said, as if that was the only explanation needed. Kala glared at him. Trames
looked
like he was at least sixty years old, but the elders in her
village assured her he was much older than that. No one seemed to know exactly
how old Trames was, though, perhaps not even Trames, who seemed to have a
different answer every time someone asked him. Her uncle had told her that
Trames had already looked old when he himself had been a boy, and that for an
“old man” he just didn’t seem to age. Kala was convinced her uncle was pulling
her leg, but some of the rumors about Trames had made her a little less sure of
herself. The clearest answer she’d ever gotten from Trames himself had been
that he ate right, aged well, and was a few years older than his teeth.

She stared at
Trames silently until he finally said pleadingly, “She said it was extra, and
we can pay for it.”

“Heaven knows
it’s fine, dear,” Alessa said, waving a hand before Kala could protest.
“Without Garnet coming around so often, I not only can keep the stuff on my shelf,
but I’ve actually started to stockpile. I never have gotten the hang of feeding
less than ten stomachs worth of food.”

“Garnet was
three of those,” Anolla whispered loudly to no one in particular.

Garnet looked
embarrassed.

“Mom, I’m sorry
I haven’t been by more,” he said a bit sheepishly. “I’ve… well, I’ve been just
a bit busy, you know?”

“Oh, I don’t
blame you at all, Garnet,” Alessa said kindly, which somehow made Garnet look
even more unhappy.

“Garnet’s a big
important warrior now, isn’t he?” Bronk asked, an excited expression on his
youthful face.

“Well, the big
part’s right,” Brican murmured under his breath to Danner.

“Jury’s still
out on the ‘important’ bit,” Danner replied in the same tone.

Kala looked at
them curiously. Brican noticed the look and winked at her.

“You’ll get
used to it,”
Brican kythed to her.

“Dear, dear,
Perklet,” Alessa said, standing on her tiptoes to embrace the Green paladin.
“It has been far too long since you’ve been to visit.”

“You know each
other?” Danner asked in surprise.

“Perklet helped
deliver the twins,” Alessa said, motioning to Bradley and Anolla. “I had such a
frightful time with them, but he came back with their father from some trip or
another and helped me through it. Such a dear man.”

Perklet blushed
and stammered a few quiet words that no one really heard.

“So, are you
boys just here for a bite, or do you have time to stop for the night?” Alessa
asked, turning to address the room at large.

“You don’t need
your room back, do you, Garnet?” Brad asked apprehensively. “I mean, Anolla and
I have sort of split it and Bronk has the whole living room to himself now,
but…”

“Is there just
the one room, still?” Flasch asked, surprised enough to break out of his study
of anything in the room but Anolla.

“Local custom, dear,”
Alessa said. “Children only get their own room after a certain age, what with
needing a bit more privacy. The rest of the children share the common room
until they move up and either take over the elder sibling’s room or have their
own added. For the longest time, only Garet and I had a room of our own. Now
with the twins, Anolla and Brad have to share, since they weren’t willing to
split up.”

“Twins stick
together, mom,” Anolla said, smiling.

Alessa beamed
back at her daughter, then turned to Kala, “You know, dear, when Garet and I
first moved to his family’s farm, we had intended on building our own home. We
had a spot picked out a bit closer to the pond, but then his poor mother passed
before we’d been here a week, and we settled in here instead. He grew up in
that very room Garnet used.” She sighed a bit wistfully. “If any of the
children come back here to settle in, maybe they can use that spot instead. It
seems a waste to let such perfect grounds go to waste.”

Garet hugged his
tiny wife and smiled lovingly down at her. She smiled back, and it was as if
the room itself became a little brighter and warmer.

“So,” Brad began
hesitantly, “I mean, the room…”

Garnet shook his
head, and Brad let out a small sigh of relief.

“We really can’t
stay too long, mom,” Garnet said apologetically. “I just couldn’t stand to
finally get out this direction and then not stop by, but we’ve got sort of a
large force on the move, and both dad and I need to be there.”