“Calm yourself. They are being summoned,” he said.
The bars practically creaked under her grip as she glared at the chieftain.
“I have young of my own,” he said, as though the words should calm her. “I know that you would do anything in your power to keep your children safe. What I do today, I do for that very reason.”
He swept his hands at the cage. “This brings me no joy. But if we allow your people to enter our lands, soon we will not have what we need to keep the good favor of Boviss. And without him, we lose all.”
With the muzzle in place, Sorrel couldn’t reply. That was just as well. The words she had in mind were best left unsaid, particularly to one’s captor.
Motion at the edge of the village drew her attention, and once again her body heaved against the bars. She couldn’t have kept still if she’d wanted to. Reyna and Wren were trotting toward her. They would have been sprinting if not for the leashed harnesses in the hands of guards struggling to keep them back.
“Mama!” they called.
The guards managed to hold the twins just far enough from the cage to keep their grasping fingers from reaching the bars. Sorrel breathed in their scent like a thirsty traveler getting her first grateful gulp of water at an oasis. Anger sizzled beneath the surface to see them tied like animals, but the anger was tempered by the profound relief that they were unharmed. They were clean. They were fed. The Fennecs had even provided some sand-colored robes to replace the ratty cloaks Sorrel hadn’t had a chance to repair.
“Where are you taking her?” Wren demanded.
“Take us too!” Reyna insisted.
Sorrel jabbed at her muzzle, doing all that she could without words to demand it be removed.
“You will not be freed from your muzzle,” the chieftain said.
Narrowing her eyes at him, she leaned back, then yanked herself against the bars again. The cage teetered. A second well-timed shove sent the whole heavy metal prison tumbling down. It clanged hard against the ground and upset the sledge. The rest of the offering scattered about. Had he not sprung aside, the chieftain would have been struck by the falling cage. As it was, Sorrel found herself rather painfully resting on her side in the toppled prison.
“Mama!” Reyna cried.
Guards gathered around the cage, blocking her view of her children. The chieftain emerged from between them. He crouched to address her. Her fallen position finally gave him the opportunity to look down upon her.
“Do you really think this will do you any good?” he fumed. “Have I not made it clear that your own life and the lives of your children are in your hands? You behave yourself and they will be treated as well as my own. If your fellow Reds are willing to take you in exchange, in a few days you will be among your own again, with them by your side. It is better than you deserve for encroaching upon our land.”
Sorrel didn’t pay his words any heed. She was too busy grinning behind her muzzle as she heard the commotion going on behind the row of guards. The chieftain noticed just a moment too late. Amid shouts from his guards, two forms came bursting through the wall of Fennecs. Wren bounded over their heads. Reyna wove between them. Wren came down on top of the cage and slashed his claws at the guards around his mother. Reyna slid to a stop outside the cage and reached through, her cunning fingers working at the bindings of her muzzle.
The Fennec guards worked quickly. Wren did his best to intimidate them away. He even tangled with one. But sheer numbers and better weapons meant Wren had to submit or face the bite of their blades. The twins were hauled away. More angry orders were relayed back and forth. When they were secured and back out of sight, the chieftain spat vicious words while his people loaded Sorrel and the sacks of gold and gems atop the sledge once more.
“We have held many of your kind as prisoner awaiting the day of the offering. Never have we held anyone so unwilling to listen to reason. Fine. If you must act as a feral mongrel, you will be treated as one.” He turned to his men. “Cover the cage. She shall have no light and no fresh air until the journey is through. And her children remain here. I am not so foolish as to allow them another chance to free their mother by taking them along to be offered in person.”
The workers were quick to obey, righting the cage atop the sledge and lashing blankets about it to block out the sun and breeze.
“I, at least, am bound by my word. Your children are too young to suffer for the crimes you commit or the crimes they commit in your name. Whether it be with the Reds or among our own, your children shall be safe. But know that you have done little to deserve this mercy.” He raised his voice. “Take her, before she can disrupt this place any further.”
Sorrel felt the sledge lurch forward. She shut her eyes in the darkness and took a long, lingering whiff. There was no force in this world that could keep her from her children forever. If there was a way to find her way back to them, she would do it. But there was no telling how long it would take. She savored their scent and burned the sound of their voices into her mind. Those memories would have to sustain her, and drive her, in the days to come.
Chapter 6
Time passed. With the subdued glow of sun through the roughly woven blankets as her only indication of its passage, it was difficult for Sorrel to know just how long it had been. Hours, certainly, but the sledge moved slowly, so Sorrel suspected the journey hadn’t taken them very far from the village. The baking sun on the blankets had turned her prison into an oven. Even as the light faded and the coolness of the night replaced it, the uncomfortable warmth within the cage lingered.
After an eternity, the sledge came to a stop. Fresh scents started to filter through the coarse cloth surrounding her. More malthropes. She shut her eyes and silently cursed fate. For years—indeed, for most of her life—Sorrel had lived with the growing fear that she may well be among the last of her kind. Now her nose was filled with the scent of malthropes by the dozen. This should have been a day of joy, a day of triumph. To be united with her kin, to know that they were thriving. It was a dream come true. She should have known the powers that had shaped her life into this endless struggle would find a way to strip the happiness from even this discovery.
The cage thumped roughly upright, clacking down onto a smooth stone slab. The Fennecs unfastened the ropes securing the blankets. The shroud dropped away. Though she was freed from it, the only light that reached her was the dull glow of starlight. The moon was full, but thin clouds turned its glow into an almost eldritch haze near the mountains on the horizon.
Her eyes swept over her surroundings. What little light there was shone upon a curious sight. The slab her cage rested upon was marble. It was carved with simple symbols and polished to a glassy shine. The sacks of gems and gold that had made up the rest of the cargo on the sledge had been arranged with care around her. Low, flat stones surrounded the marble slab, each carved with scenes such that they formed something of a record, a tale. She couldn’t see them clearly, but most featured the hulking form of a dragon standing among burning buildings or fleeing figures.
Their journey had taken them far enough for the landscape to be noticeably different from the sandy dunes of the desert village. The land here was still arid, but grass grew in wispy tufts. The land to the north had the jagged shape of a tree line. They were at the northern edge of the desert, she supposed, where it gave way to a forest even thicker than the one to the south.
The Fennecs stood in orderly rows with the Elder and chieftain standing before them all. Smooth, flat stones pounded into the ground beside them formed a walkway leading to the slab that held Sorrel. On the other side of the walkway, a gathering of very different malthropes silently observed as the workers among them arranged another offering on a second slab.
Sorrel strained her eyes to see these more distant malthropes in detail. They were tall, lean, ranging from fiery orange to deep brown and red. She understood why the Fennecs believed these were her people. They were precisely the same sort of creature as she, at
least in form. In manner, a single glimpse told of a world of difference. They stood with rigid, military discipline. Each was dressed identically, deep green capes topping leather armor. They were as heavily armed as the Fennecs, though their weaponry tended toward bows, arrows, hatchets, and cudgels. The mottled red-green metal that was so common among the Fennecs’ equipment was entirely absent. Only the Red counterpart to the Fennec chieftain wore any metal at all, in the form of a small dagger at her belt that looked to be ceremonial in purpose.
The village leaders approached one another. Sorrel pivoted her ears and listened intently. They chattered at one another, both speaking the same language with markedly different intonations. Sorrel didn’t need to know the meaning of their words. From their body language alone, she could see that a negotiation was taking place. Broad gestures swept from one carved slab to the other.
Sorrel looked to the contents of the slabs. They were as different as the villagers themselves. The Reds had offered up heaps of sumptuous foods. There were freshly killed elk and boar. Baskets overflowed with grain and fresh bread. She smelled the pungent aroma of aged cheese and smoked meats. It was a feast. But the Fennecs had offered much in the way of wealth. There was barely a glimmer of gold or sparkle of gem to be seen on the slab holding the offering from the Reds. In a clear attempt to make up for this shortcoming, elegant and ornate wood and bone carvings surrounded the bounty of food.
Meanwhile, to Sorrel’s dismay, the only meat in the Fennec offering was Sorrel herself.
The debate was a brief one, and clearly did not satisfy the Fennec chieftain. He stalked back and raised his gaze to Sorrel. Despite their stormy association with one another, there was a look of regret in his eyes.
“It seems you have been truthful, at least in so far as your lack of allegiance to the Reds. They claim not to know of you. Their scouts spotted you not long after ours did. It is a pity for you that they did not reach you before we did. Then, perhaps, you might have been free among them. And a pity that they value you so little, for they were unwilling to satisfy our needs in exchange for you. There is now but one way I can serve my people. I am sorry.”
#
Back at the village, Wren and Reyna watched the sky anxiously. They’d had their meal for the night, what little it was. The Elder, the chieftain, and most of the guards were off to make the offering. This left the twins in the care of younger and less experienced villagers. They were, as before, tied to a stake. Their behavior when their mother was taken away had lost them a bit of freedom. For now, at least, the stake was in the center of town some distance away from the other kits as they scampered about before bed. No one had given them any instructions, save that they should behave. And as far as they could tell, very few of those remaining in the village had a firm enough grasp of Crich to speak more than a scattering of words. All the twins could do was watch, wait, and worry.
The young male watching them was showing his inexperience. He’d turned his back to them, and from the slump of his shoulders against the butt of his spear, he might even have dozed off.
“I don’t like this,” Wren muttered in Tresson.
They’d been resorting to that relatively exotic language more and more while in captivity. It was as near as the pair was likely to get to privacy while still among the Fennecs.
“Mama has a plan. She must. She always has a plan,” Reyna said. “We don’t worry about Mama. We worry about us. We need a plan.” She huddled a bit closer to her brother. “When you tussled with the guard, did you get anything?”
He grinned and gently tugged open the robe he’d been given by the Fennecs. There, tucked among his own rags, was the grip of a weapon.
“A dagger. He hasn’t missed it,” Wren said proudly. “What about you?”
She nodded. “When they were dragging me away from the cage. I don’t know what it is, but I got this from an old Fennec.”
She tucked a paw into her robe and retrieved a small ceramic bottle. It was barely the size of a large grape and had a small cork stopper on one end.
“It’s just a bottle,” he said. “Probably water.”
Reyna shook her head. “He had water. And like Mama says, you know something is worth taking if it is worth hiding. This was hard to get.”
“Open it,” Wren said, bouncing a bit.
“But we don’t know what it is.”
“Open it and then we’ll know.”
They looked about to ensure there were no prying eyes, then huddled close so that the bottle was hidden between them. Reyna eased the little cork from the bottle. A subtle scent wafted from within. It wasn’t water. At least, it wasn’t just water. The odor was sweet and aromatic. Floral.
“What is it?” Wren wondered, taking a closer sniff. “Is this like the stuff Mama took from the bazaar in the south? The stuff for smelling nice?”
Reyna shook her head. “That smelled stronger than this. I think it might be—”
Both twins stopped suddenly as a quiet buzzing approached. They looked about to find its source, but the sound ceased as swiftly as it had begun. When they turned their attention back to the bottle, they nearly yelped in surprise.
A tiny form, not much larger than one of their paws, was standing on the ground between them. He was dressed in a papery brown tunic and flicked little wings that glittered faintly as though they’d been sprinkled with diamond dust. It was a copper-skinned, black-haired fairy. He peered up at them expectantly. Wren raised a paw, ready to swat the little fairy. It simply peered up at him curiously, completely unafraid. He lowered his paw.
“Did you come for this?” he asked, pointing at the bottle.
The fairy blinked at him, no sign of comprehension on his face.
“This?” Reyna spoke in Crich now. “Did you come for this?”
Now the fairy hopped back slightly, seemingly startled by the words. “Dragon talk,” it replied in a small voice.
The twins shushed him lightly, glancing desperately about.
“Yes, dragon talk. Quiet please. Now, is this what you came for?” Reyna said.
The fairy pointed. “This.”
“I don’t think he speaks this language very well.”
“Not speak well. Dragon talk not for Losh,” the fairy replied.
“Losh? Is that you?” Wren asked.
He slapped his little chest. “Losh! Helper!” He pointed at the bottle. “Give this.”
Reyna shrugged and started to tip the bottle. The fairy darted beneath it and gaped his mouth in anticipation. Wren stopped her.
“No, no. Just a little,” Wren said.
She nodded and dipped a claw into the bottle. She dabbed out a sugary drop and let it fall into the waiting fairy’s mouth. The fairy released a soft trill of delight as Reyna replaced the cork.
“Losh helper. Forest children need help from Losh?” He scratched his head. “Forest children… Losh helper to desert children. Not forest children. Goodbye, forest children!” He buzzed his wings.
“No, no! Wait!” Wren hissed.
He dropped back to the ground.
“You, uh… you are supposed to help us.”
Losh shook his head. “No. Forest children I watch for. Desert children I help.”
“But look at us! We’re the same size as the desert children, right?” Reyna said quickly.
Confusion came over the creature’s face. The twins got the distinct impression that it was not a rare expression for the simple little creature.
“Yes. Desert children big. Forest children big big. You, not big big.” He paused for a moment. “But red. Forest children, red or dark brown. Desert children, yellow or light brown.”
“But we talk dragon talk,” Wren offered.
Losh crossed his arms. “Forest children talk dragon talk.”
“And we have the bottle,” Reyna said.
“Forest children have bottles. Not for Losh type fairy, for water fairy. But forest children have bottles.”
“Think, Losh,” Wren sa
id, leaning low enough for his snout to nearly touch the tiny creature. “We are little like the rest of the village, we have the bottle that you get treats from, and we are in the village with all these people. The only wrong thing is our color, right?”
Losh tapped his chin, then reached out and bopped Wren’s snout. “Nose too big.” Losh darted up. “Ears too big. Not desert children. Forest children.”
Wren tightened his jaw and snatched Losh out of the air. He spoke in an urgent whisper, teeth clenched such that they gleamed when his lips parted.
“We are malthropes. Forest children or desert children. And we gave you a treat from the bottle. And you are a helper.” He tightened his grip ever so slightly and held him closer. “And we want help.”
The fairy, wide-eyed, nodded. “Losh help.”
The twins glanced about, then huddled even closer with the fairy sheltered between them. Wren let the little thing go, and it perched on the ground between them.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
Reyna gazed down at the fairy. “First, Mr. Losh, this is a secret. Don’t tell anyone or call attention to anyone or anything. Understand?”
He nodded sagely. “Losh know secret.”
“Good. Um… Why are there so many fairies in a malthrope village?”
“Helpers.”
“Yes, but why?” Reyna said.
Losh pointed to the bottle. “This.”
“You do it just for this stuff?”
The fairy shook his head. “No. Also because helping is good. A good thing to do. Not all fairies can help.”
“How do you help?”
“Hiding. Hiding smell. Hiding trail. Hiding everything.”
“How can you hide someone’s smell?”
“Losh show?”
“No!” Wren said. “They’ll see. This is secret, remember.”
Losh nodded. “Secret. So… words? Show with words?”
“Please,” Reyna said.
“Losh…” The fairy waved his hands. “Losh take… wind…” He slumped. “Losh words not good. Not good dragon talk.”
The Story of Sorrel Page 7