The girl from the ferry, Bandit, stood near Charon’s feet. She looked different now: she had a bright red ribbon tied around her forehead, and the jacket she wore hung to her knees, twice her size. Her high chatter was the same, though.
Eiland sat frozen. He’d fallen asleep at Charon’s side, with the fire dying beside their feet. Their packs and supplies were spread haphazardly around the makeshift camp; Eiland had never been known for his tidiness.
Even if he jumped up and ran for it, he’d be leaving everything behind—including Charon.
He stayed where he was.
One of the bandits stepped forward. Bright threads adorned a thick braid of hair that hung down his back, and gold rings encircled all of his fingers. From his carriage and the way Bandit fell silent at his approach, Eiland instinctively knew he was the group’s leader.
Eiland swallowed, shifting closer to Charon, who hadn’t moved at all. He sat still, naked under the blanket that covered him, his blue eyes running over their visitors.
The leader kicked at Eiland’s empty pack then crouched down beside Bandit. The proximity of their faces brought the similarity into sharp relief: she was his daughter, Eiland realized.
He said something to her, low and private. Bandit nodded, and behind them in the semicircle the knives were put away. Eiland exhaled.
The bandits settled around the charred remains of last night’s fire, speaking to one another in their own tongue. Charon struggled to his feet with his blanket wrapped around his waist, and Eiland followed him around the edge of the tree trunk under the pretense of helping him dress.
“What do we do?” he hissed once they were out of sight.
“About what?” Charon shot Eiland a sharp look. “Turn around.”
Eiland stared at him. Charon glared back, holding the blanket around his waist until Eiland turned away.
“The bandits!” Eiland tucked his hands in his armpits and peeked around the tree. He’d never known that much about bandits, but the tales he’d heard as a child were full of blood and cruelty. “Bandits, Charon! What do we do about them?”
“Try not to make them angry, I suppose.”
“But what do you think they want?”
There was some rustling and the sound of cloth falling to the ground. “Probably what everyone else wants. Food. Water. A safe place to sleep at night. What would you want if you were a bandit?”
Eiland frowned at the maple tree’s bark. “I would probably want to stop being a bandit.”
Charon snorted. “Not everyone gets a choice about that.” He appeared at Eiland’s side, wearing pants but with the blanket still wrapped around his bare shoulders. Eiland had cut off his shirt yesterday; he hadn’t stopped to consider that it was Charon’s only one.
“Do you want to go back and say hello to our guests?” Charon asked, cocking his head. “Or should we wait for the one who’s listening to come around the corner and drag us back?”
Eiland craned his neck. One of the bandits, a tall one with skin so impossibly dark that Eiland thought it must be painted, sat around the edge of the tree with his head turned in their direction. He grinned wolfishly at Eiland, who jerked his head back.
Rolling his eyes, Charon led Eiland back to sit next to the reignited fire with the bandits. They were unlike anyone Eiland had ever seen before. Even the traveling clans usually dressed and acted like townsfolk. The bandits wore strange clothes, and masks hung from their belts or perched in their hair. Jewels hung from their necks and wrists, many of them had pictures painted or drawn on their skin, and their eyes shone with a fierceness that had Eiland sticking close to Charon’s side.
The rest of the bandits made camp. Eiland’s spare herb pot got washed out and repurposed for soup. Bandit pressed Charon to show her how to juggle, collecting small stones from around the tree; he tried but Eiland could see how the effort drained him. After a while he scooted closer, watching the movement of Charon’s hands; Eiland had always been a fast learner and soon he took over. Bandit seemed a little less keen on him, but she clearly appreciated the effort.
The other bandits were more recalcitrant, keeping mostly to themselves and speaking in their own tongue. One of them, a man with a sharp chin and a black mask perched in his hair, settled cross-legged on the ground beside Charon and began writing in the dirt with his fingers. Apparently their written words were the same, because Charon scratched an answer back.
It made Eiland feel strangely lonely: this was the first company other than Charon that he’d had in a long time, and he couldn’t even understand them. Once Bandit lost interest in their game of rocks Eiland had nothing to do but sit by himself.
The leader of the bandits sat alone as well, though his solitary repose was far more dignified than Eiland’s.
Eventually Charon turned back to Eiland. “That one’s name is Rûak,” he said, nodding to the sharp-chinned man, who had crossed to his leader and was speaking in his ear. “He says that they’re willing to give us safe passage across the plains for one pence.”
“Safe passage? Safe from what?”
Charon cut him a sharp look. “They’re the ones with the knives, Eiland.”
It took a moment to connect in Eiland’s mind and then he swallowed hard. “I don’t have a full pence.”
“What do you have? Don’t,” Charon said sharply as Eiland started to reach for his pockets. “Don’t take it out right now. Just tell me what you think you have.”
“Maybe…maybe half a pence? What about you?”
“Three piece.”
Eiland forced himself to breathe slowly and not look around to see if anyone was watching them. “What are we going to do? There’s no one out here that we could trade with. There’s no one out here at all, except them! Even if we found a merchant wagon they’d all just rob it before we could—”
“Hush.” The bandits were stirring, finishing up their morning meal and climbing to their feet. “I’ve told him we’ll pay him once we’re safely across.”
“But we can’t pay! What do we do when we get to the other side?”
“I suppose then we’ll see,” Charon murmured, rising as well.
They left the tree and their small fire behind. The bandits walked in a long, stretched-out line, sometimes two abreast but more often traveling in single file. The path they followed was winding and reminded Eiland of the one Charon had taken out of Summerton.
He wondered if the purpose was the same and they feared some kind of pursuit, or if they were trying to confuse him and Charon.
The bandits sang intermittently as they walked, one starting the song and the others picking up at the second verse. Of course they were all in their own tongue, but Eiland thought he recognized some of the melodies from the temple hymns.
Charon lagged near the end of the group. His Agony had ended, but the aftereffects lingered: every night he virtually pitched forward into the ground. Eiland had to cajole him to eat and drink anything before Charon fell into heavy sleep.
He needed to rest much longer than the few hours of sleep the bandits allowed them, but Eiland doubted that such a request would be met kindly.
Once they began a day’s travel the bandits did not stop for anything, eating and drinking as they walked, and hunting, too. Besides their knives, three of the bandits had crossbows, and positioned themselves at the front and rear of the group; Eiland didn’t understand the significance of that until they passed a thicket and a flock of crows startled up out of the branches.
There were several swift twangs, and birds plummeted back to the ground as limp shadows. The girl Bandit scampered out into the grass to retrieve their limp bodies and the arrows. Watching, Eiland realized that even if he tried to run, he would not make it far.
Whenever they reached the crest of a hill or a creek or any other variation in the landscape, all the bandits fell silent and bent low in the grass; only the leader, Bene, remained standing, turning to look in all directions and bending to press his ear against the ea
rth before whistling them onward.
Sometimes a goodly amount of time passed before Bene whistled them up again. Eiland didn’t know what he was looking for; personally, he couldn’t imagine that anything scarier than bandits could be lurking out on the plains.
Then, they crested a hill and there came an instant, sharp whistle from ahead. All of the bandits dropped to the ground; one caught Eiland by his shoulder and pulled him down as well.
With his cheek pressed to the ground, Eiland could hear the drum of hoof beats. They seemed to be coming closer and he swallowed hard, wondering if it was a brace of soldiers who would mistake him for an outlaw as well, or a merchant train falling into the bandits’ trap.
The hooves beat nearer, and a horse whinnied loudly. Loud voices called to one another. The bandit who had pulled Eiland down, a fair-haired woman with a thin mouth, drew her blade and set it between her teeth.
Twisting around in place, Eiland looked back. A few feet behind him, Charon lay flat on his belly as well, his head lifted slightly to peer through the grass.
Their eyes met and held. About a dozen feet of ground stretched between them. If the hooves turned, Eiland had no idea if he could get to Charon fast enough or what he would even do when he got there.
He would still try. It was better than dying alone on his belly.
The horses passed close enough that Eiland caught glimpses of their riders’ heads. They were all men, with long dark hair and masks over their faces; another bandit clan, Eiland realized. They must have just struck a merchant train because their horses were weighed down with goods. They called to each other in loud, cruel voices, laughing drunkenly.
One had a young woman thrown over his saddle. She screamed as they rode past. Eiland bit his lip until he tasted blood.
One after another the mounted bandits rode past, galloping in a crosswise direction to Bene’s clan, which remained flat in the grass long after the hooves had faded into the distance.
The sun beat down on them. A locust landed on Eiland’s neck and he swiped it away. The fair-haired bandit sent him a warning glance but said nothing. Even the children were still and silent.
Finally Bene rose from the grass and whistled them up, though they continued in silence, stealing through the grass like shadows.
That night Eiland laid his bedroll close enough to Charon’s that their arms brushed when he stretched out on his blanket. They slept separate from the bandit clan, close enough for them to be seen, but hopefully not heard.
“I have a plan,” he whispered. “I’ll make a sleeping draught, a very strong one, and slip it into their food somehow. Then you go around and take all the strings out of their crossbows once they fall asleep, and use that to tie all their ankles together. Once you do that, I’ll gather up all their knives and hide them out in the grass—or better yet, I’ll bury them, and then we’ll run away before they wake up. All right?”
For a long moment Charon said nothing. Then he murmured, “How will you make the sleeping draught?”
“Valé root. I’m not really sure how much to give them, but if I chopped up half a root and put it in their porridge, I think that will work?”
“So you’ll give it to the children too?”
“I…suppose I’ll have to. Bandit, at least. She’d be able to tell them which way we went.”
“How long will it knock them out?”
“I,” Eiland stumbled. “I don’t know. A few hours?”
Charon shifted in place. “I can’t run, Eiland.”
Eiland drew a deep breath in and blew it out. Charon went on, “I can barely keep up now. So even if you were able to cut up the root and sneak it into their food without any of them noticing, and if they all ate enough for the root to work, there’s no way I would be able to get far enough away that they wouldn’t catch up to me. And then they would definitely kill me.”
“Well, then what do you suggest we do? Follow like lambs and hope they don’t cut our throats when they find out we don’t have enough money?”
“We don’t have to do anything,” Charon replied. “I’m sure you can make it halfway back to Rivervale by the time they wake up. Of course, there’s no way that they’ll believe I didn’t help you. So I expect they’ll kill me then too.”
Eiland stared straight up at the sky. Lit only by the bandits’ small fire and unobstructed by branches, the night had set every star to twinkling bright and cheerful. There was the little huntress with her bow drawn taut, braced to shoot the down the Great Serpent rising from the horizon.
Following the point of the serpent’s tail, Eiland tilted his head back until he could see the Eastern Star, burning steady and true on the horizon. It would lead him back to Summerton.
But there would be blood on his hands if he did, as sure as if he’d cut Charon’s throat himself.
“Well,” he finally said. “I’m glad you are so calm about the idea.”
With a soft, bitter laugh, Charon rolled to face away from Eiland. “At a certain point, there isn’t much use in worrying anymore.”
Lying next to him, Eiland ground his teeth together and stayed awake for hours. But he did not move an inch.
Chapter Ten
The land around them grew more rolling as they traveled. It was difficult to say in such open country, but Eiland had the vague impression that they were moving uphill. The change took its toll heaviest on Charon, who struggled along with his face pale and sweaty.
At least the bandits had slowed their pace. If Eiland didn’t know better, he’d say they were trying to help Charon keep his feet under him.
He’d begun to discern smaller units within their band. Bene often held counsel with a woman whose eyes were too like Bandit’s not to be the girl’s mother. Among the children, Bandit ruled as a semi-benevolent tyrant, leading all their games and sternly admonishing those who misbehaved. Rûak, who had negotiated with Charon, shared the leader’s sharp chin; Eiland thought him a younger brother. Bene did not often hold counsel with him, but always listened intently when he did.
There were other families, too. The tall bandit with skin the color of rich earth rarely left the side of a mousy, plump woman who led the group in songs; several children trailed behind them, bound to their mother’s waist with a string. The one-summer girl who had poked Eiland with a stick rode on her mother’s back; the man walking beside them held one of the crossbows, but took occasional turns carrying the girl.
Eiland wondered how they had all come to be here, wandering under the sun and sleeping with their knives by their sides every night. The Writings said that hearth and home was the only place for a family, yet the children scampering around his feet and racing to and fro in the grass did not look soulless or withered.
Ahead, the one-summer girl began to wail: she was tired and wanted everyone to know it. Her mother struggled to quiet her, but she looked almost ready to give birth and quite weary herself. Eiland hesitated then hurried his steps to catch up with them, offering in gestures to take the little girl.
The mother sent him a look sharp as knives but handed her over. She was small and loud, shrieking in his ear as he settled her against his shoulder. Fortunately Eiland had held his sisters’ and brothers’ children so many times that it was second nature now. He squeezed her and began to hum an old tune, something he remembered his own mother singing to him as a child.
Eventually she cried herself out and went heavy against his collarbone. When Eiland glanced sideways the girl’s mother was still watching him, but her expression had softened considerably. Patting her swollen belly, she said something in her own tongue. Eiland’s incomprehension must have shown on his face, but she only laughed, nodding.
Eiland carried the little girl for the rest of the afternoon. When she woke hungry, he handed her over and her mother—she said her name was Ghouleh, which gave Eiland some pause as it was the name of a prominent demon in the Writings—pulled her shirt open without breaking stride and began to nurse.
Eiland q
uickly averted his eyes. Several of the other bandits catcalled, which only made him blush harder. It wasn’t as if he cared about her exposed bosom—and in some small part of his mind, he knew he ought to worry that he didn’t care—but Ghouleh’s husband Ik'r walked on her other side with the machete. He was not an especially large man, but he had one of the crossbows strapped to his back and his exposed chest—
Eiland stumbled, almost tripping over his own feet. Painted designs covered Ik'r’s chest…but where they did not, Eiland abruptly recognized the scars of a Cursed. Ik'r’s arms had been wrapped from wrist to shoulder in thin leather straps; Eiland had thought it just another odd item of dress, but now that he looked closer he could he could see stained bandages underneath the straps.
Ik'r noticed Eiland’s attention, and his expression darkened. Turning quickly to face front again, Eiland wound his fingers in the straps of his pack.
At sundown they stopped in a small cove, tucked between two hillsides and covered by quivering birch trees. As the bandits made camp, Eiland pressed close to Charon. “One of the bandits is Cursed.”
“I know. I saw.”
“Do you think, if we showed him your arms, and the salve—”
Charon pressed his lips together hard and stole a glance across the makeshift campground at Ik'r, who was corralling the one-summer girl to bed down. He, too, seemed especially weary after the long day’s journey, yet still he smiled at his little girl’s stubbornness and kissed his wife whenever she drew near.
Their obvious happiness surprised Eiland. He’d always known that the Cursed could bear children, but that was with bruised girls who had been taken from their homes and returned with infants they couldn’t bear to hold. Ghouleh, though, didn’t look frightened or trapped. She had a machete. Eiland was a more than a little frightened of her.
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