by Tara Maya
Tamio was ashamed to admit he had not even thought about her. Yesterday’s obsessions never haunted him. He’d hunted and lost his prey, but there was other game in the forest. Hadi, however, still thought they were betrothed.
“I haven’t seen her.”
Kemla heard what they were discussing and joined them. “The enemy stole the White Lady. Dindi stood in their way and was almost struck down, but I did not see if she was hit or not. I was attacked and had to defend myself. After I killed the man who attacked me, I looked for Dindi’s body, but I didn’t see it. So I am sure she survived.”
Kemla added that last bit quickly; Tamio knew she was sure of no such thing.
“Why were you on the battlefield at all?” Tamio demanded. “And why did you speak for a Raven?”
“I was on the battlefield because that’s where the enemy was, Tamio,” Kemla said, as if addressing an idiot. “So if I wanted to kill some of them I had to be there.”
“You cannot be thinking of joining the raid into Orange Canyon territory.”
“Of course I’m going. I have a Raven to pay, don’t I?”
“You must give the Raven to someone else, go home to Full Basket and help your clan. Isn’t that right, Hadi?”
“Uh…” said Hadi.
“Fa! I’d have a better chance of surviving the fight for all fifteen of Hadi’s Raven’s than he’d have fighting the one of mine.”
“Uh…” said Hadi.
“I wasn’t suggesting you give it to Hadi. You will give it to me.”
“In your dreams, Tamio. And what were you thinking, taking three?”
“Why shouldn’t I take three? Hadi took fifteen!”
“Yes, but he’ll die in the first, so it hardly matters how many he takes.”
“He might have gotten lucky and survived one.”
“I’m standing right here,” Hadi reminded them.
Tamio would have kept trying to bang some sense into Kemla’s thick skull, but the wooden slats across the entrance to the Great Lodge slid aside.
Rough, hairy men and a few women with wild, tangled hair pushed their way into the lodge.
“Welcome, wildlings,” said War Chief Nann. “I have Ravens plenty for you.”
Hadi
The tribesfolk fell silent and parted to allow the wildlings to stroll down the center aisle of the lodge. Paro walked with them. He turned to meet Hadi’s eyes. Hadi smiled weakly. Yesterday, it would have made him miserable to owe the wolfling a lifedebt. Yesterday, he had not had fifteen deathdebts to pay. A lifedebt seemed a light burden in contrast.
Paro took one of the Ravens; he also took a Dove, and this he brought to Hadi.
“I haven’t seven jars of goods to give you,” said Hadi. He tried to sound regretful.
“Then you must be my slave for a year and a day,” said Paro.
Yes, yes, yes! No raid for me! No more fighting, no killing, best of all, no dying! For a whole year, at least, I will have a chance to live in peace! Hadi wanted to dance for joy, but he tried to look as doleful as possible.
“Sad but true,” said Hadi. He heaved a great sigh, as befit a man put upon by cruel fate. “I have no choice but to be your slave for a year and a day. What would you like me to do first? Fetch your water, chop your wood and tend your hearth every day? Build you a house? I know you Green Woods folk aren’t much into planting and sowing, but have you considered a patch of corn? I’m really pretty good at growing corn.”
Fa, at least, better than I am at fighting.
Paro’s lips twitched. “It would be nice to sleep under a roof again, actually, but I don’t think it would be kind to make you build a whole house yourself. I would not abuse your lifedebt to me.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I mean, I have no choice. Seeing as I’m you’re slave and all. Of course, I’d rather go on the raid and wreak mayhem like a raging maniac, but I’ll just have to save all that raw rage and death-fever for after my service. It’s going to be difficult, because, you know, I am an angry, angry man.”
“You’ve a beast prowling in your heart. I can see that.”
Hadi squinted. Was Paro laughing at him? Paro did not crack a smile, but his eyes seemed to twinkle.
“Right, then,” Hadi said, with as much dignity as he could muster. “Just so we’ve cleared that up.”
Hadi was already planning the house he would build for Paro. A nice, solid house, made from clay bricks, with a thatch roof, not a smelly hole in the ground. And he would definitely plant corn. He missed cornbread powerfully. Single-handedly, he would bring civilization to the Green Woods tribe, whether they liked it or not. Just because he was a slave didn’t mean he had to eat poorly, did it?
That would have been that, except Jensi appeared out of nowhere. She looked terrible. Not ugly-terrible, but miserable-terrible. His sister was a pretty girl, even with her bangs singed and her face painted skull-white.
“I know my brother owes you a lifedebt,” Jensi told Paro. “You must know he has nothing to give you. We lost most of what we had in the first attack by the bird-people on our clanhold. Then we lost so many of our kin in this battle. We have not even enough hands to rebuild our own clanhold. There is nothing to spare.”
“I know,” said Paro. “Your brother will be my slave for a year and a day.”
“No,” she said.
“Jensi,” Hadi warned. Please shut up. “It’s not like I have a choice.”
“No,” she repeated.
“Jensi, um, let’s not make the man who can change into a wolf mad, right?” Hadi tittered nervously. “She’s just kidding, Paro.”
“No,” said Jensi. “Hadi will not be your slave. Not for a year, not for a single day.”
Paro looked angry. “Do not think that because I am a wolfling you can disregard your kinsman’s debt to me.”
“He will not be your slave…” Jensi steadied herself with a deep breath, then took the white arrow from Paro’s hands. “…because I will take his place.”
Paro blinked at her in surprise.
“No!” shouted Hadi. You’re ruining everything! “Jensi, stay out of this! I will be his slave! Not you!”
“I know you would sacrifice yourself for me,” Jensi said, touching Hadi on his shoulder. “But I know why the beast forced you into his debt. He will never stop hurting you until he gets what he wants. I can’t allow anyone else I love to suffer, not if it is in my power to stop it. I will go with him and he will leave you alone.”
Shame washed over Hadi. How could he explain to Jensi that he wanted to be a slave to hide his own cowardice? How could he explain that after the war, he would do literally anything, no matter how demeaning, to never have to raise a spear against another man again? Her bravery humiliated him.
“Please don’t do this, Jensi.”
“I must, Hadi.” She kissed his cheek. “I love you.”
“I accept you in your brother’s place,” Paro said.
“No!” Hadi cried.
“I’m sorry, Hadi. It must be this way. My life ended with Yodigo’s death anyway. Take your freedom and live your life.”
Paro gripped Jensi by the arm. “This suits me well. I think I will take my slave and leave now, before she changes her mind.”
“Don’t do this,” Hadi begged him.
“Sorry, but she offered,” said Paro. He leaned close to Jensi and sniffed her hair. “And she smells much better than you, Hadi. No offense.”
Jensi shuddered.
“Go gather whatever belongings you own,” Paro commanded Jensi. Already the bastard was ordering her around! “And wait for me. I would have a word with your brother alone.”
Jensi hesitated.
“A slave must obey her master,” Paro said.
Her eyes flashed in anger, but she stomped away.
“Hadi,” said Paro. “I know you think I’m a beast.”
“Really? Why would I think that? Maybe it was that whole turning into a beast and tearing men’s throats out thing you
did. Or maybe it was stealing my sister!”
“I didn’t steal her. She offered herself to me.”
“You didn’t have to accept!”
“I did. The wolf in me…. One thing I have learned in the short time I have lived in the wild. Wolves mate for life. It’s as a much instinct as the kill. I cannot help how I feel about your sister.”
“If you really cared for her, you’d give her what she wants.”
“I know what she wants.”
“She wants to be free!”
Paro shook his head. “She wants to be safe.”
Hadi opened his mouth to argue, then shut it. Paro was right. Dindi was the one who had always chased after her own way, no matter what the consequences. He pitied the man who ever tried to make Dindi a slave. Jensi had only ever wanted a quiet home, with clear rules and sensible behavior.
“She wants to go home to the Corn Hills,” Hadi said finally. “She hates it here, she always has.”
At this, Paro nodded. “That much is true. I will take her back to her own people, as is right. There, I will protect her.”
“She will never be your mate, Paro. No matter what you do to her, her heart will always belong to Yodigo.”
“Perhaps,” Paro said stiffly. “But I wanted you to know…. I promise you, I will not ask anything of her I would not have asked of you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what it means.”
“I really don’t.”
Paro grinned. “I’ll ask her to build me a house. Fetch my water, chop wood and tend my fire. Maybe plant some corn. But nothing more…until she offers. Enjoy your freedom, Hadi.”
Paro looped away. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging.
“Freedom.” Hadi sagged down onto a log bench, next to his pack, where he had placed the fifteen black arrows he’d claimed for his clan. “Mucking freedom.”
Dindi
Like an Initiate to a dark future, Dindi stumbled after her captor, bound and blindfolded. Two years ago, she had been kidnapped from her home and been forced to walk blind through the forest, much like this, but thankfully it had been no foe who had taken her then.
This time there was no doubt she was in the power of an enemy.
Despite her bravado, she despaired. It had been foolish to threaten the man in black. Umbral. She had not been able to help herself; every time he even looked at her, from that face he had no right to, her anger overthrew her fear. But now, blindfolded and sickened by the foul magic with which he bound her, her sparks of courage fled her as swallows fled winter. After all his talk of fate and war, why had he spared her, even temporarily?
I deserve to get some use from you. She could still feel his rich, deep voice, Kavio’s voice, roll through her as he said those words, craving tinged with irony, replete with unvoiced promises under the surface of the words. As if she were a thing for him to possess, an arrow or a vase, and he had perverse, explicit plans.
Tamio had taught her not to overthink the simplicity of male lust. There was one obvious reason her captor might have decided to keep her alive. The other Deathsworn had reached that conclusion already. She just did not want to believe it, because it terrified her.
To be taken by force would hurt and humiliate any woman. Other women had endured worse however, including women in Dindi’s own clan, whom she knew of through the history dances. If they could survive it, Dindi swore she would too.
But to be taken by a man who wore the face, body, voice, of the man she had loved, the very man he had murdered? To have her memory of Kavio despoiled along with her innocence? She knew that would tear her into shreds. Umbral would not have to kill her after he used her. She would die in his arms.
Perhaps he knew that. Perhaps it was the real reason he had not killed her yet. He wanted to break her first.
Dead, burnt branches snapped at her calves, bare under her cape. Because he had let her put on her old clothes, she still had two important things: The corncob doll, and the shard of the bowl that Kavio had broken before her. At the time, she had thought no other pain could compare to the lash of his rejection.
Now she knew otherwise.
Kavio had known the man in black would kill him. He dreamt of it. The Banshee cried his name. Was Umbral right? Had Kavio’s fate been set? Was her own death just as foreordained?
She tripped over a root she could not see. A strong hand steadied her before she could fall on her face.
“Just a little further,” Kavio murmured reassuringly. Except it was not him.
Damn him. Damn Umbral.
She wrenched her arm free. “Don’t touch me!”
Dindi pulled away, staggered over another root, and ran smack into a tree.
Umbral picked her up and swung her over his shoulder. He carried her that way the rest of the walk.
She heard a multitude of groans, as if arising from a crowd. The air stank of blood and rotting flesh. The Deathsworn barked orders and the groans swelled.
Umbral set her down on a log. He loosed the blindfold. Light confused her eyes. Another sunrise had overtaken them. The reflection off the snow hurt. Gradually she made out a circle of black trees surrounding a square of four big black stones. The clearing before the square of Deathsworn menhirs was completely filled with rows of the dead and dying.
There were so many.
The dead were already in jars, and there were enough of them. But the wounded. Oh, the wounded.
Green Woods warriors thrashed on the ground, some with braided beards, some no more than pink-chinned boys. Orange Canyon warriors clutched their ram’s horn helms and howled like infants. A handful of Tavaedies had been grouped together, more or less with their body parts. Missing legs, missing arms, missing heads. Bodies torn to shreds by talons, bodies smashed to jelly by being dropped by flying Raptors. There were Raptors there too, and wolves, both groups human at last in death.
Umbral brushed the wet streak off her cheek.
“This is my work,” he said softly. “I will leave you here, but you still wear my leash.”
A pulse of energy flowed through the black shimmering cord, which caused exquisite pleasure to bolt through her limbs. Dindi cried out in surprise, then clamped her jaws to keep from moaning.
She glared at him. “Stop toying with me.”
“It’s a warning,” he said. “Through the leash, I can make you feel bliss. I can make you feel pain just as easily. Don’t make me show you the other side by doing something stupid.”
The Deathsworn “worked” all morning—which is to say, they killed people. The Deathsworn began their ritual with a dance. After that, one by one, they brought the injured to the four stones, one of which was laid flat, like the altar where Umbral had first tied Dindi. Then Umbral or one of the others butchered the humans as a hunter would butcher a kill: slit the throat, drain the blood, remove the head, quarter the limbs. The parts were placed in empty jars, which waited beyond the tree circle.
Dindi forced herself to watch. This was what Umbral would do to her.
If she let him.
The day never warmed, exactly, but the cold bit less savagely. Umbral removed his headdress, cloak, and tunic. Though his breath made misty swirls in front of him, he stripped to just black leather pants and black leather gloves. His naked chest gleamed with sweat. Kavio’s glorious torso, Kavio’s gentle hands, bent to a purpose Kavio would have abhorred. That thief, that bastard. One body after another he lifted to the stone. One throat after another he slit.
Once, he looked up just as she was staring hard at him. His muscular arms were stained crimson past the elbow. She could no longer see the black gloves. He looked gloved in gore. Flecks of brain and intestine splattered his bare chest.
He met her eyes. Something flickered in him, and she had the oddest sense that he felt…humiliated…for her to see him like this. Or ashamed?
Then his lips curled up in a sardonic smile.
She was sure she had imagined
it. If anything, he was proud of his “work.”
Yet, at times, he did not cut. “This one is not ready for our Lady,” he said of a warrior who had lost a foot and looked delirious with pain. Instead of killing the man, Umbral waved his hands over the man’s aura. Dindi saw a flash of golden light, and she realized with amazement that Umbral was healing him. The stump bled less. The man fell asleep.
“Leave him past the trees with our marks,” Umbral ordered the two other male Deathsworn.
He spared a few others as well. To Dindi, it was not obvious why he spared some and killed the rest, any more than it was obvious why he had changed his mind about killing her right away.
The two male Deathsworn, who had been sent to place a Green Woods woman outside the menhir clearing, returned on a path that passed the log where Dindi sat. One of them, the ugly one who had leered at her when she was still tied to the other altar, lingered.
“What are you doing, Masher?” his companion, already ahead, called back. “We have another two dozen or more left. Don’t think I’ll do your share for you.”
“I have to yellow some snow. Go on, Owlhawker, I’ll catch up.”
Owlhawker grumbled but returned to the rows of injured. There were fewer bodies now, and more had stiffened before they could be lifted to the menhir.
Masher did not duck behind a tree to attend private business. Instead, he sauntered closer to Dindi.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Your aura is skinnier than an old woman in a drought, but when I am close to you, I feel powerful. You taste real good…”
She would have moved away, but as soon as she stood up, pain jolted through the leash. She crashed to her knees from the electric agony. The flash of pain was brief, but delayed her long enough that Masher reached her side and grabbed her hair.
He jerked her onto the log and forced her on her back, with his own body splayed over her. He stank of offal.
“I could save your life,” he wheezed in her ear. One of his clammy, soiled hands rummaged inside her fur cape, which, since she’d had to remake it, was held together only by improvised knots between the rabbit skins. Fingers pinched her nipple. “I’ll let you run away, if you’re nice to me first.”