by Ila Mercer
‘Show me your wound,’ Katarin insisted.
Ari unbuttoned his cloak and lifted his shirt, revealing a scarf – that might once have been white – wrapped tightly around his torso. The makeshift bandage was soaked with his blood and when she touched it, he winced.
‘I’ll clean it for you,’ she said as she unwound the bandage. But her true intention was to see how badly he’d been hurt. She gasped when she saw the head of a crossbow bolt embedded in his flesh. Blood oozed slowly from the wound and she could see that it was much more serious than she had imagined. She wondered how he had managed to carry on as long as he had.
‘We have to stop,’ she said. ‘You can’t go on like this.’
Ari’s gaze dropped from hers. ‘I have failed you.’
‘No. Don’t say that.’
She noted the sheen of sweat on his brow, the lines of pain etched around his eyes and mouth. It was her slow and tired body that had failed him, not the other way around, and with that thought, weariness bore down on her again. How were they meant to keep running?
She took the sodden bandage to the waters edge, rinsed it, and watched the bright red of his blood stain the water. Once it was clean again, she wound it around his torso, careful not to bump the head of the bolt. He would need a physic before long except they were miles from any village. The nearest was another two days walk away. But in the foothills, there would be others. The Cawkills were notorious for their honeycomb network of caves and gangs of bandits. At this point she felt they had far less to fear from bandits than the Hunter.
*
By noon, they reached the first of the caves. It was a shallow indent in the hillside evidently used by wild goats for shelter, for their droppings were scattered across the ground. Ari sat slumped against a rock while Katarin scanned the meadows below. They had not seen or heard the hound and his Hunter since morning but Katarin was sure they could not be far behind.
She turned to Ari and smoothed his matted hair away from his brow. He could not go on. His skin had a sickly pallor and his breath was sharp and shallow. She took the flask from inside his pocket and put it to his lips.
He smiled wanly and brushed the side of her cheek with his fingers.
‘You must go on,’ he said. ‘Leave me here.’
She felt a sudden flare of anger towards him. ‘I won’t leave you.’
He shifted his hand from her cheek to her belly. ‘If not for me, then for our child.’
It was as if she’d been sleeping and jolted awake from a falling dream. She wanted to deny the truth of those words but as soon as she heard them, she knew they were true. It explained the tenderness in her breasts, the tiredness and the absence of her menses which, in the worry of the last couple of weeks, she had forgotten to keep account of.
‘How would you know? I didn’t even-’
He smiled. ‘I just do.’
She sank beside him and rested her head on his chest. Tears began to roll down her cheeks. She wanted a child. Not just any child – his child, but not like this.
‘I’d give this babe away if it meant you could be well and whole.’
‘You can’t say that. You don’t know what it means to have a babe.’
‘I don’t care about it. I only care for you.’
‘Hush. You don’t mean it.’ He pulled her in closer, so she could feel his breath stirring her skin. ‘See, you must go on. I will stay and tell the Hunter you went back to the Keep. I’ll hold him here as long as I can.’
She began to sob. ‘I’m not leaving you. I’m not.’
He sighed, and she could sense he did not have the energy to quarrel.
‘I will strike a deal with the Hunter,’ she said, for she had heard the Hunter had a penchant for the cards, and often lost all his money at the gambling table. ‘My father has bonds in his safe and, aside from him, I am the only one who knows its combination. Now that he is gone, the fortune is rightfully mine.’ She did not tell Ari that family fortunes rarely passed straight from father to daughter. Except in rare circumstances, they were kept in trust by an intermediary caretaker, usually a husband.
Ari nodded, but did not look convinced.
Katarin rested her head upon Ari’s shoulder and stroked the lines of worry from his brow. In the last month, she had mapped the entirety of his body and come to think of its lands as an adjunct to hers. Not in a proprietory way – more like the beloved shores of an allied country. He was the wild south with the taste of nectar and spices on his lips, the potent loam of sun doused soil, vast grass plains, deep blue seas and crooked trees. A land as beautiful and different from hers as could be.
‘Tell me another story about your home,’ she said. ‘And the things we will do when we get there.’
‘Katarin-’
‘Tell me,’ she insisted, planting a kiss on his neck.
And so, he began a tale from his childhood, his breath short and laboured at times. He told her of the bobo tree that shielded the village with its overarching canopy, of the sweet fruits it dropped in the summer. He told her of the way his granddam's fingers wove flax as skilfully as she wove her stories. He brought the folk of his village to life, and she could almost picture them. All like Ari, tall and long-limbed with skin the colour of honey.
She knew they should keep moving, but sensed the vitality draining from Ari with every heart beat. If she left him, he would surely die by the Hunter’s hand. So she could not leave, even though he continued to beg it of her.
There was a small hope in her heart. For she hoped to gain the help of the Hunter to get Ari to a physic. With the lure of riches, she thought he just might do it. She could not plan further ahead than this. Nor did she care to. The entirety of her being was focused on the thought of keeping Ari alive.
She scanned the meadow below again, wondering what kept the Hunter. It would be a terrible irony if he’d been ambushed by bandits now. She sank against Ari again and checked his breathing. He had fallen asleep and the creases in his brow were smooth at last. She rested her head against his chest and placed a hand over the hollow of her own stomach, but she could not conjure any feeling of happiness. That was a luxury for a future Katarin, one who was far away from the shores of Dracodia.
Striking a Deal
The Hunter licked the grease from his fingers and tossed the bones of the plover into the fire. At his feet, the hound smacked its chops dolefully for it had not shared in the bounty. Whenever they were in pursuit, the hound was only ever given small slithers of jerky. This way its senses were kept sharp and keen.
The Hunter picked up the feathered remains of the plover, admiring its pretty speckles of cream and brown. So unlike the dull brown of Yawmouth’s coastal plover or the plain grey of its southern cousin. He knew a milliner who would give him a decent coin for such rare plumage. He pulled the best feathers off the discarded wing and put them under the band of his hat for safekeeping.
In the not too distant north, the Cawkill ranges rose like a series of geological warts. Knobbly, almost free of vegetation and filled with the promise of danger. He hoped his escapees would steer well clear of those ranges for he did not wish to trespass into bandit country. It was bad enough skimming the fringes of their territory.
He cast his eye to the valley below, where a stream glistened in the morning sunlight. The Hunter guessed the maiden and Beast would have travelled through the water as they had done several days before, except this time their progress would be slow - now that the Beast was wounded. And if they had gone this way, it would lead them perilously close to the Cawkills. For a moment he toyed with the idea of abandoning his quest. Why not harvest plover feathers instead? Chances were he could fetch almost as much gathering them as he could for the trouble of bringing in the Beast. Except, there was the matter of the maiden. He had not made a bargaining price for the return of the maiden and yet he was certain she would be of value to the County Downs. Even if she had been spoiled by a Beast.
As he contemplated the chase s
o far, it puzzled the Hunter that the couple had not made faster progress. By now they should have been in Yawmouth or even Kipping. The Beast’s speedy gait far outstripped the Hunter’s capacity to keep up and yet they barely stayed ahead of him. They’d had enough time to put many miles between them. And even though he was delayed at the outset, when Jogan’s eldest son waylaid him, he had still managed to catch up with them.
He kicked sand over the coals of the fire and picked up his crossbow. The hound snapped to attention and tentatively wagged its tail. With a click of his fingers, the Hunter set off, the hound bounding down the slope with its ears pricked forward and its snout held into the wind. As predicted, the hound headed for the stream.
The Hunter found the hound snuffling through the trampled grass on the edge of the stream, clearly less certain about the path of his quarry. The Hunter did not wait for the hound to lead, he waded into the shallows, sure that Beast and maiden would have travelled north – for this was the way to Kipping. The hound followed, picking the shallows when he could, paddling when the stream narrowed and became too deep.
After half a mile, the Hunter found what he’d been seeking: a clue to confirm his hunch. In the middle of the stream, a patch of white billowed with the current. He splashed through the water and rolled aside the large stone that pinned the fabric to the stream bed. When he drew it aloft, he noted that it was a woman’s overskirt and he pitched it onto the side of the bank.
Once more he pondered on his quarry. Why a maiden such as the Sia would throw aside her prospects to runaway with a Beast, he could not fathom. It would be a life of fear and running and any issue born of that union could never be safe.
By noon, the Hunter found evidence of crushed grass on the verge of the stream. This was where the Beast and the maiden had rested, he surmised. The hound scrambled up the bank, snuffling and snorting, aroused by the array of scents. The Hunter followed, noting bent grass stalks leading across the meadow towards the Cawkill ranges. He did not like this new turn of events one bit. Nobody in their right mind knowingly travelled into those hills and he was certain the maiden knew of their infamy. Was it another trick, he wondered? Perhaps it was a false trail and the couple had doubled back and followed the stream again. And yet he could see no sign of this. All the grass stalks bent in the same direction suggesting they had only travelled one way.
The hound, eager to follow the scent of the Beast, forged ahead, its tail a bobbing black baton amongst the tall grasses.
The Hunter followed uneasily. He felt conspicuous, traipsing out in the open. He much preferred the cover of forests.
For the next hour he climbed further into the foothills, his eyes peeled, looking for any sign of bandits. Every now and then, drops of blood stained the earth, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he found the couple.
In the end, he came upon them quite suddenly. They were sheltering under a shallow overhang pungent with the stench of wild goats. He felt a small sense of disappointment that the chase had ended in such an anticlimactic way. The Beast’s eyes were closed, his breathing shallow and a pallor of death clung to his once golden skin. The maiden on the other hand, had high colour in her cheeks and watched him warily. She looked like a wild thing herself, with rips in her underskirt, tangles in her hair and grime on her face.
‘You look long enough,’ she said, as the hound circled her and the Beast.
‘You know there are bandits in these hills,’ the Hunter replied.
The maiden ignored the statement. ‘I want to strike a deal with you.’
This, the Hunter had not expected. ‘What kind of deal?’
The Beasts eyes fluttered open, and he sat up, though it appeared to cost him much of his strength. ‘Don’t take Katarin back to the Keep. I will give myself up willingly to you. But you must let her go.’
The Hunter laughed. ‘As if you are in any position to make a bargain. Look at you. You can barely sit up. I give you an hour or two at best.’
‘Help us, and you may have many more riches than Senna Jogan has promised,’ Katarin said.
‘How?’ The Hunter asked. ‘You are without a house to protect you, and your father is said to be fodder for sharks.’
‘I am the heiress to a sizable fortune. I alone know the combination to my father’s safe and you may have all of it, except what we need to purchase a safe passage back to Baaran.’
The Hunter considered the offer for a moment. The Beast knew he was dying, but clearly the maiden had not yet faced this truth. Now that he knew of her fortunes, he realised her value. However, his commonsense overruled his greed. Her scheme was too uncertain. What if the safe had already been seized? Or sentries had been appointed to guard the fortunes until the young woman was suitably betrothed? No, it would be far better to bag the Beast’s head and bring her back to the Keep. That way he could claim his bounty for the Beast and demand a decent fee in return for pledging his silence about the spoiling of the maiden. Senna Worrel would then be free to marry her and take over her fortunes. In time, the maiden would possibly even come to see these days as a folly of youth. The Hunter withdrew a hollow reed from his pocket and blew through its centre to ensure it was clear. With his other hand he pulled a small concealed dart from the under rim of his hat. It was a dart tipped with a mild narcotic. Something he had picked up during one of his wins in the gambling den. He put the dart into the pipe.
‘What are you doing?’ Katarin asked. ‘Is that something for Ari. Will you help us then?
The Hunter did not answer. He did not want to drag a screeching wild thing back to the Keep. This way, she would be as docile and dull as a sheep.
The Beast had his eyes trained on the Hunter. He appeared to understand what was happening. He reached for Katarin’s hand and brought it to his lips. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said.
‘Why?’ Her voice rose several notches in pitch.
In the next instant she slumped over the Beasts body, loose like a doll.
The Beast winced but moved to hold the maiden in his arms. Tenderly he stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. He whispered something into her hair, and she murmured lightly, but did not awake.
Then with eyes as hard as flint, the Beast levelled them on the Hunter. ‘Do it now. Before she awakes. I want her to be spared from seeing this.’
‘As you wish,’ the Hunter said and reached for the sheathed knife he wore on his belt.
Farewell
As he, Sal and Lita waved farewell to Captain Wright and the Beasts, Yaron wondered what their fate would be. With Lita’s map, Captain Wright had explained they would bargain their passage onto a small trading vessel. These ships, he’d explained, usually only sailed Dracodia’s coastal waters - not through cowardice or lack of guile, but for the mere fact they could not afford navigational maps to take them safely across oceans.
The Captain told them he knew a merchant in Kipping who’d helped him before. It was this man the Captain planned to approach, with the promise of splitting the trading profits in exchange for the use of the ship. With the Beasts acting as crew, they would sail first to Moelibok, trading iron for whale oil, then down to Southern Scarn to pick up bales of premium wool, before setting sail across the equatorial ocean to Baaran. Though Yaron wished he could go with them, the scheme sounded risky. A map was a valuable commodity, and if the merchant proved unscrupulous, the Captain and the Beasts could be marched to the gallows. It also occurred to Yaron that the Captain held great store in the accuracy of Lita’s map. Though he granted she was clever, Yaron did not think he could trust Lita’s talent for visual recall as readily as Captain Wright had. Was it fearlessness or faith that gave him such confidence?
The previous night they had learned there were more than two thousand Beasts working the Shindalay mines. Life in the mines was brutally hard, and often short. The silver haired Beast, Malec, who could speak the most Dracodian, told them only two from his gang had been with him since the beginning. The rest had died of rockfall or
sickness and been replaced with new Beasts.
Meeting the Beasts had stirred up many memories for Yaron. Some of them happy and yet some of them quite sad. One memory in particular had haunted his dreams the last couple of nights. It was the image of a head on a spike, above the Keep’s battlements, being pecked hollow by crows.
Though the features of the head had been impossible to discern from the courtyard, or from the window in his nursery, young Yaron had learned soon enough to whom the head belonged. His nurse had told him that the head belonged to Ari, and that he had been punished because he left the Keep without permission. This had struck terror into Yaron’s heart, wondering what other punishments might be meted out for similar crimes. At the time, he recalled that he had left his tin soldiers out in the rain causing the toys to show signs of rust. Every time he heard footfall outside his door, he was certain someone was coming to give him his punishment. For days he had holed himself up in his room, climbing onto his wooden rocking horse, riding for all he was worth, wishing himself far away from the Keep. It was at this time his father became suddenly attentive, coming to the nursery each evening telling Yaron tales about his mama. The tales had flowed from his father like rain spilling over the eaves, washing away the cruel images of the head, for a while at least, because soon after falling asleep, Yaron would wake screaming, the head indelibly carved to the inside of his eyelids.
After three such nights, his father had brought a mattress into Yaron’s room, and calmed the small boy after each nightmare, telling further tales, as though they were a healing salve when applied liberally enough. These were the happy moments of this terrible period and though further tragedies followed, those tales were deeply embedded in Yaron’s memory.
‘Good luck and God Bless,’ Sal yelled as they watched the group disappear through the trees.