She picked along the overgrown path, her thoughts flitting repeatedly to the knife in her knitting bag. The sky was heavy and gray in the evening light. Ahead, draped in moss, weeds and centuries, stood a statue knee deep in the forest floor. Its head and arms had broken off, leaving only a Fylking warrior’s muscled torso. Melisande paused beside it, resting a hand on its shoulder as if to gather strength. It said nothing.
She continued until the woods began to look familiar. As she neared the cottage, something rustled in the brush and then shot out into the open by the garden. Melisande stopped to catch her breath, her heart thumping. Pisskin. As she passed the barn, one of her new goats emerged and bleated for its supper. Melisande entered the clearing before the door. The snow had melted some over the day but still revealed the hoof prints that the horsemen had left behind. If anyone lurked around here, the cat wouldn’t have appeared to be let in. Self-serving creatures, cats.
Melisande entered the cottage, set down her things and moved to the table where she had left a flint box and a lamp. Pisskin yowled. Melisande lit the lamp and looked around. Perhaps the horsemen who came by that morning had been on a hunt and lost their way. The dragon warrior might have been her imagination, brought on by her dreams. Comforted by the thought, she kindled the coals in the stove and started a fire in the hearth.
A short time later, after she had fed the goats and cleared away the remains of her and Pisskin’s supper, she drew her new longknife from the knitting bag. The wool sheath slid away as she held the blade to the light. She felt foolish, letting bad dreams get the better of her. Then she envisioned her lover’s smile as she gave the gift to him—and what he would give her afterwards.
She put the knife away and went to her chair by the fire. Wind whispered in the chimney. It would snow again tonight. Pisskin jumped into her lap, circled about and then curled up and began to purr. Melisande stroked him, gazing at the flames in the hearth licking up into darkness. Riders. Hunters. Fylking. Knives. Othin, where are you? He had been delayed many times before on his patrols, and she knew not to depend on his prompt arrival. But recent events had left her in a strange, lonely place, far away from the swordsman’s touch.
Shortly after her mother died, her father, who had either intended or sensed his own end to follow quickly, had said her: You’ll want to find a man, Millie. You’re a good woman and you can’t just live up here all on your own like one of those statues.
Yarrow does it, she had returned, referring to the Blackthorn witch who lived alone in the Otter River Valley south of Odr. Melisande had never seen the crone accompanied by anyone, so she took the liberty of imagining the woman wise and free of drunken husbands and squalling babies. Not bothering to respond to her claim, her father returned to his whisky. She never could tell the difference between when he was drunk or just done talking.
Her feet began to tingle. Still petting the cat, she moved her other hand through the skeins of yarn piled into an old wooden slop bucket she kept beside the chair. Her last few projects had involved wintery colors of gray, white, green and black. Near the bottom she found a tangled wad of woad blue, the same color as a ranger’s cloak. As she touched it, the tingling ran up her legs and into her belly with a flutter. She took it out, set it by the cat and reached for the black yarn she had used to edge Damjan’s cloak. Pattern sense flowed into her fingers like a river breaking through the ice in spring.
She grabbed some white yarn, pulled out a pair of thin needles and began to cast on stitches.
~ * ~
A warrior on a gray horse thumped over the fresh snow, spruce boughs swaying with silvery restlessness in his wake. His horse moved strangely, as if it had too many legs. The rider wore exquisitely wrought mail of ash gray, black leggings and boots, and a mantle that covered his head and shoulders with feathery black. The hilts of two fine swords glinted above his shoulder. He reined in before the cottage and looked up, revealing the smooth, straight beak of a crow. His eyes glittered like stars.
Melisande stood in the snow in her bare feet, gazing up at the crow warrior like a child. He was beautiful, strange and vast, like a force of nature. He was not Fylking. Not Otherworld, either. He was beyond that.
Beware. The sound was the voice of the wind, his voice.
Melisande started awake as Pisskin jumped from her lap. Tail down, the cat slunk over the floor and up the ladder to the loft, vanishing into the shadows. Melisande sat up and rolled her neck to loosen a crick. In her lap she held a small swatch with a knitted image of a man in a blue cloak, hood covering his face, riding a black horse through the snow. In the background stood the dark green spruces that grew on the edge of the clearing before the cottage. She held it up to the lamplight. Had she just dreamed this? No, the rider in her dream looked like a hooded crow, and his horse was gray.
She rubbed her eyes. Yawning, she rolled the needles up into the swatch to bind it off later, and stuffed it into the pocket of her smock. She rose to put wood on the fire, casting a glance toward the loft. What had frightened the cat? Chilled by the thought, she knelt, reached for a piece of wood and put it onto the coals. Then she reached for another—and dropped it.
Voices.
Melisande picked up the wood and threw it on the hearth as someone banged on the door.
Beware.
There was no time to open the hatch door in the kitchen and get into the cellar; someone might see her through a window and then she would be trapped. She got up and moved across the room, brushing by the table where her knitting bag lay with the knife inside. It’s fit for one thing only, Damjan had said. Heart racing, she opened the door. Snow blew into the room on a gust of wind.
Two men stood there, clad and armed in familiar trappings of black and blue. Rangers. Melisande sagged with relief, but the edge had not left her nerves. Beware. What had the crow warrior meant by that?
“Evening,” one of the men said, carelessly touching his fingers to his brow in greeting. In his other hand he held a torch. At his shoulder, a black horse snorted and stomped a hoof in the snow. “We have news from Othin of Cae Forres. You his woman?”
“My name is Millie.” She knew she should invite them in from the cold, but her better sense wanted to slam the door and go for the knife. The second man took the horses’ reins and tied the beasts to a fence post. As he returned, he pushed back his hood. He had tousled blond hair and a scar on his cheek.
“May we come in?” the first man inquired, dark eyes shining from beneath his hood. He extinguished his torch in the snow, not waiting for an answer.
Melisande stepped aside, holding the door. Stupid dream, she thought, her heart racing. Tell them to put their horses in the barn? Offer them food? She rarely had guests, and when Othin came, he tended to have other things on his mind besides food and a place to hang his cloak. She felt like the cat, wary and resenting the intrusion.
The rangers came in, shaking and stomping snow from their cloaks and boots. Melisande took their things and hung them on the hooks by the door. As they drew near the fire, she said, “Are you hungry?”
The men exchanged glances. “We ate at the inn,” said the one with the black horse, his mouse-brown hair pulled back from his face into a tail bound with leather. He turned and faced her. “So. Where is he?”
Melisande blinked. Her relief that they weren’t staying for supper scattered like flushed birds. “Where is who? You said you had news of Othin.”
He raised his brow. “And that concerns you, does it?”
The scarred ranger’s gaze moved around the room and settled on the ladder to the loft. “Maybe he’s hiding up there.” He moved toward the table, circled it within reaching distance of the knife and started up.
“You dare!” Melisande gasped. She turned on the first man, her cheeks filling with heat. “What are you about? Who do you think is here?”
Upstairs, Pisskin growled and spat a hiss. After a moment, the blond man returned down the ladder, shaking his head.
The first
man stepped close, looking her over like a butcher inspecting a nice cut. “Your lover. Right rogue he is, mocking us and ignoring our hail. This is the second night we caught him coming here. No one in town has heard of him, so it’s obviously a secret.” A smile curled on his lips.
Melisande felt the blood drain from her face. Despite her foreboding, she had hoped that her imagination had created the image of the dragon warrior, and the men he led here. Apparently not. These men had seen him too. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“I think our brother Othin isn’t aware his woman is a spy and a whore,” the ranger said over his shoulder to his companion.
Melisande’s heart skipped a beat as heat grew in her pocket where she had put the swatch with the rider on it. Without thinking, she threw a right hook and cracked him in the jaw, whipping his head aside and putting him back a step.
The scarred ranger laughed. “Oh ho! Got us a mean one.”
The first man was not amused. With a hand on his jaw, he faced her with a cold expression of challenge. “That how you want to play?”
“Get out of my house. I swear I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” he challenged, tilting his head in mock interest. “Call your spy lover? Aye, do that. I’ll help you.” He made a brisk gesture at his companion. The other man snuffed the lamp and moved across the room to one of the windows. He pushed it open, letting in the cold. Before Melisande realized what they meant to do, the dark one struck her. The shock of the blow blanked her mind as she fell onto a chair near the table and tumbled to the floor. The ranger came down and dragged her out into the open, pinning her down. He had undone his belt and the laces of his breeches. “Let’s see if you’ll scream for me,” he growled through his teeth. Then he wrapped his fist in the linens at her throat and tore her smock and shift wide, grappling her breasts as he yanked her skirt up past her knees.
He was heavy and he was strong. He smelled like sweaty leather, horse and soot. Her cheek howling with pain, she struggled in his grip like an animal, kicking and clawing at anything she could hit. His breathing grew rough with lust as he wrestled her. She struck his face and clawed at his eyes, her fingers on fire. Growling a curse, he got her hands in a cruel grip and forced them up over her head. She cried out as he held her there, twisting her arms.
“That’s more like it,” the scarred man said from across the room.
It was no use telling them there was no lover and the one they had seen was a Fylking. She knew that now. But Melisande was no stranger to the things men were capable of when their passions were roused. As a girl she had spent many nights roaming the streets of the surrounding villages looking for her father in whatever tavern or ditch he had ended up in. Being pretty and somewhat unruly, she had found her share of trouble. But she never gave her sex to anyone she had not wanted to.
It seemed that was about to change. The ranger pressed a knee between her thighs to part her. His weight crushed the breath from her chest. Melisande tore one of her hands free, dug her fingers into his hair and yanked it hard to get his breath off her neck. He snarled with pain. Still holding her, he reached down to his thigh. She heard the whisper of a knife being drawn.
With all her strength, Melisande shoved him to that side, ramming a knee into his groin. She was too close to cause damage, but his instinctual reaction gained her a moment to get out from under him.
“Someone comes!” the blond ranger hissed.
Mad as a boar, the dark ranger ignored him. Melisande clambered up, grabbed the chair on the floor and swung it at him. He blocked it with his forearm, wrested it from her hands and threw it aside. She circled the table to put it between them, inching around for her knitting bag.
The ranger grasped the edge of the table and heaved it up and over, throwing everything on it along with Melisande into the shelves on the kitchen wall. The lamp shattered as the shelves collapsed, sending pots, pans, plates, cups and utensils crashing to the floor. The smell of lamp oil filled the air. The warrior came around and got between her and the knitting bag. So much for that. She wouldn’t be able to best a ranger with a knife even if she had it in her hand.
The blond man went outside, closing the door behind him.
As her assailant shoved the table aside to get at her, Melisande remembered the swatch in her pocket. She had knit a ranger while thinking about her love. But she had no yarn the color of Othin’s horse. She used black.
Black on snow. Pattern sense black.
She scrambled up and snatched the swatch from her pocket, every hair on her head raised and tingling. The ranger closed in on her, gripping his knife. Melisande stumbled back as a plate crunched beneath her foot. Then she slipped the needles from the loops, tossed them aside and pulled the hanging thread.
The ranger lunged, his face contorting in the firelight. Melisande’s bloody nail marks lay across his cheeks like whip marks. She retreated through the rubble of her kitchen until her back hit the yarn cabinet on the wall behind the ladder. She cowered there, clutching the knitted rider in one hand and pulling out stitches with the other, row after row, letting the curled yarn drag.
Something uncomfortable passed over the ranger’s face. His knife slipped from his grasp and clanked to the floor as he stopped and clutched his head on either side.
Melisande kept pulling.
He collapsed. Blood covered his hands. Keening in agony, he leaned forward, rocking on his knees. Melisande stopped pulling as he fell over with a choke, pots rattling and skittering away beneath him.
The door crashed open. “Millie!” Damjan came in with a sword bared and Bythe close behind. More men entered the clearing outside, their horses moving about behind them, torchlight blaring in the falling snow. Someone barked a command.
“Millie,” Damjan repeated.
The two men’s faces paled in the firelight as they took in the scene: the kitchen disaster, the ranger crumpled on the floor with blood seeping from his ears, nose and eyes, and Melisande, her face swelling with bruises, her smock torn asunder and her shaking hands holding a piece of knitting half undone and piled around her feet. She dropped it.
“By the gods,” Bythe said.
Moving the clutter on the floor aside with his boot, Damjan went to the body and checked for a pulse. Melisande knew he wouldn’t find one. Her knees buckled as nausea gripped her. She hit the floor on her hands and knees and retched, splattering bile.
Bythe came to her side. “Ah Millie,” he breathed. His blue eyes wide, the prominent lump on his throat jumped as he gulped. His thin hair glowed in the firelight. He drew forth a cloth from his tunic, wiped her mouth with it, and then removed his cloak and put it over her. Helping her up, he pulled the cloak around her protectively, supporting her as she limped to the chair by the fire.
Damjan went to the door and called out. He spoke in low tones. Two of his sons, Vinso and Anselm, came in and carried the ranger’s body out. The swordsmith stomped around in the mess as if looking for something. After a moment he returned and dropped her knitting bag at her feet. The silver pommel of her knife glinted inside.
Bythe put more wood on the fire. Then he went into the kitchen, turned the table over and began picking up. After a moment he came into the light holding the unraveled swatch cradled in wool, the second piece of evidence of a very bad day.
“There was another ranger,” Millie rasped, trying not to look at the swatch. She threw a glance at the window instead. “He’ll tell someone.”
“No he won’t,” Damjan assured her. “We’re holding him outside.” He knelt and spread his fingers over her face to inspect it. Then his gaze moved down with a warrior-dark expression. “Millie, did they—”
“That one tried to invade me,” she said, tossing her chin toward the kitchen where she had killed a man. “They said they had news of Othin.”
Damjan withdrew. “Othin took another patrol,” he said offhandedly, as if it were a small matter that rangers chose their patrols and Othin had chosen not to tak
e Ason Tae anymore.
He took another patrol. That meant Othin wouldn’t return, not in any time that would comfort her. She didn’t bother to question the information; obviously it was true or Othin would be here instead of a dead ranger and his wicked companion. But she couldn’t afford to think of it now. Trouble had found her.
“What happened here?” Damjan said. “Those rangers were looking for someone. That man out there claimed you’re harboring a spy. Why would he say that?”
Melisande shrugged. It was one thing to claim she saw a Fylking, another to claim he led rangers here to cause her harm. She had never heard of a Fylking doing anything like that. “They accused me of taking a lover. They thought to lure him out.”
“Who would you be spying for?” Bythe said, as if it had just occurred to him.
“How should I know?”
Damjan pursed his lips and said nothing.
Bythe held up the swatch. “You made this. How did you know?”
Melisande stared at the stitches ending across the rider’s head. “I knit it earlier.” Tears sprang into her eyes. “I was thinking about Othin. I don’t know how—I swear—”
“Millie,” Damjan said. “We won’t ask you how you did it. You’ve never brought anything but good to the Vale. You’re unharmed and that’s all that matters. But someone will ask. It’s a serious crime, killing a ranger.”
Melisande sat there, clutching her fingers, her heart pounding as this began to sink in. Othin had once told her that the King’s Rangers had to swear a vow on their swords, on pain of death, to protect the people of Dyrregin and never to harm them outside of their business of keeping order. He never mentioned what would happen to someone who brought harm to a ranger in return—probably because he didn’t have to. When the dead ranger’s lords got word of this, they would send someone to investigate. Even if they believed her story that the ranger had attacked her, they would not believe he had been drawn here by a Fylking or that she had killed him using pattern sense. Not once they had his scarred companion’s version of the tale.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 10