There was a startled moment of recognition as the lieutenant realized whom he faced. They stood in a tense island of stillness amidst the chaos as it dawned on the officer that he was vastly overmatched. It did not stop him attacking. Neither did it save him. Tarja parried his strike and countered it so effortlessly that he wondered for a moment at the dwindling standards of the Defenders. The man should never have made it to lieutenant. He would never make it to captain.
It had taken only moments, but the sergeant of the troop called the retreat before the carnage got any worse. Tarja recognized him. A battle-hardened man with more skirmishes behind him than his dead lieutenant had years. The Defenders were hampered by the tight quarters, the screaming civilians, and the fact that the men they faced seemed to care little if they lived or died. He ordered his troops back, and they battled their way to the door, fighting off both the men in the tavern who had leaped into the fight and the women who were hurling mugs, plates, and food at them, screaming hysterically. As the last Defender withdrew, Tarja lowered his sword and leaned on it, his chest heaving as he looked at the carnage that surrounded him. There would be no mercy for them now. R’shiel was climbing to her feet near the kitchen door. She looked angry. The rage she nursed against Joyhinia and anything to do with her was back and burning ferociously.
“Did you see them run!” cried the young man who had caught the sword, his eyes glittering. He stood on one of the few tables left standing, brandishing the weapon bravely. The letdown would come later, Tarja knew, when his blood had cooled and he had time to consider his own mortality. “We made them run!”
“They retreated because the fight was pointless,” Tarja said, wiping his blade off before he replaced it in its scabbard. “If you’ve any brains, you’ll do the same thing. They’ll be back, and next time they’ll be prepared for resistance.”
“I fought them off once!” the lad boasted. “The next time—”
“The next time they will cut your throat for being a fool, Ghari,” the tavern keeper snapped. He was sitting on the floor, cradling the head of the child in his lap, tears streaming down his cheeks. He looked at Tarja, his eyes bitter. “I thank you for your intervention, sir, but I fear you have made things worse. They will be back.”
Tarja squatted down beside the older man. “If you’ve done nothing to be guilty about, then the Defenders will be reasonable.”
The man shook his head. “How little you know them, sir. There was a time when that might have been the case, but not now. My son attacked a Defender. That is all the proof of guilt they need. Jelanna cannot protect us now.”
Jelanna. The pagan Goddess of Fertility. “Then you really are heathens,” he said, with the bitter irony of knowing that he had killed Defenders to protect a heathen. He glanced up and looked at R’shiel, but her expression was unreadable.
“When this is justice according to the Sisters of the Blade,” the man retorted, stroking the fair hair of his dead son, “do you blame us?”
Tarja didn’t answer. Everything he believed in had taught him that the heathens were a danger to Medalon. He had spent a large part of his adult life stamping out pagan cults. He had never expected to find himself fighting to protect them.
“What will you do?” R’shiel asked, picking her way through the wreckage toward them.
“Flee,” the man said with a shrug, looking around at the ruins of his tavern. The cries of the wounded settled over the taproom like a blanket of misery. A woman in the corner was making an attempt to right some of the overturned stools. Others just stared, aghast at what had happened. “What else can we do?”
“Do you have somewhere to go?”
The old man nodded. “Some of us have families in other villages who will take us in. Others, like young Ghari and Mandah there, are far from home. It is the ones like them I fear for. They are the ones the Defenders will hunt down first.”
Tarja nodded in agreement. Joyhinia might want every heathen in the country destroyed, but the Defenders would do it their way. They would take out the dangerous ones first. Those who were young and hot-headed enough to resist. The Defenders might be acting under spurious orders, but it had not rendered them stupid.
The man clutched at Tarja’s arm suddenly, his grip painfully tight. “You could help them. You could lead them to safety.”
“There is no safety for your kind in Medalon,” Tarja pointed out, rather more harshly than he had intended. “The Sisterhood will destroy you.”
The tavern keeper shook his head. “No, the demon child comes. He will save us. Jelanna has given us a sign.”
Tarja stood up and glared at the man. “Jelanna could write it across the sky in blood, old man; that still won’t make it true. Forget this nonsense and get away while you can.”
“Are you afraid of the demon child?” Ghari challenged.
“No, we just don’t believe fairy stories,” R’shiel said. “And neither would you if you had any brains.”
“If you had any faith, you would know the truth of it,” the young heathen retorted. “Jelanna protects us.”
“Really?” R’shiel asked cynically. “I didn’t see her doing much to aid you this night.”
“But she has,” a female voice said behind him. Tarja turned to find a young, fair-haired woman standing behind him. She looked enough like Ghari to be his sister, with the same hair and pale green eyes. “The gods do not always work in the way we expect them to. Jelanna brought you here, Captain, to aid us.”
Tarja stilled warily as she addressed him by rank. “You mistake me for someone else. I have no rank.”
“You are Tarja Tenragan, Captain of the Defenders and the son of the First Sister. You and your sister are on the run, and there is a price on both your heads. Your presence here will distract the Defenders. They will ignore a simple cult of heathens for the chance to capture either of you. By bringing you here, Jelanna has, therefore, protected us.”
Tarja turned from her and discovered Ghari and the others staring at him, open-mouthed.
“You are Tarja Tenragan?” Ghari asked in a tone that bordered on awe.
“I am nobody,” Tarja countered. “Stay and face the Defenders if you must. We’re leaving. Unless your goddess has made you impervious to steel, you might think about doing the same.”
“We can help you,” the young woman said. “If you will help us.”
Tarja gripped the hilt of his sword as he glared at her. “Help you? As you so accurately pointed out, our presence will draw the Defenders’ attention from your cult. Haven’t we done enough?”
She stepped closer and looked up at him. “What you see here is nothing, Captain. This same scene is enacted every night in villages across Medalon. People are dying. Your people. Heathen and atheist alike. And what are you two planning to do? Ride south and live the high life in Hythria or Fardohnya, maybe? While your people are slaughtered by a woman who kills to assure nothing more than the consolidation of her own power?”
Tarja studied the young woman for a moment, wondering how a simple villager could glean so much from gossip and rumor.
“I was a Novice,” she said, as if she understood his unasked question. “For a while. Until I saw the truth about the Sisterhood. I was a couple of years ahead of you, R’shiel.”
He glanced at R’shiel who nodded slightly. “I remember. You were expelled.”
“That’s when I embraced the old ways.”
“Just what is it you expect of us?” he asked her.
“Teach us to fight!” Ghari declared enthusiastically.
The young woman held up her hand to restrain her brother. “Ghari, you talk too much.”
“But Mandah!”
Mandah turned back to them. “You could teach us how to resist.”
“If I had a hundred years, I could not teach your heathen farmers how to fight like the Defenders.”
“Most of our people have no wish to fight, Captain,” she said. “But you know the Defenders, and R’shiel knows
the Sisterhood. You know how they operate. You know their strategies. Armed with that information, our people would be able to protect themselves.”
“You are asking us to betray them,” Tarja said.
“You deserted the Defenders and just killed three of them,” Ghari pointed out. “I’d say you crossed that stream a long time ago.”
Tarja shook his head. “You’ll have to fight your own battles.”
Mandah nodded understandingly and stood back as he strode through the debris to collect their saddlebags. R’shiel stood looking at the young woman, then followed him to the door. Mandah said nothing. He had jerked the door open, kicking a broken stool out of the way when her voice stopped them.
“Captain. R’shiel.”
Tarja glanced over his shoulder at her. The other men and women in the room watched them expectantly.
“What?”
“The Purge that destroyed the Harshini killed a thousand men, women, and children. It lasted a little over ten years. This one has been going on for three months and it has already taken more lives than that. The woman responsible is your mother. I hope you sleep well at night.”
“She’s not my mother,” R’shiel retorted.
He slammed the door behind them as they walked away.
chapter 18
Getting into Reddingdale had been easy. Getting out was a different matter entirely. They crossed the dark street to the Livery where their horses were stabled to the sounds of shouted orders further down the road. They did not have long, he knew. The sergeant had recognized them, and word of their presence in the town would have already reached the other troops. The men who had raided the inn were only a small part of a much larger force, which was unlikely to be under the command of another raw lieutenant. Telling the drowsy stableboy to go back to sleep, they saddled their horses quickly in the dim light cast by a shielded lantern and led them to the door.
Dousing the lantern, he opened the stable door fractionally, glancing into the street. Although he could not see anything in his limited line of sight, he could hear the Defenders moving toward the inn. The officer in charge called out an order to move up. Tarja cursed silently as he recognized the voice. Nheal Alcarnen was a friend, or had been once. They had served together on the border for a time. Tarja had no wish to confront him, no wish to kill him, and certainly no wish to be killed by him. As he pulled back into the stable, a figure detached itself from the shadows by the inn and ran across the muddy street toward him, slipping past him and into the stable as he pushed the door shut.
“You can’t escape that way,” Mandah warned as she pushed back the hood of her cape.
“You should be more concerned with yourself, than us,” Tarja whispered.
“Our people will be safe.”
“Jelanna’s looking out for them, I suppose?” R’shiel muttered.
“Jelanna taught us to honor her and the other gods, believe in them faithfully, and to build an escape tunnel through the cellar. My friends are well clear of the inn by now.”
“So, you heathens aren’t as helpless as you look.”
“We are still human, Captain,” she replied. “We simply choose to believe in the forces of nature, not man. We believe that humans should embrace the forces of the natural world, rather than—”
“Convince him some other time,” R’shiel interrupted as the sound of the advancing troop drew nearer. Doors slammed and angry shouts erupted as the Defenders checked the houses and stores on either side of the street. Nheal was an experienced captain. He was too adept to leave his rear exposed as he moved on the inn, even if his attackers might be little more than angry storekeepers. It was a maxim to the Defenders, drummed into Cadets from their first day: A weapon without a man is not dangerous; any man with a weapon is. They had only minutes before they reached the inn. “Jelanna didn’t happen to tell you to build an escape route out of here too, did she?”
“If I show you the way out of here, I place my friends at great risk. I cannot take such a risk unless there is something in it for us.”
Tarja frowned. “That’s blackmail.”
Mandah met his gaze, unconcerned by the sound of the advancing Defenders or by their imminent danger of arrest. “Not at all, Captain. The choice is yours. Escape or capture.”
Tarja wavered with indecision for a moment. He looked over her shoulder at R’shiel who shrugged, as if to say they had little choice in the matter and no time to argue about it. “All right, show us the way out.”
“And you will help us?” she asked, refusing to act until she had his promise.
“Yes!” he snapped. “Now move it!”
But it was too late. The door rattled as a Defender tried the latch. A fist pounded heavily on the door, waking the stableboy, who staggered toward the door, staring at them owlishly for a moment as he reached for the locking bar. Mandah pushed R’shiel toward the ladder that led to the loft.
“Quickly!” she hissed. “Up there!”
R’shiel kicked their saddlebags under the nearest stall and then scrambled up the ladder as Mandah grabbed Tarja’s arm and pulled him toward the first stall, pushing him so hard he landed on his back. She tore open her blouse and literally threw herself on top of him, kissing him furiously. Startled, it took a moment for Tarja to realize what she was doing.
By the time he had the presence of mind to kiss her back, the Defenders were inside.
Mandah screamed piercingly as a red-coated trooper peered into the stable, holding a torch high above his head. She allowed him a good long look at her generous pale breasts before she snatched up her skirts to cover herself, effectively hiding Tarja’s face in the process.
“What have we got here, then?” the Defender asked. He sounded like an older man.
“Get out!” Mandah screamed, then she burst into tears. “Oh! Please don’t tell my mother, sir! I love Robbie! Really I do! He loves me too! Tell him, Robbie!” She poked him under her skirts and he squawked with the sharp pain.
“I’ll not tell your mother, lassie,” the Defender said. “We’re lookin‘ for a deserter. Tall chap with dark hair. Dangerous lookin’ fella, he is. Got a redhead with him, near tall as him and very pretty. They were around here tonight.”
“Tall, you say? With dark hair?” she asked thoughtfully. “And redhead?”
“Aye, that’s our pair.”
“Then I saw them!” she cried, poking Tarja painfully in the ribs again. “We saw them, didn’t we Robbie? Don’t you remember? They were here! They ran off when they heard you coming!”
“How long ago?” the trooper demanded.
Mandah thought for a moment, letting the skirt drop a little so that there was more flesh than was decent visible in the flickering torchlight.
“Well, Robbie and I had already... you know... once... and it was a bit before that. Half an hour, maybe? I think they went that way,” she added, pointing east, away from the river.
The Defender nodded and turned to the saddled and patiently waiting horses with a shout. Defenders swarmed around the entrance to the stables as the beasts were led outside. Nheal’s voice rose over the others as he issued his orders, which carried clearly to Tarja, even buried under the weight of Mandah, who still sat astride him, and the smothering skirts that concealed him.
“They’re on foot!” Nheal informed his men. “And about half an hour ahead of us! Sergeant Brellon, check what’s left of the tavern. The rest of you with me!” The thunder of hooves made the ground tremble, even in the stable, as the Defenders rode off in pursuit of their quarry.
“Sir!” Mandah called as the Defender turned away to join his Company. Tarja bit back an exasperated sigh. Now what was she doing? The man was leaving! Don’t call him back, he pleaded silently. “You won’t tell my... anyone... about us, will you?” she asked sheepishly. “Ma doesn’t like Robbie much, you see. But once he’s finished his apprenticeship...”
“No, lass, your secret’s safe with me,” the Defender chuckled. “Good luck to y
ou. To you and Robbie.”
Tarja raised an arm in salute as Mandah pulled the skirts off his face, threw herself down again, and resumed kissing him fervently. She did not stop until she was certain the Defenders had left the stable.
There were three boats docked at Reddingdale’s small wooden jetty that jutted out bravely into the dark waters of the mighty Glass River. The river was broad and deep but riddled with tricky currents that could lure the unwary into disaster. No one sailed the Glass River at night by choice. Lanterns bobbed in the darkness, their reflection poking holes in the black glass of the river’s surface. Mandah motioned Tarja and R’shiel to silence as they waited in the alley beside the chandler’s store for the Defender on guard to march to the far end of his beat. As soon as his back was turned, they ran in a low crouch toward the boats.
The first two boats were Medalonian barges, with distinctive shallow drafts designed for navigating the tributaries of the Glass River. The third boat, tied up at the far end of the jetty, was Fardohnyan. It was to this boat that Mandah led them. As they jumped aboard, Tarja noted with surprise that the sky was beginning to lighten. They had spent all night working their way toward the docks with the young heathen woman. She had said barely a word in that time, motioning them to follow with hand signals or a look. Since climbing off him in the stable and unselfconsciously lacing her blouse, ignoring R’shiel’s speculative gaze, she had been all business. Tarja found himself somewhat bemused by the young woman. And more than a little angry at her. She had extracted a promise from him that he had never wanted to make and showed no remorse at all for the way she had gone about it.
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