A sense of creeping darkness, of dread, made him pause. He had felt such but once afore. Cianan moved down the hallway to a narrow, dark stairwell leading down. Grabbing the burning torch at the entry, he started down the steep winding stairs. It got damper and mustier as he descended, until the air became nigh unbreathable. There were no guards. But he heard something moving around somewhere below him, the weight of many souls. The sharp, sour scent of fear, the darker stench of despair, crushed the breath right out of him.
Cianan reached the bottom. The dungeon. Horrific flashbacks of Safehold Keep assaulted his memory, visions of the demon in Jalad's consort Tegan twisting mortal men into giant ba-pef warriors. The same cold darkness, the same smell of damp stone and human waste. His still-sour stomach churned at the stench. He willed it to behave. He saw rows of iron-barred doors on either side of the corridor, gleaming in the light of a few torches. He peered through the first tiny slot. "Dracken rue! "
Visible to his elf-sight were three women and six children, huddled together in the corner for warmth. Dark matted hair, hopeless dark eyes, skeletal and filthy. The next cell held the same – drifter women of all ages, and children. And the next. No blankets, food or water. Fury quickened his steps. These were no criminals, so why did Sunniva hold them prisoner, and in such a manner?
Someone moved behind him.
"Well, well. So we meet again after all."
Surprise straightened his spine. Cianan took a deep breath and turned.
Chapter Four
Maleta cursed her decision to flee the paladin at the Broken Blade. What had come over her? She wasn't one to run from an unexpected challenge. She had no logical reason to bolt and every reason to stay. Where was her head? She'd used up most of her supplies, but had declined restocking at Nerthus' Abbey, thinking she could buy what she needed in town afore setting out after the Black Wolf once again. She preferred traveling light and swift to being overburdened with gear. Hunting had been poor, and now she paid for that impulsive decision to leave without restocking in town. Now she had nothing.
She crouched under the bare, tangled branches of a winterberry bush and drew a knife. She found the berries gone but the inner bark undisturbed. Not nutritious, but good for killing hunger pangs, at least for a while. She scraped away a couple of strips and surveyed the fog-shrouded gulch below her.
Typical of the land itself, the veil proved both blessing and curse. In the spring, hiding in such a low-lying area invited disaster, with the rains and flash floods. But late in the fall, with perpetual fog, it gave perfect cover. As a seasoned mercenary, the Wolf chose well, forsaking the high ground for the cover of the mists.
Maleta chewed one of the strips of bark. Grimacing at the bitter taste, she drew Hedda's Sword and eased her way down the steep rocky embankment. The constant dampness kept fallen leaves from crackling underfoot, but she couldn't avoid sending small pebbles tumbling with every step.
North or south? She crouched in the wet leaves and looked both ways. The Black Wolf lurked nearby; she felt it. North. With no breeze, just the clinging damp, there'd be no way to scent a campfire or cooking food until she stood on top of it, but there was naught she could do about that. She couldn't depend on sight or scent. Sound and sensing would have to do. She headed up the gulch. Step. Stop. Scan. Minutes felt like hours. With the cloud cover overhead and the mists swirling around her, she had no way to mark the passage of time. No way but the beating of her heart in her throat.
Something moved ahead. A bowstring twanged, but the mist saved her as an arrow hissed past to her right. She dropped to a crouch and froze, silent, watching but not seeing. Her heart pounded, making her dizzy. Sweat trickled into her eyes and she blinked it away. She strained to hear the slightest sound, a clue to his whereabouts.
A twig snapped somewhere in front of her. Maleta glanced around. There was no cover save the fog. She gripped the pommel of her sword tighter and held her breath, listening for the angle of the person's approach.
A shadow coalesced out of the mists, taking on the proportions of a man in dark leathers. Her ears caught the merest jingle of chain mail. She tensed. When he moved close enough for Maleta to judge his height by the thatch of grey hair atop his head, she charged. She swung her sword low, hoping to take his legs out from under him.
His sword blocked her crippling blow. Lightning-fast, he spun and swung at her neck. She dropped, rolled and thrust up toward his belly. He turned. The merc's chain mail deflected the blow aimed at the vulnerable spot below his breastplate.
The black wolf on that breastplate mocked her. But his wasn't the face of the Black Wolf, wasn't the face of the man she'd expected.
It proved a strange fight, silent save for harsh breathing and the ring of clashing weapons, a desperate dance of death in the fog. But his age seemed to catch up with him. His parries slowed a fraction. The campfire illuminated the fog in an eerie white glow. Maleta began forcing him back toward his own camp. He rushed and feinted, trying to get past her, but she stood her ground. Pressing, always forward, to the edge of his encampment. The spitted carcass of a coney rested over a sliver of a fire crackling in the center. Her nose registered wood smoke and the smell of roasting meat.
When the heel of his boot caught on a stray rock, his ankle turned. He buckled afore her. She knocked his blade aside and laid the burning edge of Hedda's Sword against his throat. Rage at what had been done to her family, to her, the need to kill him, choked her.
She felt him shudder at the touch of the consecrated Goddess-metal. Through the sword she felt all his sins rush back to haunt him. They weren't the sins she'd expected. The knowledge of his imminent execution lurked in his murky green eyes as he looked up at her from the frozen ground, but his voice remained matter-of-fact when he spoke. "Fact I'm not dead yet means you need answers, Hedda's Own."
He was the real Black Wolf. The sword wouldn't, couldn't, lie. More, he was Sunniva's cousin, Von Berend, a member of the Shamari royal family and the former Lord Marshall, himself accused and on the run from a paranoid woman who had her entire blood family killed to protect her grip on the throne. She felt the gaping wound in his soul where his heart used to be, empty but still bleeding. His losses were as grievous as her own. She'd lost her parents. He'd lost a wife and a son.
But who'd been the other man leading the invaders? The face in her nightmares? The one who'd...
"The Black Wolf killed my parents!" Maleta burst out, glaring down at the scarred, silver-haired man. She stopped, appalled at herself. What had she said? That was not Hedda's script!
Overhead, thunder rumbled.
Surprise sparked in his own eyes. "Who was your father?"
Tears burned, and her throat tightened until she had to force the words out. "Von Jereon of Kunigonde Keep. Six years back. Men wearing black wolf breastplates slit my mother's throat and beheaded my father. They – " She could go no further.
If he sensed the more to her story, his face gave no sign. "Ah, lass, my sins are indeed many, but not that one. I stood in Marcou on dock duty the day Kunigonde fell."
The distant memory came rushing back, her own voice asking her father at the dinner table, "'I thought he was spotted in Marcou? No one can be in two places at once.'"
Her knuckles whitened around the sword's pommel. Her voice shook now. "You lie. I saw your men. I saw the Black Wolf. "
"So I've heard." He shook his head. "Look at my breastplate, lass. Think back. Were theirs the same?"
She stared at the breastplate, at the insignia that had haunted her nightmares for years. Of course they were the... wait. The ears were different, and the teeth... "There were more teeth, and the ears were more pointed."
"You have to execute for the proper crime, Hedda's Own. You accuse me of the Kunigonde massacre. On yer own immortal soul, are you certain?" He stared at her. "I don't deny I've killed many, but not mine and not yours. Not me. Upon Hedda's justice, I swear it."
She flinched at the word massacre, stark and ug
ly, felt the truth vibrate up through the blade. The same truth reflected in his eyes. She lowered the sword and stepped back. "If not you, then who?" she demanded. "Why the elaborate ruse?"
"Think, lass." His rough voice was urgent. "Who stands the most to gain by control of Kunigonde Keep? By access to the south?"
Like a sword slicing through a curtain, the memory changed. The name that popped into her mind dropped her to her knees. Marigolds made of bronze, that cold imperious voice...
"Nay! Queen Sunniva wouldn't do that. My father was a noble man and loyal to the crown." She sheathed Hedda's Sword with shaking hands, chilled to the bone.
"There were rumors of dissatisfaction and questions in the south, possible rebellion," he argued. "Did your father ne'er have men over, meetings behind locked doors he ne'er spoke of?"
Maleta fought against those memories, of grim men and muffled angry voices, of her mother's white and anxious face.
"He made her doubt him, enough for her to kill him and take his more malleable son," the Wolf pressed. "If you're Jereon's daughter Marete, lass, you need to know your brother Jovan still lives. Sunniva's made your brother her ward. I saw him two weeks ago, in the winter palace in Soto."
Maleta barely remembered the time she responded to that name instead of the one she bore now. Her memories locked on the dark-haired Sunniva astride a big bay gelding, that hateful voice. "'Bring the boy to me... I'm going to take care of you.'" Memories of soldiers tearing Jovan from her arms flooded Maleta's mind. Watching Queen Sunniva ride off with Jovan, calling back over her shoulder, "'She's all yours. A bonus for a job well done.'"
Did Sunniva know? Really know? What manner of woman would allow, let alone order, the rape of another? A mere girl of sixteen?
Who was the man who'd impersonated the Black Wolf and led the attack?
Why would Sunniva take Jovan away? Why would Sunniva need Jovan alive but not Marete? Why not slaughter the entire family and move her troops in and be done with it?
"She rescued Jovan!" Maleta snarled. "She killed my parents and left me to the tender mercy of you – well, the man I'd always thought of as you." Her head still swam.
Unexpected sympathy shone in his murky green eyes. "How'd you survive?" he asked.
"A servant helped me escape." She wondered what had become of Ana, the housekeeper who'd snuck her underground, under the cellars to a secret room, then out through a vast bronze doorway, down a tunnel Maleta had never seen afore. To Nerthus' Abbey, at first, to heal, until Mother Tam had spirited her off to Mother Kitta. And Hedda.
"She kept the one she could control," he clarified. "For whatever reason, she needs your brother alive and well."
"What of my home?"
"It still stands nearly empty at the mouth of the pass, guarded by a minimal force of the army." The Wolf sat up. "You want justice? You want vengeance? It's Sunniva you want."
Her head spun. Jovan, alive? She felt hollow, gutted. To have captured her hated enemy, only to discover him innocent, negated her entire two-year search.
"You can get your brother back. Take him from Sunniva."
Horror crawled along her skin. She shivered, as cold within as the ground she knelt on. "Go against the queen!" Tracking a single man was one thing. Taking on Shamar's sovereign, with her army, guard and night watch, hundreds strong and fanatical enough to die for her, to the last breath of the last man... "She's too powerful! What can one person do?"
"An ordinary person? Nothing. I tried, once upon a time." The Wolf had the pragmatic bluntness of a professional soldier. He, too, was a victim of those fanatical men, who lived only to obey their queen. "An assassin? Hedda's Own? A Goddess against a mortal? I wouldn't put a brass farthing against Hedda, and I will not fight you." He rubbed his ankle. "Hungry?"
She nodded. "If you won't fight against me, will you fight for me? With me? Will you help me lead men against Sunniva?"
He snorted. "Why would I do a daft thing like that? I'm an old man planning on getting even older. It's all I have left."
"You're wrong," she told him. "Think of what she's done in your name. Have you no honor left? No pride in your name? You're a professional soldier, my lord. What about the pride of clearing your name, of fighting for a just cause? Help me rescue my brother."
"And do what?" he challenged. "Go where? There's nowhere you can take him my cousin won't find you."
Maleta ground her teeth. "Not if we kill Sunniva." Where had that thought come from? Once spoken, the words couldn't be taken back, but they sounded right. How had her mission turned so, into something different than she'd intended?
"And replace her with what?" He shook his shaggy head. "What you speak of is pure suicide." His eyes gleamed in the firelight as he reached out to turn the coney so it wouldn't burn. "How do you know I won't trot off to Sunniva and tell her of our little talk?"
"Because you won't. You're a soldier and a lord of this land, not a traitor."
"A traitor to whom? The crown? I already am, just by listening to you."
"To Shamar, and the people of Shamar. Asides, nothing I could do to you could begin to compare to what Hedda would do to you should you betray Her Own."
He paled.
"Think of what She'd think of the man who helped Her Own," Maleta cajoled. "How much more would the scales balance? Think about it."
An icy wind swept through her, stealing her breath for a moment. She glanced at the Wolf. He didn't seem to notice any change as he took the coney from the fire.
The thunder rumbled louder, but no lightning flashed.
* * * *
Deep in the underground dungeons, Cianan turned to face the same drifter man who had been cast out of the Green Lady on his first night in Shamar. "Why are you all down here?"
The giant man, now ragged and filthy, stared at Cianan through the bars on the door of his cell. "Sunniva's conscriptin' our men t' her armies. A handful of us got sick from her wine an' were locked down here with th' women an' children." Rage burned in those dark eyes. "She's starvin' us. Some of th' women have been down here for weeks. More are rounded up by th' night watch every week."
"I have to get you out." Cianan reached for the cell door handle.
"Nay!" The man steadied his voice with obvious effort. "Th' women an' children're too weak t' run an' Sunniva's men broke my leg afore they threw me down here."
"Then it is up to me to bring help from outside," Cianan decided. "But I am a stranger here. I know no one. Whom do I tell? Whom do I trust to aid against Sunniva?"
The man swallowed. "There's a camp not five leagues east of here. My brother's family. Speak t' them. Th' Shamaru gather for th' storytelling in but two weeks' time. It's Sunniva's best chance t' grab almost all th' remainin' Shamaru in one swoop."
"Whom do I say sent me?"
"My name's Andorjan. Look for a man called Dagonet. He's their protector. He'll know what t' do. Now go."
Every nerve screamed at Cianan to get these people out. The haunting faces of the children, the women... He had nightmares aplenty already. But practicality intervened. No way could he do it alone. Andorjan was right. They needed more help, and fast. "I shall find Dagonet. I give you my word." He hoped Kikeona was ready. "Partner?"
"There is a door at the top of the stairs you came down. I am waiting for you outside."
"I am on my way."
Kikeona's mind-touch turned urgent. "Hurry. Men approach the staircase. They know you are missing. They mean to check the prisoners."
"How many?"
"Three. Night watch, not guard."
Cianan grimaced. Best wait in the shadows under the staircase. They would have to descend the steps single-file, and while the first two kept Cianan occupied, the one in back could go for help. His one chance lay in coming at them from behind to prevent their escape. Ever.
He slipped back into the shadows and gripped his borrowed sword. Footsteps sounded above him, heading down the sanded stone. He laid the sword on the floor. It was too long for
what needed doing. Cianan's heart sank. Two sets of footsteps. They had left a guard at the top, in the corridor doorway. He slid a stolen knife and a double-edged throwing dirk from the belt. Close-in assassination was not his strong suit. He hated the feel of hot blood slipping over his hands, thick and sticky, the sounds and smells of dying. He preferred killing with his bow. Distant. Impersonal.
He wondered if the ghost had an easier time of it. The thought of a woman killer went against every code he knew. Mayhaps Hedda had different criteria, though.
The watchmen crept down the stairs, alert and cautious. Cianan waited while the first reached the bottom of the stairs, torch in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. The shadows would hide him for but a moment. The second watchman turned his head to scan the chamber, and Cianan threw the dirk through the man's right eye. He grabbed the first man from behind. Keeping one hand over the man's mouth, he slit his throat with brutal efficiency. Leaving both men where they fell, Cianan drew another dirk and leapt up onto the stairwell. The third watchman in the doorway turned at the sound and Cianan dropped him with another clean throw through his left eye.
All three down, quick and quiet.
The corridor was empty. "I am on my way out, partner."
"You may wish to hurry. I have company." Kikeona sounded more amused than worried.
Cianan frowned. "Of whom do you speak?"
"It seems someone is trying to steal me."
Cianan hurried down the corridor, reaching for the latch on the door to the outside. He drew a knife and stepped over the threshold.
Kikeona stood in the shadows of the stone wall, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight. "I would like you to meet Jana."
Cianan glanced to the right and looked down.
Chapter Five
"Go home, little one. This place is not safe for you." Cianan decided to waste precious time sneaking back to the Broken Blade for his gear. The would-be horse thief, Jana, a Shamaru girl no older than ten, trailed along behind him. He found her waiting on Kikeona's back when he emerged from the inn with his pack. Dusky skin, black curly hair that tumbled over her thin shoulders and big dark brown eyes. She possessed the appalling ability of a seer to see right through the seeming – and the even more appalling ability of a child to ask four questions at a time without pausing for breath.
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