by Jim Butcher
The Captain shook his head. “The storm last night was long and extremely violent. No one could remain out in it and live. I suppose it’s possible that someone skilled could have come in under it, if they could have gotten to cover quickly enough—”
“She could.” Fidelias cut off a reply with a wave of his hand. “The crows take Gaius and everyone with him. He always loved to show off. Even when creating distractions.”
“Someone’s a grumpy boy this morning,” Odiana murmured to Aldrick. The big swordsman debarked the litter and turned to lift the shapely woman lightly from it to the ground. The water witch gave Fidelias a smirk that fairly smoldered with sensuality and pressed herself against Aldrick’s side, beneath the curve of his arm. “One would think that he hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night, love.”
“Peace,” Aldrick rumbled, the thick fingers of one huge hand sliding over her mouth, a casual motion. The woman’s eyes closed, and she let out a happy sigh.
Fidelias ignored the barb from the woman and said to the Captain, “This is no time to get sloppy. Give the girl’s description to our men in Riva. If she comes through, stop her. Quietly. The same if any of the other Cursors I’ve described to you show themselves.”
The Captain nodded. “And what do I tell the men here?”
“The same. If you see someone unfamiliar in the air, kill them. It shouldn’t take me long to make contact with our source. Then we move.”
The Captain nodded. “We were fortunate to have the wind last night, sir. We were able to bring in more men than we thought would be available.”
“Fortunate.” Fidelias laughed and tried to ignore the tension burning in his stomach. “That wind brought the storm and with it one of the Crown’s own, Captain. I would not be so certain it was such a blessing.”
The Captain saluted stiffly and took a step back. He murmured something else to the air, then beckoned with a hand to the Knights supporting the poles of the litter. The men rose in a sudden column of rising wind and soared into the air and through the concealing underbelly of the clouds above within a few moments.
Aldrick waited until they were well gone to say, laconically, “You may have been a little hard on them. If the Crown wanted to craft someone into the Valley, nothing they could have done would have stopped him.”
“You don’t know Gaius,” Fidelias replied. “He is neither all-knowing nor infallible. We should have moved last night.”
“We’d have arrived amidst the storm,” the swordsman pointed out. “It could have killed us.”
“Yes, the nasty storm,” Odiana murmured. “And then, too, ex-Cursor, you would not have been given enough time to enjoy the pretty slave child.” The last few words of the sentence dripped with a kind of gloating glee. The woman smiled, her eyes sparkling, as Aldrick absently covered her mouth with his hand again. She bit at his fingers, letting out a soft growl, and the swordsman let her, a smile touching his mouth.
Fidelias stared hard at the water witch. She knew. He couldn’t be sure how much she knew, about Aquitaine’s wife and the aftermath of the dismal little scene the previous evening, but he could see knowledge glittering in her eyes.
His belly burned a bit more as he considered the possible consequences, should Aquitaine learn of his wife’s liaison with Fidelias. Aquitaine seemed the type to overlook the forest for the trees, at times, but he would surely have little patience with anyone who would risk humiliating him by lying with his wife. The few bites of biscuit Fidelias had managed to get down during the flight threatened to come hurtling up again. He kept the tension off of his face and thought that he would have to do something about the water witch: She was fast becoming a liability.
Fidelias gave her a flat, neutral little smile and said, “I think we should focus on the task at hand.”
“Seems pretty straightforward,” Aldrick commented. “Get on the horses. Ride to the meeting point. Talk to the savage. Ride out again.”
Fidelias glanced around and then murmured for Vamma to fetch the horses. The earth fury moved beneath his right foot, a stirring in the ground of acknowledgment, and vanished. “I don’t anticipate that the ride will be a problem. The savage might.”
Aldrick shrugged. “He won’t be a problem.”
The former Cursor began tugging on his riding gloves. “You think your sword will alter anything for him?”
“It can alter all sorts of things.”
Fidelias smiled. “He’s Marat. He isn’t human. They don’t think the same way we do.”
Aldrick squinted at him, almost frowning.
“He won’t be intimidated by you. He regards your sword as something dangerous—you’ll just be the soft, weak thing holding it.”
Aldrick’s expression didn’t change.
Fidelias sighed. “Look, Aldrick. The Marat don’t have the same notion of individuality that we do. Their whole culture is based around totems. Their tribes are built upon commonality of totem animals. If a man has a powerful totem, then he is a formidable man. But if the man has to hide behind his totem, instead of fighting beside it, then it makes him somewhat contemptible. They’ve called us the Dead Tribe. They regard armor and weaponry as our totem—dead earth. We hide behind our dead totems rather than going into battle beside them. Do you see?”
“No,” Aldrick stated. He slipped Odiana from his side and started to draw on his gloves, unconcerned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Not to you,” Fidelias said. “It makes perfect sense to a Marat.”
“Savages,” Aldrick commented. Odiana turned to the packs and drew his scabbarded sword from it. He held out his hand, without looking, and she slipped the weapon into it, then watched as the swordsman buckled it on. “What happens if he doesn’t cooperate?”
“Leave that to me,” Fidelias said.
Aldrick raised his eyebrows.
“I mean it. Keep your weapon at your side unless everything goes to the crows.”
“And if it does?”
“Kill everything that isn’t you, me, or the witch.”
Aldrick smiled.
“What do I do?” Odiana asked. Her duty to Aldrick done, she wandered a few paces away, drawing the toe of her shoe through the mud, lifting her heavier, warmer skirts enough to be able to study the buckles.
“Just keep an eye on the Marat. If you feel them get angry, warn us.”
Odiana frowned and looked up at Fidelias. She placed a hand on the shapely curve of one hip and said, “If Aldrick gets to kill someone, I should get to as well. It’s only fair.”
“Perhaps,” Fidelias said.
“I didn’t get to kill anyone last night. It’s my turn.”
“We’ll see.”
Odiana stamped her foot on the ground and folded her arms, scowling. “Aldrick!”
The big man went to her, taking off his cape and absently slipping it over her shoulders. The fabric could have wrapped around her twice. “Quiet, love. You know I’ll let you have what you want.”
She smiled up at him, winsome. “Truly?”
“Don’t I always.” He bent to the woman and kissed her, one arm pressing her against him. Her full lips parted willingly to his mouth, her body arching against his, and she reached up a hand to rake her nails through his hair, evidently delighted.
Fidelias rubbed at the bridge of his nose, where tension had begun to gather into a headache, and walked a short distance away. The horses arrived a moment later, nudged into a calm walk by Vamma and subtly guided over the ground. Fidelias called to the other two, who broke from their embrace only reluctantly, and the three saddled and mounted without further discussion.
As he had predicted, the ride passed uneventfully. Etan bounded along before them through the trees, the wood fury taking the form of a large, silent squirrel, always just far enough into the shadows to be seen only in faint outline. Fidelias followed the bounding, flickering shape of his fury without the need for conscious effort; he had been using Etan to track for him and guide him s
ince he was barely more than a boy.
They crossed the Crown causeway and rode north and east through barren woodland filled with ragged pine trees, brambles, and thorns, toward the glowering shape of mountain rising up several miles before them. The mountain, Fidelias remembered, as well as the pine barrens around it, had a bad reputation for being hostile to humans. Little wonderthe Marat had wanted a meeting near to what would be a safe area for his kind.
Fidelias flexed his right foot in the stirrup as he rode, frowning. The boot didn’t fit correctly without his knife in it. He felt a faint and bitter smile stretch his lips. The girl had been brighter than he’d given her credit for. She’d seen an opportunity and exploited it ruthlessly, just as she’d been taught to do. As her patriserus, he felt an undeniable stirring of pride in her accomplishment.
But as a professional, there was only a cold, tense frustration. She should have become an asset to his effort, and instead she had become a dangerously unknown factor in the play of events. If she was in the valley, there was no limit to how much havoc she could potentially wreak with his plans—and even if she wasn’t, the distraction of guarding against the possibility was nothing trivial in itself.
How would he disrupt the plan in motion, were he in her place?
Fidelias considered it. No. That would be the wrong approach. He preferred short, brutal solutions to such matters, the less complicated the better. Too much could go wrong with finesse in a situation like this.
Amara thought in a far less linear manner. The simplest solution would be to get to the nearest Steadholder, declare her status, and dragoon everyone she could lay her hands on into spreading word through the valley that some sort of mischief was abroad. In that event, he’d have several dozen woodcrafty holders roaming about the valley, and one of them would almost certainly see something and know it for what it was.
If she did that, identifying herself and her location, matters would be simpler. A swift stroke would remove her from the equation, and he could then muddy the waters until it was too late for the holders to stop matters from proceeding.
Amara would realize the danger of such a course, naturally. She would need to be more circumspect than that. Less linear. She would be improvising as she went along, while he would by necessity play the hunter, beating the bushes to force her to move and then acting swiftly to cut off anything she might attempt.
Fidelias smiled at the irony: It seemed they would both be playing to their strong suits. Well enough, then. The girl was talented, but inexperienced. She wouldn’t be the first person he had outmaneuvered and destroyed. She wouldn’t be the last.
A flicker of motion from Etan warned Fidelias that the three riders were not alone in the grey shadows of the woods. He drew his mount to a stop at once, lifting his hand to signal the others to do the same. There was silence there among the dimness of the evergreens, broken only by the breathing of the three horses, the drip of rainwater from the trees to the forest floor, and the soft sigh of cold northern wind.
Fidelias’s mount threw back its head and let out a short, shrill sound of fear. The other two horses picked up on it, heads lifted high and eyes wide and white. Odiana’s mount threw its head about and danced to one side, nervous and spooky. Fidelias reached out to Vamma at once, and the earth fury acted upon his will, spreading to the beasts around him the soothing calm of the deep earth. Fidelias felt the earth fury’s influence expand like a slow wave, until it rippled over the horses, stealing away the restless agitation and letting their riders bring the beasts once more under control.
“Something watches,” the water witch hissed. She drew her mount close to Aldrick’s side, her dark eyes glittering and agate-hard. “They are hungry.”
Aldrick pursed his lips, then put one hand on his sword. He didn’t otherwise straighten from the relaxed slouch he had maintained during the whole ride.
“Easy,” Fidelias murmured, putting a hand on his horse’s neck. “Let’s move forward. There’s a clearing just ahead. Let’s give ourselves some open space around us.”
They eased the horses forward into a clearing, and though the mounts were under control, they still tossed their heads restlessly, eyes and ears flicking about for some sign of whatever enemy they had scented.
Fidelias led them to the center of the clearing, though it scarcely gave them thirty feet on any side. The shadows fell thick through the trees, the wan grey light creating pools of shifting, fluid dimness between branch and bough.
He scanned the edges of the clearing until he spotted the vague outline of Etan’s form, the squirrel-like shape flickering around the edges of a patch of dimness. Then he nudged his horse forward a step and addressed it directly. “Show yourself. Come out to speak beneath the sun and the sky.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a shape within that dimness resolved itself into the form of a Marat and stepped forward into the clearing. He stood tall and relaxed, his pale hair worn in a long braid across his scalp and down the nape of his neck. Dark, wiry feathers had been worked into the braid. His wore a buckskin belt and loincloth about his hips and nothing more. He bore a hook-shaped knife in his right hand, gleaming like dark glass.
At his side paced a herdbane, one of the tall predator birds of the plains beyond. It more than matched the Marat in height, though its neck and legs were so thickly built with muscle as to seem stumpy and clumsy. Fidelias knew that they were not. The bird’s beak gleamed in tandem with the Marat’s knife, and the terrible, raking claws upon its feet scratched through the bed of damp pine needles covering the forest floor and tore at the earth beneath.
“You are not Atsurak,” Fidelias said. He kept his voice measured, clear, his speech almost rhythmic. “I seek him.”
“You seek Atsurak, Cho-vin of the Herdbane Tribe,” the Marat said, his own guttural voice in the same cadence. “I stand between you.”
“You must stand elsewhere.”
“That I will not do. You must go back.”
Fidelias shook his head. “That I will not do.”
“Then there will be blood,” the Marat said. His knife twitched, and the herdbane beside him let out a low, whistling hiss.
From behind Fidelias, Odiana murmured, “Ware. He is not alone.”
Fidelias followed Etan’s flickering, unseen guidance. “To our left and right, at right angles,” he murmured back to Aldrick.
“Aren’t you going to talk?” Aldrick asked, his voice a lazy drawl.
Fidelias reached up a hand to scratch at his neck, squintingat the Marat. “These three evidently disagree with their Cho-vin. Their chief. They aren’t interested in talking.”
Odiana let out a breathy, “Oh, goodie.”
The former Cursor gripped the hilt of the knife that hung at the back of his neck and whipped his arm forward and down. There was a flicker of grey light on steel, and then the spikelike throwing knife buried itself in the herdbane, its handle protruding from the bird’s head, just where its beak met its skull. The herdbane let out a scream and leapt into the air in a great spasm. It fell to the forest floor, screaming still, thrashing viciously in its agony.
From the left and right came a sudden shriek of sound, the war cries of the birds and their masters, one savage paired with a bird rushing the group from either side. Fidelias felt, more than saw, Aldrick slip to the ground and turn to face one pair, but he heard quite clearly the rasp of the man’s sword being drawn. Odiana murmured something under her breath, a soft, cooing sound.
The lead Marat rushed to the fallen herdbane’s side for a moment and then, with a decisive motion, ripped the hook-shaped knife over the bird’s throat. The herdbane let out a final, weak whistle and then shuddered to stillness on the ground as its blood stained the earth. Then the Marat turned toward Fidelias with his face set in a flat, murderous rage and flung himself at the former Cursor.
Fidelias barked a command to Vamma and flicked his hand in his attacker’s direction. The ground beneath the Marat bucked in response, thro
wing him to one side, sending him sprawling. Fidelias took the opportunity to dismount from his increasingly agitated horse and to draw the dagger from the sheath at his hip. The Marat regained its balance and rushed him, aiming to move past his opponent, raking the horrible knife along Fidelias’s belly in passing, disemboweling him.
Fidelias was familiar with the technique and countered by facing the Marat squarely, meeting his rush with one boot abruptly thrust out at the Marat’s knee. He felt his foot connect hard, and something snapped in the Marat’s leg. The Marat let out a squall and fell, whipping its knife at Fidelias’s thigh as it did. The Aleran pushed away from the Marat’s body in the same motion, pulling his leg clear a finger’s width ahead of the knife, then turned to face his opponent.
The Marat attempted to rise to his feet, only to have his knee buckle. He fell into the pine needles. Fidelias turned and walked toward the nearest tree, glancing back at the others as he did.
Aldrick stood at the edge of the clearing, facing out, his blade gripped and held parallel to the ground, his arm extended straight out to his side, an almost dancelike pose. Behind the swordsman lay a herdbane, its head missing, its body flopping and clawing wildly, evidently unaware of its own impending death. The Marat that had rushed Aldrick knelt on the forest floor, its head lowered and swaying, its hands pressing at its belly and stained with blood.
On the other side of the clearing, Odiana sat on her horse, humming quietly to herself. The ground in front of her had, it had seemed, quite abruptly transformed into bog. Neither Marat nor herdbane could be seen, but the silt and mud before her stirred vaguely, as though something thrashed unseen beneath its surface.
The water witch noticed him looking at her and commented, her tone warm, “I love the way the ground smells after a rain.”
Fidelias didn’t answer her. He reached up, instead, using his knife to make a deep cut, scoring a branch on the nearest tree. He broke it off and, as the others turned to watch him, put his knife away, took the heavy branch in both hands, and, from out of the lamed Marat’s knife reach, methodically clubbed him to death.