by Jim Butcher
“Come on, Isana,” Kord said, his voice more distant. “The collar’s not so bad. Once you put it on, you won’t have any more doubts. You can see the good part of it, too. I’ll do that for you.”
Isana swallowed, revolted, and debated her options. Simplest was to shout for help. There were hundreds of people within Garrison. Surely some would hear her.
Surely. But at the same time, she would be giving her position away to Kord. She did not know how long it might take help to break down the barred warehouse door, but it surely would not take Kord long to break her neck. Though it made her seethe with frustration, she could do little but remain silent and try to find a way to escape the warehouse or to deal with Kord directly. She crouched in the darkness and struggled to think of other options.
The ground rumbled and shook for perhaps a minute, and then there was a sudden round of cheers and blowing horns from outside. Useless. She didn’t know what had happened, but she would never be heard over that din. She had to find out where Kord was and either circle out to open the door or attack him herself—and that would be mad. Even if she could find him, he was far stronger than she. She could loose Rill on him, but what if she wasn’t fast enough? No, such a confrontation was a last desperate resort.
A calculated risk, then. She took a breath and tried to keep her voice monotone, droning, to better conceal the direction. “You think that will make me happy, Kord?”
His reply came from much nearer to her, perhaps down the same row of crates. “Once I get that on you, whatever I want makes you happy.”
“I suppose a man like you needs something like that,” she said, moving back, trying to circle around to another row to slip past him.
“Keep talking. Just going to make it sweeter when I get my hands on you.” His voice was on the move as well.
From outside, there was a series of shouts, a trembling in the ground, as of thousands of feet striking it. Horns blew the signals to engage, and Isana knew that the Garrison was under attack.
Kord spoke again, and his voice came from not ten feet away from her, in the darkness, so close that she could suddenly feel the cloud of rage and lust around him like a hot, stinking mist. “See there? Bigger fish to fry. Leaves me all alone with you.”
She didn’t dare reply. Instead, keeping her movements as quiet as she could, she moved across the row to the far side, to press against the crates there. If she strained, she could hear Kord moving slowly down the row of crates, within a long arm’s reach, now, but even more, she could sense him against her, the churning muck of his ugly emotions. It drew even with her, and she held her breath as it crept on past, the pressure on her senses slowly changing, as though something warm and moist brushed over her left cheek, then her mouth, then her right cheek, as Kord crept past.
But he hesitated there, and Isana held her own position. Had he sensed her, somehow? Did he know she was there?
“Smell you,” Kord murmured, his voice very close. “Smell you. Smells good. Makes me hungry.”
Isana held her breath.
He moved, sudden and fast, the sense of him flashing across her cheek, mouth, cheek again, as he moved back toward the door. She lost him after only a second. He had moved beyond the range of what her crafting could feel.
But it came to her, suddenly, that she had a weapon he did not. His fury might be able to lend him tremendous strength, but he would not be able to use it to see. His power could reach no farther than his own fingers. But she could use her own crafting to locate him, even in the total darkness, if her reach had been longer. How could she extend it?
By provoking him, she realized. By stoking his emotions to a brighter blaze, he would radiate them more strongly, make himself more easy to sense. Dangerous plan, indeed. But if she could pinpoint where he was, she could slip past him to the door and go for help.
She moved, first, back to the far end of the rows, picking another at random, before she started down it and lifted her voice again. “Do you know how we escaped, Kord?”
Kord let out a growling sound, now several yards away. “Some damn fool didn’t patch the roof right.”
“Were you too drunk to remember?” Isana taunted, gently. “You sent Aric to patch that roof.”
“No,” Kord growled. “Wouldn’t do that.”
“You did. You hit his face right there in front of me and made him.”
Kord’s voice answered, harsher, panting, moving closer. “Happens. It happens. I get mad. He understands.”
“No he doesn’t, Kord,” Isana said, even more quietly. “He helped us escape. He made holes in the roof so that meltwater would run in and give us our crafting back.”
“Lying bitch!” Kord snarled. His fist lashed out against one of the crates, and the solid wooden staves of its side broke with a heavy crunch. At the same time, fighting erupted from very nearby, somewhere just outside the warehouse, in the courtyard itself.
“He hates you, Kord. Did he come with you? Is he here helping you? You’ve got no sons, now, Kord. Nothing to come after you. Bittan is dead, and Aric despises you.”
“Shut up,” howled Kord. “Shut up before I break your lying head!”
And the sense of his anger, his mad, blazing rage, abruptly washed through the warehouse. Isana pleaded silently with Rill to leave her even more open than usual to the emotions.
She felt him. Exactly where that rage was. Ten feet away, on the next row of crates, and pacing swiftly toward her. Isana moved silently, trying to get past him and back to the door, but as she came even with him one row over, his steps stopped and he started reversing them toward the door.
“Oh no,” he growled. “No, that’s a trick. Make me mad and make me come chase you, then you run while I find that slave bitch and break her bitch neck and you get away. No, no. You aren’t smarter than me.”
Isana paced him silently, frustrated, unsure of how near she had to be to make him remain within the circle of her senses. She kept the row of crates between them, until they came to the end.
Kord stopped, and she felt the surge of hope and lust in him as well, as he inhaled through his nose. “Smell you, Isana. Smell your sweat. You’re scared.” She heard his knuckles crack. He stood opposite her, standing while she crouched. She reached out her hand and felt the stack of crates that was between them, one, two, three, four high, at least.
“Smell you,” Kord purred. “You’re close. Where are you?”
Isana made up her mind in a flash. She turned to the top crate, leaned against it, and pushed with all her strength. It felt like it took forever for the crate to tilt and then to fall, carrying the two beneath with it, but it could only have been a second. The crates fell, Kord let out a short, sharp cry, and there was a shockingly loud crushing, crunching sound of impact.
Isana scrambled back to the door of the warehouse, fumbling in the dark. She found the bolt and threw it back, then opened the door, letting in pale morning light, though the warehouse remained in the shadow of the walls. She turned and looked back inside.
Kord lay on his belly on the ground, the wooden crates over him. One of them had struck him between the shoulder blades, and still lay half on him, unbroken. The other had to have clipped his head, because there was blood on his face. It lay over to one side.
The last had landed on his lower back, buttocks, and thighs. It had broken open, revealing the cracked and broken forms of heavy slate tiles used on the roofs of the buildings in the garrison. Isana drew in a breath. The tiles were each made of a heavy fired ceramic, and each of the crates had to have weighed close to three hundred pounds.
She watched as Kord tried to move, straining. He snarled and muttered something, and the earth beneath him stirred weakly. He tried again, but could not get out from under the crates. He subsided to the floor again, panting, whimpering beneath his breath.
Isana walked over to him and stood looking down at him. She knelt and touched a fingertip to his temple, willing Rill to impress his condition upon her.
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br /> “Your legs are broken,” she said, tonelessly. “So is your hip. So is your back.” She felt a moment more. “And you’re exhausted. You must have been drawing on your fury to pursue us.” She drew her hand away. “You aren’t going anywhere, Kord.”
“Bitch,” he snarled, the sound weak. “Finish it. Get it over with.”
“Were you in my place, you would break my head open.” She picked up one of the heavy tiles, and ran a finger over its squared edge. Held up lengthwise and driven down, it could indeed break a skull. “Maybe with one of these. Crush my skull and kill me.”
“I had you beat,” he growled. “When I die, I’m going to be thinking of it. You in that circle scared out of your head. You just remember that.”
She stood up and dropped the slate. Then she walked down one of the rows.
“What are you doing?” he growled. “When I get out of here—”
Isana went to Odiana and took the woman’s hand. She lifted the woman to her feet, then covered her eyes with her hands. Odiana nodded, weakly, and hid her eyes in her own hands. Isana led her out, stepping wide around Kord, who struggled to grab at her ankles and failed.
“You aren’t getting out of here,” Isana said. “I only know of one person, offhand, who could treat your injuries in time to heal you, Kord. She isn’t inclined.”
Isana stopped and looked down at him, then stooped down. He clutched at her ankle, and she kicked his hand away with a contemptuous, “Stop that.” She grabbed his Steadholder chain and tore it off over his head. Then hit him with it, hard, across the mouth.
Kord stared up at her, the pain stunning him, robbing him of speech.
She spoke to him in a detached, clinical tone. “You don’t feel your injuries Kord. But you’ll never walk again. You’ll have to have someone clean you like an infant. I’m not sure you’ll be able to sit up without help.”
She turned and began to walk toward the entrance, leading Odiana with her. “But you will be able to face trial. Like that. Helpless. Stinking of your own waste. You’ll go to trial before the Count, and everyone in the Valley will see what you are. I’ll see to that. And then they’ll kill you for what you’ve done.”
Outside, deeper, louder horns began to blare, almost drowning out Kord’s sudden, vicious, pathetic sobs. “Isana! You stupid bitch, you can’t do this. You can’t do this!”
She swung shut the door behind them and said, “I can’t hear you, Kord.”
Then the battle swept over her, desperation and agony and wild exultation all blended together. She struggled to merely remain standing, and Odiana clung to her, helped her to keep her balance. The two watercrafters could barely manage to hobble from the warehouse to the quiet spot between one of the barracks. Isana’s newly opened senses that had served her so well in the darkness now incapacitated her, and she sank to the ground, to her knees, curling her arms up over her head while she tried to tune down some of the emotions that pounded in her. Dimly, she felt the ground shake again, heard the bellowing of some enormous beast, an equally enormous voice roaring a challenge.
By the time she lifted her head, Odiana was gone. Isana looked up to see one dirty foot vanishing up onto the roof of the barracks building. She shook her head, still dazed, and moved until she could see the wild chaos of the courtyard, and the gargant with its ferocious rider as it turned to flatten a Marat warrior beneath its feet in a sudden rush of fierce anger and swiftly fading pain.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, her eyes opening wider, lifting up to the gargant’s rider again, and his passengers. “Oh, child, what have you gotten yourself into. My Tavi.”
CHAPTER 42
Tavi swallowed, his hands tightening on Doroga’s belt. The gargant beneath them stirred restlessly, but other than that, the courtyard was nearly silent.
Bodies lay everywhere. Tavi tried not to look at them, but it seemed that everywhere he moved his eyes, someone had died. It was horrible. The bodies didn’t look like people should. They looked misshapen and wrong, as though some careless child had been playing with his wooden soldiers and idly thrown them away after breaking them. There was blood, and that made his belly shake, but more than that, there was a horrible sadness in seeing the torn and broken forms, Marat and Aleran, man and beast alike.
It seemed such a waste.
The courtyard had grown almost quiet. In the gate and spread in a loose half-circle around it were Atsurak and his Marat. Loosely grouped around the stables were the Aleran defenders, among them Amara and his uncle.
Atsurak stared at Doroga, and the big Marat’s eyes were flat with cool hatred.
Doroga faced Atsurak steadily. “Well, murderer?” Doroga demanded. “Will you face me in the Trial of Blood, or will you turn and lead your clan back to your lands?”
Atsurak lifted his chin once. “Come die then.”
Doroga’s teeth showed in a fierce smile. He turned back to Tavi behind him and rumbled, “Get down, young warrior. Be sure you tell your people what I said.”
Tavi looked up at Doroga and nodded. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
Doroga blinked at him. “I said that I would help you protect your family.” He shrugged. “A horde stands in the way. I did what is necessary to finish what I began. Climb down.”
Tavi nodded, and Doroga shook out the saddle cord. Fade swung down from the gargant’s broad back first and all but hovered beneath Tavi as the boy came down. Doroga barely used the strap, but landed lightly on the courtyard and stretched, tendons creaking. He spun the long-handled cudgel in his fingers and stepped toward Atsurak.
Tavi led Fade around Doroga’s gargant, stepping wide around its front legs and the wet splatter on the stones there. Tavi’s belly heaved about restlessly, and he swallowed, hurrying across the stones to his uncle.
“Tavi,” Bernard said, and enfolded the boy in a rib-creaking embrace. “Furies but I feared for you. And Fade, good man. You’re all right?”
Fade hooted in the affirmative. There was the sound of running footsteps, light on the stones, and Tavi felt his aunt Isana, unmistakably his aunt, even if he did not see her, wrap her arms around him and hug him tight to her. “Tavi,” she said. “Oh, Tavi. You’re all right.”
Tavi pressed up against his aunt and uncle for a moment and felt the tears in his eyes. He leaned against them and hugged them back. “I’m all right,” he heard himself saying. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”
Isana laughed and kissed his hair, his cheek. “Fade,” she said. “Thank the furies. You’re all right.”
After a moment, Amara said, “Bernard, they’re not looking. If we rush the hordemaster now, we can get to the knife.”
“No!” Tavi said, hurriedly. He freed himself from the embrace, looking at the Cursor. “No, you can’t. Doroga explained this to me. It’s a duel. You have to let him have it.”
Amara looked at him sharply. “What duel?”
“What knife?”
Amara frowned. “The knife proves one of the High Lords is behind this attack. We can catch him, if we recover it, and keep him from doing something like this again. What duel?”
Tavi tried to explain. “Doroga and Atsurak are both headman of their clans. They’re equals. Atsurak can’t order another clan to follow him as long as their headman stands up to him in a Trial of Blood — a duel, but no one had the courage to stand up to him before now. Doroga has challenged Atsurak’s decision to attack us, before all of the rest of the Marat. If he defeats him in the trial, then it breaks Atsurak’s power, and the Marat leave.”
“Just like that?” Amara demanded.
“Well, yes,” Tavi said, defensively. “If Doroga wins, it means that the Marat will understand that The One supports him and not Atsurak.”
“The one what?”
“The One,” Tavi said. “I think they think it’s some kind of fury that lives in the sun. When they have a big decision, they have a trial before The One. They believe in it completely.”
He felt his aunt
’s hand on his shoulder, and he turned to find her looking down at him earnestly. Her head tilted to one side. “What happened to you?”
“A lot, Auntie.”
She smiled, though there was a weary edge to it. “It shows. Are you sure you know what you’re saying?”
“Yes ma’am,” Tavi said. “I know.”
Isana looked at Bernard, who looked at Amara. The Cursor drew in a slow breath, her eyes in turn moving to Tavi. “Tavi,” she said, keeping her voice quiet. “Why did Doroga choose now to challenge this Atsurak?”
Tavi swallowed. “Um. Well, it’s kind of a long story. I’m not really sure I understand everything that happened myself. Doesn’t really matter, does it? If he’s here?”
Outside, there were high-pitched whistles sounding, and the frantic howls of the Marat and their beasts had subsided to a low rumble.
“Giraldi?” Amara called up to the battlements. “What’s happening?”
“Crows take me,” called a panting voice back from the walls above the gates. “The Marat were fighting one another,then they all started blowing whistles and falling back from the fighting. They’re drawing into tribes it looks like.”
“Thank you, Centurion.”
“Countess? Orders?”
“Hold the walls,” Amara responded, but her eyes went back to Tavi. “Do not attack unless first attacked.”
Tavi nodded to Amara. “This is what Doroga told me would happen. The Marat tribes fight all the time. They’re used to it. The whistles are to call a halt to fighting and let the headmen talk.”
Bernard blew out a breath and looked at Amara. “What do you think?”