Brief satisfaction flashed in his eye. “Last time, they came a’blazing down from the north, figuring nothing could stand ’em off — but when we’re prepared in these mountains, there ain’t nothing can get in. This time they’re sneaking in quiet as they can, and they’ll win iff’n we don’t get to fighting.”
Blaine sat back a little and let the air run out of her body. Five generations earlier, at Annekteh Ridge, they’d had seers to point out the dangers — the Takers and Taken.
There were no seers in Shadow Hollers, now.
“Everyone thinks they were killed at Annekteh Ridge,” she said, her voice still hardly more than a whisper.
“Killing the Taken don’t do nothing but kill parts of the Annekteh,” Dacey said. “Not even that, if the annektehr can leave out before the Taken dies, and return to the Annekteh whole.” He ran a hand across the back of his neck, and that weary look was back. “But not many believed that. They wanted to think the Annekteh were kilt, and it was fussing over that that drove my family south. That’s why you’ve no seers up your way.”
“No,” she said, in borderline belligerence, “we’ve no seers. We haven’t, for a long time. We’ve been getting along, though.”
“For some time.” Dacey tipped his chair back so the front legs lifted off the ground. “But I seen the signs so I come on back, hoping I could help.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have any magic!”
“I did,” Dacey said, deceptively mild. “Which means I don’t. No one here does. The magic’s not strong like in your parts. My grandmother had the eye, but it weren’t common no more even then. Any longer, there ain’t anyone to do real seer things, like calling up visions a’purpose, reading things in the hills and the sky, having the knack and the learning to work potions and charms and protections. I wish I were a seer, and could tell which of those men at the camp had been Taken, but all my grandmother left me was her hounds, and that were a long time ago. I got seeings now and then, like I told you before.”
Something in Blaine didn’t want to know, and she was surprised when she asked it anyway. “Seeings?”
“Dream-like things,” he said. “Come night and day, don’t matter which.”
“I got dreams,” she whispered.
“Thought you might.” His smile held sympathy. “The magic’s coming back to Shadow Hollers, like Gran said it would. That’s what drew the Takers. You hearken that your brother didn’t see the Taker’s sky like you did? It comes to some people different than others. That’s why only some of our folks was seers in the first place.” He tipped the chair upright, ending what was for him an abnormally long conversation. “If you’ve got seeings, you’ll learn to sort ’em out from plain old dreams soon enough.”
But Blaine wasn’t ready to end this discussion, not yet. Not while she had him actually talking. She scooted forward on the bed, and Blue took it for invitation, sticking his heavy-boned head in her lap.
“Then what’re we gonna do?” She gave the dog a half-hearted shove and twitched her braid back behind her shoulder, out of his reach.
“We-ell,” Dacey said, rubbing his stubbly whiskered chin, “I’m going to have me a shave, handle a few chores around here. Then I’ve got to take a trip into town. My kin don’t have no more magic, but they still got lore. Might be I can learn something of use. Got to warn them, in any case, though the Annekteh ain’t got no call to come this way, not yet. Then we’ll circle back up to your home and get you back to your folks. And I ’spect soon after that, you all will have another Annekteh Ridge for your winter stories.”
Blaine shuddered. One Annekteh Ridge, kept far in the past, had definitely been enough for her.
~~~~~
Willum’s soft crying —
Blaine jerked up straight, cocking her head to the breeze.
Nothing. Since her talk with Dacey the day before, she’d been hearing —
Nothing.
One of the dogs, likely, making some soft protest about its perpetually hungry belly.
Blaine sighed and settled back into place on the moss and lichen-covered rock above Dacey’s covered spring, where she watched him soften the hides he’d had tanning while he was away. She’d seen fox, wildcat, beaver and wolf in the pile of pelts before him, and she’d already noticed, in the little shed behind the house, a stack of folded deerhide.
It seemed that Dacey and his dogs were very good at making a living for each other.
She hoped he was as good at dealing with the Annekteh.
Blaine sighed again and shifted her bony bottom against the rock, knowing she ought to offer her help...but pulling and stretching the dampened hides didn’t much appeal to her. Besides, to judge from the sweat standing out on Dacey’s upper lip, she wouldn’t have the strength to do much good. Not the strength she saw in his shoulders, bare of his shirt in the sunshine. She recalled their run together, the dash from the Takers, and suddenly recalled the feel of clutching his arms, when they’d only been trying to keep one another going.
Spirits. That was a thought worthy of Lenie. She blushed good and hard, and concentrated on other thoughts. More familiar ones...the way she felt out of place and useless. The worry that plagued her every thought, the wondering about —
Willum’s faint cry...
Dacey paused in his work, looking down at Mage, grinning a little at the dog’s sprawl-legged position.
How could he look so calm? So normal? How dare he?
Hot breath gusted down her neck.
Blaine squeaked, wrenching around so fast she almost lost her balance and fell off the rock.
Blue. Grinning, drooly Blue.
She scowled at him and pointedly turned around, refusing him a greeting. As if she wanted to encourage him! The other hounds surged down the hill behind her and split to flow around the blue ticked dog, yapping breathless little greetings to Dacey. They quickly settled — if only after Whimsy stepped on Mage and provoked his quick snap of ire — flopping to the ground, happy and panting, their tongues looking twice as long as their heads.
Blue lay down and slowly inched up beside Blaine, ignoring the fact that half his substantial body wouldn’t fit on the rock; he ended up draped over the side of the rock with two legs standing and two couchant. Blaine snorted at him and crossed her arms.
“One thing about a hound,” Dacey said, grinning at Blue, “they don’t spend too much time doting on you — but when they decide it’s time for a little loving, there ain’t nothing you can say about it.”
“I’ve noticed,” Blaine said dryly. To keep the dog from pushing his big slobbery mouth into her lap, she patted him. He lowered his head with a contented whfff, and was soon slumbering in his improbable position.
Impatience stirred anew. It was too homey, this little scene of Dacey working on furs and his dogs watching him. Too normal. Here she was, sitting on a rock in the cool spring sunshine, and her family was...what? Facing down Annekteh?
She needed to be doing something, anything. “Got any greens planted around here, or ought I to find your creek and pick ’em wild?”
Dacey held a raccoon pelt up for inspection. “Creek’s your best bet, but I got a patch. If it warn’t more weeds than mustards this year, you’d near be able to see it from there. Blue, go check the garden.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got him trained to pick your supper,” Blaine said, unable to keep the smart tone from her voice as the dog gave a rumbly groan and rose. “An’ do the other dogs plant it?”
Dacey laughed outright, a noise which took Blaine by surprise. Somehow she’d assumed that this taciturn man just...didn’t.
“That makes a pretty picture in my mind,” Dacey said. “But no, I done the planting, and do the picking, too. But I do have him check for rabbits and groundhogs of the evening — he likes that. Follow him an’ you’ll find the garden.”
Blue seemed pleased to find Blaine behind him, and waited, his tail slowly wagging, while she ducked inside to get a bucket. Then
he led her down a faint path through last year’s tall, dried sweet goldstalks, until they came to a small square garden spot filled with overgrown greens and weeds. Blaine stared skeptically at it.
It took some scrutiny, but she finally she spotted some lamb’s quarters and pokeweed along the outer edges of the garden, both still young and tender, the poke not yet purple with its poison. She could mix them along with the mustard greens and some early leeks, and then bread-fry the poke for poke sallet. She drifted down to the creek — Dacey’s mountains were enough like hers that she found it where she expected it — and discovered both jewelweed shoots and cowslip — enough greens to do them for a day of meals, and she’d be careful to cook that cowslip through. The hound, she noticed, had moved on to his own business and was searching the garden rows for the scent of furry interlopers.
The work didn’t last half long enough to keep her busy, or take near enough concentration to keep her from fretting. But at least when she returned to the cabin she had the chore of washing and cutting the greens — and it was nice finally to add some effort of her own to this venture. She poked around the cabin and found some lard, corn and wheat flour, and an egg beside the sink basin. Now where had he found an egg? Were there chickens around here somewhere, too?
Well, the hounds probably laid the eggs. They did everything else.
Blaine put the pone together and set it aside to wait on cooking until Dacey came in. It was late afternoon, and they’d not had a midday meal, so surely he’d look for something to eat soon. And it was time to get the woodstove going anyway, to keep off the chill of the early spring night.
When the fire was started and steady enough not to need constant adjustment of the draft, Blaine retired to the bed, curling up around herself to stare out the window. A reminder she wasn’t at home, that window was.
She’d be back home soon enough. Dacey had said they were going into town, and then the next day they would start back. She didn’t know what they’d find when they got there, but he had so much quiet purpose about the whole thing that, for now, she was inclined to trust his unspoken plans. For now. And tomorrow — well, seeing a new place, a new town — her first real town — was a lure to which she couldn’t help but respond.
The thick, wavy glass showed her Dacey’s distorted figure, and she uncurled from the bed. Maybe he’d tell her a little about the town over their meal. Maybe he’d even tell her a little about his family. Anything to keep her mind busy.
Anything.
~~~~~
Nekfehr’s annektehr could feel the man tremble inside, wrenching himself, if only momentarily, far enough apart from the Taker to do so. These hill folk might not know what was coming next, but Nekfehr did.
They thought to rebel. Of course they did. Just as Nekfehr’s home village — an insignificant, failing little Breeder village — had once thought to rebel, shortly after Nekfehr himself was taken from them.
If the Annekteh had realized that the woman belonged to one of their most useful vessels, they might not have used her as an example for the others.
But oh, his anguish had tasted fine, when he’d come across her body. And his despair, the torment when the annektehr had released him just enough to hold her, but not enough to take his own life as he so badly desired — for anything, anything, was preferable to serving the bastard Annekteh.
So thought Nekfehr, the Annekteh’s finest.
~~~~~
Rand stared warily at the men inside the hall, standing out in the meeting hall yard in the early evening drizzle, along with everyone else from the Hollers. So much for their suppers. Most of the children sat together, trading bits of their hastily wrapped meals. In front of the barn, two small, sturdy, hollow-bred horses snatched at wet grass, their flanks and shoulders steaming; they’d run from the head of one hollow to another, spreading the news of this meeting and then galloping on to let the word skip down the hollow from homestead to homestead.
The meeting hall itself was filled with the plainsmen; most of them were at their own evening meal, and the others were simply keeping dry. Only the leader and two other men, Annekteh-took both, were actually out in the yard with the locals. Rand had had no personal contact with these Taken, but he’d learned to identify them after a few moments of careful study. They often acted just as anyone else, but inevitably there came an odd moment when their expressions went vague, or their movements were awkward. For the most part, the Annekteh stayed with the same small group of men. Rand knew who they were, and so did everyone else.
But he had no idea what the gathering was about. He hadn’t heard of any incidents besides the one the day before, when a pair of Shadow Hollers men had managed not only to fell a tree at just the right wrong angle, but then to yell their warnings just a tad too late to save one of their overseers from a broken arm and who knows how many broken ribs. As far as Rand knew, their red-faced apologies and proclamations of distress had convinced the guards it had been an accident. At least, there had been no interrogations, not like the one he’d been through by Willum’s grave.
Rand realized that he was smiling — and that he was being watched. The chill that washed over him might have been the combination of rain on top of a long sweaty day...or maybe not. In any case, he was not smiling any longer.
Someone drifted up behind him; Rand barely turned his head to identify Nathan, a young man from the western edge of the Shadow Hollers territory. Lenie had turned his eye at one of the first of their enforced gatherings, and now Nathan had managed to partner himself with Rand in the timbering.
“Heard something today,” Nathan said, in the quiet but natural tones they’d all taken to using when they didn’t want to be either overheard or suspected.
Rand merely grunted in reply, his gaze on the one called Nekfehr; the man seemed distracted by something within the hall, and was naturally unconcerned by either the growing darkness or the continuing rain in which his slave labor stood.
“He ain’t like the others,” Nathan said; of course he was talking about the leader. “They say he’s mad.”
Rand glanced quickly back at Nathan, then at the leader, and another hard look at Nathan. Mad Annekteh? Or mad beneath the annkektehr within? But he fought to keep his curiosity from his face.
“Our guards was talking about it today. When I was getting water, ’member — they was all taking a break. The fellow even gives them the creeps, from the sound of it.”
“Why would he be madder’n any of the rest of ’em?” Or a better question — why weren’t they all mad.... Rand shuddered, thinking again of the moments by Willum’s grave.
Nathan’s voice lowered even further. “He weren’t ever supposed to be took. They got Breeder villages — they sounded right scornful of ’em, though. Them inside are used for Breeding, left alone otherwise. But Nekfehr, they Took anyway, once they found him. And when the village rose up agin it, the Takers done had him kill his family.” He let the words settle, heavier than the rain, not as easily shed.
“Spirits,” Rand said, eyeing the man, who had just made an imperious gesture to someone inside the hall. “Ain’t no little wonder he comes across so spooky.”
“Even the other Taken are some scairt of him, I think,” Nathan said, then abruptly shut up as Nekfehr’s attention turned on the group.
“We have something to discuss,” the man said. He moved out of the doorway with little regard for the rain that fell on his fine white linen shirt. From behind him, one of his two attendants discreetly settled a black cloak on his shoulders. That, too, seemed to go unnoticed. “I’m surprised this conversation is necessary, after the little demonstration I gave when we first arrived.”
Rand stiffened; he couldn’t help it. When the leader looked his way, he aimed his glare at the ground, but he didn’t try to school his face into bland respect. Willum, a little demonstration.
“My men seem to be having more accidents than usual. A sprain here, a stumble there, wayward falling trees...it adds up to something
I don’t like. For instance, there seem to be an unusual number of incidents with large animal snares.”
They’d almost lost a man the day before, to a bear trap. Pity; it had been so close. Pity, too, it had come on top of the tree-felling, for that pointed to plotting amongst them.
But the Annekteh would find no collusion in the hollows. There was none. They knew better — it only took catching one, Taking one, to get the lot of them in trouble. So there was merely an unspoken, gritty determination to undermine these invaders. So far they’d done a surprising amount of damage. Minor damage, of course, but even the little things began to add up.
“Do you really want us to start random checks on you people?” the leader asked, inserting true surprise into his voice. Sometimes, Rand reflected, he sounded almost human.
On the other side of the gathering, a thin, undersized youth with full-sized ears flashed a look of panic. He was flanked by two others of about the same age, Blaine’s age. One was a strapping boy, larger in height and girth than Rand himself; the other was unremarkable, aside from a certain expression of adult determination, and had some of the awkwardness of a boy not yet come into full growth. They exchanged scowls; the larger boy nudged their skittish companion, an understated but urgent gesture.
“Ah, I see someone has something to say.” There was that odd moment of hesitation, while the leader seemed to be listening to something none of the others could hear. “Estus, is it?”
The smaller boy seemed to steel himself. His voice was thin. “Yessir.”
“Do you know something about the snares and traps? Perhaps why they seem to be in such annoying locations? Perhaps, even, who is doing it?”
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