by Kirby Crow
Scarlet twisted aside and threw a punch aimed at Cadan's eye. It landed solid and Cadan's head snapped back. A small gash opened up on the soldier's left eyebrow and began to bleed freely. Cadan swiped at the blood with the back of his sleeve. His smile turned predatory as he raised his fists.
"You want to fight me, hill-brat?"
Scarlet dodged the first punch. The second impacted squarely on his chin and made his knees wobble.
"Hilurin whore,” Cadan jeered. “There are easier ways to get on your back."
Scarlet tried to hit him again, but Cadan swayed and ducked, evading the thrown punches easily. Cadan jabbed thrice with his right fist and connected all three times: hard, painful blows that made Scarlet's teeth click and his eyes water and his brain feel like it was a bean rattling in an empty gourd. One or two more and he would be unconscious.
He was not even trying to land a blow now, only trying to guard and stay on his feet as Cadan circled him with catlike steps.
Scarlet forced himself to face the facts: Cadan was bigger, stronger, and a far more skilled fighter than he was. He was not going to win this battle with his bare hands. There was only one chance.
Scarlet turned and bolted for the edge of the woods. He did not see Cadan's expression change, shifting into a fierce mask of hate like the were-beast in the tales of shapechangers, nor did he see the soldier sling the axe from his shoulder in a blur of movement and hurl it at his back.
The blunt side of the axe-head smashed high into the back of Scarlet's right shoulder, careening off the bone and leaving his arm numb and useless. He fell to his knees, a wave of excruciating pain forcing a cry from him, and then Cadan was on him. A strong arm wrapped around his neck, hauling him to his feet. The soldier's breath was hot on his throat.
"Don't make me run after you,” Cadan panted in his ear. “I've got a long day planned for us, wouldn't want to use up all my strength at once."
He struggled, slamming his boot-heel down on Cadan's instep, and the man released him with a roar and threw him down. Scarlet tried to scramble up and run. Cadan was there again, using his greater weight to force Scarlet back to the ground. Scarlet writhed under him, turning onto his back where he could throw a punch, but Cadan's hands were suddenly around his throat, cutting off his wind.
He could not get a good breath in his lungs. His knee sought to come up between Cadan's legs ineffectually, blocked by a sudden twist of Cadan's body. The fingers of his good hand clawed at Cadan's wrists, trying to tear the choking grip from his neck as the soldier straddled his waist. Cadan leaned his weight on his arms, his thumbs digging deep into soft tissue.
Scarlet was aware of wet snow trickling into his collar, the dull wave of agony that was his shoulder, and the panicked feeling of drowning. Air, he had to get air! Desperately, he clawed for the little dagger he kept in his belt, but it had not cleared the sheath when it was torn from his fingers. Cadan hurled it away, allowing Scarlet one loud, tortured breath before the life was being choked from him again. The soldier's body ground against him, and Scarlet was overwhelmed with disgust to feel the hard outline of Cadan's rigid phallus pressed against his hip.
His strength was ebbing. The world darkened at the edges little by little until the dawn began to fade like the last images of a dream. There was nothing but the cold and his own evaporating sense of fear. The last breath in his throat was like a spike of frost, but he felt calm, at peace, and wondered for a fleeting instant if the Otherworld would be anything like this one.
Then a bizarre sound intruded, an enraged roar like the baying of a wolf, and something crashed into them with the force of a storm, knocking Cadan off him. Scarlet rolled to his right, his injured shoulder taking the brunt of his weight, and a jolt of pain went through him like a hammer. He blacked out.
* * * *
"Get up,” Liall ordered Scarlet, his voice raw. “Get out."
Scarlet fled.
Liall watched Scarlet run, the mountain air rasping in his lungs like sand. He knew he would not see Scarlet again. If the pedlar ever chanced this road again, he would send Peysho to wave the pedlar through. Or even, he thought desperately, go down to the village myself and beg his pardon.
It was a silly thought. He knew he would do no such thing. The lad was right. Liall had abused Scarlet's pride and dismissed his way of life as worthless. All the slights he was angry at Scarlet for sending his way, Liall had committed first.
The tribesmen dispersed, muttering among themselves, but Peysho remained. He approached the atya warily.
"Liall?” he called, as a man will call a dog who had been acting strangely of late, while keeping a sharp axe behind his back against rabies or worse.
"Stop looking at me like the bride on her wedding night to the ogre,” Liall growled. “I am myself.” He began to sheath the dagger in his boot and halted, gazing at the blade that had frightened Scarlet so. He made a face of disgust and tossed it into a thicket of winter-bare bracken near some rocks. That was one blade he would not want to look at again.
"Ye should follow the lad down the path. Just to see him safe and all,” Peysho said.
He waved that away. “He'll be fine."
"Ye could've hurt him,” Peysho persisted. “The way ye were slashin’ at him ... ye could've cut ‘im bad and not even know it."
"He ran like he was healthy enough."
"All the same,” Peysho began stubbornly, and Liall could see the burly enforcer had the matter in his teeth.
Liall scowled at him, unaccountably annoyed. What business was it of his? “You have one pretty lad to worry about, don't take on another."
"Here, now!” Kio sang out, and Liall knew he had offended Kio as well.
"Deva's shrieking hell, I'll go!” Liall snapped.
"Give me a minute to fetch my knives,” Peysho stalled.
"Stay here,” Liall ordered. “We've wasted enough time on this nonsense."
Liall strode cursing toward the path to Lysia, leaving Peysho to scratch his chin and look after his chieftain worriedly.
* * * *
Scarlet, grandson of Herec, son of Scaja, of the blood of Lyr.
Scarlet roused enough to wonder who called his name, but saw only flashes of light, a whirling dance of butterfly colors, and through them, like a veil of shining gauze, Byzan faces in the void beyond, many faces of men and women of his race. Never had he seen so many Hilurin people in one place. They stretched out their white hands to him.
Scarlet of Lysia.
Who calls? Who is that? He felt irritated at being woken from the cocoon of syrupy warmth that rocked him like a babe in a cradle, carrying him to the Otherworld. Linhona and Scaja would miss him, true, but he would see them again. If only those voices would go away and let him rest.
Wake, Scarlet. Not for you the longsleep, the rest without dreams. This is not your time. Not now, not on the long voyage across the deep, cold sea, nor even when you come at last to the first home of the Shining Ones. Wake, O Anlyrabeth.
Anlyrabeth? He wondered what the strange word was, and why it should sing through his mind like ripples on a pond, circles that touched him with a sting like iron.
How sad that even the name of our race has vanished among you. So far fallen, the Anlyrabeth. So far. But wake now, Scarlet. Wake and live longer than memory.
Longer than memory? He felt like laughing, but he was too tired. The Byzan faces, men and women with deep black eyes and dark hair like his, faded back into the fluttering bits of color, and he fell dreamless into the dark.
* * * *
Liall saw Cadan's hands knotted around Scarlet's throat. The pedlar was glassy-eyed and he hung from Cadan's hands as if dead.
He shouted and threw himself at Cadan, tearing the brute's hands away. Liall grabbed the soldier's arms, lifted him, and flung him bodily into the bole of a tree, where he crashed face-first. Few had ever seen Liall use the full extent of his strength, and he was stronger than any Byzan or Minh or Morturii alive. He fully intende
d not to leave Cadan alive to speak of it.
Cadan scrabbled and came up on his knees. His chipped tooth had split his lip. He leered and spat blood. “You're too late. Just like the last time, eh, Liall? Too late to save them, too late to save him."
It was true. Even by moonlight, Liall could see how still Scarlet lay, how his white neck was marred with bruises and his chest was unmoving. Cadan laughed again, his bloodied mouth twisting up into a cruel, familiar sneer. Liall reached into his boot for his dagger, found it gone and remembered why he had thrown it away.
Oh, lad, it was just a game. I'm sorry, so sorry...
A silvery glimmer caught the sunlight beside Scarlet's still body, and Liall could make out the angular shape of an axe-head and the short curve of a wooden handle denting the snow.
Liall picked up the axe. Cadan limped backwards, holding his thigh. Bright blood dripped between his fingers.
"Did I hurt you, then?” Liall asked. His voice was dangerously soft. “Looks broken to me."
Cadan chuckled. “I'll live."
"You will not.” He declined to question Cadan about what the man had planned to do with Scarlet's body. The petty details of revenge—whether he intended to plant the corpse outside of the village with the Kasiri mark cut into his skin, or whether he planned to have what was left of Scarlet delivered to the camp—mattered little. Most likely, the folk of Lysia would conclude that the Kasiri had murdered Scarlet for defying them, and rumors of a violent Kasiri band would spread. Tolling and robbery was common everywhere, but the Kasiri were only barely tolerated this far north in Byzantur. The regular army would be glad of a solid reason to brave the wrath of the Bled lords and wipe the Kasiri out. Cadan must have been planning this for a long time.
Liall hefted the axe. His own thoughtlessness had cost Scarlet his life, and that made him cruel. “You're a soldier now,” he said slowly, soft as a cat's paw. “An officer. How did you manage that, I wonder?"
"Leading soldiers and leading Kasiri isn't so different.” Cadan again spat a thin stream of blood at him and tried to put his weight on his bad leg. It crumpled under him. “Men are animals. You're the one who taught me that."
Liall glanced at Scarlet, who sprawled so still in the snow. “Not all men. In that, I lessoned you wrong. I would feel badly about that, if I thought I had anything to do with the forging of you. But no, you were already a brute when you found your way into my camp."
"You were right,” Cadan insisted. “I treat ‘em like dogs and they lick it up. I'm good at it."
"I don't doubt it. Like most sadists, you have a knack for brutality,” Liall said in a low, terrible tone. “The army must be getting desperate, to raise a cur to rank.” Liall advanced on Cadan, swinging the axe deftly back and forth, just to show him what was to come.
Cadan hobbled back from him in alarm. “If I'm a cur, what are you? You're the biggest thief I ever knew!"
"Possibly."
"You maimed me!!” Cadan shouted, pointing to the scars on his face. “You bastard whelp of a she-bitch! One day I was your right hand in the krait, your enforcer, and the next you cut me off from the Kasiri forever! After the famous Wolf drove me out, every atya from here to Minh spit at the sound of my name. No one would take me in or let me join their krait. And over what? Nothing!"
Liall's jaw clenched. “Over two Byzan girls and their mother."
Cadan wiped blood from his face. “Scant fun, they were, screaming and crying the whole time. What are filthy peasant dirt-diggers to you, anyway, eh? Why do you care?"
Liall's hands curled tight around the axe-haft. “Because I am not a murderer."
Cadan's eyes were tar-black holes of hatred as Liall raised the axe over his head, intending to hurl it and cleave that visage in two, but he should have remembered that a rat is most dangerous when cornered.
"Hah!” Cadan shouted, at the same time, his right hand came up and flung a dagger at Liall. It was a little thing, more suited for a woman's purse than a warrior's belt, but Cadan aimed for his eyes and Liall instinctively took the time to bat the projectile away with the axe. Another little dagger flew at Liall, lodging deeply in the upper part of his right thigh, and he staggered. The axe lowered.
In the stolen moment, Cadan was gone, whirling and throwing himself over the snow-slicked embankment and into the concealing brush of the deep ravine below. Liall jerked the knife out and ran to the edge of the junipers, cursing. There were only trees and brush. The sun was not yet high enough in the sky to touch the bottom of the ravine, and there was a thick layer of mist rising from the dim gloom. Cadan had taken a last chance at life, but there was no possible way he could climb out of that gorge with a broken leg, much less make the journey to a friendly village. He was as good as dead.
Liall spat and threw the axe down, sick with unsatisfied rage. He turned back to look at the crumpled figured lying very still in the snow. His feet moved and he knelt beside Scarlet. The pedlar's eyes remained closed as Liall gathered him in his arms and held him.
"I did not intend this,” he whispered. His eyes stung and he swallowed hard. “I swear I did not."
He pressed a kiss to Scarlet's temple. The pedlar's slender neck, laced with black bruises, lolled over Liall's arm. Liall gave a moan of distress and his hand went instinctively to support. Then he saw the artery beating in Scarlet's throat.
"Oh," he breathed. A thread of hope touched him. His fingers pressed to be sure. Yes, the heart still drummed, but there was no breath in the lungs and Scarlet's chest did not rise.
Any man who has spent time at sea knows the mariner's trick of reviving those with water in the lungs, or whose breath has stopped while there is still life in the body. Liall placed Scarlet back on the ground, tilted his chin up, pinched his nose shut and fitted his mouth over his, praying that Scarlet's throat had not swelled and his airway closed up from Cadan's grip.
He had wanted to kiss him, but not like this. Scarlet's mouth was cold under his. Liall blew a long, steady breath into Scarlet's throat and stopped, waited a moment, and then placed his hand firmly in the center of Scarlet's chest, pressing down hard until he heard the air coming back out. Nothing. He did it again, giving his breath, his hands shaking and sweaty.
Breathe, he prayed.
A third time, Liall forced air into Scarlet's lungs, but this time, Scarlet hiccupped and Liall felt his lips move. Liall drew back and gave a shout of relief, laughing aloud in pure joy when Scarlet coughed and his eyes opened.
"Liall?” Scarlet choked, his voice raw and thin. “What happened?"
"Hush. Just breathe, Scarlet. You're safe."
"Safe,” Scarlet murmured. “Help me up."
Liall grasped his arm to help him stand, but Scarlet gasped and fell back.
"My shoulder,” he moaned. “Oh, it hurts..."
Liall moved his coat and shirt aside and hissed at the purpling bruise that was forming. “Does it feel broken?” he asked.
Scarlet winced. “I don't know,” he said in a rasping voice. “I've never ... broken anything before."
"Let me.” He slipped his hand inside the fabric and tried to feel around the raised flesh for blood or splinters of bone, but Scarlet gasped and moaned loudly the moment Liall's fingers probed the egg-sized lump. Liall readjusted Scarlet's shirt tenderly, leaving the injury alone. There was nothing he could do here.
"You need a curae," he said. “I think he knocked a chip out of the bone."
Scarlet nodded and Liall saw the bluish-white ring around his pale mouth. He was close to fainting again. “Stay awake!” he commanded, harsher than he wanted to be. “I do not know the village. You must show me where you live."
"Wainwright's Lane,” Scarlet whispered. “Have you seen my dagger? I lost it..."
Liall helped him to stand, but Scarlet swayed even as he got his feet under him. “Forget the dagger, where is the lane?"
"Third cottage ... on the right ... past the..."
And then his eyes rolled up in his head and he
fainted. Liall caught Scarlet before he fell and hauled the pedlar up in his arms, carrying him through the snow like a child.
9.
Two Coins
"Hello in the house! Open up, for Deva's sake!"
The door was thrown open and a middle-aged man stood there. He had a shock of dark hair gone steel gray at the temples and he clutched an iron fire poker in his hand. The man opened his mouth to speak, then he saw what Liall carried and his jaw dropped. Behind him were a black-haired woman and a slip of a girl with features very like Scarlet's, and Liall knew he was at the right house.
"A brigand,” Liall explained hastily when the older man hefted the poker menacingly. “I found him on the road. Let me in, old man, your son is injured!"
"Scaja!” the wife flailed at his shoulder. “Open the door!"
Scaja backed down and swung the door wider, though he did not put the poker down. Linhona darted to the back of the small dwelling and moved aside a heavy woolen curtain. There was a narrow bed behind it and Liall moved to lie Scarlet down. He settled Scarlet on the covers and turned to her. “Have you a healer in the village?"
Linhona shook her head, white-lipped with fear, her eyes all for her son.
"He may be badly hurt,” Liall said.
Linhona pinched the staring girl. “Annaya, get the midwife!"
"Midwife!” he exclaimed.
"There is no other,” Linhona snapped at him, her eyes filling with tears as she took in Scarlet's state. She moved aside the blanket to examine the bruises on his throat and leaned her head near to listen to his breathing. “We are lucky to have even her."
Annaya raced out the door. Liall frowned. It was true that no trained curae would spend years of his life learning medicine only to go hungry in a poor tradesman settlement, but he doubted a midwife would be of much use with broken bones. He moved the blankets around, settling the warm fabric up to Scarlet's chin. Behind him, he could feel the eyes of the man and woman on him. When he turned back to them, Linhona nodded to her husband in silent consent. Scaja looked suspicious and eyed Liall up and down. Scaja still had the poker in his hand.