Dark Heart

by Tina Daniell

  Their makeshift camp was concealed by a cover of tall fireweed and sawgrass, away from the main road. All around them was a sparsely wooded lowland plain dotted with ponds and ice. To the north Kit could glimpse a snow-dappled range of mountains.

  During their wait Droopface had said little, as was his wont. If the tall, stooped, lugubrious one was at all worried by Ursa’s absence, he did not show it. He had reverted to his usual self, stoically reading his tome of magic, his lips moving soundlessly as he occasionally slobbered over the pages.

  At last, when it seemed as if her nerves were about to burst from the waiting, Kit heard a clatter of hooves and then the sounds of several horses that had left the highway and were pounding in their direction. She realized that Droopface must have been more concerned than he let on, for he had stood up and was fidgeting expectantly.

  Ursa hove into sight, and Kit’s heart leaped when she saw the horse that was trotting behind his own. “Cinnamon!” she cried joyously, and rushed forward to untie her father’s horse and give Cinnamon an unabashed hug. “How did you get her back?” she demanded of Ursa. “How—”

  Even as she asked that question, Kit became aware of another rider close on Ursa’s heels, pulling up on a skewbald pony. This new arrival had long, free-flowing sandy hair entwined with feathers and was wearing a painted leather vest and chaps. Yet what took Kit most by surprise was that the stranger was a young woman.

  This female addition to the group dismounted gracefully. She was rather short, almost pygmy-like in stature, but obviously limber and strong. She eyed Kit, fingering the dagger thrust into her belt.

  “It wasn’t easy,” bragged Ursa, tying his horse as he gave a rippling laugh. “That ship’s captain, I think he wanted to keep your horse as his own. Cinnamon was getting the royal treatment. They kept a constant guard over her, and I could barely get near her without raising suspicion. I learned, however, that she was taken off ship, twice daily, for a walkabout. I figured the ship would only be in port for about a week. That gave me time to arrange an old trick.”

  Turning back toward Kit, Ursa realized that she was staring hard at the new woman, who met her look coolly.

  “Oh,” said Ursa, enjoying his little surprise. “This is Colo. She’s been riding with Cleverdon and me for several months now. Colo, this is Kitiara—I told you about her.”

  “You didn’t tell me about Colo,” said Kit tersely.

  The other stood her ground.

  “Colo’s stealthy,” enthused Ursa, “and good in a fight. Ask Droopface.”

  Droopface, who had sat back down, murmured his assent.

  As Kit weighed this information, her face relaxed. “Kitiara Uth Matar,” she said, proffering her hand in a greeting.

  Colo declined the hand, raking Kit over with a glance before hurrying off and squatting a few feet distant from the three of them with her back to the campsite, busying herself at something. Peeking over her shoulder, Kit could see that the diminutive female mercenary was engaged in throwing a cup of stones and bones, poring over their configuration.

  “Not very friendly,” Kit grumped, albeit good-naturedly, to Ursa. The mercenary had sat down on a rock near the fire that she and Droopface had started. Kit poured herself some tea from a container that had been warming over the low flames.

  “It’s not your fault,” said Ursa, his eyebrows furrowed. “She’s convinced we’re under an ill omen.”

  “How cheerful.”

  Ursa began to unpack his bedroll. “Just a run of bad luck,” he said, his mouth set in a hard, thin line. “It started four months ago, when Radisson was killed and El-Navar disappeared. We’ve been on the run ever since. Haven’t been able to get back into things. She thinks we’re being followed.”

  “Followed?” asked Kit. “By who?”

  “Whoever it was, we lost them,” boasted Ursa confidently. “We’ve been zigzagging between places and covering our tracks. Our luck is starting to turn. Isn’t my liberation of Cinnamon proof of that?”

  “What about Radisson—and El-Navar?” Kit felt compelled to ask. “You haven’t told me what happened to them.”

  He sat on a rock opposite her. Kit noticed that Droopface had set down his book and was listening intently. Colo was paying them no attention, her back still turned, consulting her oracles.

  “We were outside a small nothing village, across the channel and three hundred miles southwest of here. Radisson went into town with El-Navar looking for some drink and—” he watched Kit’s reaction “—female companionship. They went into a tavern called the Double Shiner. Everybody knows about the place, an old standby for wayfarers in those parts. They should have been safe there. We were forty miles from any enemies, forty miles from our last job.”

  “But there had been signs,” ventured Droopface solemnly.

  Kitiara was so surprised to hear the sad-faced mercenary speak so adamantly that she nearly dropped her tin cup into the fire. Ursa, reaching over to pour himself a mug of tea, nodded at Droopface’s comment.

  “Yes. Somebody or something had been following us. I don’t know who or why. There were strange birds in the sky and unfamiliar noises at night. I thought it was wiser to stay clear of people, stick together. But Radisson wanted to get away and have some pleasure, and El-Navar said he would go with him.” He paused, frowning. “They ought to have been safe. Radisson can outwit most regular people, and El-Navar has the strength of a half-dozen.”

  “What happened?” asked Kit anxiously.

  “Don’t know,” Droopface shook his head ruefully. “Don’t know.”

  “When they didn’t come back,” continued Ursa, “we went into town to look for them. The Double Shiner had been leveled—destroyed. It was almost as if it had been uprooted and ripped to bits and sucked away somewhere, so that the ground was littered with its remnants.

  “Everything was gone but its center post, from which dangled Radisson’s body. He wore no clothing. His eyes had been dug out, and over his body were scribblings done with a knife point. A thousand little cuts and holes and markings all over his body.”

  “And El-Navar?” Kit tried to keep her voice even, while in her mind flashed memories of the sinewy Karnuthian. She remembered his deep, mellifluous voice; the hair like writhing snakes; the gentleness of his touch; the power of a panther that lay dormant within him.

  “Gone too. Vanished. No evidence of his death or any clue as to his whereabouts. Colo there—” he indicated the female mercenary, preoccupied with her soothsaying “—is an able tracker. She could find nothing.”

  “Even if the townspeople could have told us anything,” added Droopface, “they wouldn’t. They were too afraid to talk.”

  There was a long silence after that remark. Ursa swirled his tea. Droopface got up and went over to his pack, preparing to go to sleep. Colo gave Ursa a sharp look, then went to her horse and unstrapped her bedroll.

  “As I was saying,” said Ursa, ignoring Colo and taking one last sip of his tea before tossing the dregs on the ground, “our luck is changing. We haven’t encountered any difficulty for weeks, and now we happen upon you.” He flashed Kitiara one of his old brisk grins. “Grown up some and even more skilled as a fighter than I remember.”

  She had to grin back.

  “It will be good to work together again,” he finished.

  “What’s the job you mentioned?”

  “It’s not much of a job, but it’ll bring a fair price. A slig is terrorizing a community just forty miles north of here, someplace called Kimmel.”

  “What’s a slig?” asked Kit.

  “Oh,” Ursa laughed. “A slig is a rare experience. You’ll find out soon enough. Here—” he kicked some twigs and branches onto the fire “—you take first watch. Wake me up to relieve you.”

  She noticed that he made up his bedroll close to Colo, who was already asleep.

  For a day and a half they progressed northward into hill country, following scrawled directions that Ursa fished out of h
is pocket and consulted at intervals. They gravitated to lesser roads and dirt paths until, in the late afternoon of the second day, they came to a rushing river that they followed upstream in the direction of a small farming village named for the leading family, Kimmel.

  The late autumn days were blustery, and the nights at this altitude increasingly cold. But the weather stayed dry, and Kit liked the snap of early winter.

  Kitiara had to admit she felt strangely comfortable being with Ursa and Droopface again. Ursa had his swagger back, and she enjoyed his bragging about exploits. Droopface, with his long, inscrutable silences, reminded her of poor, inarticulate Strathcoe; he had become just as companionable, too. Kit wondered about the fate of El-Navar, but she couldn’t coax either of her old partners into talking about the Karnuthian any more.

  Colo was a strange sort, militant and masculine in some ways, but flirtatious and feminine in others. She seemed to carry no grudge against Kitiara. The first night on the road she performed a wild dance by the firelight that made them all hold their sides for laughing. She always rode in the lead, because Ursa said she had eyes that could see far into the distance.

  The place where they eventually arrived was less a town and more a number of hill farms that had clustered together for community and protection. The locals had pooled their resources to hire mercenaries to slay a slig that had been roaming the area, stealing food and terrorizing the women at night. Some citizens had tried to battle the slig, but this one was a ferocious rogue male, detached from his tribe. He was tricky to track and even more perilous to corner.

  It was in Vocalion that Ursa heard the good people of Kimmel had chipped together and were offering a fair sum, with proof of the creature’s demise.

  For an hour, the mercenaries met with representatives of the citizenry led by the constable, a cowardly fool who seemed eager to foist the responsibility for taking care of the problem onto someone else. Ursa presented his credentials, and they in turn affirmed the amount of the reward. The general whereabouts of the nuisance was well-known. The slig dwelled somewhere among the sandstone cliffs that bordered the river, near where the forest ended.

  That night Ursa and the others camped away from the town, as was their habit.

  Ursa was in a gregarious mood. Around the campfire he told stories about the time he rode with a company of upright Knights of Solamnia, pretending to be one of them until he was drummed out of their regiment for his drinking and womanizing. Like a lot of his stories, you couldn’t tell if this one was entirely true, but Kit laughed along with Colo and Droopface.

  They made up their bedrolls early. Colo went off into the darkness to take first watch. Laying side by side on their blankets, Ursa and Kit stayed awake, passing back and forth a jug of local mead that had been bestowed on them by the grateful citizens of Kimmel.

  “Sligs are tough kin of hobgoblins,” Ursa told Kit, preparing her for the morrow. “Whatever you do, don’t get in the way of its venomous spittle. The spittle can’t kill you, but it’ll burn your skin and make you wish you were dead. Their eyesight is poor in daylight, but their aim is good at night or in caves.”

  Eventually they drank the jug down to the bottom. The drunken Ursa made an emphatic point of telling Kit that the reward for killing the slig would be shared equally—four hundred pieces of gold, or one hundred pieces each. He was doing his best to make up for his past transgression.

  The highland cold was harsh. Following Ursa’s example, Kit pulled her blanket around her ears. As she was falling asleep Kit knew, even though she could only see his eyes, that Ursa was watching her with a roguish smile on his lips. His crooked smile was not so unlike her own.

  The afternoon of the following day they rousted the slig from a tree roost along the forest edge. Colo had spotted its tracks and been stalking it since late in the morning. Kit had never seen such a thing. It was six feet tall with a horny hide of burnt-orange; a stubby tail; big, pointed ears; and a long, thin snout lined with wicked-looking fangs.

  Ursa was right; the slig’s eyes were worthless, narrow slits, and this specimen had no stomach for fighting when the sun was still high in the sky. The slig loped away from them with little provocation.

  The horses could not easily pursue the slig in this densely wooded area, so they picked a spot to tie up their steeds and then proceeded on foot. The slig seemed to be toying with them, picking his way through rocks and trees, staying just barely ahead until one of them managed to catch up, then turning to take a dangerous swipe at the closest follower.

  Colo was the most nimble of the four, and she rushed ahead, leaping over bushes, pushing through thickets a short distance behind the slig. She carried a spear that she had made that very morning by lashing her best knife to a pole. Crude though it was, the spear might pierce the slig’s hide. First Colo had to get close enough to throw it.

  Stopping to catch her breath on a small rise, she turned back to the others. Ursa and Kit were only minutes behind her; trailing laboriously in their wake was Droopface.

  Kitiara carried Beck’s sword. Recognizing the weapon when Kit had unsheathed it earlier that day, Ursa had shared a conspiratorial smile with her.

  “Hurry up!” shouted Colo. Just as they spotted her, the diminutive warrior-woman turned on her heel and seemed to tumble forward. They heard her screaming and shouting, but could no longer see her. Kit reached the rise first, but luckily Ursa was following closely and managed to grab Kit before she too plunged into the pit trap on the other side of the slope.

  Looking down, they saw Colo at the bottom of a sharply angled, slimy hole in the ground, about fifteen or twenty feet deep. She was on her feet and staring up at them with a vexed expression.

  “Are you all right?” shouted Ursa.

  “Nothing broken,” she yelled back. “But the bottom of this pit is crawling with lizards. Maybe poisonous ones. I’ve killed a few and the others are staying away for now, but I don’t know for how long. Get me out of here!”

  Kitiara looked ahead and saw the slig, not far off, watching them. The creature opened its huge mouth and let out a bizarre, elongated, hiccuping roar, before turning to lope away.

  “It’s laughing,” said Ursa, touching Kit on the shoulder. “The pit trap is a joke it’s played on us. Of course,” he added more somberly, “it would circle back to eat her later on. Good,” he said, looking up. “Cleverdon.”

  Droopface had lumbered up and stood, hands on his hips, taking stock of the situation. He carried a length of strong rope, which he quickly unspooled to the bottom of the pit trap. Colo eagerly grabbed hold of it and, after some minutes of exertion by the others, was pulled to the top. When she finally emerged she was covered with mud and a thick, yellow slime.

  Cursing her own stupidity, she splashed water from her canteen all over her body and wiped herself off with strips torn from her cloak. The others waited as Colo purged herself of the slime.

  “It could have been worse,” commented Ursa philosophically. “Sligs have been known to dig pit traps that go down fifty feet, and the bottoms are sometimes covered with sharpened sticks. I’d say you were lucky.”

  “Funny,” said Colo, finishing up as best she could, “but I don’t feel lucky.”

  The others bit their tongues to keep from laughing at Colo’s appearance, knowing the tracker didn’t think it was very amusing. They had lost precious minutes, and the slig was out of sight. Yet it didn’t take long for Colo to pick up the thing’s traces, and soon the four of them were again close on its trail. They took more care this time to avoid the pit traps that occasionally gaped in their path, blended into the terrain with vines and weeds.

  By late afternoon they had tired the slig out with their relentless pursuit, and the creature had done what they hoped it would, retreat to its lair, a cave that had been scooped out of a sandstone ridge behind a waterfall. The light inside was feeble, and no doubt the slig felt unconquerable there. It sat on its haunches, staring out through a curtain of water, roaring its
defiance, as the four mercenaries regrouped below.

  Ursa had a plan. In his pack he had prepared a bundle of pitch-soaked branches, which he now handed over to Colo and Droopface. He announced that they would distract the slig with bright fire while he and Kitiara endeavored to get a jump on the beast and kill it.

  “Why Kitiara?” complained Colo. “I’ve been with you longer than she has. I have more experience.”

  Kit was about to say something in her own defense, but Ursa spoke sharply. “You are clumsy with a sword,” he said. “She is better. That is the only reason I picked her. Bring along your spear. You will be farther away from the slig and may get a chance to use it.”

  Kit couldn’t restrain a smirk of pride. Ursa turned to leave, but thought of something else. “Remember what we talked about,” Ursa added to all of them, “sligs are abnormally intelligent. This one will be listening to us as we attack it, trying to guess our strategy. Speak to each other as little as possible. Talk directly to the slig instead. Distract it with speech. Confuse it with words.”

  Despite herself, Kit was impressed by Colo’s bravery as the female mercenary climbed the cliff face next to the waterfall and crept dangerously close to the mouth of the cave, holding a flaming branch in front of her. Colo stabbed it into the dark hole. The slig jumped out at her, roaring, but would not confront the fire. Shortly it retreated deeper into the cave.

  Droopface, ever prudent, stood on an outcropping to one side of the opening. He, too, waved his torch back and forth in circles, yelling and chanting nonstop to keep the monster’s attention.

  With the slig distracted, Kit and Ursa circled, unnoticed, until they hung precariously to slippery rocks above the cave’s entrance. At a signal, they dropped in. The slig wheeled on them, knocking Ursa down and opening a gash in his shoulder. His sword fell to the ground, but Ursa managed to jump up and retrieve it, then scurry to one side of the cave. Kit had retreated to the other, her back against the wall.