Snowtear

by S. B. Davidson

  Like a giant wall, Uther stepped in front of Riken, who was too thoroughly occupied controlling the wolves to defend himself. One of the savages broke away from the pack and headed straight for the towering man. The savage’s eyes were wild and hungry. He screamed his last battle cry a mere moment before Uther’s battleaxe rid his neck of the burden of his head.

  Dexter, seemingly finished with his fire-tending duties, grabbed a burning log from within and hurled it into the face of an approaching woman. Her knees gave out, and she crumbled to the ground with fiery embers embedded in her eyes. Her pain was short-lived. A pair of wolves pounced on her like starving rats to a piece of discarded bread. She ended her life minus the better part of her face.

  As Riken continued invading the minds of the wolves, he was faintly aware of arrows whining. In his peripherals, he saw Abby firing her bow, reaching behind her bag to the quiver there, and renotching with divine precision. At least four savages fell from her attack, the fruits of her deadly bow jutting from their flesh.

  The poor, utterly out-skilled savages never really stood a chance. One managed to graze Payton’s thigh with a sword blade, but hardly drew enough blood to feed a mosquito before Payton’s short sword cut a smile across his neck. A female dressed in tan deerskin held her own with Illter for roughly seven slow heartbeats, but that was the extent of her coping ability. She fell for a feint, and Illter took advantage of her blunder by way of a suffocating blow to her chest with the flat end of his great sword. The sharp end, he reserved for a spot between her shoulder blades.

  Riken was beginning to feel the first pulses of fatigue when a pair of bloodied men engaged Uther. One, tall with a greying beard, slammed a club into Uther’s left arm. The other never received the chance to attack. Uther’s battleaxe caught him just under the kneecap, and the severed appendage sailed across the clearing. With one assailant ridded, Uther directed his attention to the partner, who was hailing blows to Uther’s midsection. When the strikes failed to accomplish their intended purpose, Riken saw the look of sheer panic and disbelief on the man’s face like a mask. Uther turned on the dumbfounded man. The savage looked as if he could think of nothing finer than turning tail and fleeing into the safe confines of the forest, but at the last moment, he summoned whatever courage he possessed and prepared a final attack. He needn’t have bothered. Uther buried the battleaxe into the man’s chest, and the savage tumbled, no doubt damning himself for disregarding his primary inclination.

  The clearing rumbled with withering battle cries, snarling wolves, and shrieks of torment. The intruders were losing ground by the moment, but fighting valiantly nonetheless.

  Somewhere inside his head, Riken sensed the pleasure the wolves felt with this new turn. With what little capacity for feeling their small minds maintained, they disliked their former masters, who’d seen need to beat them far more often than feed them. Their unabashed delight prompted Riken on.

  A familiar cry resonated over the furor, jerking Riken’s mind from his task. He felt his hold on the wolves snap like a twig. The animals paused, whipped their drenched heads about, then, as one, bounded into the trees without another thought to the problems of men.

  The cry came again, followed by frenetic shouting in the savages’ tongue.

  Abby.

  Beads was holding her from behind, one hairy arm clasped about her waist. The other held a blade to her throat.

  “Stop,” Beads shouted. “Leave.”

  The residual effects of controlling the wolves were causing Riken’s head to throb slightly, so he had to concentrate to regain his senses.

  Abby thrashed to no avail within Beads’s grip. She tried kicking at his shins, but he dodged her deftly and grinded the blade further into her skin, drawing a slim line of blood that trickled down into the front of her leather jerkin. She clenched her teeth with rage, but ceased her opposition.

  Uther barreled past Riken, battleaxe raised. Illter and Dexter did likewise.

  “Wait,” Riken said, his head still groggy. “Hold up.”

  “Riken,” Uther demanded, the knuckles holding his axe so white that Riken thought he might shatter the handle.

  “You can’t get to her in time,” Riken said.

  Uther relented, tracing a hateful stare from Riken to the man holding Abby’s fate in his hands.

  Payton and Tawny came from behind Riken and stood close to the other two men. Around them, the savages who’d thus far escaped death began to recuperate. Riken watched them as they did. They moved like people miraculously pardoned from the guillotine, confused but grateful. Looking at the strangers brandishing the damning weapons that had given them their numerous wounds, they couldn’t seem to decide whether they should rejoin their foolish leader or flee like their previous pets.

  Disregarding the bemused savages, Riken pushed past Illter and Dexter, so he could look Beads in the eyes.

  “Let her go,” he said, taking pains to remain standing.

  The man barked at him in gibberish and motioned to the blade at Abby’s throat.

  “You understand enough to know what I said,” Riken said. “Let her go.”

  “Leave,” the man said. “Take horses. Go.”

  “Oh, we will. But not without her.”

  “Go or girl die.”

  “Girl die, you die,” Riken said, taking a step forward.

  “Stay,” the man said, shuffling backward, still gripping Abby solidly.

  “Go or stay, which is it? Make up your mind. I can’t read human minds.”

  “Leave. Then let girl go.”

  Riken shook his head and took another step. Fifteen paces separated them.

  “How about this? We stay. You get your putrid hands off her right this moment, and I won’t have to feed you your slopping entrails.”

  Riken took another step, and Beads spit at him and howled. The savage tried to tighten his hold on Abby’s waist, but she wiggled, and he slipped ever so briefly.

  “Abby,” Riken said, and the girl wrenched her body to the side before the man could right his grasp.

  Her hand went to a dagger on her hip in a blink, then buried the tip in the savage’s leg. He yelped. The blade fell from Abby’s neck, and she rocked the bridge of his nose with her elbow.

  Riken started to cut the distance between them, but froze as a pair of weapons whizzed past both his ears. Uther’s battleaxe and Illter’s great sword flew through the air, spinning ends over ends, until each culminated their short journeys embedded in one side of Beads’s chest. The man hit the ground so hard Riken wondered if they might lift him up and find a Beads-shaped hole dug into the earth.

  Rubbing her reddened neck furiously, Abby made a swift path toward Riken. Without thinking, he started to hold out his trembling arms. He was thankful he hadn’t when she swept past him and collapsed into Uther’s arms.

  Riken let the slight slide off his back and turned his attention to Beads. Hate like he hadn’t felt in a very long time filled his body, coursing through his veins like molten steel. Like liquefied steel is bound to do, the hate cooled but hardened within him, forever taking its place inside him. Its originator might be lying dead and useless on the ground before him, but his kin were still waiting at the end of this present journey. Riken resigned to the emotions. He’d let them simmer, resting until he found need to summon them at a further inevitable date. These residents of Black Earth had been but a few, and weak. The actual Black Earth tribe, able and strong and numerous in their own territory, would be a feather of an altogether different color.

  But that was still to come. For now, he needed to focus on getting there with his group still intact.

  When he joined his crew’s small circle, he found the lingering savages vacated. He assessed their damages, which were minimal, and tried to comfort Tawny, who looked as pale as a freshly laundered sheet. He started to pat the man on the back, but thought better of it. The sheltered city boy, getting his first taste of true carnage, looked ready to spew. Riken’s hand floa
ted just over the man’s back, useless.

  “Breathe deep,” Riken said, knowing little else to say in way of solace.

  Abby was still engulfed in Uther’s embrace, her head resting just under his ribcage. She didn’t cry, only trembled ever so slightly. Probably more from nerves than fear. As far as Riken knew, Abby had no fear in her. She was facing him, but her eyes were clenched tight.

  Inexplicably, he had the sudden urge to be the one holding her tight. I was, once. As if she’d read his mind, her eyes opened and latched onto his. Riken held the strong gaze for as long as he could, trying to see into her head as her eyes burned his retinas. Feeling suffocated, he dropped his eyes to the ground.

  What was in that heated look? Hate? Accusation? Something else entirely? He couldn’t be sure.

  “Right then,” Dexter said, retaking his seat around the cookfire. “Now that that little bit of unpleasantness is out of the way, we can finally have that breakfast.”

  “How can you…?” Tawny started, but the mention of food coupled with the scene of butchery surrounding them must’ve gone down the wrong pipes. The ghost-white man whirled, bent violently at the waist, and heaved the remnants of his stomach onto his bare feet.

  “By the Wind, Dexter,” Payton said, going to Tawny, but catching a whiff of the man’s business and thinking better of it.

  “What?” Dexter asked with childlike innocence, making Riken wonder if the man had really been making a joke or not.

  When Tawny had finished with all but the dry heaves, Riken said, “We’d better break camp and make ourselves scarce. That was but a hunting party. The rest of the tribe can’t be too far off, and by nightfall, they’ll be wondering why their kinsmen haven’t returned. We need to be leagues away by the time that happens.”

  While addressing the group, Riken noticed that Abby continued to stare at him. He wished again that he could decipher her look. He didn’t know which would be worse, her being angry with him, or the other alternative.

  Chapter Nineteen

  With Riken’s crew swifted away on the wings of Tawny’s fibra, any hope of retaliation on the part of the savages’ tribesmen lay in puffs of dust about seventy miles removed from their present location.

  The day’s travel was alacritous and uneventful, if a little harrowing. Racing across the blackened plains at five times the horses’ normal speed wasn’t exactly what Riken would call settling. It had been some time since he’d traveled in unison with an amplifien, and it took no small amount of adjustment. Despite his constant worry of bounding into a shallow crevice, he had to keep his head down and his eyes closed as much as possible. Seeing the cracked ground beneath his feet jettisoning by at such an abnormal pace had ways of screwing with his stomach. It wasn’t as bad in Black Earth as other places. The complete absence of scenery – no trees, vegetation, or life of any kind – clouded the affect of their velocity. Still, Riken felt more than blessed when they halted and made camp.

  Conversation was robust around the cookfire. The opportunity for communication was relatively nonexistent while traveling through amplification. The wind howling about the ears was close to unbearable, and one had to keep their head wrapped anyhow. The same wind assaulting the ears wreaked havoc on uncovered skin, like frostbite, only quicker in getting the job done. All that made travel uncompromisingly dull, which in turn made the brief excursions for food and rest cause for festivity, which the crew, aided by a choice ravaging of the wine stock, was taking full advantage of.

  “Then I tell her, ‘That ain’t a great sword poking your backside, but it’s might near as long’. Then she gets this screwy look on her face and says to me, ‘Well, let’s just hope it’s as durable’. Hand to the Fire, that’s just what she said.”

  Exuberantly amused at his own story, Dexter teetered back on the rock he was using as a seat and spilled over, flushing a goodly share of the wine in the bottle clutched in his hand onto his thick, woolen overcoat. The group enjoyed a hearty fit of laughter of their own when Dexter, abhorring wastefulness, commenced to sucking the wet remnants from the wool.

  “Was that Pug-Nose?” Uther asked Dexter when he’d resituated himself.

  “Uther,” Abby said, “don’t call her that.”

  “Seven Layers, nay,” Dexter said. “I ain’t seen that worn-out old gal in ages. She even still working?”

  “I would hope not,” Riken said before taking the smallest nip off the wine bottle he was sharing with Uther. “Back when I used to frequent Sorrow – you know, before I could afford better – she was pushing into her fourth cent, and that was at least forty cycles ago.”

  “She passed,” Uther said. “About, oh, seven cycles back.”

  “That’s a shame,” Dexter said. “Old Pug-Nose sure knew how to treat a man.”

  “You’d have to,” Riken said. “In that trade, with that face, she wasn’t putting food on her table with steamy glances.”

  “Charming fireside conversation,” Abby said. “To think, sometimes I actually question by decision to leave my family and start up this glamorous life. Any reason we can’t bring more women along on a job?”

  “We asked,” Dexter said, ducking preemptively, “but Riken said no whores.”

  Dexter’s defensive stance proved well-founded when Abby threw her empty wine bottle at his head. It sailed past and shattered on the hard ground.

  “Who’s this Pug-Nose?” Tawny asked. His nose was just visible above the wide, bushy collar of the overcoat covering his mouth.

  “Her name was Franny,” Abby said, rubbing her gloved hands close to the fire.

  “Working girl,” Payton said, “from Bagger’s End.”

  “Oh,” Tawny said through chattering teeth. “Never been there.”

  “And you never will now, married-man,” Dexter laughed.

  “You’re not missing much,” Riken said.

  “You didn’t used to think so,” Payton said.

  “Dogs don’t think anything of eating slop, either,” Riken said, “until they get a taste of fine steak.”

  “Damned right,” Dexter said, nodding. “You think they’ll ever turn back after that? Speaking of fine steaks, anyone had the pleasure of that new girl at Bare Bones? Can’t recall the name? Petite, blonde, has a birthmark on her left hip looks like a cherry?”

  The men shook their heads, Tawny a little more wistfully than the others.

  “Oh, you got to meet this one,” Dexter said, rubbing his gruff beard, a devious smile beneath. “She can do things with…”

  “Alright,” Abby said loudly before the man could finish. “That’ll just about do it for me. I’m off to bed before I really start getting titillated. You boys enjoy the remainder of your fascinating conversation without me. Take copious notes, though. I’ll want to hear all about it in the morning.”

  Dexter laughed. “Speaking of copious…”

  “By the Father,” Abby said, rolling her eyes. “Goodnight all.” She waved to the group, tossed the chicken leg she’d been eating into the fire, then disappeared into her tent.

  Riken retired not long afterward. Not that he wasn’t enjoying the ribald atmosphere around the cookfire. The Father knew it had been a long time since he’d had chance to enjoy the company of people he wasn’t expressly paying to entertain him. More, it was that he was quite conscious of his own need for restraint. The wine in his bottle was barely past the neck, hardly a sign of merriment. And though he knew he had to adhere to his own rules, that too much drink on a job always led to misfortune, it made loosening up all the more difficult.

  So with a few parting jests, he excused himself and went to his tent. Over the high, angry wind bombarding the tent, he could still hear the men outside. As he slipped out of his top layer of clothing and wiggled into his bedroll, a part of him wished he were still out there. The other part knew this was better, not nearly as fun, but better. If he had stayed, the gnawing need to drink would’ve won out soon enough. He’d had trouble such as that was apt to bring many tim
es in the past, on far less important jobs. He wasn’t keen on having it rear its foul head again. Far too much was at stake. Lucidity, despite his typical distaste for it in most circumstances, did occasionally have its place.

  Another detriment of a clear, uninhibited mind was its penchant to think. Without the numbing aid of a few pints of fermented juices, his was liable to wonder over scores of topics best left hidden. About an hour after the noise of his companions had finally died, this very shortcoming of sobriety began having its way with Riken. He was considering stealing into his stash of herbs when someone opened the flaps of his tent and drew all his concentration to a single focal point.

  “Uther said he’d sleep in my tent for awhile,” Abby said, setting down the candle she held, then hitching the string on the flaps, her back to him.

  “Bet he was happy about that,” Riken said, eyeing the woman with contained suspicion, particularly keeping the daggers on her hips in plain sight.

  “Why would he mind? It’s the same size as this one, only with one less body to fight for space.”

  “Aye,” Riken said, though that wasn’t what he’d meant, and they both knew it.

  “Though with you as a bunkmate,” Abby said, turning and pulling off her bulky overcoat, “I doubt even Uther had to do much fighting. Between the two of us, this’s practically a castle.”

  “Right. What do you want, Abby?”

  “Oh, relax, Riken,” she said, sitting. “If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have announced my presence.”

  “I know that.”

  “So relax,” she said.

  Her hair was a mess in her face, but, if anything, the wind-ravaged look complemented her all the more. Since she’d shown up at his door, he hadn’t had chance to see her without that giant overcoat on. Now, he was forced to fully take in her delicate features. It almost hurt. She wore a tight, black, leather vest with silver studs and a fur inline over a creamy, linen shirt that she was now unfastening. She stopped its descent just above the swell of her dainty breasts and tugged on it as if letting out an accumulation of steam. The leather pants he’d gotten such a fine reverse look at when she’d entered were snug along her hips and thighs, but loosened as they went down so her boots could fit beneath them.