by Bryn Colvin
“You’re making me come, you bastard!”
“You know you can’t resist me.”
She had cried out then with pleasure and bitten him sharply.
“I’m not merely going to kill you, Math, I’m going to destroy you.”
“But you still can’t help coming when I fuck you, can you?”
“Bastard, damn you.”
“Are you going to beg me to stop?”
“Never.”
“You want it too much for that.”
~*~
“What are you thinking?”
Sena’s gentle tones drew Math out of erotic memory and back to the cruel present.
“A few years later she was back. Same trick—picked up as a slave in a raid, only that time one of the others got her, one no longer walking this world. She kept out of my way. I didn’t see her. She offered information: where her people were hiding, what tactics they might use and we did very well out of her, or we thought we did. It was a trap in the end. We lost a lot of good people thanks to her, Liss’s mother amongst them. When I found out it was her, I went mad, but she’d gone by then, disappeared once more.”
“You’ve never named her.”
“She’s ill fortune, I don’t want to think about her and I will not have her name uttered in my presence.”
Sena understood the taboo.
“What does this woman have to do with Liss?”
“I’ve seen her, so has my daughter. It was from afar, but I would know that monster anywhere. She is here, watching us, seeking to destroy me. I will never have peace until she is dead and now my daughter is missing. I must assume the worst.”
“Have you warned Liss?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must trust her, she can care for herself.”
“You don’t understand,” Math said, wearily.
“Then tell me.”
“I cannot. I cannot.”
Chapter Eight
For several days they remained in the makeshift camp and Liss slept most of the time, letting her body heal. The crow-woman hunted and cooked for her, spending long hours in watchful silence at Liss’s side. On the third day of wakefulness Liss managed to get to her feet. Her muscles seemed to have atrophied as she lay ill and walking was difficult. After a while she felt herself loosen and move more easily, but the effort had taxed her depleted reserves and she was forced back into her skins and blankets. She wondered about her father then and Dothrin, both of whom she supposed would be frantic in her absence. Had her father known the source of her rescue he would have been troubled indeed and she wondered how he would receive the news that an enemy had saved his eldest daughter’s life.
“You are better today,” the woman said.
Liss had not even heard her approach.
“I owe you a debt of thanks,” Liss replied, “but I must be on my way as soon as I can, I must return to my home.”
“To the Tref upriver?”
Liss supposed she meant the town and nodded.
“It’s many days walk from here and a fair journey even as the crow flies.”
The woman chuckled at this.
“I would offer to go to them for you, send news of where you are, request horses, you could be home in no time. However, your father will kill me before he listens to a word I have to say.”
“Then I must walk,” Liss said.
“I will go with you. It is a long way following the river. There are shortcuts through the woods and hills, if you will let me show you the way?”
Liss agreed, knowing that she was lost in an unfamiliar land and inclined to trust the woman who had aided her so greatly already.
That night as they sat beside a small fire, picking meat from the small carcasses of songbirds, Liss tried again to discover whom her rescuer was.
“You know me,” she began, “you know my name and my father, but you have told me nothing of yourself.”
“What would you know?”
“Your name, at least.”
“My name is Annis.”
“Do you have a lineage, a chosen name?”
“Those are customs of your father’s people. My people do things differently. You have a name of your own, perhaps the one you were given at birth, perhaps one you find on your travels. To go with it, there is the name of your kith.”
“What is kith?”
“The community to which you belong. There are six kith parents from whom we take our names, six founders of the great communities: The first was Silla, then Tolth and Straif, followed by Iylla, Loric and Maisry. My kith is Illyan.”
Liss absorbed this with interest. They had been enslaving locals for all of her life, but she had never bothered to find out anything much about their ways. Her father considered them primitive and she had never sought to know more.
“Let me tell you a story,” Annis said.
Liss smiled encouragingly, hungry for anything this strange woman might impart to her.
“Once,” said the crow-woman, “there was a tribe of people who lived beside a river many days from here even as the crow flies. Now, the great kiths belong to the forested lands beyond here, but we have long had trading links with our kinfolk on the plains. Sometimes we would travel great distances to meet and barter, sometimes we would even take partners from amongst them, our people would become part of their communities and some of them would return with us. That was the way of things. Sometimes there would be feuds and fighting, especially in the lean years when game was rare, or when the radivarl was harsh, as it proved this year.”
“The radivarl?” Liss broke in, confused by this term.
“The wind that brings the long season of rains. Sometimes it is gentle and brings enough water to make the land fertile, but often it is cruel, bringing less than we need or far too much. It is said that a god lives in the wind, but I have never seen him. But, to continue my tale, one day an army came to these shores. I don’t know where they came from or what brought them here. What came was a fighting force of many hundreds of men, with weapons the like of which the tribes and kith had never before seen. It was clear from the first that this army meant to conquer. Some of the people retreated, some tried to defend their ancient homes. One by one, all were destroyed who came into its path. Only those who fled into the forests were saved. The communities of the plains were broken, one by one. Many did not believe in the danger until it was too late for them.
Now, this invading army had only a few women folk and many of the men wanted to take women from those they conquered, which they did readily enough. The leader of this army was a lean and powerful man. He lived by his sword and by battle. He knew only how to destroy. He managed to capture a young woman from the forest, who, by misfortune, had been trapped far from her home. The woman was foolish and thought that if she tried she might soften his warlike ways and bring some peace into his soul. She stayed with him, slept in his bed and bore him a child. At first he had been delighted with her and he seemed proud of his fatherhood, but still she saw no change in him—if anything he grew more brutal. She grew to fear him and his desire for her became ever more violent and possessive. One night he came to her drunk from slaughter and rampant with lust. He struck at her when she dared to refuse him and she fled from him.”
She sighed deeply, looking at Liss with sorrow in her eyes.
“I did not want to leave you, but when he saw what I had become and I saw the hatred in his eyes, I knew there was no time for me to rescue you. The changing of skins is a gift granted to my kith from ancient times, but it filled your father with fear.”
Liss felt her chest grow tight and her heart seemed to fail within her. This revelation challenged everything she thought she knew and yet some grain of it called out to her, making her feel the truth of it. Looking more closely at the woman who claimed to be her mother, she realised then what it was that had seemed so familiar. The face was older than her own, with creases about the eyes, but those eyes were dark, like her own and the f
ace-shape much the same. The dark braids echoed the style of her hair and, although Liss was taller and broader by far than the delicate shape-shifter, they had the same long fingers and unusually slender wrists.
Remembering everything her father had said by way of warning, Liss resisted the inclination to trust utterly what her feelings argued must be true. There was some passing resemblance, but that did not mean anything. When she and Rina were very young they had sometimes been mistaken for sisters by those who did not know them and, as far as she knew, they had no blood tie. If Math had been honest with her, this woman was a dangerous trickster who would do anything to win her confidence and then destroy her. What better way than to suggest that her father had blackened the character of her own innocent mother? How well did she know her father? Liss mused, wondering how well could she trust him. He was all that she had—he had been her sole family for years until the advent of little Vik—she could hardly cast his word away at the behest of a stranger. Even if that stranger had saved her life.
“I know it must be hard for you. I doubt you remember me; you were so very young when I left. I can’t imagine Math ever told you about me, did he?”
“He told me you were dead.”
“A more honest answer than I might have credited him with. Perhaps the years have changed him for the better.”
Liss chose not to mention any of the other things he had said of Annis, preferring to keep her own council.
“You don’t know me, I would not expect you to welcome me with open arms, but you will have some time to learn who I am as we travel. Whatever choices you make must be your own thereafter.”
Chapter Nine
A little after noon Math reined his horse in and motioned to the riders behind him that they should stop. There had been more volunteers for the search than ever they could have used. He had taken Blade, from his daughter’s first company, Gron, Noon, Sting (the only man to have mastered the longbow) and two excellent young horsemen: Fith and Gos. The other search party, headed by Leaf, was the larger of the two and had Flash’s recently claimed son amongst its number. Math had not previously known that his daughter had taken a lover, but her choice seemed sound and the youth’s dedication to her was exactly as he would have wished.
Dismounting, Math approached the bank. A lone tree that had evidently been brought down by the winter storms lay across part of the river, with all manner of debris washed up against its side. In the mud of the riverbank were signs of human presence. Math could spot a track well enough, but had never learned to make a more detailed reading. He motioned for Gron.
“Well?”
“I would say it’s at least a day old, could be longer. One person approached the bank and went right down into the water. They emerged, dragging something, but I couldn’t say what.”
“Could it have been Liss?” Math asked urgently.
“It could. It could have been a tree stump or something else. It was big enough to need dragging, that’s about all I can say for certain.”
“Then what?”
“Well, whoever it was dragged what they’d got back in the direction they came from. You can see it going off that way.”
Math nodded, he could see the track although he had not been able to tell what had made it.
“What about the person? The one on foot?”
Gron crouched down looking at the ground.
“Small. If it was one of our people, I’d say it was a woman or a child, but some of the locals can be this short, so it might have been a man. More likely I’d say, from the way their load was digging into the mud, it must have been a fair weight.”
Math contemplated this information for a while.
“Noon, take Gos and carry on following the river for another day. If you’ve not found anything by then, return to the town. The rest of you come with me.”
The thought that Liss might have been saved from the river by a tree lightened his heart, but the identity of the small rescuer preyed upon Math’s mind, filling him with disquiet.
The trail wove through heavy undergrowth, obliging them to dismount and follow carefully on foot. A shorter person might have had an advantage beneath the low hanging branches but, for the tall men of Math’s company, progress was difficult and they slowed considerably.
About an hour later their track came to a dead end beside a smooth outcrop of rock. There were traces of mud upon the stone, showing that their quarry had indeed pulled its burden up this small incline, but where it had gone beyond there it was hard to say. Math swore loudly and clambered up onto the stone to get a better view. It was a long, relatively thin outcrop, the base of which plunged into thick and impenetrable scrub. There was nothing to indicate the way forwards and he knew it would take time to find the path once more. This was just the ploy he might have expected from someone who had taken Liss prisoner. He divided his remaining company in two and sent them in opposite direction around this large obstacle, looking for some clue as to where the trail might begin again. He knew it would cost them time and suspected it was a deliberate trick to slow them down.
By nightfall they had found their trail and reunited as a group. Math was for pressing on, but with horses and men weary he had no choice but to let them rest until morning.
For half a day they struggled on through brush and thorns, until the clearly marked track they followed led them to an empty clearing where a sack of stones laid waiting for them. It was a taunt, this shameless acknowledgement of a false trail and Math fought to contain his rage. He had wasted days on a fruitless search, but at least now he could be sure who had taken his daughter prisoner.
On returning to the rocky outcrop, he found Gos and Noon there waiting. Just a few miles downstream, they had discovered a small boat and, from it, a trail similar to the one Math had followed.
“Why are you here? Why didn’t you follow it?”
“We followed it for a while, until night fell and we had to make camp.”
“And then?”
“In the morning, there was no trail, only our own prints showing us the way we had come. I can’t explain it.”
“Then we go that way,” Math said.
Chapter Ten
The two pale hounds had been edgy all morning. In the few days of travelling with them Liss had become intrigued by the slender, nimble creatures. When the inclination took them, they could move at a startling pace, running down small creatures for food and sometimes bringing such kills back to their mistress. Ever alert, they seemed to pounce for birds even before they flew across the path. They were not sociable dogs, however and would not allow Liss to so much as touch them. Whenever she tried, they moved away, until she gave up and let them be.
Perhaps catching her mood from the hounds, Annis was silent and clearly ill at ease. She paused from time to time as though listening for something, but Liss’s keen ears identified nothing beyond the occasional birdsong and the rustle of plants in the breeze. They passed through clusters of trees from time to time, but much of the landscape was scrubby and open. Only the contours of the low hills prevented them from seeing further.
The rumbling thunder of horses’ hooves caused Liss to turn and look behind her. From the brow of a nearby hill came six riders, their steeds racing through the rough grass, manes and tails streaming. On seeing her father she first grinned with delight and then realisation gripped her and she turned back to Annis.
“Run, take your crow form and hide, don’t let him catch you.”
“And you will go back to him, to whatever life he chooses for you?”
“It is the life I belong to, a life I can make my own.”
“Come with me,” she said. “Better he hunts both of us than that you become his prisoner again.”
“I was never his prisoner. Oh, go now; go before he catches you.”
“I cannot bear to lose you again child, I would rather die.”
“Run,” Liss ordered, pushing Annis before her.
They had wasted precious
seconds and the horses would outstrip them in no time.
Liss chose the shortest, steepest way up the hillside, knowing the horses would be slowed by such an attempt and that the riders might be forced to take the longer way. Her heart ached to go to her father, to be lifted up behind him and ride on his horse back to the community she knew and loved. After days in the wilderness she wanted the familiarity of home and, more than anything else, she wanted the blissful comfort of Dothrin’s arms. She had grown used to sleeping beside him and lying alone beneath the stars had been lonely, indeed. Liss ran because she knew that if half of what either of them had told her were true, Math would kill Annis as soon as he had the chance. Whatever this woman was, Liss owed her a life debt and would not sacrifice her into her father’s hands. Part of her wanted to believe she had found her lost mother, the rest hoped that her parentage was simpler and less troubling.
At the top of the hill Liss looked back to see that the horsemen had indeed taken the slower route. They had Sting with them and he would not need to be very close to get a shot off. Quickly she surveyed the landscape, plotting out a route in her mind that she thought would be hard to follow, taking advantage of the natural cragginess of the terrain to throw off her pursuers and looking for what cover there was. She had never thought to flee as one hunted from her father and his men.
“Fly,” she ordered Annis, “get away from here.”
“I will not leave you.”
“They will catch us sooner or later,” Liss pointed out breathlessly.
“Then I will die. I am weary of this life. At least I have lived to see you grown. Go to your father Liss, let him do with me as he will.”
“No!”
She dragged Annis down a scree-slope that plunged into the valley below. Here there were trees to hide their progress and hamper the horses. Still, progress was slow. The hounds ran before them, finding pathways through the dense undergrowth where Liss might never have seen a way forward. After a while the trees began to thin and they found themselves skirting a wide meadow between the hills. It had evidently flooded during the season of rains, but the boggy grass was now resplendent with small flowers.