The creature turned back to face him.
Barg brought his blade down in a cut that would have cleaved a man from collar bone to belly.
But the creature simply grabbed the blade in midswing, reached out with its free, rough hand, and took Barg by the face.
Barg struggled in its stony grasp. And then he was slipping, twisting, falling into another place entirely.
* * *
Miles away, Sugar crouched in the moon shadows at the edge of the forest and looked across a river at the farmstead of Hogan the Koramite. The man she knew as Horse.
“Is the water deep?” whispered Legs.
“I don’t know,” said Sugar.
“Do you think he will help?”
“This is where Mother sent us,” said Sugar. But in her heart she knew the chances of him helping them were slim. If Horse harbored them, he put his whole family at risk. But if he delivered them to the hunt, he, even as a Koramite, would earn a fortune.
“I think I’m wicked,” said Legs.
“You’re not wicked,” said Sugar.
“I should have listened to the wisterwife.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sometimes, when I held the charm, she would call to me like I was lost.”
Sugar looked at her brother. She’d never heard of such a thing. “She called to you?”
“In my mind. I could see her. She was beautiful. And sometimes I could see something else with her. Something made of earth, dark and wild and . . .”
Sugar waited while Legs found the words.
“Something in her voice,” he said, “it was horrible and wonderful. Every time I heard her, fear stabbed me because I didn’t want someone to think I was like old Chance. I didn’t want to be mad and taken to the altars for hearing voices in my head. And so I never answered. She said that the fullness of time had come. She promised to make me whole. Promised all sorts of things. Lunatic promises. But I was too scared. I think she wanted to help.”
She thought of Mother and her horrible speed, her terrible secrets. All this time they’d thought the wisterwife charm was a blessing, a gift. It was an annual ritual for most people to fashion a Creator’s wreath and hang it above their door to draw the blessings of the wisterwives. The wreaths were fashioned with rock and leaf, feathers and bones. Many set out a gift of food or cast it upon the waters. But Regret had his servants as well. So who knew what this charm really was? That charm could be anything. “You think it was real?”
“I don’t know what to think.” His voice caught. Sugar couldn’t see his tears in the darkness, but he held his head the way he always did when he was in pain.
Sugar wanted to cry with him, wanted to feel overwhelming grief. But she was empty, as desolate as rock. And that pained her as much as anything else. What kind of daughter was it that had no tears for the butchering of her parents?
And what kind of daughter was it that ran? She’d had her knife the whole time. Furthermore, she’d been trained how to use it.
“Da always said you were an uncanny judge of character,” said Sugar. “If your heart tells you to be afraid, then let’s trust it. Da would have.”
Legs leaned into her, and she took him into an embrace, putting his face in her neck and stroking his hair.
Things to act and things to be acted upon. She had a knife. Lords, she’d had at least six, for there were a number in the kitchen. She could have done something. She could have sent Legs to the pheasant house, gone around back herself and surprised that line of bowmen. She could have distracted a whole group of men. She might have tipped the battle.
Why? Why had she run!
And if she hadn’t run, if, beyond hope, she’d tipped the battle, what then? She’d seen Mother. Seen her horrible power.
Legs gently pulled away. “Will we talk to Horse?”
They had no tools to survive in the wild. Besides, an army of hunters would be combing the outer woods, expecting them to run there. If Horse helped them, and that was a desperate if, then maybe they might be able to survive until all but the most patient hunters gave up dreams of a bounty and went back to their normal labors. If she and Legs survived that long, that’s when they would escape.
“I don’t know,” said Sugar. “Let’s just take this one step at a time. Right now we need to find where they ford this river.”
5
Thieves
TALEN, SON OF HORSE, sat at the wooden table in nothing but his underwear because he had no pants. Somehow, during the middle of the night, they had walked off the peg where he’d hung them. And he’d searched high and low. The last of their cheese was missing as well.
The cheese he could explain: if you were hungry and a thief, then a cheese would be a handy meal to take. But it was not the regular poverty-stricken thief who roamed miles off of the main roads, risked entering a house, and passed up many other fine and more expensive goods to steal a pair of boy’s dirty trousers hanging on a peg in the loft.
No, there wasn’t a thief in the world who would do that. But there was an older brother and a sister who would.
Talen had two pair of pants to his name. And he wasn’t about to ruin his good pair by working in them. He needed his work pants. And to get those, he needed leverage. The good news was that he knew exactly which items would provide that leverage.
It only took a few moments to find and hide them. Then he went back to the house, cut three slices of dark bread, and put them on a plate in the middle of the table next to the salted lard.
River, his sister, came in first from outside carrying a massive armload of rose stems clustered with fat rosehips. Talen sighed. She had fifteen bushels of the stuff in the back already. Were they going to make rosehip syrup for the whole district? And he knew he’d be the one that would have to cut each and every hip and remove the seeds so her syrup didn’t end up tasting like chalk. It was a thorny business, even if he did wear gloves.
River walked to the back room to deposit her load and returned. Blood spattered her apron. A thick spray ran from her cheek to throat.
“What happened to you?”
“Black Jun,” she said. “The cow that was bred by that rogue bull, her water broke last night, but the calf was too big.” She shook her head. “Jun’s brother-in-law from Bain cut into her this morning and made a mess of it.”
“Did she die?” asked Talen.
“Not yet,” said River, “but such a wound, even with old Nan’s poultice, would take a Divine’s hand to keep it from corruption.” River had been apprenticed to Nan who had midwifed as many cattle as she had humans. That’s where River saw how to take a calf that was too big by cutting in from the side. That’s where she’d learned about the virtues of everything from pennyroyal to seeding by moonlight. She could have learned far more, but old Nan went out late in a rainstorm one night and tumbled down a steep slope to her death. Even so, if River said the wound was bad, it was bad.
“And the calf?” asked Talen.
“Saved,” she said. “For now.” She took off her bloody apron and hung it on a peg on the wall.
Under the apron, River was wearing her work pants, which would have been a much easier mark for a clothing thief since River’s room was on the first floor of the house. Of course, she’d only point out that nobody would look for pants in a girl’s room. Which was true for most women, but River wasn’t most women. She wore pants to everything but the dances and festivals, and even then she threatened to do so. Skirts were a bother in the fields, she said. A bother on a horse, and a bother when hunting. And nobody was going to tell River otherwise..
Talen gave his bloody sister his most pleasant smile.
She looked at his bare chest and legs. “Where are your clothes?”
“That’s a good question,” said Talen.
River shook her head and went to cupboard to get her pot of honey. She searched about then turned around looking like she’d lost something.
Surprise, surprise.
&
nbsp; There was nothing like her cinnamon honey. It was not the thick amber that most of the honey crafters sold. This honey was thin and clear and tasted like moonlight. River got it from a love-sick dyer who lived on the far side of the settlements and liked her despite her pants. He said the honey came from bees that made their hives in the cliffs there. He had also said that his love for her flowed like the nectar of the pale green flowers that clung to the cliffs, that she was his flower and he her bee, and that their pollinations would be more wild and splendid than anything a pot could contain. He’d said a lot of things; all of which proved that the dyer knew nothing of women. At least, not River. She had smiled at the dyer’s sentiments, but that didn’t make the dyer any less of an idiot or his hands any less blue. River was not a girl won with declarations of wild and amorous pollinations or delicious gifts, even if the gift was honey so rare it cost three weeks worth of labor.
Ke, Talen’s older brother, walked in next with flecks of barley stalks caught in his tunic. Ke was built like a bull. In the summer he looked even more like one because he shaved his hair short. He did it, he said, to keep his head cool and make it easy to clean. But it also allowed him to show off the thick muscles in his neck.
He walked over to the bedroom and retrieved his bow and archer’s bag. The bow was made with wood, horn, and sinew, and it was so powerful only someone with his massive strength could draw it more than half-a-dozen times. Da, because of his strength and size, was sometimes called Horse. Ke, having inherited all of Da’s muscle, had picked up the name of Little Horse, but he wasn’t a horse. That was too noble a creature. Ke was a bull, no doubt about it.
Talen, of course, inherited all the wit in the family, but nobody seemed to value that. He was never referred to as “the bright one” or “that great blaze of brains.” Instead, he got names like “Twig” and “Hogan’s Runt.”
Ke sat at the table. His bow was blackened with charcoal and linseed oil and then covered with a good layer of goose fat and beeswax to protect it from the wet. Ke had always been an excellent archer; Da had seen to that. But Ke was now something more. He’d proven last year in the battles with the Bone Faces that he was an efficient killer as well. He pulled out his crock of goose fat to rub in yet another layer, then looked back into the bag. “Hey,” he said and opened the mouth of the sack wider to fish about in its contents.
“Lose something?” Talen asked.
“Where are my new bowstrings?” Ke asked.
“Strange,” said Talen. “All sorts of things going missing today.” He tsked. “What a negligent bunch we must be.”
It took River about two seconds to catch on. “I want my honey,” she said.
“I want my trousers,” said Talen.
Ke looked up from his sack. “You took my strings?”
“You took my trousers.”
““What would I want with those?” asked Ke.
“What would I want with your bowstrings? They don’t fit my bow.”
River put her hands on her hips. “That honey has a special—.”
“Oh, don’t act like you’re offended for the Dyer,” Talen said and began to work his way toward the door.
“Who said anything about him?” River asked. “That honey’s imbued with vitality. Now, hand it over.”
“Pants first,” said Talen. He continued to move until he stood between them and the doorway.
Ke narrowed his eyes.
River cocked her head, threatening a fight. She tightened the yellow sash she used as a belt. This is what she did when she wanted to run. Then Talen’s brother and sister exchanged an evil glance, and Talen knew if he stood where he was a moment more, they’d have him.
“Trousers,” he demanded. Then he dashed out of the house in his bare feet and underwear and into the yard.
To his surprise, Talen found Nettle, his cousin, opening the door to the smoke house to get something to eat. He was supposed to be on a patrol with his father, but Talen didn’t care what he was supposed to be doing. He was here now, and could even the odds in this fight.
Ke and River charged out of the house. At this point River was the one to worry about. In addition to being a healer, she was a thrower, deadly with spoons, pots, and sticks at twenty yards. She could whip off a wooden garden clog and fling it with ferocious aim at your head before you’d taken five steps. Talen knew; he had the bumps to prove it.
He darted left. One moment later a short length of firewood flew past his head. Talen thanked his instincts and darted right, passing Nettle.
“Trip them,” Talen called back.
Nettle, the Mokaddian traitor, did no such thing. He cut a link from one of the hanging sausage chains, took a fat bite, and stood back to enjoy the show.
Talen raced toward the woods beyond, but River had the angle on him and sprinted to cut him off. Thank the Six she hadn’t had time to pick up anything but a stick. Talen veered toward the garden.
“Pick up the pace,” Nettle called out. “They’re gaining on you.”
“Coward,” Talen yelled back. He dashed around the garden fence, turned to avoid Ke, ran back toward the house and found himself boxed in between the midden and the barn.
He had two choices. He could make a run at one of them and hope to blow by, or he could go up the old walnut tree and hope they would stay at the bottom and do nothing more than shout insults and threats up at him.
He wouldn’t get by Ke and his long arms. Talen had enough room to get by River, but she was daring him, grinning at him to just try.
He made his decision.
Da had fashioned a wooden slab bench and put this bench under the giant walnut tree, just to the right of the trunk. Talen ran for the bench. When he was close enough, he took one running step to the bench and the next to an old knob sticking out about five feet up the trunk. He followed the momentum upwards, grabbed a branch, pulled himself up, and stood on a fat arm of the tree well out of the reach of his brother and sister.
“That’s about the dumbest place you could have chosen,” said Ke.
Talen climbed a few branches higher and looked down at the two of them. “The joke’s up.”
“We don’t have your hog-worn trousers,” said Ke. “You’re the one who loses things on a regular basis.”
Talen did not lose things on a regular basis.
Ke bent over and picked up a number of rocks. “You come out of that tree or I’ll knock you out,” said Ke.
“No,” said Talen. “I think you need to give up your childish games.”
But Ke threw a rock instead.
Talen ducked. The rock flew straight and true and would have made a pretty bruise, but a small branch stood in the way and sent the rock wide. Goh, he needed to put more branches between him and those rocks, so Talen scrambled up the tree until the branches were no bigger than his thumb.
He couldn’t see Ke or River from this height. Nettle stood over by the well finishing his sausage, using one hand to shade his eyes from the sun.
“You smelly bum,” Talen called down. “Do something.”
“Jump,” shouted Nettle. “He’s coming up.”
Talen heard the leaves rustling below as someone ascended toward him.
Nettle was a fine one to stand there and call out impossible instructions. Talen must have been at least forty feet up in the air. There was nothing else around the tree but the barn, and that was much too far away, which meant he had nowhere to go.
Ke was right—running up this tree had been idiotic.
Down below, Ke pulled himself up into the tree.
Talen did not want to be at his brother’s mercy at this height. Then he thought he saw a path through the limbs that just might let him get around that big bull. Talen descended, scooting to the right. Ke climbed, circling to the left until they were only separated by a couple of branches.
“I’m going to give you one last chance,” Ke said. He looked up at Talen like a dog that had just cornered a rabbit. Talen scuffed the branch he st
ood on and sent small particles of bark down into Ke’s face.
Ke ducked to keep the bark out of his eyes, and Talen made his move. All he needed to do was get to a branch four feet below him and to the right. It would be a quick climb from there to the ground.
He swung down, but Ke had been expecting the move, and suddenly he was grabbing at Talen’s leg.
Talen moved out on his branch. Ke followed. Talen jumped for another branch. He grabbed it with both hands, pulled himself upward, but before he could get a leg up, the branch popped and swung him to the side.
It was dead and rotted.
Talen looked for something else to grab, and then the branch popped again and broke entirely from the tree.
Talen reached out, grabbing for anything, but it was too late, and then he was falling head first. He yelled. He saw Ke’s face, then a wide open space beyond with nothing between him and the ground but a branch that would most assuredly break his neck.
6
Stag Home
IF THIS FALL lamed Talen, he’d be good for nothing but the war weaves. An image of him at the wizard’s altar in Whitecliff flashed in his mind, the Divine draining away his Fire, the essence that fueled the days of his life, so it could be used by a better vessel—by a dreadman. The dreadman would give Talen homage for the gift, but Talen didn’t want any homage.
He yelled again, a long “Nooooooo.”
A twig poked Talen’s eye. Then his ankle caught, and Talen swung into the center of the tree and smacked his head.
Ke grunted. “Grab a branch,” he said.
Talen looked up. It felt like a piece of bark the size of his thumbnail was stuck in his eye. He blinked, but could barely see. He blinked again and found his ankle was caught, not in a fork of two branches, but in Ke’s iron grip. Ke bent over a branch holding onto Talen, his face set in determination.
“You’re slipping,” he said.
Talen twisted around, found a branch, and grasped it with both hands. “I’ve got it. Let go.”
Servant: The Dark God Book 1 Page 5