Servant: The Dark God Book 1

by John D. Brown

  “Please stay here,” River said to Sugar. “Talen will be all right. You just sit down and enjoy your meal.”

  It felt so good to stand straight and see sunlight. Perhaps she could stay up here for just a little while.

  “I can understand his reluctance,” said Sugar.

  “He’s not the only one that’s reluctant,” said Nettle.

  * * *

  When Talen returned, they ate in relative silence, River asking Sugar questions that would make any normal guest feel comfortable. But these were not normal circumstances, and they only made the meal more strained.

  Toward the end, River turned to Talen and said, “Because of last night, Ke and I now must find Sugar and Legs another place. So we’ll be hunting one up today. That means you’re going to stay here to finish the chores and to keep an eye out. Sugar and Legs are your charge until we return.”

  Talen just looked into his bowl.

  “Look at me, Talen. Do you think Da and I are stupid people? I know Ke, of course, is suspect . . .” She grinned.

  It was a good effort to break the tension, but Talen did not accept it. “Yes, given the facts, I do think you’re stupid. But then I know you’re not stupid, so that means you’re hiding some of the facts.”

  River glanced at Ke, then back to Talen.

  “And you’ve been hiding them for quite some time,” said Talen.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” she said. “Da knows these people. They’re good, Talen. And there’s more to this than you realize. So much more. But now’s not the time or place to explain. All you have to do is finish the chores and keep an eye out. I want you to give Sugar and Legs some time up here. And that means you’ll have to stay in the house. Because you won’t be able to warn her or cover her retreat if you’re outside.”

  “Then how do I do the chores?”

  Both River and Ke looked at Nettle.

  “Right,” said Nettle. “I’ll be out in the fields.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” said Talen. “You’re not leaving me alone with these two.”

  “Chores have got to be done,” said Ke. “It will look odd, a fine day like today and nobody working. Besides, a man shoulders his own burdens.”

  “Sure,” said Talen. “And when these two eat me, I guess you’ll be the one cleaning up what’s left.”

  River said, “They present no more danger than me or Ke.”

  “Just the presence of them,” Talen said, “is enough to put a noose around every one of our necks.”

  But River didn’t listen to him. She stroked Sugar’s hair and finished eating. Nettle finished and went out to the fields. Finally, River and Ke stood and announced they would be back. Talen asked where they were going.

  “Out,” Ke replied. Then the two of them exited the house.

  While River had been there, Sugar, for the first time since the awful events, felt a lightening in her mood. There were some people that possessed such great quantities of openness and hope that it spilled over to others. River was one of these people. Of course, when River closed the door behind her, Sugar and Legs were left with Talen.

  He threw the bar on the door, then turned to her. He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe his predicament and picked up his bow. He withdrew two arrows from one of the three tall baskets that hung on the wall. Each basket held arrows with that were ringed with a different color just below the fletching. She assumed the colors distinguished a different spine strength and weight that would match the strength of the bow. He nocked one of the arrows marked with an ochre ring. The other he kept in the hand that held the bow. Both had gray goose feathers. Both were plain, but they had clearly been heated and straightened and would fly true to deliver the iron tips that shone with grease to keep the rust off. “Here’s the first thing we’re going to get straight,” said Talen. “Me and my immortal parts are off limits. You see that smudge on the lintel of the doorway to the loft?”

  Sugar turned to look where he pointed. A moment later the bow hummed and an arrow shaft sank into a dark coloration on the pale whitewashed lintel.

  She turned back to him. He held another two more of the ochre-ringed arrows, one nocked just as before.

  Legs sat at the table eating the last scraps of his food. He put down his spoon and held very still.

  “I’ve been thinking all morning,” Talen said. “I don’t know what game my father is playing, but I do know this: if you cross me, I won’t hesitate. In fact, by all rights, I should shoot you down now.”

  Sugar knew the look in his eyes. She knew he was considering it. Her father had taught her to never show fear in a fight. Never show pain. Never give an opponent any reason for courage unless you wanted to lure them into a trap. What kind of a fighter was Talen? Was he one that only respected force? Or was he one that was more interested in avoiding a fight?

  “Why does my father harbor a hatchling?” he asked.

  “I’m not a hatchling,” she said.

  “Whatever you call it.”

  “I practice no dark art,” she said.

  “No, you wouldn’t think it dark, would you?”

  “I don’t know any lore,” she said.

  “But your parents do.”

  She had no response to that.

  “Right,” he said. “So what’s been done to my father? Or is some threat being hung over us?”

  “Nothing has been done,” she said. “There are no threats.”

  He was agitated. Angry. Scared. She could read it all in his face. And she would have the same reaction in his situation, was having the same reaction to what her mother had done.

  “How do I know River and Ke aren’t already under the spell of some foul master?” he asked. “How do I know they’ll even return?”

  He raised his bow as if to draw it. “Nettle said to wait and see. But I can’t see how that will help.”

  Sugar knew what was going through his mind. He thought she was sleth. And only a fool would play games with such a creature. Better safe than sorry, that’s what he was thinking.

  She had to calm him down. Had to buy some time. Because she and Legs would not survive the afternoon with him in this state. “I will not lie to you,” she said. “My mother did things that—”

  She didn’t want to say it. Legs sat motionless as a heron at the table, his wild hair sticking up. She didn’t want for him to hear it this way, but that wasn’t the reason she’d stopped. She didn’t want to name Mother, didn’t want to pin that awful description on her. There were other explanations for what Sugar had seen her mother do. Maybe Sugar’s fears had distorted what had happened. Maybe Cotton had indeed been stolen and magicked by woodikin. Maybe the soul of one of the famished rode in the body of the stork they’d found. There were a dozen maybes.

  But the easiest explanation would not go away. She had to face the truth. There was no salvation in lies. “I saw my mother charge an army. I saw her cleave a man’s head in two. I saw her move with a dark grace that horrified me.” The words dropped from her mouth like heavy stones, but she pushed on. “And I saw the sleth signs on the dead body of my little brother. I know you have no reason to believe me, but I found out about this only a day before you.”

  Talen did not raise his bow, but he didn’t lower it either.

  Sugar continued, “I am not associated with any murder of sleth. I have nothing to do with any art, unless my mother has done something to me like she did to my brother. But I don’t know what that would be. I’m as confused as you are, Talen.”

  “You’re convincing,” Talen said. “But that’s what you’d expect from a sleth.”

  “Think on this,” she said. “If we were so wicked, wouldn’t we have risen from the cellar early this morning and worked our mischief on you when you were all asleep?”

  “I didn’t sleep,” he said.

  “Even so,” she said. “If we were sleth, it would have been the perfect time, don’t you agree?”

  He said nothing,
but she could see the wheels of his mind turning, see him weighing her, weighing the situation.

  At last, he shook his head in frustration, then pointed at the edge of the table where Legs sat. “That’s the line,” he said. “Come across, and my arrows fly.”

  She exhaled and realized she’d been holding her breath. But his decision didn’t mean they were safe. He could change his mind at any moment and sink an arrow into each of them. She needed to have another plan to neutralize that bow, but couldn’t see what she might use. Then she brushed the knife at her waist. A bow was a hard weapon to wield in close spaces. A knife, on the other hand, was perfect.

  She turned so the knife sheathed at her waist was hidden from his view. Then she ran one hand through her hair and with the other she discretely removed the loop that held the knife in the sheath.

  She and Legs were going to get out here. Her mother had told her to take Legs and ride. She should have disobeyed her mother before and fought, but now she’d make up for that. She’d take Legs and stow him in a safe place. And then what? Go find Mother?

  It was a ridiculous thought. And unimportant at this moment. Right now she had to figure out how to deal with this boy. She began to clean up the breakfast dishes. Began to tidy things so her mind could work.

  When she was calm, the first thing she noticed was that he’d placed himself in the wrong part of the house. “You cannot look out of the windows from where you’re sitting,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  She said, “You can’t watch for hunters from that side of the room.”

  “You look out the windows and watch for hunters. I’m watching you.”

  She nodded in acquiescence. But if hunters did come, it would not do to have them find him sitting there, guarding her and Legs. You didn’t guard a visitor. Any hunter with a brain would see something was odd.

  Legs stepped toward Sugar with his hands out. When he found her, he asked, “Should I go down?”

  It would probably be best. That way she wouldn’t have to worry about him should the situation change. But she didn’t want him to sit down there alone thinking about what she’d just revealed. He needed to know she was strong. That things would be all right.

  “Stand with me,” she said, “and smell the morning coming in through the windows. We’ll visit the potatoes soon enough.”

  The shutters by the dining table looked out over the farm. She pulled them completely open, then walked to the back of the house and opened the shutters on the window there so she had a clear view of the river. She scanned the woods and farm; nobody but Nettle was there.

  Talen said, “Why did you take my pants?”

  “I didn’t take your pants.”

  “You wore them the first night here. Why?”

  “Your sister gave them to me. She wanted to use our clothing to create a false trail should anyone with dogs come across our tracks.”

  Talen nodded and fell silent.

  After a few moments Legs began to hum one of the songs he’d often sung to entertain the men and women of Plum village in the evenings as they sat drinking their ale. It was the one about a stupid boy trying to outsmart a gang of crows. She smiled. Perhaps it was she who needed him.

  Legs sang another few songs, and then he stopped, and Sugar could see he was thinking. A few minutes later he began again. A half-an-hour must have passed that way, Legs humming or singing, stopping to think, singing again. Sugar tidied up breakfast, then the floor, all the time watching the windows. And the whole time, Talen sat on the other side of the room with his bow at the ready.

  Sugar ran through a number of scenarios. She knew if Talen changed his mind and decided to use his bow, then she would pick up a chair as a shield and charge him. He’d only get off one shot that way. It would pierce her body or it wouldn’t. And if it didn’t, then she’d be in close with her knife. However, that wouldn’t solve any issues should hunters show up. They needed to seem friends, and that would never happen with him holding the bow.

  She finished the floor, cleaned the ashes from the hearth and put them in the tin ash bucket, then took a good long look out the window. Nettle worked in the distance.

  Talen spoke. “What kind of a name is Legs anyway? It’s not like he’s tall for his age. I can’t imagine he’s quick either.”

  “No, Zu,” said Legs. “It’s rather hard to be speedy when you can’t see where you’re going. And do you know what that means?”

  “What?” Talen asked suspiciously.

  Sugar knew the tone in Legs’svoice. This was him wanting to make a point. But the last thing they needed to do was provoke the bow boy who had just considered killing them both.

  “Legs,” said Sugar in warning.

  “It means it would be a bit difficult for me to catch and eat you.”

  Talen raised his eyebrows. “What’s he going on about?”

  “I’m just pointing out the obvious,” said Legs. “And you can talk to me directly if you want. I’m not deaf.”

  Talen stood. “Maybe I don’t like the way your eyes slide around.”

  His eyes had indeed been sliding. Sugar knew it unnerved some people.

  “Sorry, Zu,” said Legs and closed his lids tight. “I know all the stories about sleth. I’ve sung all the songs. I’ve been thinking about them. And you’d expect if my mother had the powers you think she does, she would have given me my sight. Why wouldn’t she have done that?”

  “What do I know about your mother’s slethy ways? Ask her yourself when they put you in the tower.”

  “She wouldn’t,” said Legs, “because she couldn’t. She’s not sleth.”

  Sugar wished she had Legs’sconfidence. But she didn’t want him to provoke Talen further. “Legs,” she said, “we didn’t answer his original question.” She turned to Talen. “Legs is his nickname. He was born legs first.”

  Sugar didn’t tell him that the midwife said when Legs feet first appeared, he’d pulled them back from the cool air in the room and refused to come out. The first time she’d heard that as a girl, she’d laughed and laughed. She had made her mother tell it again and again. The memory of that happy time seemed so far away, so unreal, as if it were something she’d made up.

  “I think I want to go down now,” said Legs.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think that’s a good idea.” Because who knew what Legs might say next? Lords forbid, he’d probably try to tweak Talen with some comment about him taking care of Legs’sbusiness earlier.

  Legs walked to her, hand in front feeling the way. She took his hand and led him to the cellar door.

  When the door was up, Legs turned to her. “I don’t care,” he said under his breath. And she knew he meant he didn’t care even if Mother were sleth.

  “No,” she agreed, but that was a lie. She cared. Legs descended the stair into the darkness with the potatoes, and she shut the door behind him.

  She turned back to the window and knew she couldn’t stand there doing nothing while Talen watched her. “You can hardly make a lunch over there,” she said. “I will make us something to go with that fish. Can you tell me if your sister keeps any savory?”

  Talen hesitated. She expected him to say something about poisoning the food, but he didn’t. He pointed at a cupboard. “It’s in there.”

  “Thank you,” said Sugar and began washing and cutting vegetables. She found leaving the cellar door open put her on edge. Not everyone had such a cellar built into the floor. Many were outside the kitchen. She could see how having it in the kitchen would be handy, and it was not in the way, but she was not used to working so close to such a hole, so she shut the door.

  When she finished with the vegetables, she found what she needed to make flat cakes. She was about to ask Talen where they kept the lard when she glanced out the back window and saw half-a-dozen Mokaddians wearing leather cuirass and helms crouching at the top of the river bank.

  Her heart jumped.

  A handful of them broke off and approached t
he house, crouching low as they walked.

  These were not Fir-Noy. They wore the colors of the Shoka and displayed Shoka tattoos. But it didn’t matter—Shoka or Fir-Noy, they were still Mokaddians, still sneaking up on the house.

  She drew back from the window so they wouldn’t see her, then glanced out the front and saw Nettle working the field in the distance, oblivious to what was happening. She turned back and watched the first man run up to the house and take his position at the corner.

  Her breath came quickly. The moment she’d been dreading had come and found her making flat cakes. All her mother and father had suffered to give them a chance to escape would now go to waste.

  But that couldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it happen. She didn’t have time to open the door to the cellar, descend, and close it up again. And she wasn’t going to sit down there like a fish in a barrel.

  She whirled round to face Talen. “Hunters,” she whispered.

  Talen had been leaning against the wall in his chair, balancing it on two of its legs. He came away from the wall and brought all four legs to the ground.

  She pointed toward the river, then motioned for him to put his bow down. If he had truly been guarding against something in the woods, then he would have been outside. Both of them would be. They needed to appear to be friends. They needed to appear to be more than friends. It would have been better if Ke had been sitting there, but Talen would have to do. She only prayed he wasn’t a fool.

  She could not speak, not if she didn’t want to alert the man outside, so she hastened across the floor toward Talen. He stood, alarmed at her approach.

  One, two, four steps, and she crossed the line he’d drawn. He raised the bow, but either his fear had paralyzed him, or he wasn’t a fool after all because he allowed her to come right up to him, grab the wrist of the hand that held the bow, and whisper into his ear.

  “They’re outside,” she said.

  “Fir-Noy?”

  “I’m going to sit on your lap,” she said, “like a lover.” Then she pushed him back into his chair and settled onto his lap.

  Talen’s eyes were round with alarm.