Enemy (On the Bones of Gods Book 1)

by K. Eason

  And realized his error, in the next moment. Wished he could take back the shout, the name, as the woman spun toward him. Not Snowdenaelikk. Clearly not, and more clear still as the fog and snow dissolved into details. Shorter than Snow, wild-haired, with golden eyes the same shade as a rock leopard’s, and as pitiless. His skin tightened. Prickled. He would be safer with a dozen rock leopards than in this woman’s company. Veiko took a careful step backward. Lifted the axe, dual warning and warding.

  The woman raised her right hand. Fire writhed and flashed on her palm, yellow and hot and in a pattern that made his head ache, his gut seize and burn at the back of his throat. Veiko cut sideways, turned to sprint for the trees. Got two steps before all the world froze solid: breath in his lungs, heart in his chest, every muscle he owned.

  She drew near enough he could smell her, woodsmoke and oiled leather and old blood. The wet tips of her hair struck his cheek, that close to him. They might have been the only people alive in all the world, trapped in a pocket of

  hell

  calm. Too quiet here, only her breath and his. He squirmed against her witchery, helpless as a scruffed puppy.

  The woman said something in a language he did not know. And then, in bruised Dvergiri, “You are looking for Snowdenaelikk. Tell me why.”

  I am a fool. That was a truth. She is my guest. That was another. And this woman, with her cat-yellow eyes, would have neither one. He clamped his lips tight together.

  She frowned. And again, in Dvergiri: “You summoned the dead. Tell me how.”

  Veiko stared at her, and shook his head a second time, while anger and fear tangled and burned in the back of his throat. Witch-woman, the sort who might poison wells or steal children or drink blood in the dark of the moon.

  She smiled faintly, cold-eyed. “The Taliri are like you. So stubborn. Dvergiri men are wiser. They do as they are told. But I don’t know you. Who are you? Who are your people?”

  Veiko shook his head as far as her witchery permitted. A wise man would stay silent. A wise man would not be here. He answered her in his own language, forced between teeth: “I have no people.”

  She put her hand on his chest, as if to feel his heartbeat through bone and leather. Paused there while snow melted on his cheeks and ran down like tears.

  Gathering herself, he thought, like a rock leopard before leaping.

  “It seems,” she said, “that I must take the answers from you.”

  Veiko licked his lip. Collected enough wet, between saliva and snowmelt, to spit. He missed her. Barely.

  She nodded. Then she said a word, and a razored net dredged his skull, slicing bone and brain and making him glad he had no breath for screaming.

  Horrified, he heard himself answer. How he knew Snowdenaelikk. His name. His bargain with the dead. He would have collapsed after, except her witchery would not let him. Held him upright while his legs shook as if he’d been running.

  She stood very still and looked at him. Then the anger drained out of her eyes, and something else took its place.

  She showed him her weapon: no broken sword, he saw, but a spike, bone-colored and slightly curved. It looked like the tip on old Kaari Mykkanen’s spear that Kaari swore was a wurm’s tooth. Veiko was suddenly very glad that he had not asked Kenjak how he had died. If he did not know what was coming, he might still meet it bravely.

  The woman knelt at his feet like a lover. Drove the spike into his thigh and dragged it downward. It sliced easily through breeches and flesh and muscle, stopped hard at bone, while Veiko struggled with a hundred boyhood lessons that said a man did not cry out, did not show an enemy weakness, did not—

  Let himself be trapped by a witch-woman, involve himself in another’s battles, strike down a chieftain’s son one spring morning.

  He managed the first, at least. Only just. He stared hard at the spike sticking out of his leg and told himself he could bear this. Men fought through such wounding.

  She turned the blade once, in the wound. Pulled it out. Heat followed, and wet. She waited a heartbeat and stabbed it into him again. Carved a second line through his flesh.

  Veiko thought about the great flat expanses of ice that a man could not look at in sunlight without going blind. Imagined himself staring until his vision turned white. Let her cut him into carrion. He would not—

  Scream, yes, he would, when she stabbed him a third time. He caught it behind his teeth, strained it out into a sound that would shame him all the short way to his dying.

  He wished for a stray arrow. Wished for his dogs, for a distraction, wished for one chance to strike and to see how this witch handled an axe in her skull.

  Logi barked from very nearby. The witch-woman’s head snapped up. But it was Helgi who leapt at her, soundless, from the other side. The big grey dog struck her shoulder, sent her sprawling, tearing the spike out of Veiko’s leg as she fell.

  But she was quick, this witch-woman. Got her knees under her and crouched, unmoving, as Helgi skidded around for another charge. Veiko could not see the spike in her hand, but he saw the shape of her shoulders. A man would know that meant a weapon raised and ready. But a dog would not.

  Wait.

  Veiko’s fingers convulsed on his axe handle.

  Helgi gathered himself and leapt. The witch-woman twisted, drove the spike deep into the dog’s ribs. Rolled aside as Helgi squealed and spun, midair, to snap at the wound.

  Veiko dragged the axe upward, one-handed. Too slow.

  Helgi staggered a tight, panicked circle. Ears flat, teeth bared. Foam collected on his lips. Dripped as he snapped and whined. He collapsed. Churned snow and dirt and stopped.

  The witch-woman stood slowly. Reached for the spike where it thrust out of Helgi’s side. Not looking at Veiko, because he was held and helpless, left him caught up in her spells, which she counted solid. Which she had not checked. Which had unraveled like poor knitting.

  Fool.

  He brought the axe down with all his force and fury. Missed her skull as his leg betrayed him, and cleaved her shoulder instead. Bone snapped, and flesh split, and red sprayed out into the snow. Her mouth rounded wide as her eyes. Stretched around a sound that was neither scream nor cry. His bones hurt again, and the inside of his skin.

  He fell hard, crumpled backward across packs and gear and the hard line of his bow. Ice closed over his head, water seeping through his lips and filling his lungs. He strained against it until he couldn’t anymore, and then he sank. The light retreated, but it wasn’t dark: grey, like falling into solid, frozen fog. Roaring in his ears, a hundred waterfalls, a thousand rockslides.

  Dying.

  And then a palm slammed into the center of his chest—

  “Fuck and damn, Veiko, don’t you die.”

  —and with it came Snowdenaelikk’s stone-and-spice smell, and hands he took on faith were hers, rolling him onto his side in fresh snow while he coughed himself back to living. Hot breath on his face, and more wet: Logi whined and licked his ear, and clawed as if he meant to crawl into Veiko’s shirt like a puppy.

  “Idiot.” Snowdenaelikk elbowed Logi aside. Peered into his face from blurry too-close. Familiar planes and angles, eyes that would be blue with any light at all. “Veiko? You all right?”

  Yes, but she’d moved on already. Ran hands over him, brisk and efficient and unconcerned for his modesty. She stopped at his leg. Stared down with something like horror. “Fuck and damn. That’s Tal’Shik’s mark.”

  “The witch-woman.” He blinked focus past Snowdenaelikk. Flurries whited the world into smooth edges, blurred boundaries. “She cut me. She made me—” He clamped teeth together over that shame.

  “That’s godmagic, yeah? You’re lucky you’re breathing.” Snow clamped hard on the wound. “I’m sorry, I’ll look at it later, but we have to go, yeah? Now. There might be Taliri, still. Or Ehkla. Or Dekklis.”

  He caught her wrist, stopped touch and talk together. “Helgi.”

  Two beats silence, this time. She pulle
d loose, very gently. Shook her head. “No.”

  He swallowed hard. Foolish, to hurt so much for a dog whose life had bought his own. More foolish to have asked at all and hoped for any other answer. And stupid, entirely, to feel guilt for that death. It had been luck that brought Helgi out of the storm at that moment, not his wishes. Not his need. A man could not wish such things.

  But a noidghe might.

  His right arm was still cold, but the fingers worked when he tried them. He made a fist of that hand. “Did Kenjak find you?”

  A frown. She helped him sit up. Kept her arm across his shoulders. “Yeah. He did. Twice. Told me to run the first time. Second time, he told me where you were. Said I should tell you his debt to you is clear. You know what that means?”

  “Yes.” Veiko dragged his good knee under him. Drove the axe shaft-first into the snow and leaned hard on the head. Ground his teeth against sudden nausea. Something wrong in the wound. Cold deep inside it, and burning.

  Snow grabbed a fistful of sleeve and shirt. Steadied him when he might’ve fallen again. “You need to walk, Veiko.”

  “I have two legs.”

  “Yeah? I see one and a half.”

  “I will walk slowly.”

  “Right.” She slipped an arm around his ribs. “Just don’t fall on me, yeah? Never get you up twice.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Snow could—and did—haul Veiko up a second time. And a third, then a fourth. His blood had soaked through her trousers, where their legs touched. Should have begun to clot, yeah, and hadn’t, and—

  “Got to stop, Veiko.”

  A grunt that she felt through his ribs, a momentary grip on her shoulder that she took for all right. She angled against a pine, let him shift his own weight to the tree. Laughing God, all she could do to keep herself steady. He was taller, broader, and the sort of heavy that meant a person sliding in and out of consciousness. Sweat soaked her shirt, which was both exertion and death sentence in this weather. The wind was coming crosswise now, blizzard getting thicker, storm-twilight that would only get darker when the sun set. They needed shelter now.

  And she had no idea where they were, except out of the riverbed. She looked back, as if she might see if ghosts and Taliri still fought. As if her motherless svartjagr would appear just for wishing.

  Find your own food from now on if we die. Hear me, Briel?

  Veiko kept saying, “Go up.” Might mean a delirious man thinking of home, the land above the tree line, all snow and ice and wide skies. Might be following some sending of Briel’s that Snow herself hadn’t gotten.

  And he might just be dying. That was her worry. She knelt in the snow at his feet. Risked her flesh to frostbite and peeled her gloves off. Risked backlash and called up a witchfire, candle-sized. She balanced the flame in her left hand. Snowflakes fell through it and collected on her skin and melted.

  “Is that wise?” At least he sounded like Veiko, and not a man one step from dying.

  “Witchfires are cold. You won’t burn.”

  “That is not what I meant.”

  “Then no. But I need to see. Not you.” She nudged Logi back with an elbow. “Sit, yeah? Don’t need your help.”

  She peeled the edges of his trousers back—leather, and wool under that, and all of it soaked. Found a pale strip that might’ve been skin, might’ve been bone, amid the wet and gore. The wounds weren’t wide. Precise, very deep, clean on the edges, except the one that ran to the edge of his leg, as if a scribe had dragged her stylus sideways off the parchment. But the cuts were nowhere near the big veins. He shouldn’t be bleeding like this. And the wounds shouldn’t be swollen on the edges, either, shouldn’t be hard and hot.

  Snow dipped a bare fingertip into the wound, touched it to her tongue. Salt and metal, bitter under that. She made a slow fist. Counted five. Crossed stares with Logi, who’d defied orders again and crowded in close.

  “Poison,” she told him, under her breath. “Killing him. You get that? You lick it, you’re next. Get back and sit.”

  Logi sat. Flattened his ears. Whined and watched her as she scrubbed her hands clean in the snow and forced them, still wet, into her gloves.

  “It burns,” Veiko said quietly. Calmly. Asking, without asking.

  She glanced up at him. Kenjak’s ghost had looked healthier. “It’s poison.”

  He nodded, unsurprised.

  “What’d she use on you? Knife?”

  “A spike. Curved.” He tried to sketch out the shape of it, one-handed. “Like a wurm’s tooth. The spike. Kaari has one on his spear.”

  Delirious, definitely. No motherless idea who Kaari was, and, “Worms don’t have teeth.”

  “Not worm.” He frowned at her, Veiko-earnest. “Wurm. Like Briel, only larger.”

  Just like Briel. Yeah. Big fucking cousin. “Dragon, yeah? That’s the Dvergiri word.”

  There’d been a whole shelf labeled “Dragon” in the Academy, vials and jars and bits. But never whole teeth. Never whole claws. Never the tail-spike, which was the more likely source of Ehkla’s carving tool because that’s where the poison was.

  Ask where that toadfucker had got herself bits of a dragon. Ask how. That was Tal’Shik’s beast. Tal’Shik’s favorite shape.

  Snow tugged at her belt with stiff fingers. She could carry her blade. She looped the leather twice around Veiko’s thigh, once across the worst of the wounding, and once above it. Pulled it tight and buckled it. Please, that the bleeding stopped now. Slowed down. Something, until she could help him.

  Logi whined. Nudged her, this time, and licked her cheek. Snow stood up fast. Slapped the snow off her knees hard enough to sting. “Should’ve kept running, Veiko. You were clear.”

  “A poor way to treat my guest.”

  “Your what?”

  “Guest. At my fire. I am responsible for you.”

  Laughing God, conversations with this man were like exploring deep caves without a candle. Think you have a path, yeah, and then slip right over the edge.

  “It was only a campsite, Veiko. Not a homestead.”

  “That is all that I have.” He seemed to think that was funny. Delirious. Dying. Poisoned and laughing himself off the tree. He caught himself on her shoulder. Hung there while she sidled against his ribs and held on.

  “Well. We need to find another one, yeah? Briel give you any idea where we’re going?”

  Shee-oop answered, and then Briel burst into her awareness. Showed her a narrow slit between boulders near the ridgeline that might be wide enough for two people, for a dog, for a svartjagr tired of the cold. Showed her something else, too: a pair of figures on the trail behind them.

  Snow stopped. Closed her eyes, because they were useless, and carefully did not think about roasting Briel on a spit.

  “Veiko.”

  “Yes?”

  “Briel’s found us a safe place. A cave. Up the hill. Problem is—”

  “You cannot see.”

  “That’s the first, yes.”

  “And the second?”

  She told him.

  Dekklis took a certain pride in her tracking skills, finding the merest trace of an animal, or a person. Broken twig, displaced leaf. Tracks in winter layered in the dirt and the snow until the next storm wiped a trail clean.

  Which this storm was well in the process of doing. Down to an arm length’s visibility now, Istel only a smudged suggestion at her shoulder. But she could have followed this trail with one eye, in the dark, by smell alone. Fresh bloodstink that would bring every predator for a league. Dark splotches on the snow. The ragged tracks, already half-full, that told her two people together, the bigger of whom limped and leaned hard on the other. One dog that walked mostly on three paws.

  She’d found the other dog already. Looked at it and considered that she had no idea what could do that. Decided that she should find the half-blood and ask.

  She tried not to think—as the snow got deeper, thicker, in the air and on the ground—whether or not Snowd
enaelikk might know how the big dog had died. She just walked and listened to battle sounds receding. Followed the tracks as they snaked up the riverbed, then up the bank itself. Didn’t think about the storm getting worse, or the sun going down, or the cold that already made her lungs ache. Didn’t think about dying out here. Patrols disappeared in winter sometimes and thawed to bones and rust.

  She left that thinking to her partner.

  “Dek. Where’re we going?”

  “Blood goes this way.”

  “Yeah. See that. But base camp’s the other way.”

  “You cold, Istel?”

  “Yes. Not the point. Dek. Rurik needs to hear about what happened.”

  “Which part? You want to tell him you saw his brother’s ghost killing Taliri? Or that those same Taliri killed a whole patrol?”

  “How about, there’s a Taliri warband in the forest and they’ve got a conjuror?”

  “So did we for a while. Funny how the Taliri’s conjuror knew Snow. I’m curious about that.”

  “All we saw tonight, that’s what you’re wondering?”

  “I’m not sure what I saw.”

  “Dek.” All Istel’s objection, condensed to one syllable.

  “A little further. Look at that blood. Her friend’s bleeding out. They can’t keep going.”

  “Neither can we.”

  She remembered then that he was hurt. That he’d probably taken more damage in the escape. Guilt roughed her voice, turned honest query into accusation. “You need to stop?”

  “No, First Scout.”

  Good and pissed at her, which meant yes, he needed a rest. Dekklis tucked into the lee of a big pine. Crouched and pretended to study the tracks while Istel leaned on the trunk and made no attempt to pretend that he cared about much of anything besides staying upright. She snuck a glance sidelong. Couldn’t tell if he’d started bleeding again. He’d take her head off, justifiably, if she asked.

  She’d kill her own man, she kept this up. But, “The trail keeps going. They can’t be that much ahead of us.”

  “Might be laying an ambush.”

  “That much blood? More likely we’ll find a body than a fight.”