“Just relax,” Darshia whispered. “Let me do all the work.”
* * *
Some hours later, Tosh felt soft hands shake him roughly by the shoulders.
“Wake up! Hurry!” Darshia’s voice, a frantic whisper.
Tosh tangled naked in the sheets. It took him a moment to remember where he was. Ah, yes, lovely, lovely Darshia and her talented hands and amazing mouth and soft, creamy—
“Get up! Now!”
“A moment, my love,” Tosh mumbled. “I can be ready for you in a moment, I promise.” The woman was hungry for more? Well, who was Tosh to refuse a lady?
“Not that, idiot. Wake up.”
It donned on Tosh that something untoward was afoot.
He sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes. “What’s going on?”
She shoved his clothes into his hands. “The Perranese are here.”
He stood abruptly, attempted to put on his pants.
“No time.” She grabbed his arm, dragged him to a small closet and opened the door.
“Don’t you think they’ll look in the closet?”
She ignored him, knelt and pried up the floorboards inside the closet. There was a ladder underneath, leading down into darkness. “Get in.”
“Where does that—”
“Get in!”
He got in.
Hear heard Darshia replacing the floorboards overhead as he descended into darkness, fumbling to keep hold of his clothes and boots. Ten seconds later, the ladder ran out, his foot dangling in midair. The floor might have been two inches below or fifty feet.
Tosh was still trying to decide what to do next when strong hands grabbed him roughly from behind, another hairy paw clamping down over his mouth.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Rina watched the snow devils, appraising them deliberately even as they bore down on her, snarling, from the steep slope to the side and up the stone steps in front of her. She understood how fast they were moving, closing quickly, a deadly and efficient hunter pack.
But she watched them in slow motion—the tufts of hair curving out and up from their foreheads like horns which earned them the devil name. The flat, apelike faces, curved tusks, long arms and gangly legs propelling them through the snow. Their high-pitched wails echoed through the valley.
The lead snow devil, the bull, leapt for her.
She was already spinning, cutting it in half across the chest, blood spraying in a fine mist. Rina came around again to catch the second one at the neck, its head popping off in a fountain of gore.
The third understood in some animal way that this prey was not as easy as it had first seemed and hesitated, thought about retreating even as the point of Kork’s sword entered its chest and came out the back in a wet, bloody splatter. To Rina, the Fyrian’s sword felt like an extension of her own body—natural, easy. It was her sword now.
She withdrew it from the snow devil’s body just in time to wheel on the two coming down the slope.
Rina laughed. In the last few hours, events had given her many reasons to cry, but she set aside those thoughts until later and delighted at the ease with which she had dispatched the snow devils.
A sword through the throat. She withdrew it in a spray of blood, swung at a hairy paw reaching for her, severed it, brought the blade around to behead the beast.
The skirmish had ended before it had begun, the snow devils in a bloody semicircle around her, a scattering of limbs, intestines, blood. The spirit still hummed along her limbs. Rina held the sword over her head, ready for the next wave of foes.
None came.
She lowered the weapon slowly. She backtracked a few paces to where she’d dropped the cloak, retrieved it, wrapped it around her shoulders. She didn’t feel the cold but understood it would bite her eventually when she released the hold on the spirit within her. There would be fatigue, an eventual price to pay. But not yet.
First she needed to make it down the mountain, find shelter in one of the valleys below Klaar.
Rina hiked effortlessly. An hour took her down the stone steps. Another hour took her within the shadow of the city, and then into the forest beyond. If she had her bearings right, there was a lake to the south and an inhabited area ahead of her. She soon she found herself trudging into a small village. The snow was coming heavily again, filling in her tracks a few yards after she’d made them. A large barn to her right drew her attention. Shelter.
She entered, closed the door behind her. She noted warmth. Two cows, three goats, five pigs.
There was a pile of dry hay at the far end of the barn. Rina burrowed into it, wrapped the cloak around her as she curled into a tight ball, and released her hold on the spirit.
The world crashed down upon her.
Physically at first. Her shoulders screamed hot agony, knees and ankles burning. Even in the shelter of the barn, the cold was bitter. She shivered violently, teeth chattering. Every muscle protested.
But the physical hurt was nothing compared to the wave of emotion that slammed her square in the chest. She put her arms over her face, sobs wracking her body. She cried endlessly for her mother and father. For Kork. Everyone Rina loved—who had loved her—was dead. Her world lay in ruin.
She cried, pain and heartache blurring into an ongoing, gray misery until utter exhaustion at last pulled her into a bottomless black well of sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Alem had immediately turned off the road, spurring the gelding through the forest. He didn’t want to meet Perranese troops coming from the other direction. But to shoot the gap down to the lower valley, there was no option but the road. He sat astride the horse a moment in the trees about fifty yards from the road’s edge, tilted his head, listened.
Stillness. Calm. Quiet.
The horse clop-crunched through the snow and out onto the road. All clear.
He walked the horse down slowly, and two hours later the lower valley spread wide in front of him, the village of Crossroads already in sight. It was one of Klaar’s larger villages, with about forty small but well-kept dwellings and a tavern and attached stable that attended to travelers and their horses. The tallest building in the center of the village was both the town hall and the Temple of Dumo.
The village was named for the self-evident fact that it clustered around a major crossroads in Klaar. If Alem kept riding west, the road would take him into the wide world of Helva. The road curving north went to fur-trapping territory and ended eventually at Ferrigan’s Tower. The road south went through the scattered lowland villages and curved distantly around the mountains, turning into the Small Road which led up to Klaar’s back gate.
Alem rode through the village and took the road south. He looked and listened but detected no sign of life. Most of the villagers would have evacuated to the city, and any who stayed behind would have been frightened off by the Perranese army marching down the northern road.
He followed the track south out of the village for a half mile then turned off onto a small path; it was almost unnoticed under fresh snow, but Alem had walked it many times. He followed it into the forest, walking the gelding slowly. An hour later the snow-crusted pines thinned into a clearing, a small, frozen lake icy blue in front of him. Since the body of water was called Lake Hammish, the village perched on its shore was also called Hammish.
For the first time ever, it occurred to Alem that the Klaarian method of naming things tended toward the direct and obvious. He made a note to be more observant in the future.
Hammish was much smaller than Crossroads: nine cabins spread along the shoreline, a score of small wooden boats pulled up on the dark sand. Eight of the nine cabins housed fishing families, who earned a living off the big tiger gars that lurked in the lake’s depths.
Alem reined in the horse and dismounted in front of the ninth cabin.
His grandmother Breen had repaired fishing nets, tackle and lures for decades. She was very old, and her sight was failing, but her fingers were still as nimble as when she
was a girl. Some even came up from the river country to purchase her handiwork.
Alem paused before knocking, looked at the other cabins. Smoke rose from the chimneys of three. Hammish was tucked away. They might not have even gotten the word to flee to the city. Not that Breen would leave anyway.
He looked at the lake. It was very deep, but not far across, and he could see the large hunting lodge of a minor noble whose name Alem couldn’t remember. He’d never been over there.
He knocked.
The door creaked open. “Alem!”
Breen threw her bony arms around her grandson. They hugged.
“You got here just in time,” Breen said. “I was on my way to Agatha’s.”
“Agatha?” Alem remembered the wife of the elder fisherman was named Agatha.
“A stranger in town,” Breen said. “Agatha is in a tizzy about it. She’s so easily spooked.” She waved a dismissive, wrinkled hand as if that explained Agatha.
“Is it the Perranese?” If a scout had found the little village, others could follow. At the very least, they would take Alem’s horse. At worst …
Breen cackled. “Oh, dear me, no. Nothing so dramatic.” She closed the door behind her, turned and walked toward a cabin down the shoreline. “She’s just found some girl in her barn. Strangers disturb the goats.”
* * *
The three of them stood together, peeking inside through a crack in the barn door. It was a communal building and all of the village’s animals were inside. Agatha was a squat, weathered, sturdy woman with vacant eyes and a frowning, worried expression. As she was the wife of the elder fisherman, the barn fell within her jurisdiction.
The bleating of the goats inside was constant and annoying.
Alem turned to Agatha. “So … there’s a girl in there?”
“That’s right,” Agatha said.
“You don’t know her?”
“Never laid eyes on her before,” Agatha said. “Went in to milk them cows, and there she was in the hay, sleeping.”
“Sleeping, you say.”
“Yes.”
“Sinister.”
Agatha blinked.
“So.” Alem was trying to understand this. “You went in, saw this girl, and then … then went to tell Breen.”
“Well …” Agatha shrugged, gestured to the barn. “I mean … well …”
Alem glanced at Breen standing behind her, and the old woman shrugged.
“Would you like me to take a look?” Alem asked.
Agatha sighed relief. “Dumo bless you, lad.”
Alem entered the barn.
He found he was holding his breath as he tiptoed back to the haystack. Ridiculous. And yet, this wasn’t the sort of village anyone came to by accident. It was off the beaten path. Agatha’s reaction was comical but understandable too. Strangers popping up out of nowhere just didn’t happen in Hammish. And, frankly, Alem would not be surprised to find out that Agatha had never been out of the village in her life. A stranger unannounced might actually be a shock to the system.
Alem suddenly felt mature and worldly, coming from the big city of Klaar. Not bad for a stable boy.
Head stable boy.
He peeked around the corner into the hay-filled stall. A lump under a cloak, half covered with hay. If she were indeed sleeping, then she slept the slumber of the dead because the racket from the goats was about to drive Alem crazy.
He approached slowly, trying to get a look at her.
She stirred, and Alem froze.
The girl in the hay pushed herself up to her knees, her back toward him. Her cloak fell away. The red-inked tattoos across her shoulder and down her spine startled him. There was a large circle with an intricate design between her shoulder blades, a twin line of fine runes down either side of her spine. More red lines leading up into her hairline and across the width of her shoulders. She was beautiful, strange, exotic, and Alem felt his heart beat a little faster.
He tried to focus on the circular design, but it resisted his observation, seemed to shift and move beneath her skin. He gasped.
She turned at the sound, brushing hay and strands of black hair out of her face. Their eyes met. He recognized her and gasped again.
Impossible.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tosh gave up struggling almost immediately. More than one pair of big hands had grabbed him, enormous, hairy, powerful arms lifting him and spiriting him along the pitch-black passage.
Trolls. That fucking whore tossed me into a fucking troll pit.
But they weren’t trolls. They rounded a corner, and the dim light from a single candle showed Tosh he was in the iron grasp of the two “cudgel brothers,” as he’d come to think of them; indeed, from the angle at which they carried him he could see one of the cudgels stuck into a wide leather belt.
The candle was on a small table with a jug of wine, a wheel of cheese and a plate of thick, dark sausages. They set him upright next to the table. Tosh could see chairs now and a small stove. The “smaller” brother—a foot taller than Tosh—whispered, “Keep it down, eh?” before removing his hand from Tosh’s mouth.
“This here’s our hidey hole,” the bigger brother said.
In the candlelight, the brothers looked strange and unreal, like they’d been mashed together out of clay, their ears and lips thick, bald heads large and round.
“I’m Tosh.”
“We know,” said the bigger one.
Tosh frowned. He’d hoped they would tell him their names.
“Sorry, gents, but I forgot how you’re called.”
“I’m Lubin,” the smaller brother said.
The bigger brother thumped his chest with a massive fist. “Bune.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance again.” Tosh took in his surroundings. He was in a natural cavern augmented with stone work and buttressed with thick, wooden beams. Part of the ceiling overhead was natural stone, and part was thick wood. It had the look of a place long used. “So what is this place and why am I here?”
Lubin sat down on one of the chairs, grabbed the jug of wine. “A cave.” He drank, smacked his lips and handed the jug to his brother.
“Perranese,” Bune said then drank deeply.
Ah. Clear as mud.
They handed the jug to Tosh.
He shrugged. Why not? Tosh drank and almost spit it out. This for damn sure isn’t the good stuff. He braced himself and took another, smaller swig to show he was a good sport. He handed the jug back to Lubin.
Tosh cleared his throat, belched fire. “Okay, fair enough that maybe I don’t want to meet any Perranese troops right at this particular moment, buy why are you down here?”
“Better to be safe,” Lubin said. “The new bosses won’t hurt the whores.”
“Men like whores,” put in Bune.
Ah. The intellectual one.
“But it is different for armed men. We are here only to protect the women, but these foreigners might not understand. Better to be safe for now and wait.”
Lubin took another swig from the jug, then handed it to Bune, who drank and then held it out for Tosh again.
Yeah, why not? It’s not as if I’ve got anything else to do.
He drank, winced; a mellow warmth spread through his body. The stuff wasn’t half bad on a second go.
The high-pitched ring of a small bell startled him. Tosh glanced up, saw a little brass bell in the corner where the wooden part of the ceiling met the natural stone. A length of thin, brown twine led up through a hole in the wood. Somebody above yanked on the twine again, and the bell rang.
“What’s that?”
“That’s Mother,” Lubin said.
* * *
“Come in,” she said.
Tosh entered the third-floor room and closed the door behind him.
It was a nice room, and in that sense it didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the Wounded Bird. It was more like a nobleperson’s study: padded leather-covered chairs, a large polished desk, oil lamp
s hanging overhead providing good light, not smoky. He looked down and saw he was standing on a thick carpet with an intricate pattern, exotic, probably hauled all the way from Fyria or some other far-off land.
As if you know how the nobles live, idiot. Just pay attention to the lady.
She wore a blue silk dress of a modest, modern cut and could have passed for merchant class or minor nobility, but Tosh already knew who she was. She ran the Wounded Bird, although whether she was the owner or merely running the place for somebody else, Tosh didn’t know. She tended toward the plump and had rosy cheeks, cool blue eyes, black hair streaked with white. A handsome woman, probably quite fetching in her younger days.
“You’re Tosh?”
“Yes.”
She looked him over, eyes shrewd, and Tosh suddenly felt strangely exposed.
“They call me Mother.”
“No name?”
“I have a name,” she said, “but it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone. But everyone in Backgate knows who Mother is.”
“Thanks for taking me in,” Tosh said.
“Don’t,” Mother said. “It wasn’t my idea.”
Uh-oh.
She tilted her head, considering. “Not that I necessarily disapprove.”
Tosh shifted his feet, rubbed the back of his neck. “Well … thanks anyway.”
“Sorry for your rude awakening,” Mother said. “But we had to get you down into the cave. I can offer you better hospitality now.”
Mother gestured to a chair near the desk. Tosh sat.
She turned to a silver tray behind her on which was a crystal decanter and matching crystal wine glasses. She filled one, handed it to Tosh.
He sipped. Better than the brew he’d been swilling downstairs although it didn’t spread that warm feeling through his limbs as quickly. “Thank you.”
“I have a brothel to run,” Mother said. “Part of that is keeping my girls happy, and it lifted their spirits to take you in and treat you nicely. I imagine you represented every father, brother and granddad killed by the invaders.”
Tosh didn’t know what to say to that, so he sipped more wine.
Mother paced slowly as she spoke. “A sour little officer from the Perranese army came to tell me what I’d already guessed. We’ve been asked—ordered, actually—to open for business. Their general isn’t a fool. He knows what it takes to keep soldiers in line, and discipline can only take you so far.”
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