But he’d never before lost his son’s respect. It delivered a fresh kind of pain.
He couldn’t explain why it had been necessary to betray the bladedancers. Not in a way Ruven would understand. And now he struggled to explain why he needed to go back and see what became of them.
Ruven had backed him into a corner, and he’d given the goat a bitter concoction to make it throw up the poison. Now, the guilt was crippling him, and he needed to know if the animal had survived. He needed to know if Narina could defeat the firewalker and his army.
What if she didn’t defeat him, what then? What if Sohn Tankred killed her? How could Andras go back and serve Lord Balint again? For that matter, how could he serve the man even if Narina won? He couldn’t, that was the answer.
No more. I paid my debt.
He had worked his way cautiously back up toward the grassy hill, covering perhaps half the distance again, when he heard the sound of stomping horses, men shouting, and the clash of steel. Narina’s battle cry rose above the din.
A horse charged down the hillside toward Andras, and he threw himself from the path and scrambled up the loose dirt and rock to one side, terrified. But the horse held no rider, and was tossing its head with eyes rolled back as it galloped precariously down the steep trail. One false step and it would go over the edge and half slide, half fall forty or fifty feet until the ground leveled. It pounded past Andras without slowing.
The riderless horse reminded Andras of just how exposed he was. Should riders come up from the other direction, or should they finish off Narina, Gyorgy, and Kozmer and continue this way, they would catch him in the open. He might manage to convince them that he was Balint’s servant before they cut him down in their bloodlust. Or he might not.
Andras hurried forward until he found a boulder at the edge of the hill that he’d spotted on his way down. He crouched on the leeward side, trying to work up the courage to peer around the rock to watch. The fight was raging now, and several more horses rode past on their way from the battlefield. One poor beast had been opened at the belly, and dragged its intestines through the dirt as it galloped off to die.
It was all Andras could do not to share the horses’ terror and run after them. Instead, he stayed low, listening. There was too much shouting to figure out what was happening, but the fight continued, which must mean that Narina was still alive. Surely she would be facing off against Tankred by now. How would she hold her own with so many other enemies in the fight? At any moment Andras expected to hear a triumphant shout from the attackers as the bladedancer sohn fell.
“Gyorgy!” It was Narina’s voice. A command, not a cry of despair.
Two of them, at least, were still alive. Presumably the elder sohn, as well. Hope rose in Andras’s chest. The sound of fighting grew even more ferocious.
And then it ended. Two men staggered past, faces covered with blood, one clutching his shoulder, the other still carrying a spear. Other survivors, presumably, had run back the way they’d come. If there were others, that is.
Andras stayed hidden until he heard Narina’s voice, now calmer, speaking words that he couldn’t quite pick up. She’d not only survived, she had won. His treachery hadn’t cost Narina her life. By all the demigods, that was a relief.
He was anxious to tell Ruven what had happened. Would it ease the disappointment in the boy’s face when he looked at his father? Please, let it.
He was cautiously descending the hill to where he’d left the boy and the dogs when he came across one of the two escaping men from Sohn Tankred’s attacking force. The man lay sprawled across the path, motionless.
Andras naturally thought it was the injured one of the pair, who’d succumbed to his wounds and been abandoned by his companion. But it was the other man, the one with the spear who’d been leading the way. In fact, his right hand still clenched the weapon. Someone had cut the man’s throat and left him to spill his lifeblood onto the dusty path.
A few steps beyond lay the second man. What was left of him. His body had been severed in two at the waist, with the legs slightly lower on the trail than the torso, as if they’d kept running for two or three steps after being separated from the rest of the body. Between legs and torso lay a mass of spilled organs.
Andras’s heart pounded with terror, and he wanted to turn and run. Had he been alone, he’d have done just that, going back to Narina to throw himself on her mercy. But he was horrified to have the killer between himself and Ruven, and wouldn’t rest until he’d climbed in with the boy and the dogs to hole up until the safety of nightfall.
As he rounded the bend, he came to a dead stop. His mouth fell open in fear. A tall, broad-shouldered man stood with his back to Andras. He held a massive two-handed sword lightly in his left hand while his right parted the thorny brush, right where Andras had left Ruven and the dogs.
“I know you’re in there,” the man said. “Come out where I can see you.”
There was a low, familiar growl in the man’s voice, though Andras couldn’t immediately place where he’d heard it before. Nor did he spot familiar colors in the man’s tunic, only saw that the man seemed to be a soldier from his boots and hauberk. A horse pawed impatiently a few feet away. It wasn’t one of the animals who’d fled the battlefield, which meant that the man had ridden in from elsewhere. Who was this lone rider, and what kind of a warrior must he be to cleave a fleeing man in two with a single sweep of the blade?
“You’ll either come out, or I’ll hack this bush apart and find you myself.” When there was no response, the man drew back his sword and swept it across the front of the brush, which fell away like stalks of rice before a scythe.
To this point, Andras had felt rooted to the spot, paralyzed like a rat cornered in a barn. But the warrior’s attack on the brush was a slap in the face. Two more swipes and the bush would be gone, and Ruven and the dogs would be exposed in their hiding place.
He waved his hands. “Wait!”
The man turned, a startled look on his face. Perhaps caught unawares, he nevertheless recovered in an instant. There was a blur, and suddenly Andras found himself dangling off the edge of the man’s fist, which seized him about the throat. The man held his massive sword in the other hand, drawn back and ready to skewer the ratter.
“What’s this?” the man said. “A peasant?” He let Andras fall to the ground.
Andras scrambled backward in a crab walk. His heart was thudding in his temples, his throat aching from the man’s grip. At the same time, the attention was on himself, not on the brush where he’d left Ruven.
At that moment, he recognized the man. It was Miklos, the leader of the horsemen who had attacked the bladedancer temple in an attempt to steal Balint Stronghand’s weapons for Lord Zoltan. A foolish move, it had ended in disaster. Narina’s father had cut the men down by the dozen, with Miklos himself one of the few who hadn’t suffered injury.
Andras’s first thought was that he’d come for revenge. Word must be out that Narina had killed Lord Zoltan. One of his lieutenants, burning with indignation, had set out to assassinate her. Though how would he think such a thing possible, when the bladedancers had already fought off multiple attacks?
No. There was something different about the situation, starting with Miklos’s blurred-motion pivot from the swiping at the bush to seizing Andras by the throat.
Miklos’s eyes narrowed. “You’re no peasant. You’re that ratter from the mountains.”
And you’re no common soldier, Andras thought.
“I healed your men, my lord. Gave them balms, remember? Please don’t kill me.”
“Who is in there, your son?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“What are you doing here? And stand up when I talk to you.”
Andras climbed shakily to his feet. “There’s war on the plains. And volcanoes erupting in the mountains. It’s safer up here, even with all the brigands.”
“Sounds like a lie, to me. Call the whelp out here. Now.”
Miklos glanced up the trail, then swung his sword over his shoulder and sheathed it. “I won’t kill him. Not if you speak true.”
“It’s all right,” Andras said into the brush. His voice trembled. “You can come out now. And bring the dogs. Ruven?”
There was a rustling, and the boy’s face appeared among the branches. Andras gave him an encouraging smile—what he hoped was encouraging, anyway, though he was trembling all over—and gestured for him to stand at his side. Ruven emerged the rest of the way, and together they whistled for the dogs to follow.
Miklos scowled. “I’d forgotten about the beasts. Keep them under control if you want them to live. I can move faster than any dog. I can kill them if I choose, or I can rip apart their auras and turn them as mad as rabid curs.”
“They will behave themselves,” Andras promised.
A few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have understood what this was about, but so much had happened that he’d begun to get a clear picture. This man was no cavalry captain—or at least, he wasn’t merely that. He carried the same authoritative air as Narina and Tankred. And the two-handed sword—was that a falchion? It must be. This man must be a warbrand.
Miklos fixed him with a penetrating gaze until he was forced to look away. “You sense it, don’t you? You feel what I’m carrying. Sohn Narina didn’t—I managed to hide my sowen from her and disguise the aura of my sword. But not from you. You’re a sharp one, you know who I am.”
“I don’t sense anything, my lord. I don’t know what that means—the sowen—only that people like you have a control or, um, a mastery of your surroundings. I’ve only been thinking matters through in my slow way, figuring things out on my own.”
“Ah, yes. You are clearly a spy for them—they will have told you things.”
“I’m not a spy for the bladedancers.” He held up his hand in fear as the man leaned forward with anger flashing at what he clearly thought was a lie. “No, my lord. Please. I am a servant—I have my loyalties. That’s why the bladedancers threw me out.”
“Who do you work for, then?”
There was no reason to keep it secret. “Lord Balint.”
“Hmm.” Miklos rubbed a thumb and forefinger at a pendant hanging from a leather thong around his neck. It looked like a crystal feather. “Yes, I suppose it makes sense,” he said at last. “A ratter could come and go, and even. . .wait. Do you know of the firewalker? You do, don’t you?”
“There was a sohn named Tankred working for Balint. Is that who you mean? Balint and Tankred sent me to find the bladedancers. Narina found out—that’s why she drove me away. It was too late—I’d led Tankred to her.”
Andras glanced at Ruven, who stared away with a small frown. The boy was remarkably calm considering the situation, more concerned, it seemed, with his father’s treachery than with the murderous warbrand standing in front of them.
“You’re lucky Narina didn’t kill you. That’s what I would have done.” Miklos glanced up the path again, toward the hillside. All was quiet in that direction, but he seemed concerned. “The battle must be over. And it was the bladedancers who carried the day, if those fleeing idiots I cut down are any indication.”
“Aye, my lord. I heard her voice after the fight ended.”
“The question is, where will they be going next?”
“They said they were going back to their temple.”
The words came out of Andras’s mouth before he realized the question hadn’t been directed toward him. That was twice now he’d volunteered information about Narina and her companions. He vowed to stay quiet unless forced to answer.
“The volcanoes will have closed the canyon,” Miklos said. “Or very nearly so. They won’t be going that direction—not unless they have assistance to get through. Anyway, I can’t assume that the matter is settled, not entirely.” A sharp look at Andras. “You’re sure this Tankred was alone? There weren’t other firewalkers with him? Others coming up the road behind?”
“I. . .I don’t know. I only know of the one.”
“It’s late afternoon,” the man said. “This will be better done in the dark—easier to hide my sowen while they sleep.” Again, Miklos seemed to be talking out of reflex, not actively speaking to Andras or Ruven.
“May we go, my lord? We would only get in your way.”
A short, bitter laugh. “No, you may not. You have gear? Fetch it.”
Andras crawled into the brush and hauled out their satchels, waterskins, and his spade.
“Good,” Miklos said. “Obey my orders and you live. Disobey, try to escape, do something foolish like take a swing with your shovel, and you die. Is that understood?”
“Aye, my lord. I’ll do what you tell me.”
“You’d better, or you won’t be the only one to suffer.”
Miklos gave a hard stare at Ruven to drive the point home. The man’s crystal feather caught the sun and reflected its light. As if sensing its presence, Miklos reached a hand and fondled it again. Then he turned without another word and made for his horse. Andras had no choice but to follow.
Chapter Thirteen
Miklos led them down the hillside a few hundred feet to where the trail branched, with the left fork following the ridges up and down, and the right carrying them higher into the foothills, toward the base of the mountains. They took the left. A few minutes later, the man found yet another small trail, this one tucked between a pair of bent trees and a rock wall. At first glance, it looked as if it dead-ended. Instead, it opened into a wider ravine.
Miklos had either been this way before, or was able to sense the lay of the land. Andras wasn’t sure which. In any event, the man soon led them into a boulder-strewn canyon filled with hiding places. Here and there lay evidence of previous travelers, most likely brigands: cold fire pits, horse droppings, bits of tattered clothing, animal bones. Miklos showed no concern.
“This will be a good place for camp,” he said at last. He tied his horse to the branch of a tree and unslung his saddlebags. “There’s a pheasant and a rabbit in the bag, some dried peas, salt, and cooking gear. There’s a stream nearby, and the water seems to be fresh. Fetch water, and cook us supper. You can eat the rabbit if I don’t return in time, but save the pheasant for me, is that understood? And peas, too. I want cooked peas, and they’d better be soft and well-seasoned.”
“Where are you going, my lord?”
“Stop calling me that—I’m no crowlord. Call me Sohn Miklos, if you must. I’m going back to find the camp and scout it out. I need to be sure that Narina won the battle and find out where she intends to go from here. You will stay here and work. Keep the fire small—it’s less likely to attract attention.”
He left on foot. Father and son stared at each other, with the dogs in a half-circle, panting and looking on expectantly. Notch whined, and Skinny Lad came and nudged at Andras’s hand, but not in a way that was begging for food. The dogs seemed to sense Andras’s mood and know that something was wrong. So did his son, who looked at him with a worried expression.
“Can we run, Da?”
“He’ll find us if we do.”
“What does he want with us?”
“I don’t know. He might not know, either. All I know is that we’re safer obeying him for now.”
“Maybe Narina will kill him. I don’t like him—I hope she does. I hope she cuts off his head.”
Andras didn’t like his son’s bloodthirsty tone, but he supposed that was to be expected, as things had taken such a violent turn over the past weeks. There was no escaping it for any of them, and one could only hope that the blood spilled was not one’s own.
“I hear the stream trickling. Fill up the skins and bring them back. I’ll build a fire.”
Once Ruven set off, Andras turned over the fire pit with his spade and plucked out a few larger, partially burned pieces of wood. These would be dried from the heat of a previous campfire and could serve as kindlin
g. He gathered sticks and dried grass and made a little nest to start the fire in. He was still blowing it into life when his son came back, set down the waterskins, and stood very still and quiet on the opposite side of the fire pit. It was already too dark to see the boy’s face, but he sensed that something was wrong.
“Did you hear someone?” Andras asked.
“There’s a body near the stream.”
Andras stiffened. “Freshly killed?”
“No. There’s a crow eating it, and it’s already picked over. It smells bad.”
“Near the stream, you say? But not in the stream, right? So long as it’s not in the water, it won’t harm us. The fellow was probably killed by brigands.”
“It’s not a man, Da.”
“Oh.”
“They hung her from a tree by her neck. Her hands are tied behind her back.”
“Come sit by me.” Andras fed more sticks into the growing blaze. “Ruven, these are hard times, and you’re going to see more things like that. You’ve already seen them. . .and it’s not likely to get better. There’s plenty more war to go before we can see peace again.”
“She was just hanging there.”
“Try not to think about it. And try not to worry. If the body is old enough to smell rotten, then whoever killed the woman—”
“Girl. Not a woman. Only a girl. She’s hanging by her neck, and crows are eating her face. Do you think her ma and da are dead, too? I hope they didn’t see.”
“Shh. No more of that, I mean it.” The fire was safely blazing now, and his son was disturbed enough that something should be done. To be honest, Andras was disturbed, too. “Where is she? I’ll cut her down—it’s the least I can do.”
“All right, Da.” Ruven sounded relieved. “Can you cover her face with branches or sand or something after? It doesn’t seem right that the crows would eat her lips and nose.”
Crowlord Page 13