Season of Sacrifice

by Mindy Klasky

  “I can’t wager my horse!” Maddock protested.

  “Of course you can,” Wilson said. “Explain it to him, Lila.”

  Lila was Wilson’s lady companion. She had watched the men all evening, scarcely taking her eyes from Maddock. At first, he had flushed under her frank inspection, but he had gradually grown accustomed to her hungry eyes. When she had refilled his borrowed mug for the third time, Maddock had been certain that she smiled just for him. Smiled, because she didn’t know that he was a craven coward.

  “Yes, Maddock,” Lila spoke now. “It’s your turn to have a little luck. It’s your turn for the…dice to come your way.” She hesitated only a moment, but he read volumes into her words. As if to confirm his thoughts of dice and more, the woman padded around Wilson, scooping up the bones on her way.

  “It’s just that the horse isn’t mine….”

  “Isn’t yours?” Lila crooned, and the threat of a frown creased her brow. “What do you mean?” Lila held out her slender hand, and Maddock automatically reached for the carved cubes. He caught a whiff of sweet perfume from her hair as he closed his fingers over the trinkets of bone. She purred, “Have you made a habit of taking things that don’t belong to you?”

  “I—” He had to stop and clear his throat. “I borrowed him from a friend.”

  “Ahhh.” Lila sighed, and she smiled softly before she looked across at Wilson. Maddock resisted the urge to reach out for the woman, to reclaim her attention for himself. “Well, if you haven’t any more to gamble, then you must be on your way. What a pity, though. Just as your luck was certain to change. The horse would have been worth ten pieces of silver. But come along, Wilson.” Lila reached out to take back the dice.

  “No! Wait!” Maddock protested, and he was rewarded by Lila’s gentle smile—her smile and her hand closing on his arm. Ten pieces of silver…“One more toss, then.”

  Lila’s fingers pressed into his flesh, her eagerness barely restrained. Her words were so soft that he had to lean down to hear. “One more toss.” Her repetition sounded like a promise.

  Maddock squatted beside the flat board, closing his fist around the bits of bone. Breathing a prayer to all the Guardians, he shifted the bavin beneath his shirt, forcing himself not to think of Alana, not to think of the People waiting for him back at Land’s End. Instead, he tried to forget all that had gone wrong, all of his mistakes since leaving the People. Exhaling explosively, he flung out his fingers, letting the dice soar. They clattered onto the board and spun for a moment before two eyes glared up at him, cursing him like a cancer from the smooth white bone.

  “Too bad, boy.” Wilson barely swallowed a chortling laugh. “What’s the horse’s name, so that he doesn’t feel too lost away from home?”

  The question inspired rough laughter from the ring of onlookers, and Maddock bristled.

  “Aye, boy,” one of the ruffians jeered through a greasy beard, “we wouldn’t want the beast missing his master too much.” The leering drunkard tugged at his trews suggestively.

  Maddock glanced at Lila, embarrassed that she had to hear such vulgar jests. When a pretty flush stained her cheeks, his anger rose like high tide. His hand fell on the cross-hilt of his sword, and he stood to his full height. “Here, now! No need to be crude in front of the lady!”

  “Lady!” Another of the rogues spluttered. “There’s no lady by this fire! At least there wasn’t till you arrived.”

  Laughter hooted among the ruffians, and Maddock’s sword cleared his scabbard before he could measure the danger.

  “Easy, boy,” Wilson spoke into the sudden silence. “You’re new to Smithcourt. You don’t want trouble.”

  “I’ve had trouble enough, with you stealing my money and my horse.”

  “Those are harsh words, boy. No one has stolen anything. You chose to play a game or two, and the Seven Gods weren’t watching over you tonight. Don’t turn spilled grain into a famine, boy.”

  “I’m not a boy!” Maddock barked, and the gamblers cringed when he swept his sword around the semicircle.

  “Certainly not.” The two words came from Lila. “You’re man enough to know when to set aside childish things.”

  Maddock’s determination wavered as Lila took a step toward him. The firelight glinted through her skirts. “They’re the ones who are childish,” he muttered.

  “Certainly,” Lila said. “And there’s no reason for us to waste any more time with them. Come along, Maddock. Come along with me, away from all these folk.”

  Maddock heard the promise in her voice, and he let her words pull him around the fire. Her fingers settled in the waistband of his trews, and his passion stirred, even as he leveled his sword against the gamblers. “Aye, Lila,” he cast a challenge toward Wilson. “I’ll take you away from the likes of these.”

  He kept the sword level as they backed away from the firepit. Lila’s fingers became more insistent, and she scarcely waited until they had ducked behind a rough stack of hay bales before she was doing disturbing things with her fingers, her mouth, her hungry, hungry flesh. The woodstar began to burn against his chest, but its heat was quickly lost amid Lila’s attentions.

  Maddock twisted beneath the woman, managing to slide his sword into its scabbard. “Lila,” he breathed, and she shook her head, her hair cascading about his face as she silenced him. Hay pricked through his shirt, and he closed his fists amid her skirts.

  As he felt her willing flesh beneath his hands, he heard a clatter on the other side of the haystack. The bay gelding nickered nervously, and Maddock started to stand upright. “Wait,” Lila gasped, and she emphasized her command by shifting beneath his stiffened fingers.

  “My horse,” Maddock said, fighting his distraction.

  “He’s not yours any longer.” Lila knelt and reached for the lacing on his trews. Her hands were on his thighs, and then he felt her lips, hot and smooth. He threw his head back against the haystack and gave himself up to her ministrations.

  His breath caught in his throat, and he forgot that he was miles from home, forgot that he was on a mission to save the twins, forgot that he was watched over by Alana Woodsinger. He forgot everything except the fact that he was a man, a trained body of tempered flesh and heated blood. Pulsing, pounding blood.

  As crimson waves crashed behind his eyes, Maddock’s gelding screamed in terror.

  Panting, he put his hands on Lila’s shoulders and thrust her away, ignoring her mewed protests. Scrambling at the lacing on his trews, he settled a hand on his sword hilt and peered around the hayrick to spy on the gamblers’ firepit.

  The scene was chaos. Soldiers surrounded the gamblers, two armed men to every rogue. The captain of the guard bellowed over Wilson, “On your feet, outlander!”

  Wilson clutched his right arm with his left; firelight glinted on the blood that spurted from a deep cut. The gambler said, “I’m telling you, man, I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

  “Oh no,” the guard snarled. “I can see that. You’re wearing a brooch made of shell, you’re counting coins from the outlands, and you’ve got a mangy dog for a horse. You couldn’t be our man.”

  “I won them from the man you seek!” Wilson practically scraped the ground with his belly, he was so eager to please the captain. “Please, your honor, I diced with the man and beat him.” As if to prove his point, Wilson edged a pair of bone cubes from the pouch at his waist, almost losing a hand to the guard’s suspicious blade. “See! Look here, if you don’t believe me!”

  The captain gestured to one of his underlings, and a soldier came forward to take the dice. The man gave Wilson a sneering glance as he hefted the bits of bone, and he threw them three times in quick succession.

  “So, you’re a cheat and a liar, that’s clear enough. These are trick dice,” snarled the captain.

  “A man’s got to earn a living,” whined Wilson, even as Maddock’s rage snapped in his chest. Curse them all to a storm-tossed crossing! He’d been bilked out of his property, and he h
adn’t even suspected Wilson’s duplicity. Maddock took a step toward the firepit, but Lila’s hands grasped at his waist.

  “You can’t!” she whispered urgently.

  “Whore!” He bit off the word. “You knew the entire time!”

  “You can’t go out there! They’ll cut you down before you say two words, and then they’ll come after me!”

  Before Maddock could retort, the decision was taken from him. “Come along, the lot of you,” the captain ordered. “You’ll be enjoying Duke Coren’s hospitality now.”

  It happened so quickly that Maddock was not certain who made the break for freedom. One moment, the gamblers were being driven toward the city gates, the captain manhandling the restless bay gelding on a short tether.

  The next instant, someone bolted. The soldiers responded like the trained fighting men they were, leaping for their captives. When the frightened gamblers resisted, the soldiers used their blades. The smell of fresh blood maddened the already jumpy horse, which reared up and brought its sharp hooves down near the captain.

  The fighting man swept up his sword reflexively, catching the gelding’s well-muscled neck. The horse screamed once before falling to its knees, its blood pumping across the rough earth like a river broken through a dam.

  Wilson was promptly sacrificed in the soldiers’ desperate attempt to restore order, his body slit from groin to throat like a gutted fish. Another man forfeited a hand, and a third was hamstrung by a blade as sharp as any butcher’s. Several of the men were knocked senseless by the iron hilts of swords and daggers.

  Then, almost before Maddock could register what had happened, the remaining gamblers were hastened away. Four soldiers were appointed to watch over the wounded, the dying, and the dead. The horse shuddered for a few minutes and then lay still in a pool of spreading night-black crimson. Maddock felt his own blood drain from his face.

  If not for Lila, he would have been dead or captured.

  The woman seemed to realize the same. She stared at him with horror. “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “I’m a boy from the outlands,” he growled, forcing his eyes away from the destruction.

  “What do Duke Coren’s men want with you?” Her words trembled, and her full lips stood out against her face as if they were painted on.

  Grimacing, he reached for the dagger stashed in his right boot. “Better that you not know that. You’ll be able to claim innocence once you get me past the city gates.”

  “You’re wanted by Duke Coren!”

  “The duke got the body he wanted,” Maddock answered with a grim satisfaction that he did not feel. “Let’s move, before the soldiers come back to clean up.” She stared at him for long enough that he had to raise his dagger, setting the blade against her quivering neck. “Come along, Lila. See me through the gates, and then you’ll be free to go.”

  The woman had shifted her gaze to Wilson’s corpse, and Maddock finally stepped forward to block her line of sight. Only then did she seem to become aware of his blade, of the bitter threat in the man she had duped. She came back to life with a disbelieving shudder.

  A cry broke from her lips, and Maddock hissed as he pulled her close, covering her mouth with his own. He glimpsed the four remaining guards turning toward them as he whispered, “I’ll gut you as easily as they did that thief. To the gates, and not another word.”

  Lila’s eyes flashed in terror, but she managed to speak. “Your sword. The night guard will never let an armed man enter. Leave it here, in the hay.”

  Maddock was washed with misgiving—the sword was his greatest possession, more valuable even than the People’s horse that he had squandered. Nevertheless, he could see the logic in Lila’s words; an armed man was certain to be questioned, especially in the dark of night.

  “Do it,” Lila urged. “I don’t have the powers of the Seven Gods. I can’t work miracles.”

  Forcing himself to act with more decisiveness than he felt, Maddock burrowed into the hayrick, nestling the sword in a dry, cushioned bed. He could retrieve it later, he justified, in the morning even. Once he knew his way through the city streets, once he could come and go with other travelers, anonymous in the light of day. Once he had gotten past this cursed night.

  He sensed Lila pulling away from him, recognized a tension in her muscles that told him she planned to flee. “Not yet,” he whispered, and reckless courage filled him. Nestling his dagger against the small of her back, he stepped out from behind the hayrick, simultaneously pulling her close for a struggling kiss.

  As the soldiers looked up, hands on their own weapons, Lila settled her arms around his waist, leaning toward him in a credible facsimile of lust. To Maddock’s surprise, she barely glanced at Wilson’s cooling body as they made their way to the gate, winding between other folks who had been drawn by the nighttime commotion. If he had not felt her tremble beneath his fingers, he would not have known that she had any reaction to the bloody camp.

  The heavy gate was locked for the night and the portcullis lowered, but a pair of soldiers stood alertly at a narrow doorway built into the wood-and-iron defense. Without a conscious thought, Maddock stiffened, and his fingers slipped inside the waistband of Lila’s skirt. His precious iron dagger seemed hot enough that it would shine like a beacon through the soft fabric, shine like the bavin that was swaddled against his chest.

  “Halt!” one of the soldiers cried out, but Lila merely stumbled forward, pulling Maddock with her.

  “Evening, your honor,” Lila slurred, cascading the words as if she had drunk a barrel of ale. Maddock let himself be carried along by her charade, and he purposely stumbled as they approached the uniformed man.

  “The gates are closed for the night.”

  “But, your honor,” Lila protested, and she lurched forward, displaying a generous bosom, “you wouldn’t abandon a lady outside the walls, would you?”

  “A lady!” snorted the guard, but he reached out to steady the woman. Maddock tightened his own grip on Lila’s waist, determined to remind her who was in control.

  “Aye, your honor. A lady who got surprised by nightfall. Surely you have other disturbances to look toward?” Lila smiled sloppily, and she slipped her hand down the guard’s arm. Maddock stiffened and started to intervene, but then he saw a glint of metal coin pass between the pair.

  “Aye, I suppose,” the soldier grumbled, and made a show of crossing the portal to talk to his fellow. Lila merely dropped another curtsey, flashing her chest once again.

  Maddock stumbled over the raised threshold with her, pulling her close and miming his supposed lustful intent. He gripped her tightly as they wandered down the middle of the thoroughfare, staggering like the drunken lovers they pretended to be. He let her guide them into a side street, but he was not surprised by her sudden vehemence as she pushed him away, scarcely waiting until they were out of sight of the guard.

  “There! Let go of me, you animal!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Maddock hissed.

  “I did what you ordered. Let me go!” Before Maddock could comply, Lila twisted like a salmon caught in a net. Her long neck curved, and her teeth dug into the flesh of his shoulder. He bit back a curse as he dropped his knife. She took advantage of his confusion to spring away, her footsteps already fading by the time he recovered his blade.

  It would take her only a few seconds to summon the guard. Maddock bolted down the night-still street, taking turns at random until he was lost in the heart of Smithcourt.

  Maddock stood in the shadows, looking out at the postern gate of Coren’s palace. The cursed building was impregnable. Maddock had studied it from all sides, at every hour of the day and night. Coren had simply been too careful. He had too many guards.

  The duke needed those soldiers, Maddock had discovered. Smithcourt did not yet belong to him. Rather, Coren was locked in a bitter battle for the Iron Throne, basing his claim on the massive sums of gold that he had pumped into the royal treasury. That same gold permitted him to
purchase the most ruthless mercenary soldiers.

  Nevertheless, Coren was being challenged directly by Bringham, the Duke of Southglen. Bringham was a young man, much beloved by his own people. He’d been a confidant of the dead king, and while inexperienced, he had much potential. So far, he had managed to escape Coren’s attacks, slithering to freedom repeatedly, like the dragon that was his coat of arms.

  Bringham’s popularity had apparently grown in Smithcourt while Coren was on his journey to the westlands. Coren felt more and more pressure to consolidate his position, to win over the people of Smithcourt, and all the rest of the kingdom. The city folk could all too easily throw their support to Bringham, making it impossible for Coren to take the Iron Throne.

  So, Coren worked to curry favor among the Smithcourt folk. He paid his soldiers to keep some semblance of peace in the streets. He hosted a three-day festival to welcome the arrival of Reade and Maida, the Sun-lord and Sun-lady, complete with fireworks and sweetmeats for everyone in the streets.

  Nevertheless, gangs of young men roamed the streets at night, fighting each other and building nasty rivalries. Three times, Maddock had seen fresh-blooded bodies lying in the streets—one with a crude knife carved into his chest to show that Coren’s men had been at work. The other corpses had been little more than boys, and there had been no hint who had murdered them.

  At first, overwhelmed by a city that could have swallowed thousands of Land’s End villages, Maddock had wandered aimlessly through Smithcourt. The first people he’d dared to ask for directions had run in fear, apparently thinking him a lawless cutthroat. A second group had roared at his outlandish accent. The third cluster of rogues had attempted to steal from him, kicking him in the ribs when they found that he had nothing left to take, nothing but an odd, pointed star made of blackened wood.