by Mark Eller
In other words, it acted exactly like every other fucking horse Mathew had ridden during this gods-cursed trip that already seemed to have taken four times longer than he expected. Five of the beasts had bolted from beneath him. One of those had broken its right foreleg after slipping on ice and sliding headlong into a tree. Three had escaped. The final one had been recaptured but was useless for Mathew’s purposes since at the least hint Mathew was approaching the beast would suffer a seizure and collapse. Which left him with only this skittish bay since the seven riding arvids they had brought along wanted absolutely nothing to do with him, and none of his followers appeared willing to offer their remaining mounts after he had so quickly gone through the others. No, once the bay completely rejected him, he would be left with no option but to walk.
Growling again, he glanced to his right to make sure Glace didn’t wear a mocking smile. It had been Glace’s idea to bring a wagon along, but Mathew had nixed the thought because he was damn well not going to be hauled along like he was some old woman wearing a yellow bonnet.
Glace paid his ire absolutely no mind. Instead, the young thief’s gaze fastened with unusual intensity on the forest surrounding them, and Mathew couldn’t blame him. Hell’s corruption, it seemed, had been busy in this area. More than half the trees surrounding them were dead skeletal carcasses possessing ice coated wooden arms which reached forlornly toward the grey clouded sky. The tress not already dead were obviously dying because they were covered by putrid fungal growths which oozed dark fluids and filled the air with a foul stench.
Bad enough, Mathew supposed, for those with merely human senses, but to his wolf’s nose the pungent odor was nearly unbearable. The discomfort made him edgy, and that made him want to assuage his irritability by sinking his teeth into something. He needed to calm his nerves with the comforting taste of blood.
Another reason, perhaps, why the bay seemed so nervous.
“You appear unhappy,” Fox said from where she rode near his right side. “I hope your unpleasant mood isn’t going to affect the luxurious conditions of my imprisonment, most lordly soon to be king.”
Reluctantly refocusing his attention, Mathew fastened his gaze on the only woman who had dared mock him since before he turned fifteen. Fox rode the smallest arvid they still possessed with a casual nonchalance that ignored the fact her hands were manacled before her, and her legs were tied to the stirrups. The woman was...well she was impossible. Smaller than he had first remembered from the initial time he had encountered her, she was lithe and trim and far too good looking for a thief. At the moment, her hair was a deep auburn, but he doubted this was its true color since one report given him had said it was a deep black and another said it was a dirty blonde. Dyes, he suspected, though he wasn’t willing to discount the possibility of magic or a god’s blessing. There was an almost sparkling something about her. It wasn’t an unnatural allure like so many of the hellborn owned. No, this was an effervescence which spoke of unnatural health and supreme confidence. Her quick energy seemed almost more than human. The sight of her, even the sound of her voice, affected him like no other purely human woman had since his change. With a single cock of her eye, she made him rise like a stallion ready to mate.
God touched. There was no doubt about it, especially with Dakar’s mark riding her neck. With her every gesture, with every breath, her blessings poured off her, obvious to any eye trained to look for the subtle and almost hidden. God touched, which was why she rode in light clothes on a more than cool day. She wore only deerskin pants and a thin blouse unbuttoned halfway down to her navel, allowing him to catch frequent side glimpses of one small breast and an occasional flash of a gem attached to a chain she wore draped around her neck, placed there by Mathew’s hand. The gem’s fire, he had told her, reminded him of the fire in her eyes.
Almost as if she read his mind, the fire within those eyes flashed upon him, trying to melt him with their mocking regard.
Another tease, he knew; another way in which she dug herself beneath his skin. She might be his prisoner, captured by his orders, her life might rest in his hands, but nothing he said or did gave him control over her will.
“Just shut up,” Mathew muttered.
Smiling, she shook her head. “I’m just trying to get this straight. From what I’ve gathered, we are heading to someplace called Grace because a woman nobody trusts said if you go there you’ll be made king. As I also understand it, you have few connections with the nobility, a poor reputation with the common people, and are more feared than liked by the scum you deal with on a daily basis. So, since you obviously possess no other qualifications for ruling, you must have been chosen because you are the most murderous bastard in the kingdom.”
“Corrupt,” Glace broke in. “He was chosen because he is the most corrupt person in the kingdom. There’s a difference between murderous and corrupt, you know. One can be attempted by anyone. The other takes a person with brains to accomplish.”
“Oh yes, so much better,” Fox laughed. “I can’t believe somebody who is supposed to be so fantastically smart threw aside his little criminal enterprise, shed himself of most of his henchmen, and left his power base to travel in the middle of winter to claim a kingship promised to him by a woman I’m told is a notorious liar.”
Glace nodded. “Exactly what I said. But would he listen?”
Out in the woods, something cawed. Mathew’s ears perked. The sound seemed totally unnatural to the mortal world. Hellborn were out there, or perhaps those the hellborn had changed. Glace had been right when he said this was a stupid idea, but he had been wrong too. For the last couple of years they had thought Mathew’s change ceased when Glace removed the curse ring by slicing off Mathew’s finger, but that was not the case. Of late, Mathew had noticed a number of small changes. His teeth were a bit longer. His claws were a touch sharper, and he was growing fur where before there had only been bare skin. Bad enough on the face of it, but Mathew was more concerned about the changes within his mind. For the last week, every human he encountered smelled like food.
“Mathew?” Glace asked, sounding alarmed.
“He’s thinking,” Fox supplied. “Not an easy chore for him.”
“Would you two shut up?” Mathew snapped.
“Not until the my gag is put back in,” answered Fox, “and not for long even then. Darling, I don’t think you have the slightest idea of exactly what you‘re dealing with. Listen sweetling. I’m the greatest thief Ilian has ever seen. I can get into and out of places nobody else has ever dreamed existed. Trying to control me is a pointless waste of your time.”
“If you’re so damned good, then why are you still here?”
Gently laughing again, Fox shifted so her shirt gaped further open, allowing him a full side view of her breast all the way up to the start of her nipple. Mathew’s already turgid state became more insistent.
“Maybe I like seeing just how a little thing like me can frustrate Yyles’s big bad thief lord. Maybe a little bird spoke in my ear, saying I ought to hitch a free ride.”
“Maybe you’re just a bitch.”
“That too,” Fox admitted, and with those words she reached up to fasten two buttons, granting Mathew some relief from this unusual experience. “Don’t get attached, sweetums. I’ll only be your prisoner for a tiny bit longer, but let’s return to exactly why we are on this little jaunt through the slums of nature. I might not be too fond of you, but I seriously doubt you are stupid enough to believe you’re going to be made king.”
Leather creaked when Glace shifted in his saddle. “He’s been promised the Hell gods will remove his curse.”
Chuckling low in her throat, Fox tilted her head while giving Glace a quizzical look. “Maybe they can help, but please tell me you aren’t so callow as to believe there is an actual Hell.”
“There seems to be some universal agreement on the matter,” Glace pointed out, “not to mention all the creatures we’ve seen crawl out of the hellhole these last few y
ears.”
“Provincial ignorance,” Fox supplied.
“Are you saying we’re stupid?”
“I’m saying there’s no such thing as Hell anywhere else in the world except beneath Yernden. You do the math.”
Suddenly feeling a burst of black rage, Mathew jerked around in the saddle, thrust out his arm, and jabbed a finger at her. “One more word and I’ll gag you. I’m tired of your chatter.”
Unfazed, Fox gave him a steady stare. “I suppose I’d best behave then. The way I heard it, the last person who irritated you lost his head. Farnon, wasn’t it?A friend of yours?”
“Crabber!”
Crabber’s arvid bulked when it drew near. “Mathew?”
“Do something with her!”
“What do you want—?”
“What the hell do I care? Slit her fucking throat if that makes you happy.”
“Ummm...” Looking past Mathew, Crabber caught Glace’s eye. Shrugging, Glace gestured for him to drag Fox back to ride with the remainder of Mathew’s followers. The shrug and compromising gesture infuriated Mathew even more, but he reined in his temper because Glace was the last truly loyal man he had. If he killed Glace now, the others would most likely abandon him at a time when he might need fodder.
“We’ll get you changed back,” Glace quietly promised once Fox was safely out of earshot.
Mathew cut off any further comment with a quick gesture. “I’ve been more prickly than usual lately, but this isn’t me.”
“Mathew I—”
“And you’ve been too passive for a thief. Pay attention to your surroundings.”
Instant understanding settled into Glace’s eyes. He looked once more toward the dead and dying forest. “Shit.”
Later, light failing, they stopped for the night. Mathew roamed through their small camp like a predator on the prowl. Tem and Ergoth worked hard at staying far from him and close to Fox, two curs sniffing after the god touched bitch. Mathew didn’t care. They were only a pair of fools he intended to sacrifice to this forest if the need arose. Neither had the brains needed to stay alive on their own. The Fox belonged to him, something she would soon learn when he found a place which felt even remotely safe. He was done playing with her, done playing jester to her games. In a day, maybe two, he would have her face pressed into the dirt while he rode her like they were two hounds. Afterwards, when she wiped the last of the tears from her eyes, he would explain to her that she would not be free of him until he wore his human form once more. Maybe then she would convince her god to remove this curse warping his body into a beast’s shape, a curse matching his smudged soul.
“Antou!” he suddenly shouted when he saw the man’s head sprout out of a patch of high weeds. “You’re on sentry duty!”
“Man’s got to take a dump sometime,” Antou answered with a surliness Mathew had never heard in his voice before. A sudden stillness in the camp said Antou’s tone had not gone unnoticed. Every eye fastened on Mathew, waiting to see what he would do.
Frowning, Mathew looked at each of his men in turn. Crabber appeared almost gleeful while Tesh, Lorn, and Valcon showed alarm. Fox shook her head in disbelief, and his gentle thief, Glace, nodded understanding, giving Mathew unspoken permission Mathew did not need. The simpletons, Ergoth and Tem, appeared oblivious.
Antou jerked his trews into place, shifted the sword at his hip, and placed one defiant hand on its handle. The act of a madman. The act of a suicide, for he and Antou both knew Mathew was far better with a single six inch knife than Antou was with a two foot sword.
“The forest,” Mathew whispered to himself because the inexplicable dark rage filled him again. “Loc Mir.” He shuddered when a miasma that could originate only from Hell brushed against his skin, seeped into his pores, and drove his fury higher. This shouldn’t be happening. Not here. Not on the far edges of a forest Omitan claimed as his own.
Ignoring his blades, he strode purposefully toward his recalcitrant hireling while Antou pulled his sword free and assumed the classic stance of someone who had received too many formal lessons and not enough practical experience.
“Stay back,” Antou warned when Mathew drew near. For the first time, some sense of sanity seemed to have reached him because he voice showed the slightest traces of fear.
Ignoring the warning, Mathew strode two paces closer before Antou lunged. Almost casually, Mathew brushed the blade aside with a flick of the recently grown steel hard claws on his right hand. Antou started to back away, managed almost a quarter step, and then Mathew flicked his left hand toward the man’s throat, ripping open Antou’s jugular with one quick slash.
“Damn,” Crabber hissed, and he backed to the far edges of the fire’s light, his shape almost lost in the gathering gray. Frowning, Mathew looked toward him and wondered if he should kill one more of his men. Most likely, Glace wouldn’t object since he had an open disdain for the older thief, some history between the two of them from before Mathew took Glace under his wing.
“Man was an idiot. Deserved what he got,” said Lorn. He looked at Valcon and the two of them stepped forward to grab Antou’s arms and drag him out of the immediate campsite and into the foul woods.
“Does anyone else want to shirk their duties?” Mathew demanded while the sweet stench of human blood overwhelmed the foul odor issuing from the dying trees.
He was answered by silence. With a slight nod, Tesh touched his sword’s hilt to assure its placement and followed after Lorn and Valcon. Mathew heard him stop moving when he was at least fifty feet away, and then he began doing a slow circle of the camp, taking up the sentry duty he had earlier been assigned along with Antou.
A lucky man. If Mathew’s attention had fallen on him first, Antou would be the one circling the camp while Tesh’s blood soaked into the ground.
He looked toward Fox, expecting to see mocking contempt in her eyes. Instead, he saw only wariness and a touch of fear. Good. It was about time she realized exactly who she dealt with. He was Mathew Changer, thief lord of Yyles, not someone who could be treated lightly.
Sitting only three paces away from Fox, Glace’s stare was steady censure.
Biting back a curse, Mathew strode over to his last truly loyal man. Pissed off as he was, he knew he had to make some pretense of caring about Glace’s thoughts.
Neither Glace nor Fox rose when he approached the fire. Squatting on his heels, Mathew studied Glace’s still face for a moment. Glace glanced at Mathew’s hand and then returned his steady gaze to Mathew’s eyes.
The corner of Mathew’s lip twitched when he realized Antou’s blood still stained his claws.
“You disapprove?”
“I expected you to discipline him. Killing was a bit extreme.”
Shifting his gaze away from Glace, Mathew looked into the fire’s small flames. Dancing yellow and orange, a touch of blue where one section burned around a copper bearing rock, the flames drew him while simultaneously brushing him with a distant touch of fear.
“A man has to be hard if he’s to keep control of his gang.”
“What gang?”
With a gesture of his fur covered hand, Mathew indicated the camp.
Glace shook his head. “Mathew, you no longer have a gang. You gave it up for this insane trip. You have me and a few cheap hirelings. Nothing more. The only thing keeping them with us is the money you paid and the possibility that through some strange twist you’ll actually become king of Yernden.”
“You doubt I’ll be king?”
“You had doubts yourself, but your view keeps changing. Sometimes you’re sure this trip is a fool’s errand. Other times you act like you are king already. Mathew, you know I love you like a father, but I have to tell you, you’re not acting yourself. You’re becoming unstable.”
Frowning, Mathew looked toward Fox.
She gave him a brief shrug. “Go ahead, ask the woman you put in chains and plan on raping what she thinks. I’m sure her opinion is totally unbiased.” Fox held up her
still manacled hands, and then she stilled. “What is that?”
Following a nod of her chin, Mathew peered into the thickening gloom to see the skeletal outline of a seven foot tree. He started to snort contempt at the woman’s nerves, but then the tree moved in a way impossible for wood, and he realized with a sudden start exactly what he saw.
“I think it’s an ordig, one of Omitan’s blessed creatures. If so, you don’t have to worry about it. They‘re relatively harmless unless they feel endangered.”
“Ordigs ensure the health of Loc Mir, the sacred forest,” Glace added. “We’re on its outskirts now.” He caught Mathew’s disbelieving stare. “What! Think I don’t know anything you haven’t taught me. I’ve never seen one before, but Salnac used to talk about such things. At his core, he was a very religious man.”
“If that thing is blessed, I don’t want to know what something cursed looks like,” Fox said. “The stench rising off it is unbearable.”
Feet gently crunching in the crusted snow, Tesh’s form gradually took shape in the gloom as he backed toward the firelight. “Mathew, I don’t like this. Lorn and Valcon should have been back by now.”
As if in answer, the ordig’s form hunched in on itself before a long wooden arm jerked into motion, and then something misshapen soared through the air. It landed with a wet smack only a few feet away and remained still, staining the snow around it with spatters of red.
“Valcon’s hand,” Glace observed after a brief moment. “I recognize his thumb ring.
Eyes narrowed, Mathew snarled at the ordig’s hunched figure before jerking his head around to look at Crabber. “Remove the woman’s chains.”
“Don’t bother,” Fox told Crabber as she scrambled to her feet. A quick flurry of her fingers was answered by a rattling of manacles, and then her hands were free as the bindings fell into the snow. “Your ordig looks a bit too dangerous for close in work. Anybody have a bow they want to loan me?”
“Except’n for Crabber, we’re city thugs. Crabber owned the only bow, and Valcon borrowed it while he was standing guard.” Tesh told her. He shrugged. “Best guess, our only bow is now lying near his body.”