Rhapsody: Child of Blood tsoa-1

by Elizabeth Haydon

  There on the table lay a primrose, fresh and fragrant as the moment it was picked.

  * * *

  The back streets of Easton were dark and cool, a haven from the scorching sun. The two men traveled silently over the cobblestones, past bickering merchants and domestic squabbling, unnoticed in the shadows. That Grunthor could pass without being seen attested to the blinding heat of the day and the depth of the shade in the streets. Normally his sheer size and mass stopped conversation and traffic on the rare occasions he entered a city.

  The Brother could sense the more crowded streets long before they got to them, the deafening vibration of the heartbeats of the unwashed masses throbbing in his ears and skin. Whenever a large group of people were present in an upcoming street they would circumvent it, taking an alternate route, adding time to their journey but increasing their chances of going unnoticed.

  They picked their way down a deserted section, avoiding scattered refuse and the human garbage that was sleeping off the last night's binge, belching and muttering at the cobblestones beneath their faces. Neither man looked down as they stepped over the drunkards and piles of rubbish, dodging the obstacles with a practiced gait.

  The upcoming alley was empty, the Brother knew, and it was a feeder street to the external thoroughfares of the southeastern section. A few blocks more and they would be within reach of the wharf, and the surrounding bustle would swallow them up into anonymity.

  The Brother and Grunthor had traversed most of the alley, were within fifty yards of its end, when a commotion spilled into it. A handful of clumsy town guards rounded the corner and came into the alley, chasing a street wench. The men came to an involuntary stop in the shadow of the buildings.

  * * *

  Rhapsody stepped into the street in front of the Hat and Feathers, scanning the area for any of the miscreants and lowlifes she remembered from Michael's ragtag band of followers.

  The pub was on the Kingsway, one of the busiest of Easton's thoroughfares near the northwestern gate, and the street was teeming with human and animal traffic, pounding with noise and stench. Not seeing anyone she recognized as one of his ruffians, she crossed the muddy road, avoiding as best she could the puddles of muck left over from the last night's thunderstorm.

  At the center of the Kingsway she met up with Pilam the baker, attempting to navigate a heavy wheeled pushcart covered in burlap through the bemired street. Like a stone breaking the flow of a river, he was causing the stream of people to part and pass around him, sometimes narrowly missing him. His bald pate was red with exertion and shiny with sweat, but his face broke out in a wide grin when he saw her.

  "Rhapsody! How are you this fine afternoon?"

  "Hello, Pilam. Here, let me give you a hand with that."

  Rhapsody scanned the street again, dodged some merchants who were skittering around the obstacle, then took hold of the near side of the cart and raised it out of the rut that was preventing it from moving. Pilam gave it another push and the cart lurched forward, scattering a pile of flat loaves of bread from under the cloth covering. He caught one as it fell, then offered it to her as they again joined the traffic propelling down the muddy street.

  "Well, thank you, dear. Please, take this, with my thanks."

  "Pilam, you are so gallant. Thank you," Rhapsody said, tossing her head in a manner that made the golden fall of hair catch the light and flashing him a smile that made him weak in the knees.

  She stuffed the bread into her pack, then looked around again. Her exaggerated movements had caught the eyes of a number of passers-by, which was her intention; the more witnesses who saw her away from the Hat and Feathers, the safer Barney and Dee would be.

  As she came to the cross street, she noticed a familiar-looking man engaged in an intense conversation with a town guard. Quickly pulling up the hood of her cloak, she stepped behind a line of barrels in front of the boyar's shop and watched as a second guard joined the conversation. Then the three of them made their way rapidly down the street toward the Hat and Feathers.

  Rhapsody looked on anxiously as the men approached the tavern, stopping passing townsfolk on their way. After having no apparent luck with the first three or four people they asked, a woman nodded in answer to their questions and pointed up the street in her general direction. She sighed in relief as they turned and ran back toward her, the opposite way from the Hat and Feathers. She put her hood down again and rounded the corner onto the cross street.

  Leaving the Kingsway put her out of the mercantile district and into the narrower, alleyed streets of residential buildings. Rhapsody knew this area well; it was easy to find alcoves and porticos in this section of town in which to hide. She was almost to the end of the first block when she heard shouting behind her.

  She wheeled around to see about a dozen men, several of whom were town guard, running at full tilt toward her, drawing weapons. Rhapsody was amazed. Michael had never been able to count the town guard among his lackeys when she had been unfortunate enough to have commerce with him, but that was almost three years ago. Apparently Barney was right about his growing influence. This was going to be more difficult than she had thought.

  Rhapsody ducked around the corner and pulled up her hood once again. She hurried across the street and made for the second alley, which ran between a one-story shack with a thatched roof and a building with two floors fashioned out of mud-brick. The shack had a root cellar, and she was able to squeeze along the side of the hole and under some thatch fallen from the roof. She made herself as comfortable as she could, listening to gauge the guards' approach.

  She could hear them for some time before they came into her line of sight, checking the alleys across the street. From the sound of it they had broken into smaller groups and were splitting up to comb the area more quickly. It also seemed to her that there were many more of them than before.

  A group of three came around the corner and walked past her head. She took a deep breath and held it while they looked around, kicking over broken crates and boards, cursing.

  She felt like cursing herself—how could she have missed Michael's ascent to importance? Her general loathing of him had won out over her common sense, and her miscalculation could cause her problems she was not prepared to deal with. But, she reminded herself, it's not like I had another choice. To have gone with Gammon obediently would have been unthinkable.

  Rhapsody watched as one of the three guards scattered a pile of lump coal next to another mud-brick building a few blocks up. A man in a leather apron ran out into the street, cursing and shouting. As the argument grew heated she used the distraction to slip out of her hiding place and dashed around the corner, back toward the cross street that led to the Kingsway. She was almost to first corner when a cry went up behind her.

  There was no way to make it back to the Kingsway now. There was also no hope of taking shelter in a house—even if the residents let her in, she might be responsible for bringing disaster upon them. Rhapsody fled, breaking into a run that took her up the first alley and three blocks deeper into the back streets before the guards rounded the corner. They were shouting, and as they pursued her up the alley two more appeared from a street just in front of her. She was trapped in the middle.

  Rhapsody tried to run for a side alley, but she was brought to the ground almost immediately. The guard who seized her rolled her over onto her back and slapped her full across the face; she returned the favor by booting him in the testicles. As he hunched over in pain she scrambled to her feet and broke away from his grip, only to be grabbed by the second guard. He pulled her arms roughly behind her back, lifted her off the ground, kicking and struggling, and carried her back into the main alley.

  "My, you certainly are a lot of trouble," he said into her ear as he jerked her down the street. "But I'm sure you'll make it worth his while, won't you? When he's rammin' it in you, darlin', think of me." His mouth closed on her neck, and his free hand groped her breast.

  With great effort Rhap
sody twisted one of her arms free, sending a stabbing pain from her shoulder to her fingers. Fighting to overcome the wave of nausea that followed the pain, she flicked her wrist to bring her dagger forth, twisting her fingers to make it slide into her palm.

  She slashed over her head and behind her, aiming for his eyes. The speed with which she hit the ground as he dropped her and doubled over assured her she had struck her target. His screams shocked the three guards who had been following behind her and had stopped where they stood when they saw her captured.

  Before they could move she had taken off again, running at breakneck speed down the main alley and into the darker parts of the back streets. When they recovered their composure the three gave chase, while the other tried to tend to his hemorrhaging companion. They saw her dart past two women carrying baskets of clothes and slip down yet another corridor in the street.

  Rhapsody entered the alley and stopped, looking around for a place to hide. There was none. She ran forward again, then stopped abruptly when she saw two shapes approaching her from the other end of the street.

  The first was a man of gigantic proportion in metal-banded leather armor wearing a helmet with a pointed spike on the top. The second figure was cloaked and hooded, his face covered with what appeared to be a form of veil, and though he appeared diminutive next to the giant, she knew he was tall as well. He moved with an agility that startled her; when he saw her he stopped immediately, about three steps sooner than the giant was able to.

  Rhapsody looked behind her again. The three guards had rounded the corner and had closed the distance between them to about thirty feet. She was trapped between the strangers and the guards. Given what she knew about the guards, she decided to appeal to the strangers for assistance.

  She turned to the two odd travelers. "Please help me," she gasped, puffing from exertion. "Let me pass." The strangers looked to each other, but did not move.

  The guards slowed their steps but continued forward, walking three abreast. Rhapsody turned to face them again. She would need to convince them these strangers were her allies, powerful allies. She did her best to smile at the odd-looking men.

  "Pardon me, but would you be willing to adopt me for a moment? I'd be grateful."

  The man next to the giant nodded slightly. "Thank you," Rhapsody gasped again. She turned back to the town guard. "What an extraordinary coincidence," she panted, a smile of false bravado on her exquisite, sweating face. "You gentlemen are just in time to meet my brother. Brother, these are the town guard. Gentlemen, this is my brother—Achmed the Snake."

  For a moment it was as though time expanded all around Rhapsody. Heat flushed her face and she heard, and felt, a distant but audible crack, followed by a puff, like a spark exploding, or smoke dissipating.

  A strange feeling washed over her, unlike any she had ever felt; light-headedness from all the running, perhaps. She winced internally at the idiotic name that had come to her on the spot, but it seemed to have done the trick, because the town guard were now staring over her head in abject fear.

  A series of soft thoop sounds whispered behind her and whistled past her. Faster than her eyes could track them shining projectiles, thin as butterfly wings, struck the throats of all three, toppling them over in rapid succession. The guards fell heavily into the mud of the alley, not moving.

  Rhapsody looked down at the bodies, amazed. She turned to the strangers again. The smaller of the two was slinging a strange-looking weapon, shaped somewhat like a crossbow but with an asymmetrical curved arm, over his shoulder and under his cloak again. She looked at him in blank admiration.

  "Nice work," she said. "Thank you."

  The two strangers looked at each other, then around the alley. The cloaked one put out his hand to her. It was slender in its leather sheath, but the grip looked deadly.

  "Come with us if you want to live," he said.

  His voice was dry with an unnatural rasp to it; it was a percussive sound that widened Rhapsody's eyes with interest.

  She looked quickly over her shoulder, hearing the approach of more guards, and then turned to the stranger once more and took his gloved hand. Together the three of them bolted from the alley and into the shadows cast by the afternoon sun setting over the back streets of Easton.

  * * *

  The walls of the vast city could no longer be seen and darkness was swallowing the meadows that surrounded Easton long before the three travelers stopped to make camp. They had left the city by the eastern gate, down by the docks.

  Easton was a port city, a thriving relic left over from the days of the racial campaigns in the Second Age. Though its original planning, and recent attempts at restoration, saw it as a great center of art and culture at the crux of the trade routes, during the wars it had been refitted for defense, as a walled fortress, surrounded on three sides by great stone bulwarks eighteen feet thick leading down to the wharf. The bustle of the seafaring traffic made handy cover for their escape.

  Rhapsody had run through the back streets of Easton before, had even been dragged once or twice, but never as purposefully as with these two who half-led, half-carried her through the yards and cobbled alleys. She was able to keep up with them only because of her knowledge of the city.

  When they cut through two abandoned buildings well after the point where she was sure they were out of tracking range, however, she lost her bearings. Certainly they had also lost anyone who might have identified them at the scene of the crime. In front of a busy portside tavern, the slighter man stopped.

  "These will do," he said, then stole two horses in broad daylight.

  The giant lifted Rhapsody onto one of the horses, and they walked a few blocks before the men mounted and rode quickly out of town, across the fields south and along the sea.

  The giant rode slightly behind, and Rhapsody could hear the horse working hard to keep up with the pace set by the man with thin hands. In fact, even though she rode in front of him, in the same saddle, she could not hear his breath. It felt only as if she were wearing a modestly heavy cloak instead of sitting in front of a person intent on escape, guiding the horse from behind her. The vibrations from the galloping horse hid her trembling.

  They rode the entire afternoon. Rhapsody had never been outside of Easton's southern wall before, and kept casting mournful backward glances at the great gray vista of mud-and-thatch buildings, decaying marble temples, ramshackle stone houses, and towering statuary receding more and more into the twilight with each moment. At dusk she could barely make out the high, twisting wall that led down to the harbor, where distant lights were twinkling; it was nothing more than a faint black line in the approaching darkness.

  Once they were out of sight of the city, they slowed their pace, but it was clear that the two men intended to put as much distance between themselves and Easton as possible. Even as night fell and Rhapsody had to acknowledge to herself that she was lost, and might have been kidnapped, not rescued as she first thought, they pressed on.

  For a while Rhapsody had felt it was dangerous to the horses to keep moving when no one could possibly see a safe path. Then, without a sign or warning, they stopped. The night had come into itself, and the riders were surrounded by darkness.

  "Get down." The voice seemed to come from the air.

  Before she could react the smaller man quickly moved her from the saddle. He was down himself in an instant, and with a swift motion threw the reins to the other man.

  "Grunthor, lose the horses." The veiled man vanished into the night.

  Rhapsody lost sight of him almost immediately. She turned to the shape that the darkness made even more huge, simultaneously backpedaling a step and reaching quietly for the knife in her wrist sheath.

  Grunthor did not look at her, but dismounted, tied up the reins on each horse, and stepped back.

  "Get on with ya," he said, but the animals were so spent that they hardly reacted. As if he had anticipated this, the giant removed his helmet and moved to a spot directly in f
ront of the horses, where both of them could see him clearly, even with all trace of twilight faded from the sky. He spread his arms and roared.

  The sound rumbled and echoed through the horseflesh and through Rhapsody. For a moment the mounts were frozen, but after a breath they were reanimated and fled in the panic of prey in sight of the predator, wild-eyed and screaming.

  Grunthor replaced his helmet and turned to Rhapsody. He took one look at the expression on her face and roared with laughter.

  "'Allo, darlin'. Oi'm so glad to see it's love at first sight for you, too. Come along." He walked away into the night.

  Rhapsody was not sure that it was wise to follow the giant, but was sure it was even less so to make him angry, so she took off after him. She struggled to keep up, trying to sort things out in her head. "Where are we going? Are we walking all the way?"

  "Doubtful. We already been on forced march today."

  At the edge of the horizon the full moon appeared and began to rise, golden, blanketed in the fog at the edge of the sea. Its light did nothing to illuminate the darkness; impenetrable blackness hung, heavy as pitch, in the summer air. Rhapsody thought she had good night vision, but she was still moving along more by touch and sound than sight.

  She trailed after the giant as he followed a path that was apparently only visible to him until she nearly stepped into a small fire. Grunthor had sidestepped at the last second and had to put his arm in front of her to keep her from putting her boot directly into the flames.

  A camp was already made. She was not sure if she didn't see it because he was in the way, blocking her view, or because of the darkness of the night, or the way the camp had been placed.

  Grunthor moved to a spot upwind of the fire, took off his helmet, and drew a long breath before sitting down. He had paid little attention to her so far, and even though it would put her directly into his line of vision, Rhapsody went to the opposite side, keeping the fire between them, and dropped her pack to the ground. She wasn't bothered by smoke, and thought the flames might provide at least a small barrier if necessary.