Scarlet and the White Wolf, #1

by Kirby Crow

  Liall would not meet Peysho’s eyes.

  “Get up,” he ordered Scarlet in a ragged voice. “Get out.”

  Scarlet fled.

  Shadow of the Past

  SCARLET ABANDONED WHAT little pride he had left and ran. A mourning dove trilled from the trees as he loped down the mountain path, and it sounded like mockery to him: fooooooool fool!

  A game, Liall said. If waving his knife around was a game, what was he like when he played for true? It seemed incredible that he had ever found anything attractive about such a brute. He was angry at himself for ever thinking it.

  At the bottom of the path was the little circle he had hidden in to dress, ringed in by a row of tall junipers laced with snow. He stopped there, his breath like fire in his lungs, and stripped off the slashed remains of the bodice. It was ruined. He would have that to explain at home, and bruises besides. His heart thudded as he leaned his shoulder against a scraggly evergreen and strove for calm. The wind sighed through the thick branches.

  You’ve got only yourself to blame, he thought reproachfully. You insisted on having your way and challenging him instead of doing as Scaja advised and taking the Salt Road for a while. Well, you called him out. How do you like his answer?

  His chest ached where Liall had pressed down with his knee. He rubbed the bruised flesh there and tried to think what to do next. All of his goods had been left on the mountain. He could not even continue on by the Salt Road, and would have to go home empty-handed and shamed after being pawed at and stripped by a Kasiri. The thought of Scaja’s eyes staring him down in silent disapproval made him feel faintly ill. He shivered in humiliation and covered his face with his hands.

  “No better luck?”

  Scarlet whirled around to see Cadan step out from behind the broad trunk of a tree, his fighting axe casually slung over his shoulder. The birds were suddenly silent.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded, shaken. He had not heard anyone creep up.

  The soldier was staring at him with an odd intensity. He took a step closer. “If I’d known you liked to dress as a woman, I would have said fairer words to you when we met. Yes, and paid for your beer besides.”

  Cadan gave him a bone-thin smile, and Scarlet was abruptly very aware that they were alone here, that he had left his long-knives at home, and that no one would hear him in the village if he should call for help. He suddenly wished he had never met Cadan or Liall at all.

  Kev would say this is what I get for talking to strangers, he thought. “Go away,” he commanded weakly, and Cadan laughed.

  “Your mouth is bruised,” Cadan said, taking yet another step. “Did the Wolf steal a kiss? Ah, I see he did. He always fancied his boys pretty and stupid.”

  Scarlet stepped forward, meaning to step around the soldier, but Cadan moved to block his path. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Home.”

  “In a little while. Maybe.”

  Scarlet’s eyes flashed to the crimson vine on Cadan’s sleeve uncertainly. Surely an officer had more honor than this, or at least better wits? The sense of danger in the air was palpable, and he suddenly knew beyond all doubt that Cadan meant him harm.

  “Let me pass.”

  Cadan’s arm shot out and shoved him back. Scarlet stumbled but recovered quickly and curled his hands into his fists. “What do you want?”

  The scars on Cadan’s cheeks writhed as he smiled, and his eyes glittered with a strange, hungry light. “I’ve seen the look on your face when you talk about the Wolf.” His gaze raked Scarlet’s body. “You could look at me that way. I wouldn’t mind.”

  “You’re mad. I despise that bandit.”

  “But you don’t. You want him.”

  Scarlet’s throat had gone dry. “You’re wrong.” He wanted to say more, to declare that he had never been attracted to any man, ever, but his instincts told him his denial would be met with more of the same derisive amusement.

  Cadan’s smile turned knowing. “Stay a while,” he invited. “I will treat you better than he did.” He made a grab for Scarlet’s wrist.

  Scarlet twisted aside and threw a punch aimed at Cadan’s eye. It landed solidly and Cadan’s head snapped back. A small gash opened up on the soldier’s left eyebrow and began to bleed freely. Cadan swiped at the blood with the back of his sleeve. His smile turned predatory as he raised his fists.

  “You want to fight me, hill-brat?”

  Scarlet dodged the first punch. The second impacted squarely on his chin and made his knees wobble.

  “Hilurin whore,” Cadan jeered. “There are easier ways to get on your back.”

  Scarlet tried to hit him again, but Cadan swayed and ducked, evading the thrown punches easily. Cadan jabbed thrice with his right fist and connected all three times: hard, painful blows that made Scarlet’s teeth click and his eyes water and his brain feel like it was a bean rattling in an empty gourd. One or two more and he would be unconscious.

  He was not even trying to land a blow now, only trying to guard and stay on his feet as Cadan circled him with catlike steps.

  Scarlet forced himself to face the facts: Cadan was bigger, stronger, and a far more skilled fighter than he was. He was not going to win this battle with his bare hands. There was only one chance.

  Scarlet turned and bolted for the edge of the woods. He did not see Cadan’s expression change, shifting into a fierce mask of hate like the were-beast in the tales of shape-changers, nor did he see the soldier sling the axe from his shoulder in a blur of movement and hurl it at his back.

  The blunt side of the axe-head smashed high into the back of Scarlet’s right shoulder, careening off the bone and leaving his arm numb and useless. He fell to his knees, a wave of excruciating pain forcing a cry from him, and then Cadan was on him. A strong arm wrapped around his neck, hauling him to his feet. The soldier’s breath was hot on his throat.

  “Don’t make me run after you,” Cadan panted in his ear. “I’ve got a long day planned for us, wouldn’t want to use up all my strength at once.”

  He struggled, slamming his boot-heel down on Cadan’s instep, and the man released him with a roar and threw him down. Scarlet tried to scramble up and run. Cadan was there again, using his greater weight to force Scarlet back to the ground. Scarlet writhed under him, turning onto his back where he could throw a punch, but Cadan’s hands were suddenly around his throat, cutting off his wind.

  He could not get a good breath in his lungs. His knee sought to come up between Cadan’s legs ineffectually, blocked by a sudden twist of Cadan’s body. The fingers of his good hand clawed at Cadan’s wrists, trying to tear the choking grip from his neck as the soldier straddled his waist. Cadan leaned his weight on his arms, his thumbs digging deep into soft tissue.

  Scarlet was aware of wet snow trickling into his collar, the dull wave of agony that was his shoulder, and the panicked feeling of drowning. Air, he had to get air! Desperately, he clawed for the little dagger he kept in his belt, but it had not cleared the sheath when it was torn from his fingers. Cadan hurled it away, allowing Scarlet one loud, tortured breath before the life was being choked from him again. The soldier’s body ground against him, and Scarlet was overwhelmed with disgust to feel the hard outline of Cadan’s rigid phallus pressed against his hip.

  His strength was ebbing. The world darkened at the edges little by little until the dawn began to fade like the last images of a dream. There was nothing but the cold and his own evaporating sense of fear. The last breath in his throat was like a spike of frost, but he felt calm, at peace, and wondered for a fleeting instant if the Otherworld would be anything like this one.

  Then a bizarre sound intruded, an enraged roar like the baying of a wolf, and something crashed into them with the force of a storm, knocking Cadan off him. Scarlet rolled to his right, his injured shoulder taking the brunt of his weight, and a jolt of pain went through him like a hammer. He blacked out.

  “GET UP,” LIALL ORDERED Scarlet, his voice
raw. “Get out.” Scarlet fled.

  Liall watched Scarlet run, the mountain air rasping in his lungs like sand. He knew he would not see Scarlet again. If the pedlar ever chanced this road again, he would send Peysho to wave him through. Or even, he thought desperately, go down to the village myself and beg his pardon.

  It was a silly thought. He knew he would do no such thing. The lad was right. Liall had abused Scarlet’s pride and dismissed his way of life as worthless. All the slights he was angry at Scarlet for sending his way, Liall had committed first.

  The tribesmen dispersed, muttering among themselves, but Peysho remained. He approached the atya warily.

  “Liall?” he called, as a man will call a dog who had been acting strangely of late, while keeping a sharp axe behind his back against rabies, or worse.

  “Stop looking at me like the bride on her wedding night to the ogre,” Liall growled. “I am myself.” He began to sheath the dagger in his boot and halted, gazing at the blade that had frightened Scarlet so. He made a face of disgust and tossed it into a thicket of winter-bare bracken near some rocks. That was one blade he would not want to look at again.

  “Ye should follow the lad down the path. Just to see him safe and all,” Peysho said.

  He waved that away. “He’ll be fine.”

  “Ye could’ve hurt him,” Peysho persisted. “The way ye were slashin’ at him... ye could’ve cut ‘im bad and not even know it.”

  “He ran like he was healthy enough.”

  “All the same,” Peysho began stubbornly, and Liall could see the burly enforcer had the matter in his teeth.

  Liall scowled at him, unaccountably annoyed. What business was it of his? “You have one pretty lad to worry about, don’t take on another.”

  “Here, now!” Kio sang out, and Liall knew he had offended Kio as well.

  “Deva’s shrieking hell, I’ll go!” Liall snapped.

  “Give me a minute to fetch my knives,” Peysho stalled.

  “Stay here,” Liall ordered. “We’ve wasted enough time on this nonsense.”

  Liall strode cursing toward the path to Lysia, leaving Peysho to scratch his chin and look after his chieftain worriedly.

  SCARLET, GRANDSON OF Herec, son of Scaja, of the blood of Lyr.

  Scarlet roused enough to wonder who called his name, but saw only flashes of light, a whirling dance of butterfly colors, and through them, like a veil of shining gauze, Byzan faces in the void beyond, many faces of men and women of his race. Never had he seen so many Hilurin people in one place. They stretched out their white hands to him.

  Scarlet of Lysia.

  Who calls? Who is that? He felt irritated at being woken from the cocoon of syrupy warmth that rocked him like a babe in a cradle, carrying him to the Otherworld. Linhona and Scaja would miss him, true, but he would see them again. If only those voices would go away and let him rest.

  Wake, Scarlet. Not for you the longsleep, the rest without dreams. This is not your time. Not now, not on the long voyage across the deep, cold sea, nor even when you come at last to the first home of the Shining Ones. Wake, O Anlyribeth.

  Anlyribeth? He wondered what the strange word was, and why it should sing through his mind like ripples on a pond, circles that touched him with a sting like iron.

  How sad that even the name of our race has vanished among you. So far fallen, the Anlyribeth. So far. But wake now, Scarlet. Wake and live longer than memory.

  Longer than memory? He felt like laughing, but he was too tired. The Byzan faces, men and women with deep black eyes and dark hair like his, faded back into the fluttering bits of color, and he fell dreamless into the dark.

  LIALL SAW CADAN’S HANDS knotted around Scarlet’s throat. The pedlar was glassy-eyed and he hung from Cadan’s hands as if dead.

  He shouted and threw himself at Cadan, tearing the brute’s hands away. He grabbed the soldier’s arms, lifted him, and flung him bodily into the bole of a tree, where he crashed face-first. Few had ever seen Liall use the full extent of his strength, and he was stronger than any Byzan or Minh or Morturii alive. He fully intended not to leave Cadan alive to speak of it.

  Cadan scrabbled and came up on his knees. His chipped tooth had split his lip. He leered and spat blood. “You’re too late. Just like the last time, eh, Liall? Too late to save them, too late to save him.”

  It was true. Even by moonlight, Liall could see how still Scarlet lay, how his white neck was marred with bruises and his chest was unmoving. Cadan laughed again, his bloodied mouth twisting up into a cruel, familiar sneer. Liall reached into his boot for his dagger, found it gone and remembered why he had thrown it away.

  Oh, lad, it was just a game. I’m sorry, so sorry...

  A silvery glimmer caught the sunlight beside Scarlet’s still body, and Liall could make out the angular shape of an axe-head and the short curve of a wooden handle denting the snow.

  He picked up the axe. Cadan limped backwards, holding his thigh. Bright blood dripped between his fingers.

  “Did I hurt you, then?” Liall asked. His voice was dangerously soft. “Looks broken to me.”

  Cadan chuckled. “I’ll live.”

  “You will not.” He declined to question Cadan about what he had planned to do with Scarlet’s body. The petty details of revenge—whether Cadan intended to plant the corpse outside of the village with the Kasiri mark cut into his skin, or whether he planned to have what was left of Scarlet delivered to the camp—mattered little. Most likely, the folk of Lysia would conclude that the Kasiri had murdered Scarlet for defying them, and rumors of a violent Kasiri band would spread. Tolling and robbery were common everywhere, but the Kasiri were only barely tolerated this far north in Byzantur. The regular army would be glad of a solid reason to brave the wrath of the Bled lords and wipe the Kasiri out. Cadan must have been planning this for a long time.

  Liall hefted the axe. His own thoughtlessness had cost Scarlet his life, and that made him cruel. “You’re a soldier now,” he said slowly, soft as a cat’s paw. “An officer. How did you manage that, I wonder?”

  “Leading soldiers and leading Kasiri isn’t so different.” Cadan again spat a thin stream of blood at him and tried to put his weight on his bad leg. It crumpled under him. “Men are animals. You’re the one who taught me that.”

  Liall glanced at Scarlet, who sprawled so still in the snow. “Not all men. In that, I lessoned you wrong. I would feel badly about that, if I thought I had anything to do with the forging of you. But no, you were already a brute when you found your way into my camp.”

  “You were right,” Cadan insisted. “I treat ‘em like dogs and they lick it up. I’m good at it.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Like most sadists, you have a knack for brutality,” Liall said in a low, terrible tone. “The army must be getting desperate, to raise a cur to rank.” He advanced on Cadan, swinging the axe deftly back and forth, just to show him what was to come.

  Cadan hobbled back from him in alarm. “If I’m a cur, what are you? You’re the biggest thief I ever knew!”

  “Possibly.”

  “You maimed me!!” Cadan shouted, pointing to the scars on his face. “You bastard whelp of a she-bitch! One day I was your right hand in the krait, your enforcer, and the next you cut me off from the Kasiri forever! After the famous Wolf drove me out, every atya from here to Minh spat at the sound of my name. No one would take me in or let me join their krait. And over what? Nothing!”

  Liall’s jaw clenched. “Over two Byzan girls and their mother.”

  Cadan wiped blood from his face. “Scant fun, they were, screaming and crying the whole time. What are filthy peasant dirt-diggers to you, anyway, eh? Why do you care?”

  Liall’s hands curled tight around the axe-haft. “Because I am not a murderer.”

  Cadan’s eyes were tar-black holes of hatred as Liall raised the axe over his head, intending to hurl it and cleave that visage in two, but he should have remembered that a rat is most dangerous when cornered.

>   “Hah!” Cadan shouted, at the same time, his right hand came up and flung a dagger at Liall. It was a little thing, more suited for a woman’s purse than a warrior’s belt, but Cadan aimed for his eyes and Liall instinctively took the time to bat the projectile away with the axe. Another little dagger flew at Liall, lodging deeply in the upper part of his right thigh, and he staggered. The axe lowered.

  In the stolen moment, Cadan was gone, whirling and throwing himself over the snow-slicked embankment and into the concealing brush of the deep ravine below. Liall jerked the knife out and ran to the edge of the junipers, cursing. There were only trees and brush. The sun was not yet high enough in the sky to touch the bottom of the ravine, and there was a thick layer of mist rising from the dim gloom. Cadan had taken a last chance at life, but there was no possible way he could climb out of that gorge with a broken leg, much less make the journey to a friendly village. He was as good as dead.

  Liall spat and threw the axe down, sick with unsatisfied rage. He turned back to look at the crumpled figured lying very still in the snow. His feet moved and he knelt beside Scarlet. The pedlar’s eyes remained closed as Liall gathered him in his arms and held him.

  “I did not intend this,” he whispered. His eyes stung and he swallowed hard. “I swear I did not.”

  He pressed a kiss to Scarlet’s temple. The pedlar’s slender neck, laced with black bruises, lolled over Liall’s arm. Liall gave a moan of distress and his hand went instinctively to support. Then he saw the artery beating in Scarlet’s throat.

  “Oh,” he breathed. A thread of hope touched him. His fingers pressed, to be sure. Yes, the heart still drummed, but there was no breath in the lungs and Scarlet’s chest did not rise.

  Any man who had spent time at sea knew the mariner’s trick of reviving those with water in the lungs, or whose breath had stopped while there was still life in the body. Liall placed Scarlet back on the ground, tilted his chin up, pinched his nose shut and fitted his mouth over his, praying that Scarlet’s throat had not swelled and his airway closed up from Cadan’s grip.