A moonsinger didn't need to croon the answers for him to know them. Magebutcher, Ringthief, Red Reaver — those were his true names, honestly earned through his own immoral and bloody actions. He'd be a fool to believe he could ever live up to the royally conferred, pompous title "Defender of the Westreach."
He'd been accused of many things, a fool the most common among them. But he'd more often than not proved them wrong.
"I must remember who I am," he murmured to the moon. "I must remember I am no chicken herder, and never have been. I must remember that though I was born Brannen Cairn of Hunt's Hollow, he died when I left for war. I must remember—"
He stopped short. Soon enough, others would remember his name. For a little while longer, he would remain the Bran whom Garin thought he knew.
Before the World pulled back the wool and revealed the sheep to be the wolf.
A Nasty Flock of Chickens
Sixteen days on the road, four towns passed — and still no horses for sale.
Garin's feet dragged through the muddy street, freshly moistened by the morning's rain. Sixteen days of endless walking and ceaseless speaking. He'd now seen more towns than he could count on his hands, but he didn't feel any excitement for it.
Traveling, he decided, wasn't all it had promised to be.
But however disappointed he might feel, Aelyn's irritation eclipsed it. "King's coin," the mage grated as they left the fourth village. "What good is a king's coin if it can't buy horses?"
He glared at Bran, who was whistling rather cheerfully. Garin didn't know how he could be so nonchalant under the elven mage's stare.
"This is your fault," the mage pointed out.
"It is," Bran agreed heartily. "Just because you can take anyone's horse by the King's seal doesn't mean you should. And what's the rush? It's a marvelous day!"
Garin and Aelyn shared a look before Garin quickly looked away. He and the elf didn't share much in common, but on this, they were in agreement.
"I wouldn't mind horses," Garin muttered.
"But how would we conduct our lessons? We'd be 'hoarse' halfway through the day!" Bran grinned at him. "If you take my meaning."
Garin rolled his eyes. "You would be, anyway."
"Besides, not only do those folks need their horses, but didn't you see those skinny beasts? I wouldn't have been surprised if they collapsed halfway to Halenhol — and then what good would they do us?"
"They'd get us halfway there," Aelyn snapped.
Halfway. Weren't they halfway there yet? Sixteen days they'd been walking, and they had many more miles ahead of them. As much as Garin enjoyed learning more of the World from Bran, the would-be chicken herder never stopped lecturing and quizzing him. Even swordplay was growing dull amidst the rest of the drudgery.
He was realizing just how much of traveling was the long, boring moments in between the stories folks told.
But even more than what he had to face was what he no longer had. He missed kicking his feet up by the hearth at the end of a hard day's work. He missed the teasing from his older brothers and sister, and his mother's fond smile and tight hug. He missed the freshly baked bread to the stale hardtack they ate now; the tender meats to their tough, salted pork; potatoes and cabbage rather than whatever bitter roots and foul-tasting mushrooms they could find in the surrounding forest.
He'd never admit it to his companions, but he missed home.
After the town faded from sight, Bran walked up next to him again. "Where was I? Ah, yes — the Siege of Halenhol. Now, Queen Jalenna had fair warning of warlocks among her enemy's ranks. To counteract these, she sent out the Mute Monks to silence them—"
"Why don't you ever tell stories from your life?"
The question seemed to come from nowhere, but he realized it had been simmering inside him for a long time. As he lifted his gaze from the road, he found not only Bran's eyes on him but Aelyn's as well.
When Bran didn't answer, Garin barreled on. "You had a different name before — both you and Aelyn said so. You've been a deserter and a highwayman according to what you told those brigands. You know magic and magical artifacts, and say you've trained as a warlock. And to hear you talk, you've seen the Extinguished firsthand."
Bran gave him a small smile, though his eyes looked flat and sad. "Not much slips by you, I see."
"I can't figure you out. You must be a madman or a myth, but you seem as grounded as a man could be. But I don't know you at all, do I? How could I, when I don't even know your name?"
Aelyn had drifted closer and flashed him a sharp smile. "A brave thing, to run off with a man you don't know. A brave thing — or a stupid one."
Garin stubbornly kept his gaze on Bran, who had averted his eyes. "Who are you, Bran? Or whatever your name is?"
Bran stared at the muddy road for several long moments longer. In the gray light, with his shoulders slouched forward and his eyes hooded, he looked a worn and defeated man, like a farmer after he'd watched all his crops gone to rot.
"When we reach Halenhol," he said quietly, "you'll hear many stories about me. That I'm a hero. That I'm a murderer and a traitor. Some good things, but many more of them bad, and all of them exaggerated." He finally lifted his gaze, but only to stare down the road. "I suppose, by not telling you, I wanted to preserve this simple guise I've worn in Hunt's Hollow. The chicken farmer, friendly and helpful, his past buried and dead behind him, ready to settle down into a quiet life in the far country. I wanted to inhabit again the realm of my childhood before it was torn away from me."
Bran looked at him finally. "My name is not a lie, Garin. I was born Brannen Cairn, but all the children knew me as Bran the Bastard. So you see, it's not my current name that is the lie, but the one I adopted upon leaving. The one all the World came to know."
Garin stiffened his jaw. It wasn't an answer, not like he wanted. More than ever, he burned to know the stories behind the man next to him. It wasn't even that he distrusted him — especially as he'd been using his birth name all along.
"Birth name or not, if the other name is the one everyone else knows you by, I want to know it. And if I'll hear it in Halenhol anyway, why not tell me now? If the stories they tell about you are lies, why not tell me the truth?"
"Because you'll never look at him the same, boy," Aelyn spoke from Bran's other side. "Because he knows that once you are privy to all his sins, you'll go running back to your little mud-road town and shudder to think you ever traveled with the likes of him."
Garin felt his face flush. But though he wanted to lash back, he held his tongue. Theoretically, the elven mage couldn't harm him as long as that ring was on his finger. Yet provoking Aelyn would be like poking a stick at a caged bear.
And what if he was right?
Bran suddenly stopped, and Garin stumbled to a halt, watching as the man stood stock still.
"It seems our mysterious companion is having second thoughts as it is," Aelyn taunted.
"Shh!"
The intensity in Bran's shushing quieted Aelyn instantly, and he, too, looked around, alert. Garin strained his senses, but he saw nothing in the encroaching woods, could hear nothing but the wind stirring through the leaves, and the birds—
He frowned. The birds had stopped singing.
They come, little Listener.
Garin's heart lurched into a gallop, and he whipped his head around as if he could find the speaker. As if the words hadn't come from within his mind.
"Wings!" Aelyn hissed as his gaze turned upward. "Death on wings!"
Bran gripped Garin's arm tightly and pulled him off the road. "Get into the trees and find cover — a gully, a cave, anything."
Garin stumbled to keep his feet under him. "Why? What's coming?"
The man's eyes were on the road behind them as they slipped into the forest. "Quetzals. A whole tangle of them from the sound of it."
"Quetzals?"
"Winged, feathered serpents. They're small, but they attack with perfect coordination. A tangle c
an take down a chimera if they're hungry enough."
Garin imagined the sight and shuddered. He'd never seen a chimera, but he'd heard they were bigger than bulls and much deadlier. Besides, he wasn't fond of snakes, and snakes flying through the air were even worse than slithering on the ground.
"Feathered serpents?" Garin mustered a laugh. "No worse than a nasty flock of chickens, right?"
Bran flashed him a wolfish grin. "Exactly. Now go! Leave them to a professional herder."
Releasing him, the man spun, hands untying the straps across his back and letting both scabbard and pack fall to the ground as he drew the sword.
Despite the danger, Garin paused and stared at the weapon. Even in the shadowed forest, its silver blade gleamed, and strange blue symbols, like on the walls of the dark pendant's chamber, squirmed across the steel.
Bran shouted over his shoulder. "Run, Garin!"
He stumbled through the brush, blood hammering in his ears, knowing he was a coward and scarcely caring.
Bran scanned the forest surrounding him. Big trees, spread out, with little undergrowth to speak of. Not good ground to fight a swarm of flying beasts.
But when it came to killing quetzals, there never was good ground.
He heard the buzz of their wings churning the air as they swiftly approached. No point in being quiet now. Quetzals hunted by smell, and they would have already caught theirs.
Though, he suspected, it was by another sense that they had tracked them this far.
Aelyn slipped from the shadows to stand by him. In one hand, he clutched a pouch with its drawstring slightly loosened to show a yellow powder within, while in the other, he held a slender, iron rod that resembled a fire poker but for how intricately it was forged.
"They've come for the pendant," the elf said. "They'll focus their attacks on me."
"I knew I'd brought you along for something."
An idea occurring to him, Bran shrugged off his cloak and, setting down his blade, began to wind the cloth around his left arm. Aelyn watched him wordlessly. As he stood, arm wrapped and sword in hand again, the buzzing had grown so loud he knew they must almost be upon them.
"When I throw this powder," Aelyn said as the leaves above them began to shake violently, "try not to be in the way."
Before he could respond, the canopy burst open.
Even in the dim light, the quetzals were dazzling. Wings sprouted all down their spines, a dozen pairs to each, their long bodies undulating through the air as the wings flapped in a rippling pattern. The feathers were brilliantly colored: the green-blue of glacial lakes, the bright red of arterial blood, the yellow of freshly husked corn.
But for all their beauty, the twisting, hissing ball of them swiftly descending toward them stirred in his gut nothing but fear.
With famed synchrony, the quetzals dove as one, like fifty arrows streaming toward their targets. Bran darted for a nearby trunk and spun around. Aelyn, unmoved, pointed the iron rod up at the tangle, then shouted. The words boomed through the clearing like a thunderclap, and the rod sparked.
Bran squeezed his eyes shut, but even behind his lids, it flashed a brilliant white. A roar filled his ears, and energy crackled around him, then a wall of wind sent him stumbling backward.
Opening his eyes, he squinted through the light dotting his vision at the mage. He stood, hat blown off, revealing his dark hair sticking out from its braid, his fiery eyes staring up in defiance. Around him, the dead bodies of seven quetzals lay blackened and crisp. Bran was surprised when his stomach rumbled at the smell.
"Not now, you insatiable animal," he muttered.
The quetzals had scattered before the lightning, but they'd already regrouped at the canopy and readied another attack. This time, instead of diving straight at the mage, they spread out like a noblewoman's skirts around him, then arced in from all angles.
Aelyn dropped the rod, tossed the powder in a circle around him, and withdrew a glass orb the size of an apple. "Now would be a fine time for aid!" he shouted above the tangle's hissing.
Bran was already moving forward, sword a blur as he chopped at a passing quetzal. "Kald!" he shouted as the steel met the serpent, and for a moment, the blade flared in brilliant flames. The snake shrieked as its tail severed, blood spraying over Bran, but even as it flew away, the sorcerous flames greedily ate at its body.
Recognizing the second threat, six of the quetzals veered off from their dive at the mage and flew shrieking toward him.
"Yuldor's flaming balls," Bran muttered, lifting his left arm.
Behind the approaching snakes, he saw the rest of the tangle descend on Aelyn, then twist away. As the quetzals scattered, he saw not the elf's mangled corpse left behind, but an orb of blue light surrounding the mage, a protective barrier that had warded the serpent's attacks away, and the yellow powder rising in flames around it.
But instead of giving up, the rest of the tangle turned toward Bran.
"Thanks for that!" he shouted, but there was no time to say more as the first half dozen reached him. Thrusting his cloak-wrapped arm out, he felt the snakes latch into it, one after another, their fangs just long enough to prick his skin. Grunting, he spun the blade up, and six limp bodies fell to the ground, their heads still lodged in his arm, their blood spraying into his face.
But the rest of the tangle was there, and they seemed less intent on his arm. Hastily wiping his eyes, Bran suddenly found himself in a dizzying, whirling dance, kald a mantra on his lips, Velori flashing with flames, the hilt growing unbearably hot beneath his glove.
But even as others fell or flew off, screaming and burning, the remaining score was wearing him down. Some he warded off with his protected arm, but others darted in, tearing at his legs, his shoulders, some even scraping his head. Bran dove into a roll and swept flames overhead, but still they came, harassing him as mercilessly as crows at carrion.
"Over here!" a youthful voice suddenly called.
One of the quetzals spasmed, then darted off into the woods. Three more followed it, then another two. Then the rest of the tangle, deciding there was easier prey, fled after the others.
Even as Bran chopped into one of the last serpents still attacking him and cried out as the second bit into his backside, he groaned. "You Night-touched fool, Garin!"
Awkwardly beheading the serpent that had lodged in his rump and prying it loose, he limped off in the direction that the tangle had flown.
Garin had never cared much for running.
In Hunt's Hollow, boys had little to occupy them but what they could find outside. Most of their games involved a physical contest of one or another — wrestling, archery, and slingshotting numbered among Garin's personal favorites. Races, however, never had. As often as not, he wouldn't even try but would pretend to give it an honest effort, then jog along at his leisure.
But now, with a tangle of quetzals in pursuit, he'd finally found a race he cared to win.
His heart hammered fast in his chest, wild as an unbroken stallion. His tortured lungs hardly seemed to pull in any air and screamed for more. His legs, leaden and clumsy, tripped over the brush.
But with winged death flying behind him, he had no choice but to push on.
He'd just thought to distract them when he'd flung the stones at the quetzals. He hadn't imagined the whole flock would turn and give chase. Now, he wished he'd remained a coward and done as Bran had bid him.
He didn't even know where he ran but took whichever course was easiest. When a ravine appeared in front of him, he veered and followed its edge. When the slope became steep after that, he searched for level ground. He heard the quetzals gaining on him, some flying overhead now, no doubt readying for a coordinated attack.
Garin's wind-teared eyes wandered to the ravine on his left. The only place safe from them.
But as much as he didn't want to be torn apart by flying snakes, he couldn't force himself to jump. The stream was thirty feet down, and shallow from the looks of it. Maybe if he lay do
wn, he might escape the quetzals underwater, at least for a little while. But when he had to come up for air, what then?
And that was assuming he survived the jump.
The quetzals were circling all around him now, so many he couldn't count them at a glance. His feet edged toward the cliffside. He wanted to collapse with exhaustion and fear.
Command them.
Even with death surrounding him, a deeper terror stabbed through him. Garin scarcely dared to breathe, wondering if he'd imagined the dark whisper in his head, wondering what it meant if he hadn't.
Command them, little Listener. They will obey.
Unmistakable that time. Though the words were soft, they were sharp, cutting through his mind as if they might draw blood. Garin stared up at the winged serpents, mouth opening, dry tongue working around his mouth.
"Go away," he said weakly. Then, stronger, "Go away!"
Young fool — in their own tongue!
"I don't know how!"
Cede control to me.
Garin swallowed hard. The quetzals were circling in, closer, closer, barely ten feet away on any side. Their hissing surrounded him, their fangs flashing as they bared them, their wings buffeting him with reptilian musk.
"Alright," he said in a small voice.
He felt his muscles seize, and his tongue lashed in his mouth. Head jerking back, his eyes stared up into the churning mass of feathers. His lips moved, and from his throat ushered forth sounds so guttural and harsh he could scarcely believe he made them.
The quetzals scattered.
His muscles slackened, and his knees buckled. Unable to keep upright, consciousness slipping away, he collapsed, falling backward.
Back into the ravine.
Bran lunged and seized Garin's jerkin while digging his sword into the earth behind him. The boy was slight but growing tall, and it took all of his effort to haul him back from the cliff edge and onto solid ground.
There he collapsed next to the boy, laughing weakly, though nothing that afternoon had been amusing, and the old wound in his side throbbed painfully. He leaned over the youth, looking down into his half-lidded eyes and pale face.
A King's Bargain Page 7