“Why am I not surprised?” Amos beckoned Birdie to ride over and climbed up behind her. The saddle shifted under his weight, and Ryn grunted at the strain. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair o’ the griffin, either.”
“I am here, Hawkness.” Gundhrold materialized out of the storm. “There was a small matter of an escaped Khelari that needed to be handled.”
“An’ have ye dealt with it?”
“It is done.”
“We must hurry, Amos.” Shielding her face against the flying sand with one hand, Birdie twisted around in the saddle. “The lions can find their way to the border, even in the storm, but we have to leave now before it worsens.”
Amos urged Ryn forward with a hefty rap of his heels against her sides. Birdie could feel him fumbling in his pocket with his free hand, then he pulled a kerchief out and shoved it in her hands. “Here, lass, cover yer mouth an’ nose. Ye won’t be able to breathe otherwise.”
As they forged ahead into the whirling maelstrom of grit and wind, she glanced back over her shoulder at the battle ground now shrouded by a fresh blanket of sand. She was stunned by the ease and silence with which a life could be extinguished. Gone as if it had never existed, ended as if it didn’t matter at all.
She fought the urge to be sick. But nothing—not death nor disease nor rumors of torture—could force her to be sick in front of the others. They were just doing what must be done to escape.
To survive and defeat the Takhran.
13
Tremors racked Inali’s body. He lay on a bedroll beside the tiny fire Amos had built. In the wavering light, his shivering seemed exaggerated, almost grotesque. The color had leeched from his skin, leaving it the pasty gray of the frost that flecked the ground, and the dim firelight only accentuated the hollows behind his eyes and in his cheeks, like caverns.
Caverns. The sword.
Standing in the dark with bodies all around.
Birdie blinked the images away. She sat with a skin thrown around her shoulders for warmth. Hesitant to steal the fire’s heat from Inali, she sat several paces away with her knees tucked beneath her chin, back to Gundhrold’s side. Or perhaps she was simply reluctant to sit near him. To the man who had thrown himself between her and a blade.
To the man who might die in her stead.
On the opposite side of the fire, Amos’s silhouette paced back and forth, and every now and then, she caught the glint of his dirk rotating above his outstretched hand. It had been two days since they left the desert. Two days of bone-aching travel and a fear and tension so tight she could almost sense it like a physical cord binding them together while threatening to tear them apart. They had slipped past the army, it was true. But it could not be long before the Khelari were once more on their trail. Not if past experience held true.
The Takhran’s spies were everywhere.
Sym carried a blanket to Inali’s side and began tearing it into strips. The noise of the ripping cloth seemed dangerously loud and unnatural. Amos had chosen a small grove of stunted trees for their campsite, but Birdie still felt exposed and vulnerable with nowhere to shelter or hide and no mounts to carry them to safety. When they left the desert behind, they had released the lions and continued on foot. Lions would only draw unwanted attention north of the border.
Amos halted his pacing and squatted beside the fire. “Will he survive?”
“It is too soon to say.” Sym’s words were clipped, short, her movements quick and efficient, as she removed the previous set of bandages and set them to boiling in a pot over the fire. “If he does, he will almost certainly lose the use of this arm. The blade damaged bone as well as flesh. Infection is setting in. He needs quiet and rest. Not this.” She gestured at their campsite.
“Aye, an’ I’d like nothing better ’n t’ give it t’ him, but for now, this’ll have t’ do. Lightin’ a fire is a risk in an’ o’ itself that I’d much prefer not t’ take if it could be avoided.”
Sym’s voice lowered. “Can the little Songkeeper not—”
“Nay, I’m sorry.”
For a moment, there was no sound but the crackle of the flames and the squelch of the wet rag in Sym’s hand as she cleaned Inali’s wound. Birdie pulled the skin tighter around her shoulders. After they had emerged from the sandstorm—battered, exhausted, and crusted with sand—she had tried to summon the Song to heal Inali. Tried. The melody had not responded, and in the back of her mind, a voice so soft she wondered if she had imagined it whispered “No.”
A shudder ran through her. The fear was still there, caged up inside, cowering like a hunted animal. At her side, Artair’s sword gleamed pale gold in the fire-glow. She lowered one hand and brushed her fingers along the grooved ridge that ran down the center of the blade. It was like touching an icicle.
Gundhrold lifted his head and crooked it around to look at her, blinking bleary eyes. “Are you well, little Songkeeper?”
Something about his use of the title irked her. It felt wrong, somehow. Out of place. “I have a name.” The declaration slipped out before she could stop it.
He squinted one eye at her. “You have many names, little one. Birdie is one of them. Songkeeper is another.”
“Is it?” She huffed a humorless laugh. “Sometimes I wonder …”
“Little one—”
Leaves crunched to their left beneath heavy footfalls. An animal, Birdie thought it. Something four footed, at least. The cadence was wrong for a human. Amos sprang into action, scooping a handful of earth over the fire to smother the flames. With the calculated grace of a cat on the prowl, Sym stood and eased a spear from the quiver on her back. Hand clenched around the hilt of her sword, Birdie started to rise, but Gundhrold’s wing tapped her shoulder, warning her to stay where she was.
The crackling stopped, replaced by the swish-swish of a tail and a deep animal-ish sigh followed by a snort. Buried within that hint of the beast’s voice, Birdie caught a trace of the five-noted melody sung in deep, hearty, droning tones.
Like the hum of a dragonfly’s wings …
She stood, ignoring Gundhrold’s warning hiss. “Balaam? Is that you?”
No response. Nothing but the constant sighing of the wind in the trees and the distant chittering of a petra to its kit, then the footsteps started again, plodding slowly toward them.
Amos swept her behind him with one motion of his arm. “Stay back, lass.”
A stocky, four-legged figure pushed through the low branches of a hallorm tree and halted only a few feet from Amos. The peddler stood stock still, dirk drawn and ready in his hand. There was just enough moonlight filtering through the trees to see the beast’s whiskered gray muzzle and brown eyes. It stretched its neck out and sniffed Amos’s hand then let out a throaty snort that sounded a bit like air escaping a bellows.
“Well, I’ll be …”
“Balaam?” Amos sheathed his dirk but kept a protective hand on Birdie’s shoulder. “Is it really ye? Blitherin’ barnacles, but I thought sure ye’d been eaten by wolves long before now.”
The donkey blinked at him. Once. Twice. “Daft man, of course it’s me. Who did you reckon it was—one of them black armored slumgullions from the north?”
Birdie stifled a breath of laughter. It did not surprise her to discover that the donkey’s thoughts ran a lap slower than most creatures she had encountered, or that he spoke in a deep, drawling voice that rivaled a swamp for sluggishness, but hearing phrases she had only ever before heard Amos use—now that was something unexpected.
Balaam’s head lolled around to look at her. “Well, if it isn’t the little Songkeeper.” A corner of his mouth curved upward in a sly, fox-like grin that looked woefully out of place on his sweet, donkey face. “I knew you, I did, from the first moment I heard you speak, but I reckoned you were too young then to risk you knowing it too.”
“So you didn’t speak to me?”
“Couldn’t, now could I?” The donkey’s forehead wrinkled with confusion. “Not if I wanted to keep you safe.”
“G’on, lass. Ask him how he’s been, where he’s been stayin’, an’ all that.”
“Hold on, just a minute,” Sym shoved her way in between the donkey and Amos. “We have a sick man who needs rest, and the last thing we need is for all this jabbering to bring a Khelari patrol down on us.”
Amos dismissed her concerns with a wave of his hand. “We won’t take long, an’ it could be o’ use t’ us, maybe even procure us that shelter ye were hopin’ for not half an hour ago. Go ahead, lass, ask him.”
Birdie squirmed out from under the hand on her shoulder. “He’s already heard you, but I can tell you what he says.”
“Shelter, aye.” Balaam nodded sagely. “I been staying with Brog. He’s got a nice little shelter for himself an’ a few of the lads who stop by for brew. Don’t reckon he would mind sharing with you lot too.” Nodding to himself, the donkey turned on his heel and started back into the woods. “Almost time for chow too.”
“Wait, don’t leave yet.”
Her shout brought the donkey to a halt, but he stamped a hoof and fixed her with a look of longsuffering patience. She hastily repeated the donkey’s words to Amos.
“Brog, here, in the Soudlands?” The peddler slapped his knee. “That’s grand news.” He sobered a moment later. “Hardale must have fallen. The Brog I knew would never have left the Whistlin’ Waterfly behind unless he was driven from it.”
“Aye,” Balaam muttered in a sad singsong voice. “No more Hardale. No more Sylvan Swan. No more straw or barn or chickens in the yard. It’s all gone, gone, gone.”
The donkey’s words held no surprise for Birdie. Somehow, she had known it to be true since word of the Midlands’s fall first reached Nar-Kog. But expecting it did nothing to ease the ache of hearing the news so casually proclaimed.
The peddler nudged her with his elbow. “Ask him if he can take us t’ Brog’s shelter. ’Twould be good for the lad if we could get him somewhere warm an’ sheltered, an’ Brog has some experience with the healin’ arts.”
The donkey simply nodded and moseyed off without waiting for them to follow. Birdie scrambled for her pack, while Amos and Sym eased Inali up onto Gundhrold’s back and stamped out the last traces of the fire. Then they were off through the trees, into the night, hurrying to catch up with the plodding beast.
And all the while, the donkey’s singsong voice repeated over and over in her ears.
Gone. Gone. Gone.
How long before the same fate befell the rest of them?
“Well, I’ll be . . . if it isn’t Amos McElhenny!” Brog’s welcome boomed out like a Waveryder fog horn. The former tavern-keeper stood silhouetted against firelight in the doorway of a low hut half-buried in the side of a hill. “Truth be told, I never thought I’d see your ugly face again.” He held out his massive, craggy hand, and Amos shook it with enthusiasm.
“Nor I ye, Brog, but there’ll be time for pleasantries later. We’ve a wounded man—can we bring him in?”
“Sure, sure.” Still holding the door open with one hand, Brog shuffled aside and beckoned for them to enter. “Set your man by the fire.”
Amos motioned for Birdie and Sym to enter, then turned to lower Inali from Gundhrold’s back. The griffin crouched to make the task easier, but Amos still grunted as the limp Saari warrior fell into his arms. He ducked through the low doorway and in two long strides made it past a battered table and chairs to the hearth where Sym had already arranged a bedroll. He settled the lad and knelt at his side out of Sym’s way. The Saari warrior moved through Brog’s kitchen like a sandstorm, commandeering supplies with reckless abandon. Within moments, she had a pot of water boiling over the fire and Birdie tearing fresh bandages from a scrap of cloth that might have been one of Brog’s shirts.
Brog cleared his throat, reclaiming Amos’s attention. “Well then . . . I’ll see what I have by way of herbs and medicinals. Stock’s a bit depleted, I’m afraid, what with rough times and all.” Still chunnering away, he started to swing the door shut, but the griffin’s wing stopped him. “Saints alive!”
Amos never would have dreamed the big man could jump so high. Brog landed with a thud and stumbled back, knocking over one of the chairs and slamming into the table. It sagged beneath his weight and skidded with a screech across the floor until he regained his balance. He surged back toward the door, reaching for a broad-bladed woodsman’s axe hanging on the wall beside it.
“Wouldn’t try it, if I were ye.” Amos couldn’t help chuckling at the terror on the tavern keeper’s face. “The old catbird’s been known t’ lop off hands for less.”
Brog sidestepped away from the axe. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Chances are yes, if ye’ve still got at least one good eye in yer head.”
Gundhrold sighed, and it was that conceited, enduringly patient sort of sigh that never failed to raise Amos’s hackles. “Have no fear good innkeeper, I shall remain outside. I do not think your hovel has room for another.”
With a faint dip of his head that could almost pass for a bow, the griffin retreated from the entrance. Brog instantly slammed the door shut and slid a heavy bolt into place, then spun around and set his broad back to the door. “Did he just call me innkeeper? Now that’s an insult, if I’ve ever heard one. I’ll have you know there’s miles of difference between a paltry innkeeper and a respectable tavern keeper.”
Sym gave a dry chuckle. “But you don’t object to him calling this place a hovel?”
“Of course not. It is a hovel.” Brog’s hand trembled as he lifted a jug from the table and sloshed brew into a mug. He raised it as if in toast. “One gets by.”
Amos shrugged his pack aside and started rolling up his sleeves. “Brog—herbs?”
“Right.” The tavern keeper plunked his mug down and turned to a floor-to-ceiling set of shelves. After a minute of muttering and the sound of glass bottles clinking, he held up a small, browned bottle and a packet of sinew and needles. “Here we are. Distilled from the seed of the corrin tree. Just the thing for staving off infection and promoting heal—”
Sym plucked it from his hand and spun back to Inali.
“—ling.” Brog dusted the front of his quilted tunic. “Well, you seem to have it well in hand. I’ll just see that Balaam’s bedded down for the night.” He paused in the doorway. “Your beast won’t harm me, will he?”
“He’s not our beast.” Birdie lifted her head from the bandages she was tearing, face as stern and fierce as a thundercloud. “Gundhrold is his own master.”
Whoo-hee. Amos stifled a chuckle at the surprise on Brog’s face. Sometimes his lass could be quite the fireflower. “He won’t harm ye, Brog. Just be polite.”
The door creaked shut, and Amos turned to assist Sym, but it was clear she had dealt with her fair share of wounds and considered him more of a hindrance than a help. She moved with confident precision as she bound, stitched, and even cauterized as needed with the heated tip of Amos’s dirk. Age had made his hands thicker and tougher and less steady than in his younger days, so he was more than content to leave such delicate tasks to her.
At the beginning, Birdie rooted out supplies and passed them to Sym as they were called for, but by the time Sym tied off the last bandage and pronounced it done, his lass was curled beneath an animal skin, asleep on the packed earth floor. Sym scrubbed the blood from her hands on a scrap of bandage, then settled down beside Inali with her back to the hearth and her legs stretched out before her.
With a sigh, Amos rose on creaking limbs and dropped into one of the chairs at the table. He kicked off his boots and leaned back, studying his hands. Inali’s blood had seeped into the cracks and scars of his skin. He knew from experience that it would take a good deal of scrubbing before it fully washed away, but
the stain of it would remain engraved on his memory.
One life saved could not reverse the stain of lives lost.
They were headed to the place of his complete and utter failure, to the place that haunted his dreams at night and brought him shivering from slumber. And he—more fool that he was—had not only agreed to it, but he was willingly taking his wee lass into a world of horrors.
The chair opposite him scraped back and then groaned beneath the weight of the tavern keeper. Brog crooked an eyebrow at him, hefted the jug, and poured out two mugs with deliberate slowness. With practiced aim, he slid one into Amos’s outstretched hand, and they both drank in silence.
Now that he had a moment to study the tavern keeper, Amos was surprised by the change in his appearance. Though still a big, rawboned man, he was thinner than Amos had ever seen him, and there was a new sense of smallness about him. Almost as if he had shrunk in on himself beneath the pressure of the trials he had faced. His dark beard bristled about his jaw like the mane of a lion, and he was garbed in the rough wrap-around tunic and loose leggings of the Soudlands, instead of the respectable white shirt-sleeves and vest of a tavern keeper.
Times had been hard on the keeper of the Whistlin’ Waterfly.
At last, Brog set his mug down, swiped a hand across his mouth, then rested both hands on his stomach. “Well, do you care to tell me what this is all about? How on earth did you find me here?”
Amos eased his chair back. “Wasn’t looking actually, more coincidence than aught else. Stumbled across old Balaam in the woods, an’ I know that fool beast well enough t’ know he’d have found himself a right comfortable set up somewhere. Followed him back here. Long an’ short o’ it.”
“You didn’t seem surprised to see me.”
That stumped Amos for a moment. It was boggswoggling how easy (and woefully mistaken) it was to write off tavern keepers as less than savvy, when in truth, most were more likely to hone in on the unusual. He mulled over the best response, and in the end gave the one that was the closest to truth. “I’ve seen far too much in the past months t’ be surprised by aught, old friend.”
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