As she placed her palms on the edge of the boat, preparing to heave herself inside, she felt two hands around her waist and stiffened. Sha-Kutan lifted her up out of the water, and she raised her knees over the hull of the boat. He sat her down on the bench beside Sao-Tauna, giving balancing weight as he lifted a leg over the side and climbed aboard.
The craft sank noticeably under the large man’s weight. He grabbed the oars, easing them quietly into the water and pulling hard against them. The boat lurched into motion, Lee-Nin and Sao-Tauna both leaning back as Sha-Kutan propelled them downriver.
“Do you want your clothes?” Lee-Nin held up his shirt.
“When I am dry.” Sha-Kutan pulled at the oars with the same effortless strength he had displayed in hefting her into the boat.
She did not like to admit it, but occasionally, it proved helpful to have the ugly brute around. Maybe more often than occasionally.
“I’m glad your plan worked.” She ignored the rippling of his muscles glistening damp in the pale light of the stars, focusing on his mangled face. “And we have their supplies.”
“Yes.” Sha-Kutan looked upriver. “They will steal the pilgrims’ horses and the supplies they need and head north before dawn. They know where we are headed. They cannot fail to note how often we have been with the pilgrims.”
“True.” Lee-Nin glanced up the river as well. Travel with the pilgrims offered a certain protection and anonymity that traveling alone would not provide the three fugitives, but it also made any pilgrim band a target for their pursuers. “We could try to travel alone. We are not that far from Tanjii.”
“We could change our destination.” Sha-Kutan’s eyes found hers, revealing nothing of the thoughts behind them.
“Star people.” Sao-Tauna looked back at Sha-Kutan. He squinted at the girl but said nothing, continuing to row.
Lee-Nin made no comment either. It seemed madness to let a young, strangely quiet and reserved child determine the course of their proposed escape, but she had no better idea of where to hide than Tanjii, or a pilgrim ship to the Forbidden Realm. At least there, far across the ocean, she would likely die at the hands of the urris for violating the millennium-old Pact rather than a warden seeking to slit her throat for helping Sao-Tauna survive her father’s murderous rage. She pondered again why the tahn wanted his daughter dead. What threat did the girl pose? She could not imagine the child to be more dangerous than the man who sat rowing them downriver. She wondered whether he suspected how dangerous Lee-Nin could be. Best to make sure that he didn’t, in the event she needed to defend her life, and the girl’s future, as she had all those years ago.
She smiled at him. He nodded back, and she suddenly experienced a wave of shame for thinking about killing him, the one man in all her life who had not tried to harm or use her in any way. The one man who actually risked himself to save her and Sao-Tauna. The shame turned to curiosity as she again wondered what motivated him to help them when someone else likely pursued him. Could it be merely convenient self-interest? Could it be compassion?
She let these thoughts fill her mind as the sound of the oars repeatedly dipping into the water lulled her to sleep. She curled up on the fishing nets beside Sao-Tauna, trusting Sha-Kutan to keep them safe until dawn, realizing as she fell asleep that she had never trusted anyone and how odd it felt that he should be the one she finally found faith in.
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To continue reading Lee-Nin’s storyline follow this link.
THE CARNIVAL
YETH
SHADOW-BLACK LEAVES and branches shuddered and swayed, slapping fur and flesh in hasty passage. Yeth looked back through the trees of the forest as she ran. The humans followed. Not close, but too close to stop. Ahead of her, Tarak carried the wounded Shifhuul in his arms as they crashed through the woods, taking no heed to conceal their trail. They needed to return to the castle with all haste. While they could potentially hide in the woods if they got far enough away, their absence would unbalance and undermine Leotin’s leadership.
They also required time for Yeth to use The Sight to heal the wound sapping the life from the diminutive wyrin. The gash in Shifhuul’s chest would take considerable time and effort for her to alter through The Sight. More time than available to them if they tried to stop and hide. Their only hope to save the wyrin lay in getting back to the castle and finding someplace secluded for her to heal him.
“How close?” Tarak spoke over his shoulder, his voice ragged with anger.
Yeth looked back again. The torches of the human militiamen wavered through the trees several hundred paces behind her.
“They are closing the gap. We are making our trail too easy to follow.” Yeth considered taking the wyrin from the roagg’s arms, as she had more experience in hiding her trail in a forest, but she knew the roagg could bear the added weight much easier at the speed they ran. The thought of splitting up to divide and confuse their pursuers also occurred to her, but she discarded it. If they did not both reach the castle in time, the wyrin would surely die. And he had risked his life to save hers. Without his actions, she had no doubt she would be dead, skewered by a human sword like the one she had so poorly wielded. If the wyrin lived, she would ask him to teach her the weapon. As the past minutes showed her, she might not always have her spear at hand to rely upon. And she simply did not command the concentration necessary to use The Sight while defending against an armed opponent and brandishing an unfamiliar weapon.
Yeth followed Tarak as they ran from the forest and into the cornfield behind the castle. They did not bother to hunch down, and they raced straight for the north-facing wall. Haste concerned them more than concealment. She could hear the shouts of the humans behind her, but did not waste the time to look back. It would not change the distance between hunter and quarry, and they could run no faster without fear of further damaging the wyrin’s racked body.
As they broke from the cover of the corn stalks, she saw slender black shapes darting above her in the sky. She looked up to find the humans along the castle wall firing arrows at the militiamen chasing her and the roagg. The two humans who had pretended to be militiamen stationed in the field ascended the ropes dangling down the side of the castle.
Tarak reached the wall first, slinging the unconscious wyrin over his shoulder as he clasped both massive paws around the rope. He pulled himself up, using his feet to scrabble against the uneven stone of the fortification and assist in his ascent.
Yeth grabbed the second rope, pulling herself up arm over arm, using her feet to balance herself, favoring her doubly wounded left shoulder. The cut she’d sustained during the attack of the castle soldiers had been easy to staunch and bandage. However, she’d lost considerable blood from where the militiaman’s blade slid through the flesh of the same arm, the pain and the weakness of the limb slowing her. While she had made the same sort of climb many times as a Sight Scout, and in her training years ago, the act still left her muscles burning halfway up. Tarak did not slow beside her, the strength in his arms seeming inexhaustible. She saw more arrows fly from the top of the wall as one from the pursuing militia shattered against the stone beside her head.
“Hurry!”
Yeth looked up again at the sound of Palla’s voice. The human female and Leotin tugged at the rope holding her, hoping to aid her climb. She saw the castle commander, Pi-Gento, and two other humans pulling at the rope Tarak climbed. As she yanked at the rope in her hands, an arrow lodged in Tarak’s back. He grunted but ignored it, continuing to pull himself up the wall.
Another arrow clattered against the stones beside Yeth as she reached the top of the wall. Palla grasped her hand and pulled her up between the crenellations of the parapet. She landed on her knees and crawled along the walkway atop the wall to where Tarak laid Shifhuul on the flagstones. She placed her hands on the wyrin’s side, pulling his shirt back to examine the wound. Blood stained his fur and clothes. Too much blood. She r
ested her hand on his chest, feeling for a heartbeat. She found a weak pulse, noting the shallowness of his breath. She glanced up to find a ring of eyes looking down at her.
“What happened?” Palla asked as she knelt beside Yeth.
“A sword. He fought bravely. He saved me.” Yeth looked back to Shifhuul’s chest, watching as the movement of his lungs slowed.
“Will he live?” Tarak placed a wide paw on the wyrin’s small head.
“He is fading.” Yeth looked deep into Tarak’s eyes. The roagg said nothing. He knew what it would mean for her to use The Sight in the presence of so many humans, especially the locals. The humans of the Kam-Djen faith abhorred The Sight. They would see her as worse than the pilgrims they named heretics and sought to burn alive. Leotin might be able to protect her for a time, but it would make travel in the carnival difficult if not impossible.
Yeth looked down to Shifhuul, her hand still resting on his chest. She recognized this moment as one she had already lived. The blood … The wound … The choice.
ONE YEAR AGO
THE ACRID smoke of damp wood tinged with burnt moss drifted between the leaves of low-hanging branches. The smell tickled Yeth’s nose as she crouched silently behind the trunk of a garn tree, the acidic sap of the rough bark abrading and burning the exposed flesh of her arm. She ignored the pain and watched the yutan male seated ten paces away by a fire in a small clearing.
She calmed her breath, stilled her mind, and held The Sight. In her hands, she clasped an arrow nocked to the string of a red yew bow. The vision of The Sight helped her see how to land the arrowhead exactly where she wished even as The Will would assist in its placement. She needed only to await the proper moment. A moment she determined through the soft counting of numbers within her mind. When she reached 100, she would act in unison with her two fellow Sight Scouts, who even now held positions around the yutan male’s camp.
They had tracked the male named Fell for three months through forests and fields and marshes, nearly losing him twice. Yeth did not believe in losing a quarry and both times reconnected with the trail. Moreover, she did not believe in allowing a yutan so dangerous to run free. For more than twenty years, she had tracked and retained criminals with the help of her Sight Scout comrades, but never one as vile and violent as Fell. Larger than most yutan males, well skilled in combat, and possessed of a frightening ability with The Sight, Fell had set himself up as leader over a remote pod in the Western Panth region, killing those who stood in the way of his rule. The Great Western Pod had cast a decree against him, sending a band of Sight Scouts to take him into custody. He fled before they arrived, leading to the long weeks of pursuit Yeth now hoped to finish. She preferred to close the chase by ending Fell’s life, but the Supreme Pod had laws, and its agents followed those laws. Criminals faced justice in all cases. Even though she had lost three of the scouts under her command to an encounter with Fell a week prior, she would uphold the Supreme Pod’s laws. The loss of her yutan comrades stung her pride, and the deaths of close friends wounded her heart. It would require great restraint not to kill Fell.
As the count in her mind neared the hundred mark, an arrow flashed through the firelight to graze the leather of Fell’s jerkin where he sat by the fire. From the position the arrow originated, Yeth knew the archer to be Lanth, the youngest of the scouts, and the most skittish in the field. He had counted too quickly, setting the plan in motion in pieces rather than a united action. Fell rolled to the ground as another arrow flew toward him, striking a log in the fire instead of his chest. An arrow from Joth, the second scout left in Yeth’s band. He should have waited for Fell to attack the known intruder. More impatience and more problems.
As Fell stood and reached out his arms, two large shapes flew through the trees, branches breaking in their tumbling path. Yeth watched in amazement at Fell’s power. Lanth and Joth flew to his hands as though someone had tossed him two kitith balls. The scouts fought back with The Sight, attempting to arrest their flight with little result. They slowed, but did not stop until Fell’s hands clasped their throats.
Yeth stood and drew the arrow to her cheek in a single, silent motion, aiming carefully as Fell grasped the two scouts about the neck with each hand. As he held them at arm’s length, squeezing the life from them, their hands clawing at his fingers, Yeth took aim. Patience had only ever been possible for her in relation to the hunt, but within that singular aspect of her life, she abandoned herself to it. She waited for Fell to move slightly as Joth and Lanth struggled. Seeing her mark, she let the arrow fly, adding The Will to The Sight, increasing the speed and force of the arrow’s trajectory.
The steel arrowhead slammed into Fell, driving through leather armor and flesh to lodge in his shoulder. Yeth ignored the temptation to add the power that would push the arrow clean through. She needed the poison on the arrowhead to enter Fell’s blood. He roared in pain, using The Sight to fling Lanth and Joth into nearby trees. The two scouts struck the trunks head first, falling to the forest floor, motionless.
Yeth ignored her concern for her fellow scouts and friends and nocked another arrow as Fell yanked her first shaft from his shoulder. The poison needed time to work, and she needed to get at least one more arrow into him before he would succumb to the toxin and fall unconscious. As Yeth made to raise the bow and draw the string, her feet slid from beneath her, and her body leapt into the air. Fell had found her location in the forest glade and, hands outstretched, hauled her to him with The Sight.
Branches lashed at her face and limbs, knocking the bow from her hand. She disregarded the impulse to try and fight the momentum of her flight with The Sight, instead adding to it, pushing herself faster toward the yutan killer she had hunted for so many months. As she broke through the trees and into the clearing, she grasped the hilt of her belt dagger with the will of her mind, sending it flying free of the sheath, its blade slamming into Fell’s chest even as she collided with his hands.
The double impact of Yeth’s body and the blade of her dagger sent Fell crashing to the ground, Yeth atop him, rolling through the small campfire, embers bursting into the air. They came to rest with Fell astride Yeth, his eyes blinking in wonderment as he looked to the dagger hilt poking from his chest. Yeth focused her mind and will, pushing him away with The Sight. Wounded, the blade likely piercing his heart, Fell rolled away to lie on his back, staring up at the branches of the trees.
Yeth leapt to her feet and stood beside the criminal, keeping a safe distance from his hands. She used The Sight to pull a long hunting knife from the scabbard at his waist, the hilt soaring quickly into her fingers. As she watched him, he turned his eyes to her.
“I’ll kill you. All of you.” The color drained from Fell’s face as blood continued to throb from the wound in his chest, his thick leather vest becoming slick with blood.
Yeth said nothing. She glanced at Lanth and Joth, their motionless bodies illuminated by the still burning logs of the campfire now scattered around the clearing. Joth’s neck bent at an unnatural angle, his eyes unfocused, seeing nothing. She could not see Lanth’s face, but his chest moved with breath, indicating he still lived. She looked back to Fell, knowing what she should do, what her training and the laws of the Supreme Pod demanded.
“I know your plan.” Fell’s hand rose to rest on the blade in his chest. “Heal me. Keep me sleeping with The Sight and potions. It won’t work. You’re too far from home. I’ll wake one night and kill you as you slumber, and take you after you’re dead.”
Yeth knelt beside Fell, placing the tip of the hunting knife in the soft forest loam. She watched him fade from consciousness as she considered his words. She harbored no doubt he would attempt to kill her and Lanth again if he could. She also knew he would likely succeed. Observing the rise and fall of his chest, she thought about the Supreme Pod and the laws she had sworn to enforce — the male and female yutan scouts she had lost tracking the criminal dying before her — the innocent yutans he had killed over the years. The
law demanded she heal him and bring him back to face trial. She could do that. Her strength in The Sight had always been stronger in healing than wounding or warping reality in large ways. She could repair Fell’s wounds and try to keep him in a mindless sleep for the weeks it would take to carry him to the city of Gerhanach and the Great Pod Court. Could, but would not.
Yeth noted the cessation of Fell’s breathing, his chest falling still, the air growing quiet in the glade. She watched him die and then pulled her dagger from his ribs, wiping the blade clean on his trousers. Then she tended to Lanth, the young yutan waking to weep at the loss of yet another companion, his eyes wide as she recounted her decision to let the criminal die instead of facing trial.
As the sun rose, giving a dim light to the forest, they buried the criminal and their friend in graves on opposite sides of the glade, speaking the Aasho death prayer, petitioning Kiv the Destroyer to claim the yutans and guide them to Onn the Creator to be reborn into better lives, guided by Tam the Sustainer. Burial ended, they began the long journey home for Yeth to face the consequences of her choice.
The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Volume 1) Page 56