“Huh?” Bershad turned around.
“Your leg. The arrow. Yesterday you were limping.” Vera was frowning.
Bershad looked down and rubbed his leg. Even without moss, he healed faster than a normal man.
“I’m used to pain,” he said.
“No,” Vera said. “This is something else. An arrow through the meat of your leg from, what, fifty yards?”
Bershad shrugged. It had been more like thirty.
“You shouldn’t even be walking.”
“It’s a good thing I can,” Bershad said. “Otherwise you’d have to carry me.”
This was the first time anyone besides Rowan had been around long enough to watch him recover from an injury. Bershad realized he should have been more careful about it.
Vera kept frowning at him. “What’s the worst wound you ever took?”
“We don’t have time for this.” Bershad moved to continue across the shelf. But Vera stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Tell me.”
Bershad couldn’t tell her about his worst injury, which was when that Gray-Winged Nomad had bitten into his stomach outside of Mudwall and made a mess of his guts. Along with the dragontooth dagger, he’d gotten two apple-sized scars on his belly from the lizard’s fangs. Rowan had plugged the wounds with moss and lugged Bershad around in a litter for two weeks, figuring the Flawless Bershad was finally done for. But he was walking by the third week and killing dragons again by the fourth.
“I got my foot chewed to the bone by a Red Skull once,” Bershad said instead.
“That should have crippled you,” Vera said.
“Guess that makes me the luckiest bastard in the realm of fucking Terra,” Bershad said in a voice that was closer to a snarl than he’d intended. “Are we going to stand here talking all day, or are we going to move on?”
Vera stepped back a few paces. She looked at him like he was a horse that wasn’t entirely broken, but she still had to ride. “No,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They hiked for hours, but never found a ravine or drainage back to the river. As evening approached, they passed through a field that was strewn with massive rocks from an ancient landslide. The trail of rocks ended at a steep but climbable cliff.
“We should wait up there,” Vera said, pointing at the trail.
“Why?”
“If there are men following us, this is a good place to get acquainted with them.”
She had a point. Bershad hooked his spear through a loop on the back of his sword belt.
“All right.” He began to scale the first big boulder, struggling for good handholds.
Vera gave a short grunt that could have been her version of a laugh, then stepped forward and lifted herself up with practiced grace.
“Don’t slip,” she said as she passed him.
When Bershad reached the first ledge of the cliff, breathing hard from the climb, she hauled him over the lip. There was a flat area about forty paces across before the cliff rose again.
“Dark soon,” she said, pointing at the western sky.
“This is as good a spot as any,” Bershad said. “In the low light, it’s too easy to fall trying to get higher.”
“For you, maybe. You climb like a drunken child.”
Bershad ignored her, scanning the mess of trees and rocks they’d crossed that afternoon. “You really think Skojit’ll follow us?”
“What would you do if a group of outlanders hiked through your land and killed a bunch of your friends?” Vera asked.
“I don’t have any friends,” Bershad said. “But I get your point.”
Bershad hunkered down beneath a rocky overhang with a long shadow. Vera tucked herself next to him, sitting so close to Bershad that he could smell the faint scent of Papyrian oil in her hair. They had a clear view of the field below, but were both hidden in the shadows.
They waited for hours. The moon cast a pale light over the rocks and trees below. A few mice picked their way around between Bershad’s boots, hunting for scraps. All of them scattered when an owl swooped down from a nearby tree. Bershad watched the owl’s wings beat until it disappeared into the gloom.
Bershad was about to ask Vera what Papyrian owls were like, but she tightened her shoulders, then went still. Bershad scanned the ledge without moving anything except his eyes, trying to figure out what had spooked her. He would have missed the two white eyes in the darkness if the Skojit hadn’t blinked right as Bershad’s gaze was passing over him.
The Skojit’s face was gaunt, wreathed by wild, unkempt hair. He watched for a while longer, then he disappeared below without a sound.
Vera and Bershad didn’t move or speak for half an hour. Then, it was only whispers.
“What do you think?” Vera asked.
“Hard to say. But he was awful subtle for a man who didn’t think anyone was up here. Our tracks couldn’t have been too difficult to follow.”
“Agreed. What next?”
The Skojit answered the question for him. Off in the distance—maybe four hundred yards past the place they’d separated from the trail—the yellow-and-orange glow of a fire appeared. Soon it grew into a massive pillar of light in the dark trees.
“Shit,” Bershad muttered.
Without a sound, Vera got on her belly and crawled to the edge of the cliff.
“To follow us so carefully and then light a fire like that,” she whispered as Bershad came up behind her. “Doesn’t make sense.”
“Could be they figure the trail’s gone cold.”
“You don’t believe that,” Vera said.
“No,” Bershad said. “And even if I did, I’m not going to cross these mountains looking over my shoulder every ten minutes. How far can you sling one of those rocks?”
“If I can see them, I can kill them. But I need room to swing it.” She motioned to the fire. “At night, and tangled in those trees, I can probably only get one or two shots off. The sling is better suited for open spaces.”
If there were more than three or four Skojit, this would be difficult.
“Let’s go take a look,” Bershad said. “Quietly.”
“You’re the loud one,” Vera said. “Look at this.”
Vera grabbed a handful of his hair. Scoffed. Then she unwound two lengths of leather cord from her hair and used it to tie Bershad’s hair in a tight knot.
“I can stop the jingling,” she whispered as she worked, “but these rings of yours reflect moonlight like fucking mirrors.”
Bershad shrugged. “It’d be dawn by the time we got them cut out.”
They crept down the cliff and crossed the field, heading toward the fire. When they got within a few hundred strides, they crawled the rest of the way, using a thicket of scrub pines for cover as they snuck up on the Skojit camp.
Six men. They were roasting a mountain goat and talking by the fire. They wore the same wild combination of thick furs and mismatched armor as the Skojit who’d ambushed them before. But this group seemed to have scavenged more expensive gear from the corpses of their enemies—steel mail, scale gloves. One had a gilded breastplate that looked freshly forged.
“Think they crossed the river after all?” one of them asked. His hair stretched down to his waist, but was cut into a Mohawk and dyed blue. The Skojit spoke a heavily accented version of Ghalamarian that was filled with slang and odd pronunciations, but Bershad could more or less understand it.
“Not all of them. Two came this way,” another one said. He was short and wiry, but sat closest to the fire and seemed to be the only one eating food. He had the casual confidence of the man in charge.
“But you can’t find them,” Mohawk said.
“Footprints and broken twigs aren’t the only way to find flatlanders.” The leader took a bite of goat using a long, curved knife. Grease ran down the side of his face. He nodded his head. Seemed to like the taste. “Eat.”
The others began slicing off pieces of meat. For a while there was just the sound of men
chewing. Attacking the Skojit while they were eating wasn’t a bad idea—nobody was holding a spear or axe. But they each had knives, and a man could do a lot of killing with a small blade if he had a mind to. Better to wait until some of them went to sleep.
“Crow, you ever seen a man killed like Splitnose?” Mohawk asked the man next to him. He seemed to be the talker in the group. “Cut damn near in half down the middle.”
“Thunderclap killed a man like that once,” Crow said, talking around a mouthful of food. “Axe.”
“Dragonshit,” Mohawk said. “Thunderclap did a boy like that and you know it. Ten years old at the most. And skinny.”
Crow gave Mohawk an angry glance but said nothing. Just swallowed and took another bite. They had four or five big skins of wine in the camp, all of them full, but nobody was drinking.
“Yeah, it’s a real piece of work we’re chasing, I think,” Mohawk continued. “Smashed in Red Legs’s skull, too. We found her away from the others.”
“I always liked Red Legs,” one of the other men said.
“You only liked her ’cause she’d do that thing with her mouth on your cock.”
The man shrugged. “I liked her jokes, too.”
The men reduced the goat to a pile of red bones within twenty minutes. The skinny leader kept his eyes on the forest, scanning one way and then another with watchful eyes.
“Right, then,” he said eventually. “Crow takes first watch.”
The men grumbled but did as they were told. They arranged themselves in a circle so that each man could stand up fast and cover a different part of the woods. They also tucked their weapons inside their cloaks, being careful to cover the steel and prevent it from catching the moonlight. They pretended to snore while Crow perched on a rock, only watching one direction. After a while he pretended to doze off, too.
Bershad motioned for Vera to follow him, and crawled back beneath the scrub pines until they dipped down into a low spot. He leaned close so that his lips were right next to her ear.
“Ambush,” he whispered. His nose filled with the scent of Papyrian oil again—all lavender and lilacs.
She nodded. Brought her face around to whisper in his ear. “Still want to kill them?”
“They’ll just keep after us if we don’t.” He thought about how they could get this done just the two of them. It wouldn’t be easy. “Circle around to the other side, I’ll be waiting back where we were. Kill the sentry with your sling. Might be they hold fast. Might be they scatter. Either way, kill the next one that gets up, then I’ll throw the spear and charge. Soon as I’m surrounded, you make your way in and get as many as you can from behind.”
“Simple enough.”
“You try to get too clever with your killing, you’ll just get tangled up in your own genius.”
Rowan had told him that.
Vera melted into the darkness. Bershad moved back to the edge of the camp and waited. The sentry, Crow, was still pretending to sleep. Bershad slid his mask over his head and cinched the straps tight. The familiar pressure on his cheeks and forehead was comforting. His breath was hot on his skin. He waited. A few minutes later, Bershad heard a faint whooshing sound from the far side of the camp.
Crow’s head exploded. Red mush and bits of skull blew through the air in all directions. A scrap of scalp landed in the fire. Skin and hair bubbled on the flames. At first none of the other men moved. But Bershad could see the milky white orbs of open eyes searching in the moonlight. A moment later the skinny leader sprang up with a howl, and the rest followed and scattered in different directions.
“Fuck,” Bershad hissed.
Vera’s next shot hit the Skojit that had charged in Bershad’s direction. The rock took a massive chunk of flesh off his back, exposing a mangled mess of meat and shattered bone. The Skojit fell forward on his face. Tried to get up. Failed. Slumped over.
After the shot, the skinny leader switched directions almost immediately, heading toward Vera. He had a short sword in each hand and moved with the calm determination of a man who had been ambushed before. He’d be on her before she had time to reload the sling.
Mohawk and the other two Skojit were looking in different directions. Scanning the darkness for someone to kill. Bershad picked the one who was closest to discovering him and threw his spear. Impaled the Skojit just below the place his two collarbones met.
There was a wet sound. Blood flooded down his chest. The Skojit dropped to his knees and died. Bershad drew his sword.
When Mohawk and the other Skojit—a short and beefy man with a pot belly—saw Bershad was alone, they fanned out in opposite directions. Mohawk to the left and Pot Belly to the right. The firelight put an orange glow on their skin. Mohawk was carrying a double-headed axe made from two enormous slabs of sharpened stone. Pot Belly had a crude mace—one thick piece of oak with iron barbs hammered through the tip.
“You’re the one,” Mohawk said, continuing to move to the left. He was a big man but he had quick, agile feet.
“I’m the one,” Bershad said, his voice muffled behind the black, feline visage.
“Some mask,” Mohawk said. “A cat, is it?”
“Jaguar.”
Mohawk nodded, as if it had been a crucial question. “I promise not to crush it with my axe, if you promise not to cut me in half,” he said. Smiling now. Bershad smiled, too, but all Mohawk saw was the jaguar’s snarl.
“Deal.”
Bershad knew from experience that panic—not poor odds—is what generally kills outnumbered men. Most people get overwhelmed and start whipping their head one way and then the other, trying to keep all their enemies in sight. Bad for your balance. The Skojit knew that, too, because they fanned out so far to either side—working to divide Bershad’s attention until one of them got a view of his back and put a hole in it. They were patient and careful, neither one eager to get killed in a deal where they’d been given such a clear advantage.
But Bershad didn’t panic. He waited until the two Skojit were as far away from each other as they were going to get, and Mohawk was in midstride and just a little off balance. Then he charged Pot Belly, who seemed like he would be easier to kill.
The beefy Skojit had just enough time to look surprised and then pull his mace back before Bershad was on him—rushing at full speed and thrusting his sword toward the Skojit’s fat chest. Pot Belly swiped his mace across himself in a clumsy parry. Bershad’s blade got tangled between two of the iron spikes, and he felt the grip being wrenched away as the Skojit pulled his mace down and to the left.
Instead of getting into a pushing and pulling match for it—which would have taken about as much time as Mohawk needed to decapitate him from behind—Bershad let go of his sword. The grip whipped out of his hands and slammed into the dirt with a heavy thud. Pot Belly smiled. Came around for a killing stroke. But Bershad grabbed the Skojit by his furry collar and started head-butting him in the face.
Three quick hits, as fast and hard as Bershad could make them. The forehead of Bershad’s mask was reinforced with steel strips, so Pot Belly’s face lost some of its shape with each crushing blow. After the third hit, his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped his mace. Went limp.
Bershad dove to his left just in time to dodge Mohawk’s axe. The Skojit sheared his friend’s arm off at the shoulder, cleaving flesh and bone as if it was a dried-out log. Pot Belly fell to the ground and started the jolty twitches dying men get.
Mohawk bulled toward Bershad, his axe coming in sweeping arcs of violence. He whirled the weapon with frightening coordination—twisting and weaving it through the air with both hands. Bershad ducked and skipped from side to side, staying one very small step ahead of the crescent-shaped death the Skojit was bringing down on him.
Bershad shifted left, tripped, and slammed mask-first into the dirt. Rolled away just as the stone blade crunched into the area his head had occupied a moment earlier. Got to his feet just as Mohawk brought his axe around for a sweeping horizontal cut
. He ducked the axe swing and crashed into Mohawk’s legs.
The big bastard stumbled but didn’t fall over. He cracked Bershad in the back with the butt of his axe. Once. Twice. There was a spike on the end that punched through Bershad’s cloak and bit into flesh.
Bershad drew the dragontooth dagger from the small of his back, reached around Mohawk’s leg, and hamstrung him. The Skojit groaned as the muscles in his leg ripped apart.
Then, finally, the big bastard fell over.
Even as his ass and ruined leg hit the ground, Mohawk brought the axe around for a final, murderous effort. But Bershad caught his arm and drove the dagger through all the meat and tendons in the Skojit’s wrist. The axe fell from his maimed hand. Bershad slit his throat in one brutal motion. The blade nearly cut Mohawk’s entire head off, sharp as it was.
Bershad felt the old bloodlust rising in his chest, hot and tight, but pushed it down. Vera was still fighting. He picked up his sword and rushed into the darkness, following the sound of grunts and scrapes of metal on metal. When he found Vera and the skinny leader, they were wrestling on the ground. Vera had managed to get herself behind the skinny Skojit, who looked like he was bleeding from four or five different stab wounds, but somehow wasn’t dead. She was working hard to slit his throat with one of her daggers.
The leather armor on Vera’s left shoulder had been sheared off, exposing links of chain mail beneath. The Skojit was holding the dagger off his neck with one mangled hand and twisting the fingers of Vera’s free hand with the other. Every muscle in his wiry arm was bulging at the pressure he was grinding into her bones.
Bershad rushed forward and stomped his boot into the back of Vera’s dagger—shoving the blade deep into the Skojit’s throat.
Dark blood poured from the wound, then from the Skojit’s mouth. Bershad stomped again. Killed him. Bershad stepped back and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm the mad tide rushing through his head. Vera untangled herself from his body with the stiff, timid movements of someone who knew there was about to be a lot of pain coming her way.
“You got the others?” she asked between heavy breaths.
Blood of an Exile Page 23
