Rhuan tied the bedding and ducked through the low branches, trying not to harm any leaves with his exit. He spooked a few birds from their perches with his haste, striding quickly toward the karavan encampment. He had made his farewells to those who mattered; now he need merely prepare his horse, mount, and go.
“Dioscuri.”
It was a whipcrack of tone. Rhuan, startled, stopped dead in his tracks. From the trees came a woman—ah, but no, she was more than that, far more. And he knew exactly what and who she was the moment he looked at her, though she wore no form he had ever seen.
He inclined his head briefly. “Ferize.”
She wore white, pure white, and a long girdle of gold and onyx. Her hair too was white, hanging heavily to her waist. He had never seen her when she was not beautiful, but it was an alien beauty, an unsettling beauty. In green eyes her pupils were slitted, like a cat’s—but she was all demon.
On bare feet she came to him, leaving no whisper of movement in the lush grass, gaining no weight of heavy dew on the hem of her skirts. Now she was close enough that he could see the faint mottling at her throat, the barest trace of a multihued scale pattern. When she smiled, it had nothing of kindness in it. Only anger, and fangs.
“How dare you?” Ice and fire, in voice and eyes. “How dare you?”
“Ferize—”
“We have tasks, Darmuth and I, journeys to complete even as you and Brodhi do. How dare you keep us from them? How dare you risk our futures?” She had never, in all of her guises, been particularly tall, but at this moment, afire with anger, her slender frame contained enough power to dwarf him. “Be not so selfish that you harm Darmuth, dioscuri. We are kin-in-kind, he and I, as much if not more than you and Brodhi. I will not have him endangered.” Slender hands reached up, caught sidelocks, and began to wind them around her palms. He was so shocked by that presumption he could not speak. Ferize tugged, and was not gentle in the doing of it. “You have tasks,” she continued. “You have responsibilities. Are you such a child that it does not matter to you what may become of Darmuth?” She tugged again, hard, gripping sidelocks in unkind hands. “I will not have you risk his fate.”
He finally managed to speak. “And what would you do, should it come to that?”
She took another bight in his braids. “You ask that of a demon? You ask that of me?”
His smile was no kinder than hers. “I ask.”
The scale pattern crawled from throat up to chin, bled into cheekbones. The flicker in slit-pupiled eyes was oddly yellow. Her hands, wrapped in braided, ornamented hair, rested at his temples. But she moved them slightly, enough that long thumbnails rested on the delicate skin of his eyelids just beneath the arch of bone. With her strength, it would take very little effort to punch through flesh and into the eyes beneath.
Ferize smiled. “Ask again, dioscuri.”
Rhuan kept a firm rein on his own emotions. “All of this anger and threat because I postponed a Hearing?” He closed his hands around her wrists. His strength could not match hers, but he was fairly certain she would not do as her thumbs implied. “Let be, Ferize. You have made your point.”
She stepped close against him, so close her breasts touched his chest, then jerked his head down to hers. Her tongue, in its demon form, flicked out and stung his bottom lip, leaving fire in its wake.
As she released his braids Rhuan jerked away, cursing, and pressed the back of one hand against his mouth.
“I cannot kill a dioscuri, or I risk being sentenced to the worst of all the hells,” she said, “but be certain I can make his life most inventively miserable.”
He swore at her, lip afire.
The scale pattern faded from her face. Ferize smiled. With a final flick of her forked tongue, she turned in a swirl of pristine skirts and glided away from him, white hair swaying.
Rhuan spat once, twice, then swore again. Nothing but time would mitigate the poison she had injected. The dose was not enough to kill him, but for at least half a day he would indeed be miserable.
He grabbed the bedroll from the ground and strode jerkily away, attempting to think up the most effective reprisal, and knowing with glum acknowledgment such a response would merely mire him in more trouble. Ferize had the right of it: His neglect of the required Hearings could indeed jeopardize Darmuth’s fate. It was that admission coupled with guilt that lent Ferize’s sting more heat.
“Point taken,” he muttered as he walked. “Point very much taken.”
But he felt no better for saying it, for confessing his shortcoming. He felt young, and small, and punished.
BY LATE MORNING, Davyn declared they had given the snares enough time to possibly provide fresh meat, and he and Gillan set out to see if they had had any luck. Part of him knew it was a retreat; Audrun clearly was short on sleep, which made her short of temper. She had suggested with some acerbity that they simply pack up and go not long after the sun crept into the sky, setting snares elsewhere along the road, but Davyn overruled her. He wanted fresh meat, and felt this grove of trees and lush vegetation might well provide it. He had learned through hard experience that if one put off a task in favor of another day, the task often was all the more difficult to accomplish later on. And so with quiet insistence he took up the snares, nodded at his eldest son to accompany him, and went out as the dawn brightened to day to set the snares amid the trees. They could afford no more than a few hours, but it would give time to the hares as well as to Audrun, who might relax as the lack of haste permitted her time to rest.
He and Gillan had found active burrows in the grove and hoped for luck. But the first snare was empty. Gillan took it up and tucked it into his belt.
The second and third snares were also empty. The fourth contained a partially eaten hare. Someone had beaten them to their meal. Davyn sighed as Gillan disposed of the remains and cleaned off the snare. They went on to the fifth and final snare with no real optimism. It was with a twinge of surprise and relief that Davyn saw the snare had done its job.
“I’ll get it.” Gillan went on ahead, pushing through the undergrowth. But as he bent, he made an abrupt, startled sound and recoiled. “This is no hare, Da!”
The note in his son’s voice spurred Davyn into a jog. When he reached Gillan he saw that indeed, it was no hare. It was nothing he’d ever seen before. The thing was approximately the size of a hare, but all resemblence ended there. In place of fur it had scales, dark spiky scales, and each front paw boasted three long curving claws.
“I think it’s dead,” Gillan said.
The thing did appear to be dead. It lay on its side, one hind leg twisted as if it had fought the snare. Already the belly had begun to bloat.
“Da,” Gillan began, “you said different kinds of animals live in different places …what is that?”
Frowning, Davyn found a tree branch and used it to flip the thing over. This view was no more informative, but every bit as worrying. The scaled hide was like no other flesh Davyn had ever heard of, let alone seen. Its muzzle was drawn back in a rictus, displaying a mouth full of serrated teeth. Filmed-over black eyes bulged in their sockets.
Davyn tossed the branch aside. “We’ll head back. I don’t want either of us touching that thing.”
“What about the snare?”
“Leave it,” Davyn said briefly. And then, out of no thought he had considered, “Don’t tell your mother.”
“What do you think it is?”
Davyn shook his head, turning to follow the trail through the tall grasses that their passage had beaten down. “I’ve never even heard of anything like that.”
Gillan followed closely behind him. “Why don’t you want me telling Mam about it?”
“Because she came out here last night to relieve herself, and doesn’t need to know she shared the grove with something like that thing.” The corner of his mouth jerked wryly. “I don’t think I’d want to know it, either.”
He wondered briefly if after all Audrun had seen eyes during her s
ojourn the night before; if this thing could in fact be what she’d seen in the darkness. He wondered also if this was what had emitted the horrible howling that had awakened them all. Lastly, he wondered how it had died. Snares trapped, they did not kill. Clearly some predator had found the hare in the fourth snare and dined well until interrupted. But there had been no sign that a predator had killed the thing in the last snare. Davyn had heard that some animals would chew a leg off to get free of a trap, but that was a spring-trap, not a snare. There was no sign of struggle, no sign of violence. Just a dead—thing.
Davyn suppressed a shudder. “Let’s go,” he said. “Time to get back on the road.”
Chapter 42
TORVIC NATURALLY WANTED to accompany his father and brother to check the snares, but Audrun was adamant that he stay near the wagon. Lack of sleep and the experience the night before with glowing eyes and shrieking animals left her feeling dull and out of sorts, even though morning tea improved her mood for a bit, and she had no patience for overactive children. She assigned cleanup chores to Torvic and Megritte to keep them busy, and kept one eye on them as they sloppily scoured the tin plates in a big pan of water heated in the fire. Already the fronts of their tunics were sopping. With strict orders to herself to overlook it so she need not think about one more thing, Audrun climbed up into the wagon to help Ellica finish folding up the bedding and tucking it away.
Ellica, seated on the floorboards, glanced up as she entered. Once again Audrun was struck by the realization that her eldest daughter was growing into a beauty. Audrun smiled inwardly. Gillan’s voice had broken, and Ellica’s courses had begun. Neither of them were children anymore. They would settle in Atalanda as a family of seven, once the babe was born, but Ellica might very well marry before the year was out, and Gillan could be courting a girl for himself by this time next season.
She knelt down beside her daughter and helped her pack away the bedding. Audrun remembered very clearly her own transition to womanhood. At Ellica’s age she was being courted by Davyn, the boy from the next farmstead over. She hadn’t understood then the smiles her parents exchanged, the knowing glances shared, but she certainly grasped both now. Audrun opened her mouth to tell her daughter how proud she was of her, but the impulse was cut off as shrieks emanated from outside. Meggie … and now Torvic was shouting for his mother.
Audrun scrambled out of the wagon with Ellica close behind. She found her two youngest standing rigidly beside the fire, staring at something in the grass. “Stay still!” she shouted. It was pure instinct: Hold still until you could see the danger clearly. “Meggie, Torvic—stay still.” Very slowly and carefully Audrun climbed out of the wagon, motioning for Ellica to remain inside. “I’m here,” she told the youngest quietly. “Remain still.”
Megritte was crying, but she did as told. The tension of fear in Torvic’s body had lessened; he struck her now as a pointing dog watching the prey for his master. Audrun reached up slowly and took from the side of the wagon the long-handled spade she used in the garden. Davyn had made it for her when she was pregnant with Gillan so she wouldn’t have to kneel as her belly grew.
She kept her tone calm and conversational. “Torvic, can you hold very, very still? I’m going to ask Meggie to move away … can you stay where you are as she does that?” He nodded, still intent on whatever was in the grass. “Meggie, I’m coming to get you. Will you wait for me?”
With her mother now present, Megritte’s tears had stopped. Audrun took careful, quiet steps, raising the spade in both hands. Over the years she had killed any number of vermin and snakes with the spade, and she didn’t fear to do so now. But Torvic and Megritte had grown up in her garden and in the fields with their father; even snakes didn’t engender this kind of reaction. It had to be something more, something unknown.
Audrun reached her son and daughter. On the other side of the fire ring she saw something dark but tall; dense grass shielded most of it from her view. Carefully she put a hand on Megritte’s shoulder. “Meggie, I want you to back away slowly. Don’t run. Just back away very slowly. Torvic, stay where you are. I’m right here. Meggie—slowly.” She pressed her daughter’s shoulder and carefully guided her backward. “Count to ten, Meggie. One count for each step. When you reach ten, stop. All right?”
Megritte’s blond hair was, as usual, in disarray. Her braids were constantly falling out of confinement. Even as she guided Meggie back, Audrun couldn’t help but be momentarily amused by the knowledge that the mind thought about any number of inconsequential things even in the midst of unknown danger.
“Ten steps. How many have you taken?”
“Four.” Meggie still sounded frightened, but she no longer cried and clearly believed she was safe now that her mother was present.
“Six more.” Megritte was now past her, and Audrun released her hold. “Torvic, I want you—”
But something moved, and Meggie shrieked, and Torvic ran even as Audrun brought up the spade as a shield.
It was brown. Brown and blunt-nosed. In shock, Audrun watched it stand up on its hind legs, balanced on a long, whippy tail. Down its spine ran a line of flat, serrated spikes. The belly it now displayed was yellow-green, blending into a scarlet throat.
Audrun’s mind registered details even as she stared at the thing. It was, her mind decided, a snake with legs. It simply could not grasp anything else. Part snake, part lizard.
It stood up before her, blood-red eyes staring, and hissed at her.
“Get in the wagon,” she said. “All of you.”
The thing before her began weaving from side to side in an odd, unearthly dance. She saw a pouch at its exposed throat pulse, skin folds moving, and then it abruptly expanded the pouch and screamed at her.
It was reflex, no more. The scream startled her badly; she blocked the thing’s leap with the flat of the spade with- out conscious effort. The snake-lizard fell back, still hissing. A sideways scuttle through the grass put it clear of the fire ring. Audrun turned as it moved, keeping it in front of her. She was aware of Megritte’s shriek but could not spare a glance for her children; she prayed to the Mother that they had obeyed her and climbed up into the wagon.
The thing rose up again onto its hind legs, balancing on its tail. Audrun focused sharply, recognizing its preparation prior to striking. The dance began, the throat-pouch filled, the scream was emitted even as it leaped.
Once again she blocked the strike with the spade. But this time, as the thing fell back, Audrun followed up with two more blows. She had done damage, she knew, and the tail whipped frantically. Three more blows with the flat of the spade stilled it, and then she raised the spade into the air and brought the edge down on it, cutting into and through the scaly neck. It took three tries to completely sever the head from the body.
She was aware then that Davyn was there, and Gillan. They were speaking at once, and Torvic and Megritte piled out of the wagon. “Don’t touch it!” she cried as the youngest ran up. She caught at Torvic’s arm even as Davyn grabbed Megritte. “We don’t know what it is … don’t touch it.”
Davyn took the spade from her. “Here,” he said, “we’ll bury it. That way no one can mistake where it is as we prepare to go on. Gillan, why don’t you fetch the oxen and hitch them?” He planted the spade in soil and grass and brought up both. “Torvic, Meggie, why don’t you help him? It’s time you learned how. Ellica, can you see to things inside the wagon?” And quietly, as the children disappeared, he asked, “Are you all right?”
Audrun couldn’t help herself: She was shaking. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” And she was, though her trembling continued. It exasperated her, that she could not control it.
Several more spadefuls built a mound over the thing. Davyn patted the soil down, then draped an arm around Audrun’s shoulders, turning her toward the wagon. “We’re ready to leave anyway. And no meat, I’m afraid; the snares were empty.”
Mostly meaningless talk. But by the time Davyn had returned the spade to its rope loop
s along the side of the wagon, her trembling had abated. She looked at her children waiting at the back of the wagon. Audrun forced a smile. “I think for a while we’ll all of us ride. We can walk later.” And she shooed all of them up into the wagon as Davyn nodded approval.
IT WAS AS Rhuan packed the spotted horse—little enough to take: bedroll, beaded bag, a packet of flat-bread and a few hanks of meat dried and seasoned for preservation along the road—that he felt the shiver down his spine. Hair stood up on his arms. The horse, as clearly sensing something, sidled against the rope reins, tautening them. But Rhuan stood perfectly still, making no effort to curb the horse.
It came up from the earth beneath the soles of his boots. No sound accompanied it, merely a rippling vibration, an almost tentative probe of what lay above the surface. Like the rootling sent out from the elderling tree, something quested. There was no disturbance in the soil, no movement in the tall grass, nothing at all that he could see. But he knew it.
He knew it.
For a moment Rhuan stood very still. Every portion of his body clamored alarm. Like the horse, his first instinct was to run, to run until he dropped, until he was well beyond the reach of the thing that quested after him.
Then, as the horse’s ears speared forward and his nostrils expanded in a concussive snort, Rhuan knelt upon the earth. One hand remained clamped on the reins, the other dug down through the grass and into the rich, black soil below. He brought up a handful, shut it within his hand, and let it speak to him.
Swearing, Rhuan surged to his feet and threw the clods of dirt aside. In one smoothly interconnected series of motions he turned, took a long stride to the uneasy horse, grabbed a double handful of mane and reins, and swung up into the saddle. He gave the horse neither time nor rein to protest, merely wheeled it toward the tent settlement. He longed to gallop, but there were always children and adults clogging the footpaths between tents, and now, still not far removed from the Hecari culling, survivors continued to sort through the remains of charred belongings. The best he could do was a long-trot, but it was better at least than a walk. With so many of the tents destroyed by flames he could thread his way through swiftly enough, and reined in at Mikal’s big tent. Dismounting, he quickly looped the reins around one of the anchoring ropes and yanked aside the drooping door flap.
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