Cian spat onto the snow. “That's one thing true Nalavacians and exiles can agree on.”
What did he do now? Just like himself, Brenn was no stranger to exile. But he'd hardly been back in Nalavac for six months before this latest falling out.
“We'll take you to Brenndall,” Cian said. “We give you one day to visit your friend. After that? We come back and get you. Make you our slaves for what that stupid woman did in the Ladhar.”
“Extraordinary,” Siggi said. “Of every misplaced insult I've heard… You don't know who you're talking about. Nasira is one of the most brilliant minds from the Comet Tail Isles. An art—”
“Siggi,” she said. “That's enough.”
“I don't care who she is, fat man. Moira was a brave girl. She deserved a good death. All of you are the same to us. Outsiders.”
Fiona gestured for the women warming Nasira to get up. They grabbed their blankets and hopped up as fast as they could. Naked, they darted through the snow to the ash branches where they'd hung their clothes. There, they got dressed and brushed themselves off like they were under attack from an army of mosquitoes. They scraped and rubbed until Argus wondered if all that friction would set their clothes aflame.
Fiona reassured them in Nalavacian, and turned to the outsiders. “My kin are suspicious that touching the bronze woman's skin will make them ill. I told them not to worry. Our tribe is strong, and the cold always wins.”
“How nice of you,” Argus said.
Her eyes widened, then froze. Sarcasm was lost in this place.
“Come along,” said Cian. “The path is long.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Following the Nalavacians was like trying to find the perfect magical powders.
You just couldn't do it.
The faster you ran the closer you thought you got. Yet somehow they always stayed a step ahead of you, taunting, teasing, just out of reach.
The fires near the stream, where the tribe made camp, were nothing but a pleasant memory. Of the hundred or so tribesmen, only ten joined the outsiders on their trek deeper into the Wanderwood, Cian and Fiona among them.
“Slow,” muttered a blonde woman at Argus's side. “Slow. You. Are.” She chewed on her words, as if they were hunks of meat left too long over a fire. In the moonlight she was almost beautiful. Until she smiled and pushed him to move faster.
The cold always wins.
The Nalavacians shoved them along. They were groaning now, their patience at its end. Finally, when the Nalavacians refused to go any slower, they gave up and carried them. Strong hands clad in wool mitts grabbed Argus as if he were a child's plaything. He felt himself being swung onto a man's back. He didn't resist. One of the women picked up Nasira. Siggi was too heavy for one man to bear, so a pair of them held him stretched between them. One grabbed his arms and the other his legs, steering the Rivannan around tree trunks without missing a step.
Argus watched stars blur by above the crisscrossed branches. One moment they pierced through and the next they were swallowed up by the weight of the forest. One branch blended into all the others. A giant, endless spiderweb.
It had them trapped now. It had them deep.
They entered another tree tunnel, and he covered his face while the branches reached and scratched and pressed in on them. The moon disappeared. So did the Nalavacian voices; the only sounds in this place were their labored breaths.
When they emerged, welcomed into a dusting of falling snow, the Nalavacians crept into the edge of a clearing ringed with skulls. Some belonged to foxes and squirrels and rabbits. Argus spotted one enormous bear skull. A few were human. All of them were skewered with sharpened branches so they floated above the clearing at eye level.
“What in the blazes is this place?” Siggi asked.
His handlers groaned and tossed him into the snow. The raven-haired woman carrying Nasira dumped her too. Argus had just enough time to close his mouth before he landed face first in a puddle of icy slush.
Cian prodded them with his snowshoes and said, “Get up. Brenndall lives just beyond this clearing.” He pointed past the row of human skulls.
“Where?” said Nasira.
“We'll come back for you next moonrise,” Fiona said. “Don't try to run. We'll find you. There's no escaping the Wanderwood.” She whistled at her kin, most of whom were doubled over and sipping from their special waterskins—the kind that didn't freeze even on nights as cold as this—and motioned for them to turn back.
A few Nalavacians glared at them. But the happy sighs outnumbered the scowls. Not much longer before they could reunite with their fires and tents. And they'd travel faster without their human cargo. They disappeared into the tree tunnel and left the outsiders in the middle of the clearing, alone.
“What now?” said Nasira. An elderly Nalavacian had rubbed some sap on her wounded thigh and wrapped it in wool, but dried blood stained right through it. Purple. She was still pale—almost as light as the skulls leering at them from every angle.
“Now we get out of this damned clearing,” Argus said.
“Brenn?” said Siggi. “Brenndall the Bold?” He cupped his mouth and called a little louder. Loud voices didn't belong in this place. It seemed like the skulls were listening, and if one called too loudly they were prone to wake up.
Argus turned to Nasira. “Can you go any farther?” She nodded. “I think so. It helped when they carried me. You might have to—oh.” Siggi threw her over his shoulders with a sigh. “Not a problem, lady artificer.”
“I'm not an artificer. And I'm sorry. I suppose I should have killed that poor girl. Maybe then they would have left us in peace.” She shook her head. “I just couldn't do it.”
“Aye,” Argus said. “But you listened to your heart. You did what you had to do. Don't worry, Nasira. I don't plan on waiting around for them to take us back.”
“What are you planning?”
He bit his lip. Nothing had come to him yet, and he was only a fraction of himself with Reaver gone. If he bent his ear and listened close, he could still hear her whispers over the falling snow. The Nalavacians would fight over that blade. Maybe they'd fight over him and his friends too.
“I won't be their slaves,” he said. “I'll make them kill me first.”
Siggi nodded. “Never again, friends. Never again.” During his childhood, he'd spent years as a slave to one of the wealthiest families in Rivanna. The only time of his life he was reluctant to talk about. Argus had never asked how the arrangement ended, though he assumed it was bloody.
“We can't let that happen,” Nasira said.
“Come on,” said Argus. “Let's find Brenn. Those skulls keep staring at me.” They shuffled to the edge of the clearing. When they reached the human skulls, most of which were disfigured with broken jaws or ax wounds, he slithered between them and into a copse of hardwood trees.
The trees thinned, and they found themselves in another clearing. Where the first had been oblong and misshapen, this one had sharp edges. They crept into what looked like a perfect rectangle. A man-made clearing. No skulls.
Enormous footprints disrupted the blanket of snow. Argus followed them with his eyes. They wound up a small hill and disappeared into a cabin at the far edge. Smoke curled from the roof, and he smelled delicious burning.
“Brenn?”
A shadow protruded from the side of the cabin. It was almost as tall as the cabin itself. He'd assumed it was a stack of firewood, but instead he found an angry Nalavacian.
“Who goes there?” he said, striding closer with his ax.
Siggi said, “How about some old friends?”
“That's right,” said Nasira. “How about the Legion of the Wind?”
For a few heartbeats the Nalavacian said nothing. Then he dropped his ax and came running. He pulled them into his enormous arms, lifting them, swinging them like dolls.
“By Setep!” he said, raising his pale blue eyes to the moon. His laugh filled the clearing—warm enough to
thaw them. His beard was longer, but Brenndall was basically unchanged since they'd last parted. He stood barefoot, impervious to the cold, hardly clothed at all.
“Come in,” he said. “Come warm yourselves by the fire.”
They followed him into his humble cabin. The ceilings were low. A lone pair of windows opened out to the clearing, half-covered in snow. The space was small, but with its bearskin rugs and roaring fire, it felt fit for an emperor.
Brenn stoked the fire and ran outside to grab a few more logs. The travelers collapsed in front of it and availed themselves of some of their host's blankets. Boots and damp clothes removed, they sighed by the flames.
When Argus worked himself up to it he looked at his tingling toes. They were still a disturbing shade of blue, but he'd avoided the black that demanded amputation. His fingers, which hadn't gotten wet, were even better off.
“Thank the gods,” he said, and turned his attention to Nasira. She was still shivering, never truly warm after her time in the water. Her plunge had been costly. A couple of her toes looked like spent firewood.
“What did you get yourselves into now?” said Brenn. He didn't wait for an answer. After barging around the cabin he returned with a handful of dried leaves and a jug of dark liquid. These he combined in a pot, which he hung over the fire. He pulled Nasira's feet closer to the flames, rubbing them and having Siggi do the same to her hands. He stirred his mixture while it warmed. When it started to simmer he dipped a long spoon in, collected some of the brew and dribbled it onto Nasira's feet.
“Ow!” she said, jerking away from the spoon.
“Good. Pain means there's a chance to save them yet.” This time Brenn had the others hold her down. He didn't stop until her toes and fingers were covered with the sticky mixture. After that he kept her by the fire. The mixture congealed as it started to cool, covering Nasira's fingers and toes like tiny mittens.
“It hurts,” she said through gritted teeth. “What in the world did you put on me?”
“An old Nalavacian salve. Dried Milfoil leaves and sap from the Ospar tree. It's… unpleasant. But it's saved countless frozen toes.”
“What now?” Siggi said.
“Now we wait. See that she has enough blankets, and keep that fire going strong. We'll know better come morning.”
Nasira swore. “Morning? Will it at least stop hurting by then?”
“Hopefully not. Not if you want to save all your fingers and toes.”
“That would be the ideal outcome, yes.”
“Then better grin and bear it, love. Maybe a story will serve as a welcome distraction. You can start by telling Brenndall how you ended up in his little cabin.”
They took turns telling him what had happened. Brenn cringed when they told him about the girl and the fight. “You never said anything about the Ladhar happening on a frozen stream,” Siggi said.
Brenn shrugged. “Things were simpler when I was young. I don't know how my tribe does things anymore. Bugger that. I can't even call them my tribe anymore. They won't have it. I tried to make peace again, after our battle with Eamon in Garvahn.”
Argus grinned. “S'pose your kinfolk doesn't understand your special breed of humor.”
The Nalavacian glared at him in a way that made him wish he'd held his tongue. “My humor is the least of my worries. The ones in power now are the brothers and sisters and offspring of the ones I wronged before I left last time.”
Argus nodded. He remembered the story well. The Nalavacians praised strength and ferocity, but even they had their limits. When Brenndall grew up, he surpassed his kinfolk on both accounts to an alarming degree. After a few too many disagreements—which ended invariably with Brenn using brute force to get his way—the tribe elders had arranged a coup to send him into exile.
“I killed them all,” he said, revisiting the story Argus heard long ago. “When they came to banish me I slit throats and smashed skulls until no one was left. Went into hiding for a while, but only to bide time for revenge. I raided their camp in the middle of the night. Killed a few dozen more. Before everyone who was left found me, and forced me into the Wanderwood.
“They thought I died in here. And I almost did. But by fate or good fortune I found my way out, left Nalavac and joined the Legion.” He stopped to clear his throat and check Nasira's extremities. Then he was moving again, pacing the cramped cabin and clinking glasses until he came back with a bottle of clear liquid.
“Drink this,” he told them, pouring shots into glasses. “My people call it snow tremor. Thaws the bones. Gets you roaring drunk too.”
“Don't mind if I do,” Siggi said. The Rivannan downed his in a single gulp, coughed until his face turned red and said, “Better already! What happened when you got back, Brenn? Bet what was left of your tribe soiled their smallclothes.”
Brenn grinned a crooked grin. “You aren't far from the mark. At first they refused to believe it. Some fled, some bowed down, everyone kept their children close. When I told them all I wanted was another chance to live among them and make a new home—that I hadn't meant to kill the others, but they'd given me no choice—they let me in.”
“What changed?” Nasira asked.
“I was never really in, you see. As the days passed I found out the only reason they agreed was because they were afraid of me. Cian and Fiona, they spent a lot of time away from Nalavac. They'd heard some of the tales about Brenndall the Bold. Between that and what I did to their relatives, I suppose they had good reason to fear me.”
He told them how he slept in a tent alone on the edge of camp. His kinfolk ignored him whenever they could. They kept their distance. He heard them whispering late into the night; those whispers stopped whenever he came too close.
“I told them I was sorry,” he said. “Dozens of times. 'Slaughter is in my nature,' I said. I even told them what Willow showed me about my true ancestor. They looked at me like I was mad.” He shrugged. “Gods know, maybe I am.”
One night Brenn awoke to daggers slicing through his tent. His tribe had organized an assassination attempt. Five more fell to his ax before the survivors scattered. “It was the same as it was before. They cursed and wailed and called me an evil spirit. Said they'd only wanted to get rid of me back then before I turned into a tyrant.”
Brenn decided to leave. He couldn't bring himself to stay, because the tribe would send others and he would kill them too. He told the survivors that he would go into exile. All he asked for was a sliver of the Wanderwood to roam in peace.
“I've been living here ever since,” he said. “It was foolish of me to come back.” He stoked the fire, watching the coals cough up fresh sparks. “But for some reason I can't bring myself to leave.”
“It's your home,” Nasira said.
“Is it? Not really. Not without the people who used to love me and call me their kin.”
Argus mentioned that the tribe would soon return to claim them. He told Brenn that he had no plans of going along with it, and apologized in advance for any tribesmen who might die. “Better if you don't get involved,” he added. “So you don't have to pick sides.”
Brenn groaned. He tore through his beard, but his fingers never landed on the answer he sought. “I don't want to think about it now. Rest, and we'll talk it over in the morning.”
“Aye,” said Argus. “We've had our fill of fighting for today. One more question though.”
“What is it?”
“Why are all those skulls in that clearing? The one just before yours.”
“For protection. My tribe says the Wanderwood houses the souls of the deceased from every kingdom. Even the evildoers. Setep makes them fight endless battles for sport. I've never seen any myself, though some nights I hear horses and clinging steel when I listen close.” He shrugged. “The Wanderwood isn't all bad. Our tribe and many others dwell under these boughs. But I won't take any chances.”
Argus shivered and moved closer to the fire. Beside him, Nasira flexed her fingers and toes, marve
ling at the blackened shell around them. Siggi downed another shot of snow tremor and laid his head in his hands.
“I'd offer you a bed,” said Brenn, “but I only have one.”
“That's all right,” Argus said. “Your tribe took our packs, but we'll make do.” His eyes fluttered. Crackling logs filled the air with a warmth that penetrated all the way to his bones.
Tomorrow night they'll come for us. And tomorrow night we'll face them. Tomorrow…
He slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Argus ran on a frozen stream. He couldn't escape it no matter how fast he went. A terrible creaking sound swallowed him. It rushed at him from every direction, gaining with every step.
The ice gave way, and Argus plunged into the rushing water with it. He gasped. Tried to breath. Couldn't. The water stabbed him like a thousand needle points. His limbs didn't work. Unable to kick or paddle, his only choice was to watch himself sink beneath the surface.
Deeper. Deeper and deeper until the pale blue ice sheet became invisible and there was only darkness. Argus tried to shut his eyes; they were frozen open, reluctant witnesses to his own death. The stream widened and roiled into a giant waterfall and he plummeted over the edge, numb and limp and lifeless.
“Wake up.”
This time he opened his eyes onto a cozy cabin. Siggi hovered above him, smiling, still smelling faintly of the snow tremor he'd drunk last night. “You were having a nightmare.”
“I… I drowned.”
The Rivannan laughed. “Not yet, my friend. On your feet now. Brenn is making breakfast.”
That got Argus off the floor in a hurry. He stretched, tender from yesterday's journey. A healthy fire blazed in the corner. Nasira and Brenn stood in front of it while a pot of something delicious simmered. The Nalavacian stopped his stirring to look at Nasira's hands.
“How do they feel?” Argus said.
“I'll let you know in a moment,” she said. Siggi and Argus wandered closer and watched Brenn take a hand into his meaty paw. With a grace of movement Argus didn't know he had, he peeled the liquid mitten off Nasira's hand. One by one the fingers were exposed, red and raw but no worse for the wear.
Fortune's Toll (The Legion of the Wind, Book Two) Page 16
