Andras put a hand on his shoulder and turned back to Narina. “You know what I mean.”
She did know. Ruven rarely complained, but that meant he pushed himself until he was staggering with exhaustion, at which point it was too late, and he had to be carried until they found a good place to make camp. She worried he was already at that point today.
Narina considered. She’d contained the shadowy, corrupt thread in her sowen, and felt more in control than at any time since rescuing Andras, Ruven, and the dogs from the fire. At the same time, the corrupt element of her sowen kept squirming, testing its bounds, trying to break free. A voice seemed to whisper in her head.
You’ll follow this path sooner or later. You’ll kill the warbrand whether you want to or not.
She dismissed these treacherous thoughts. She knew what she needed to do. First, get down to that village where she could bathe, where she could wash her clothes. Meditate. Get food for herself and her companions. Then continue the hunt. It wouldn’t be long now until she found him.
“Stay close,” she said. “Ruven, keep the dogs quiet.”
“Where are we going?” the boy asked.
“Into the village to see to our needs.”
The father glanced toward the little hamlet, and his frown deepened as he seemed to be considering the same doubts that had occurred to Narina moments earlier.
“It’s quiet here,” he said. “The war hasn’t touched them yet. They won’t be happy to see strangers.”
“They won’t see strangers,” she said. “Trust me on that.”
#
As they approached on a narrow footpath, Narina learned how the peasants in this place had avoided notice. It wasn’t the fog, though that certainly helped, but that a wooded hill wrapped around the village on three sides. The sound of rushing water could be heard on the far side of the hill.
She pushed her sowen through the hillside and sensed the river rolling along, deep and swift as it churned past the hill. Undoubtedly, troops hurried past here on their boats, but saw only a wooded hill, nothing worth foraging. As for the far side of the hill, they’d come down through a series of ponds and marshlands—these breeding grounds for mosquitoes—before the ground dried out. They’d then looped around an old stone quarry, long since abandoned, before trudging up the rise overlooking the foggy little valley.
If Narina hadn’t been following the thread of her enemy and his disturbance of the auras, she most likely would have missed the village entirely. As it was, she took in the neat, sod-roofed cottages, with their well-tended fences, and suspected that hidden or not, it wouldn’t be long before either Damanja or Balint stumbled upon this place and stripped it bare.
Two men, one old, one young, stood guard at a row of sharpened stakes that had been planted across the footpath, reinforced on either side with mounds of freshly heaped sod. The younger man wore a leather breastplate with its straps broken and dangling loose. He’d set a battered helmet atop one of the poles of the makeshift palisade and leaned against a stave with a spear point crudely fixed to the end. The older man, most likely the younger one’s father, had a fringe of gray hair around a bald scalp. He was thickly built and well-fed for a peasant. His only weapon was a scythe.
No doubt the pair could call for help and raise a few more souls from the village. Nevertheless, Narina couldn’t help but wince at the pathetic nature of their defenses.
“This might dissuade brigands,” she told Andras in a low voice, “but a handful of trained soldiers would only laugh. They might even take it as an invitation.”
“Shh.”
“Don’t worry, they can’t hear us. Come on, follow me. Ruven, keep the dogs close—they might not have the good sense to stay clear. And we don’t want them barking.”
Rather than vaulting the palisade and strolling right between the two men, as she might have done had she been alone, she led the others around the barrier, through a ditch, and around the far side to regain the footpath leading into the village.
The two guards were chatting, and paid no attention to the three people and six dogs walking past less than a dozen feet away. The younger of the pair was concerned about soldiers he’d spotted on the far bank of the river. Lord Balint Stronghand’s, he offered, which was a bad sign, as it meant there would probably be a battle nearby. The older seemed more concerned with the miller’s daughter. Didn’t the young man find her appealing? Surely he’d noticed the way her backside swayed when she was sweeping out rice husks from beneath the stones. Enough about the soldiers across the river, the older man grumbled when the boy tried to steer him back again.
“I don’t blame the old man for not wanting to talk about the war,” Narina told Andras. “I imagine it grows exhausting.”
Andras only shook his head, and he didn’t respond until they were well past the village guards, walking beside a bubbling irrigation ditch that ran down a stone-lined channel before flooding through an open sluice gate and into a rice paddy.
“More likely, he figures there’s nothing they can do,” the ratter said at last. “So why keep chewing it over?”
“They could do something about that pathetic attempt to barricade the road. We walked around it, no problem.”
“Say they’d thrown up a wall instead. Cut stones and mortar. Would that have made any difference?”
“No, I suppose not,” Narina said with a shrug. “Not unless they walled in the entire village, farms and all. Built watchtowers and found someone with actual weapons and military training to man them. If I were them, I’d get out of here.”
“We’ve seen plenty of peasants who’ve tried just that. How has it gone for them?”
She was surprised by Andras’s aggressive tone. If she hadn’t been holding so tightly to her sowen, it would have angered her. Even thinking about being angry made her blades vibrate in their sheaths. It crossed her mind how easy it would be to draw them and kill father, son, and dogs. She imagined them lying in pools of blood, stretched across the footpath where they’d fallen, while she straddled them, bloody swords in hand.
Narina shuddered in horror and shoved this thought away. She stopped, closed her eyes for a moment to regain control, and then pointed to the nearest building. Smoke trickled from a stone chimney poking out of the sod.
“That one will do. There’s food inside.”
Andras blinked. “But there’s people inside, too. Right?”
“Leave them to me.”
She reached out with her sowen, felt the auras of two adults and a child, and then touched them one after another.
You are very tired. You must sleep. You cannot keep your eyes open.
She nodded, satisfied. That should be sufficient. She came up to the door, pushed on it only to discover that it had been barred from the inside, and used her sowen to throw the bar out of its latch. Her sowen swept through the cottage before her eyes had a chance to adjust to the darkened interior.
A man holding a baby staggered past without seeing, on his way to a straw mattress in the corner. The baby was already asleep in her father’s arms, and the man was blinking and yawning heavily. The man’s wife stood on the opposite side of the cottage, stirring at a pot that hung from a hook over the fire.
The woman looked up with drooping eyes and seemed to see Narina for a moment. She glanced toward the bed in the corner, where her husband had barely managed to avoid falling on top of the infant as he collapsed. She turned back toward Narina, then her head drooped, and she collapsed where she stood.
Narina was at her side in an instant, and pulled the woman back before she could upend the pot of boiling soup and fall face-first into the fire. She carried the woman to the cot and put her down before adjusting the father and daughter to get all three of them in place.
Andras remained at the doorway, and Narina gestured impatiently. “Don’t stand there gaping like an idiot, get in here. The boy and dogs, too. And shut the door. Good, now sit over by the fire. Tend it, look to whatever you need if the food isn’t done
yet. Scrounge up something for the dogs, too.”
“Are you leaving?” Andras asked.
“For a bit, yes.”
“And when they wake and see us helping ourselves to their provisions?”
“They won’t. I gave them a push. Perhaps too hard. All three will sleep until morning.”
“At which point they’ll see that someone ate their supper and fed their breakfast to the dogs.”
“At which point we’ll be gone,” she pointed out.
“That woman looked at you,” Andras said. “She’ll remember in the morning.”
“And what of it? What’s that to us?” She forced down her anger, but couldn’t keep a note of sarcasm out of her voice. “If you’d taken the coins I found yesterday, you could have left her a few silver moons and soothed your conscience.”
Andras gave another one of those glances to his son, this one ashamed. “Someone buried that silver, and you had no idea if they’d been killed or not.”
“It was either steal the coin then,” she said, “or steal the food now. I guess you made your choice.”
His tone remained defiant. “I guess I did. Well, then, you’d better get to it. Sooner you can fight this warbrand, the better. Then we can go back to your temple and find you the help you need.”
“You think it’s that easy? Defeat one warbrand and then go off and receive my cure? Don’t be naive.”
“Call me naive. Or call me sane. Half the time you’re out of your mind. It’s you who doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
Maybe it was the smell of cooking pottage after a long, hungry march that made him short with her. Or maybe this had been brewing for several days, and he’d finally run out of patience. Either way, he wasn’t the only one tired of the other’s company.
“That’s it, I’m done with you. Stay here or not. Eat or not. I’m not coming back.” She held out a hand. “Give me the satchel. Hand over my clothes.”
His face reddened in anger, and he held out a hand to stop Ruven, who looked up from the dogs as if he were going to make some pathetic appeal. He shuffled off the satchel, but held it out of her reach, as if somehow that would stop her if she decided to take it anyway. Narina snapped her fingers impatiently for him to obey.
“Don’t you do it,” Andras said. “Don’t you leave us here in this strange place. They’ll take us for thieves. They’ll drive us out to face the army, or worse.”
“That’s nothing to me. Give me my clothes.”
“You led us here, Narina. You have no right to abandon us now.”
She grabbed the satchel before he had a chance to flinch. “I have every right.” She fished out her change of tunic, leggings, and undergarments and tossed the bag at his feet.
His jaw clenched. “Why you selfish, vicious—”
Andras’s words died, and his mouth hung open in fear. Narina actually glanced behind her to see if someone had thrown open the door and come in behind her. Belatedly, she realized Andras’s fear was directed at her, and she looked down to see that her swords were in hand. The demon seemed to drip shadow, and the dragon glowed with white light. Had they always done that?
“Please don’t kill us,” Ruven said in a small voice.
He stood with his hands wrapped around Skinny Lad, who stared at her with a fixed, knowing expression. The fiercest of the terriers, Notch, stood between the boy’s legs, growling. All the dogs were looking at her, and their auras stood out as bright, angry points of light.
Narina’s swords wanted to drink their blood—slay them all—and it was all she could do to restrain them. Her hands trembled as she slowly, deliberately slid them back into their sheaths. The dogs began to relax, as did Andras and Ruven.
“I’m sorry. I’ll feel better after I have bathed. Please stay here and eat. I’ll come back, I promise.”
Chapter Seven
A violent tremble came over Narina as she stepped outside. She’d almost killed them, and it hadn’t been the first time. Every day there was a moment—sometimes multiple moments—when she was on the brink of slaughter. Not just her companions, but every person she met on the road.
“You could leave them,” she said aloud. “Truly walk away and never look back.”
Andras was right; they’d be at great risk here in this village or anywhere on the plains. But that risk was nothing compared to the daily struggle Narina fought to keep her swords in their sheaths and the stain of murder off her soul. It wasn’t as if the ratter was blind to the threat, but he didn’t seem to understand the magnitude of the danger.
The problem was that their calming presence was the only thing holding her back from the slaughter. From taking the war into her own hands and sweeping across the plains in a whirlwind of death until the fiefdoms were drenched with blood and exhausted of their strength. That would bring peace.
It wasn’t yet sunset, but the fog had settled even deeper into the village, which left the cottages and barns emerging like gray ghosts from the gloom. A chill hung in the air, a contrast to the past few days, which had been sweltering. Such unseasonable cold could only come from the high peaks. The dragons, she supposed.
Narina felt for water, and discovered it in a stone-lined basin a few hundred yards deeper into the village. Listening carefully, she heard a trickle of water flowing out of a bamboo pipe into the cistern, which meant the water would be relatively fresh.
She thought it would be a cistern for washing clothes, but even better, it seemed to be an actual communal bath, including a little stone wall to keep out animals, with a gate enclosing the solitary entrance. From beyond the gate came male voices; the baths were already occupied, it would seem.
That was no good, but a push was all it took to clear the villagers out. Five men walked barefoot and naked through the gate and onto the path, clothes in hand, perplexed expressions on their faces, as if they couldn’t quite figure out what had driven them out of the baths, and yet were incapable of giving it serious thought.
Something about bending their wills to serve her whims left Narina with a sour taste in her mouth. Even so, as she undressed, she bent the auras around the baths to create a sort of ward that would keep people away. There were far too many of them wandering about.
Animals, too. A village dog barked nearby, then was quickly hushed. It was followed shortly thereafter by a woman’s voice exclaiming surprise. Narina grinned, guessing that one of the naked men must have shown up at home, still dripping and carrying his clothes in a bundle. In any event, that set off the dog again, and it took longer to quiet the beast this time.
Barking dogs were a danger for a village trying to stay quiet and hidden in its corner of the fiefdom. If the mutt had known that six strange dogs were in its village, it and all its friends would be barking nonstop, regardless of attempts to silence them. Could it be that the dog was smelling her presence? She hadn’t thought to shield her scent, if that was even possible.
She carefully set her swords on top of her bundle of clothing, and the clean clothes on top of that. As soon as she returned to the cottage of the sleeping family, she’d send out Ruven with a layer of protection to wash her dirty clothes. Give the boy something useful to do besides fussing over the dogs.
But first, Narina had work to do. She stepped into the water, which was slightly cool to the touch, but not cold, until she’d immersed herself to her waist, which was as deep as the stone basin got. She sat slowly and let the water rinse over her head. The village sounds faded until she could only hear the gurgling of water flowing out of the pipe to spill into the stone basin.
The dulled sounds provided a moment of relief. Her senses were so sharp that it was hard not to notice every sound, sight, smell, or even shift in the breeze as it waved through fields of rice. The auras were so bright and sharply defined, it was all she could do not to stare at them. It was mentally exhausting.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t stay down here meditating for long. She had to use the moment to search for her enemy,
and so, even as she sat submerged in the basin, holding her breath, she gathered her sowen and sent it through the village, sniffing and prying.
Miklos, where are you? And how did you get here?
The last she’d seen them, Miklos, Kozmer, and Gyorgy had been pushing through the smoke and fire, carrying Narina tied to the back of Brutus, their mountain goat, in an attempt to fight their way past the eruption and carry her to the temple. There, they would do. . .what, exactly? Prod and pry with their sowen in an attempt to cure her of her supposed ailment, she imagined.
She’d tried to kill herself in the fire, then went to Andras and Ruven’s aid to push the flames back and save the lives of the ratters and their dogs. All of that had taken tremendous concentration, but even so, she should not have missed the warbrand descending back into the plains. Yet somehow, he appeared to have gone past without her detecting his presence.
You’re not the only one whose powers have grown.
Now that she was searching, the village was filthy with the remnant of his aura. It clung to the main path and left its stink at the mill. It hung about houses, pastures, rice, and fields. Even here, at the baths. Every corner of the village, as if he’d reveled in it.
Narina lifted her head out of the water to breathe, and spoke aloud. “If you were good enough to hide yourself in the hills, why did you leave such a mess here?”
And by all the foul demons, what had he been doing? He hadn’t simply passed through, or his sowen would have left a simple trail similar to the one she’d been following these past few days. It was almost as if he were searching for something important.
Or leaving something. Could that be it?
Once the thought entered her mind, she couldn’t put it out again. She dropped back into the water, and once submerged took a slower, closer look. Yes, there it was. His sowen had deliberately disturbed the auras and left a mark on them. It wasn’t so different from how Narina had created a connection to Skinny Lad so that she could find her friends later, back when her priorities had been feeble, trivial matters like fulfilling a contract with Lord Balint.
Shadow Walker (The Sword Saint Series Book 3) Page 6
