Five Bloody Heads (The Hounds of the North Book 3)

by Peter Fugazzotto

  “A little broken birdy,” said Spear.

  “Everything’s spinning.”

  “It’ll stop soon. Don’t you worry about that.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You having your fun here? Not just enough to rob them? Gotta unleash your depravity too?”

  The man’s one good eye focused on Spear as if seeing him for the first time. “Spear? Is that you?”

  Through the man’s ragged beard and the wear of the ages, Spear recognized him. Molgi. One of his men at Cullantown. Younger then. Not yet filled out. His beard then just a smear of fuzz on his chin. He was one of those who had waited with hidden knives for Spear on that night when he returned to Cullan after killing the warlock. Molgi was one of those traitors hoping to lure Spear to the mead hall by the Black River, eager for him to step into their embrace of daggers. He was one of those who had betrayed Spear when he had pledged himself to Cruhund.

  Molgi laughed. “You burned the fortress. Set the whole damned thing a fire. Destroyed everything!”

  “Wasn’t going to leave it to you dogs.”

  “We…we thought you were lost beyond the North. Cruhund wanted to hunt you down for taking everything that was his.”

  “His? You mean everything he stole from me?”

  Molgi tried to brush away the sword from his face but Spear only pressed it more firmly. “Don’t blame me. I just follow the crew. Leaders come, leaders go.”

  Seana and Kiara had crept in through the back door, hesitant, swords drawn, heads at the opening, unwilling to step foot in the house. “Take the woman and child. Go back to the stables,” said Spear. “Wait there.” Kiara vanished quickly but Seana hesitated, her gaze finding Spear’s, and then she was gone, the black night where she once was.

  Molgi fingered the blade again. “So what are you? Some kind of crusader in the night? A devil swooping down out of the storms? Far cry from the Spear Spyrchylde I once ran with.”

  “I’ve come for your head.”

  Molgi laughed, spittle flying from his lips. “This head? My big ugly head? Who the hell would pay for my head?” Then the smile slipped from his face. “It’s fucking Cruhund, isn’t it? That son of a bitch!”

  Spear turned to Night, Little Boy and Bones. “Back to the stable as well. I’ll finish this on my own.”

  After they left, he withdrew his sword from Molgi’s face and let him come to sitting. The side of his head was gashed open, a raw cut of blood-matted hair. He blinked hard as if trying to focus his eyes and he dropped his hands to the floor to steady himself.

  “Why would he want your head?” asked Spear.

  “Because his men, they like me. They see Molgi as something more than a sword that follows. He’s afraid of the inevitable. One day they’ll be done with him, his quick temper and quicker blade. Killing men won’t make more men follow him. He doesn’t get that. No leader just a slave driver. Castle built of sand.”

  “It’s not Cruhund who wants your head.”

  “Who else even knows me?”

  “The little broken bird. The one you left on the side of the road. One of the pilgrims. Five men in black armor she wants, dogs stitched on their breasts. And with each head, my hand gets heavier in coin.”

  “That girl?” Molgi gnawed at his lower lip. “She wasn’t dead?”

  Spear shrugged.

  “I can weigh your hand heavier,” said Molgi.

  “I have to deliver heads. I’ve made a promise.”

  “What if we make a deal?” The man started to rise but the end of Spear’s sword kept him to the ground. “Fucking head’s bleeding.”

  “Not sure you’re in a position to bargain.”

  Molgi brought a bloody hand from the cut on the back of his head. “Damn, you kicked me hard.” He wiped his hand on his black armor. “One thing I know. There’s always room to bargain. Especially among scoundrels.”

  The rain cracked against the ground outside the back door.

  “What’s she giving you? A few coppers, maybe a silver piece?”

  “A ruby for each head. Got one already. And a horse to boot.”

  “How the hell she have rubies?” Molgi shook his head. “Don’t matter though. A head’s a head, right?” He pointed to the corpses of his fallen companions. “What if you took one of those heads? How about the one split by the axe? Give it to her. She won’t know it’s not mine. You get your gem and I get to walk away. Maybe even run.”

  “Why would I do that?” asked Spear.

  “Because I can put enough coin in your hand to snap your wrist.”

  “You lie.”

  “If I’m lying, you take my head anyway, right?”

  “Enough coin to snap my wrist?” Spear glanced towards the doorway and then back to Molgi.

  “The price of a head,” purred Molgi. “A bloody, cracked head.”

  “Why don’t I just kill you and then look for the coin?”

  Molgi smiled. “Deal?”

  Spear remembered the scene of the massacre by the road: the baby in the ditch, the glistening intestines, the sky dark with the crows. The fire had only been able to purge so much. Yet he had robbed the very same people, cut the man’s head open, stolen what little coin they had. How different was he than Molgi and the others? How far away was he from just such a scene? And when his gems and coins were gathered, would he care what his men did out of his sight?

  “Deal.”

  “Really?”

  “Where’s my coin?”

  Molgi reached into the ashes in the hearth and pulled out a small burlap sack. It bulged with the shape of coins. “Mostly coppers and bronzes, a handful of silver and gold combined. But near as big as my head.”

  “How’d you get this?”

  “Let’s just say Cruhund is going to be really upset when I don’t return to the keep.”

  “I’ll need your armor,” said Spear.

  Molgi hesitated.

  “The five men wore black armor. If she comes back in here for some reason and sees the headless corpse in that cloth armor, she’ll know I lied, and then I won’t get my gem.”

  Molgi unlaced his armor and left it on the floor at his feet. “Deal’s still good, right?”

  Spear nodded. “The others are in the stable so make sure that you keep the house between you and the stable so they can’t see you.”

  “Doubt they’ll see much in this rain.” Molgi turned at the doorway. “Thanks. And maybe one day our paths will cross again and I’ll return to the favor and be the one to save your life.” He winked. “For a fistful of gold.”

  The killer stepped into the rain and disappeared in the dark night. A wind had picked up, coursing through the house, lifting at the hairs on the back of Spear’s neck. He stared at the corpses on the ground. He hoped the head would come off easy. The floor was thick in blood and it stuck beneath his soles. He felt a sudden turning in his stomach. Molgi was a monster and Spear had just let him go into the world.

  As Spear turned to the door, a shape flew at him out of the darkness of the fields. He leapt back and a head hit the floor and rolled to a stop at his feet. It was Molgi’s.

  The cloak of Night lifted with the coursing wind, filling the doorway like the wings of a hawk. “We had a deal with the girl.”

  “Who would have known?” said Spear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SPEAR WOKE TO weeping.

  He shifted beneath his bed roll. The others slept undisturbed under the roof of the stables. The rains had broken and, through the widening space in the clouds, the stars stretched against the night sky. They seemed so deep, layered, thousands of invisible stars buried just beyond what he could perceive. He wondered how far the heavens stretched.

  He pulled his bedroll to his neck to keep out the chill. His breath clouded the stars before dissipating. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the crying. But it was persistent and he could not return to the world of dreams.

  He wondered if the Dhurman woman and child who had
survived the attack were crying again. He imagined most of their days would be filled with tears, haunted with memories of their family slaughtered before their eyes. If he had not returned to Grymr’s Hold and instead tried to pick up Molgi’s trail, could he have stopped what happened?

  He remembered the blood on the walls and the floor, more blood than he imagined a few bodies could hold, the severed fingers and arms and feet, the woman tied to the bed and then men going at her like the gore about them was nothing more than paint and decoration. Then he saw the scene on the road where Val’s family had been butchered. Was Val lucky to have survived?

  What had the world become? These were men of the North, returned from the wars in the South. But they had returned to do this. To clans people and Dhurmans alike. What was the line between them and him? He had killed and continued to kill. Was what he did any different? Hadn’t he only killed for coin and to protect what was his? How fine was that line?

  The weeping, soft and muffled, continued.

  He sat up and peered at the sleeping bodies. The mother and daughter huddled against the wall. The mother’s arms circled tightly around her daughter and they both slept. He wished they could sleep forever because the moment they woke, the horror of what had happened would engulf them.

  The weeping was not coming from the stable but from the direction of the farm house. In the darkness, he could not see who cried.

  Let them weep, he thought, if that was what they needed to survive. The borderlands were cruel. Who did not already know that? Then his stomach turned. What if it was Seana? Had her world been so broken? What if she wept over his betrayal? But she was done with him. If she wanted to be free of him, then she would need to find her own strength. Maybe she would see the difficulty in that. Maybe she would come back to him and the dream they once shared.

  He lay down and closed his eyes but he could not sleep. The weeping bubbled at the edge of his hearing.

  He sat up from the blankets and pulling his damp cloak over his shoulders slipped out of the stables and towards farmhouse. A figure sat huddled outside the front door, silhouetted by the pulsing fire in the hearth.

  Val looked up when she heard Spear’s footsteps.

  Her eyes were red and her cheeks wet with tears. She wiped her fists across her face. She stared off into the surrounding darkness.

  “You want me to go back?” asked Spear.

  “Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

  “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be anywhere near it. You’ve seen enough.”

  She choked back a burst of laughter. “What difference does it make? Can my life get any more ruined?”

  Spear sat on the stump next to the door. The stale smell of sweet pipe weed lingered at the threshold. He wondered if this was where the Dhurman settlers perched in the evenings, sucking at pipes, staring out into the skies, grateful for what they had been given. Or was this where one of the settler’s wife berated him, warning him about the riders in the distance, urging him to return to the south?

  “Don’t really have to do this anymore,” said Spear.

  “Do what?”

  “These men, their heads. You can just give it up.”

  “Then how are you going to get my gems? How you going to become the big man?”

  He shrugged. He slipped his fingers into his purse and pulled out the second gem, the one she had handed over after he dropped Molgi’s head at her feet. The gem caught the light of the dying hearth fire.

  “I’ll get there again,” said Spear. He closed the ruby in his fist, hiding it from the light. “Did it before. Or if you want, you just give me the rest of the gems and I’ll keep my word. I’ll get the other heads. Bring them to you. You don’t need to be a witness to all this bloodshed. I can protect you from that.”

  “Bring them to me?” Val shook her head. “Where am I supposed to go? I have nowhere to go. I have no one else to turn to. Those monsters killed my family. They severed my only real connection with the world. I don’t know if I could find my way back to my village. Even if I returned, to what? The ghosts of my mother, my father? The memories of my little brother’s crushed skull?”

  “These heads won’t bring your family back.”

  “Did you really just say that? You think I’m stupid? I know they’re dead. Half the time I wonder if I’m actually not dead, too. I can’t even feel my body. I feel like I’m a passenger trapped in the head of someone else, trapped in a nightmare I can’t escape.”

  “Go back to Grymr’s Hold,” said Spear. He rolled the ruby between his index finger and thumb. “Break one of the gems. I’ll send Kiara back there with you. No one will hurt you on the way. You can arrive there safely. She’ll stay with you until I come back. I’ll bring you the heads. I’ll even give you five for the price of four. Save that last gem so you can start a new life.”

  The dim light rippled over her face. The tears had stopped but her face still glistened with the tracks. “I want to see them die,” she said. “I want to see the last light of life drain out of their eyes. I want my face to be the last thing they see before they die. I want them to know their lives are meaningless.”

  “It won’t make a difference in the end. I know this.”

  “Well I don’t know this. I want their heads. We have a deal.”

  He nodded. “We do. Just know that the deeper we go, the more dangerous this gets.”

  “Cold feet suddenly?”

  He sighed. “You’re going to break yourself beyond repair, Val. You’re not going to be alive in the end. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

  “No, that’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “I died in that ditch. There is no life ahead for me.” She dragged her fingers across her cheeks and then was gone, a hurrying shape moving towards the shed.

  In the distance, the wind swished through the tops of the pines. An owl, unseen, let out a low plaintive hoot. He imagined the bird perched on a branch, eyes wide to the night, scanning the fields, waiting for a shifting shadow. Even in the darkest hours, a hunter lingered.

  Spear yawned. Hopefully some of the warmth still clung to his blanket.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and saw all the blood: rivers of red through the mud on the road, splattered on the walls of the farmhouse, dripping from his palms. He saw the heads of Red Tail and Molgi. Then he saw a third head. His own. It lay in the underbrush, streaming with ants, flesh torn, ravens laughing from the branches. It stank of rot. His eyes had been plucked out, gaping holes. Past his head, in a field full of bright blue flowers, Seana ran, her hair streaming, Longbeard spun, hands spread wide, and Night laughed, his hood thrown back, his face lit by the sun. Val was there, too, naked, glistening in blood and she flung her hands to the heavens. The tiny drops of blood that flew from her fingers turned into sparkling red rubies, hundreds of rubies seeding the field around them.

  None of them turned back to the head in the bushes. No one cared that Spear was dead. After all, what was he other than a cold-hearted killer?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SMOKE BILLOWED FROM the farmhouse, black spirals twisting out of the doors and windows and spreading towards the shards of blue that broke through the morning clouds. Orange flames licked up the walls; the thatch roof crackled and popped. For a long time, the sodden roof smoked white but now flame danced, single flames jumping and gathering to other flames. Already the walls were beginning to char and the plaster to crack and slough away.

  The heat surged against Spear’s face, a welcome comfort in the cold and damp morning. But the smell of burning flesh nearly made him retch. He watched the flames with a fist over his mouth even though it did little to muffle the smell.

  He had been surprised how quickly the building took to flame. He had broken a few vessels of oil on the floor, but somehow he thought the rain-soaked structure would barely catch. Instead, it had become an inferno minutes after he tossed the torch in among the corpses.

  Longbeard stood next to Spear and cursed
. “If Cruhund’s men are near, they’re going to see that smoke. Give us straight away. Lose all element of surprise. What are you thinking?”

  “Let them know we’re coming,” said Spear. He pulled his hand from his face and snorted. “It won’t make a difference in the end.”

  “We head back to Grymr’s. Turn this next gem into coin. I want my share. You’re leading us towards nothing.”

  “Go back on the promise?”

  “I made no promise.” Longbeard nodded towards Valda. “I saw her slip away last night. I searched her bedroll. She has to be hiding the gems on her body. How hard would it be to overpower her?”

  “I made a promise.”

  Longbeard rolled his eyes. “Sometimes promises are made to be broken. She’s a fucking little girl and you’re letting her hold you to your word like she is a clan chieftain.”

  “That’s right. I am.”

  Longbeard muttered in disgust and stalked off towards the stables.

  Val sat by herself in the yard, away from the stables and the house. She held a switch in her hand and swatted at seedlings struggling through the mud of the furrowed fields.

  Seana, Little Boy and Kiara were readying the horses. With the one they had taken from Red Tail on the bridge outside of Grymr’s Hold and the three they found in the stable, they nearly had enough for all of them to ride rather than walk. It was an unexpected benefit from the pursuit of the five men. Maybe by the end of this, they would all have horses. Maybe that would change things for his band.

  Bones was dancing at the edge of the fire, all elbows and knees. He was singing a clan nursery rhyme.

  “He’s crazy as they come.” Biroc had come from the stables. “Ever since the first day I met him. Something off in that one.”

  “And yet you stick with him?”

  “He’s still alive. I’m still alive. Figure as cowardly as he is, he’s some kind of lucky charm. Look at him. All he’s been through. All the battles all these years. Should be dead half a dozen times over.”