The Lioness d-aom-2

by Nancy Varian Berberick

“Get down!” Bayel shouted.

  Kerian dropped, falling to her knees in the blood of the dead Knight.

  An arrow screamed overhead, then another. Each missed, and she heard the sound of Bayel being flung to the floor. Kerian rolled and saw the sooted face of Thullea, a woman of the northern dales. A silver flash overhead, a dagger flew. The draconian screamed and fell, an elven blade through its eye.

  Kerian scrambled to her feet and shoved Bayel out the door.

  They found no chaos there, only the eerie silence after killing and two Knights surrounded by the Night People. Wael the taverner shivered in the chill dark as his tavern burned.

  “Good,” she said. “Now we’ll settle down to wait.”

  They did not wait long. The stars had hardly moved in the sky before Kerian heard the approach of Jeratt and his men. He came with only thirteen, for three had been killed in battle. “We got the rest of’em though. Caught ‘em ragin’ back when they knew they’d been fooled. “

  He looked down at the dusty ground. “Didn’t get the big one, though. Killed five of the Knights, left the others bleedin’ in the forest… and Thagol, I don’t know how, but he got away.”

  Kerian listened and didn’t say anything for a long while. Fire leaped to the sky, her Night People reunited, and the two bands spoke amongst themselves of the deaths they’d suffered and the deaths they’d dealt. She’d wanted Thagol to see this burning, this ruin. She wanted to kill him here where he’d killed Felan. She wanted to settle that debt and all the debts the Skull Knight owed her from the moment he murdered her cousin and piked her head upon the bridge in Qualinost.

  Fire roared, and the heat of it made her men drop back to the crossroad itself, taking their prisoners and poor Wael with them.

  At last, Kerian looked up. “Kill them,” she said to Jeratt, jerking her thumb toward the Knights. “Someone take Wael to a safe place.”

  Jeratt spat. “And the Skull Knight?”

  “He can watch the burning from wherever he’s hiding.” She looked around, at her Night People and the fire. “We’re not finished this night.”

  Jeratt understood. He and Bayel gathered half the warriors and sent them out into the forest, running silently through the forest and up the Qualinost Road. Kerian took the rest and paralleled their run across the highway, deep into the wood. Both halves of her force came upon the encampment of tribute wagons in the dark hour before dawn. Six Knights and four draconians heard the single piercing call of a nightjar. Some looked around for the bird, startled, others only heard it in their sleep in the instant before the Night People fell on them. Half the Knights died before they knew they were under attack. The draconians died instantly of arrows through the eye, their deaths causing the agonizing deaths of anyone else near. Kerian herself cut the dray horses loose and sent them into the forest. She, Bayel, and Jeratt handed out weapons from the little wagon filled with that treasure, and scooped up four pouches of coin from another. One she gave to an elf to deliver in secret to the taverner.

  “The rest is for Felan’s widow. Give her a good sword, and give her these pouches of steel. Tell her they are her child’s inheritance from his father.”

  They fired the wagons, leaving behind nothing of use.

  Before the smoke could travel far, they separated, two dozen and more warriors returning like shadows to their homes, some far-flung, others nearby. They would not come out to fight again; they would vanish into the population, become simple farmers and tradesfolk.

  “For now,” Kerian told them. “For now, until you hear otherwise.”

  For now …they murmured, all in agreement as she went among them, clasping hands, clasping arms.

  “And you?” asked one, the eager young woman who had fought beside Jeratt in the forest.

  Kerian grinned, bright and feral. “The next time the coward Thagol hears about us, he’ll know that all this kingdom is our battleground.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  That winter, in the eastern part of the kingdom, there were glad greetings as Kerian and Jeratt returned to the Lightning Falls. “Or Thunder as the dwarves name it,” Ander told Bayel. The young man had settled in well among the outlaws. Jerart’s welcome was one of shouts and laughter and hack thumping. Bayel was introduced and accepted warmly and went easily among them for the sake of his reputation in the east as a harrier of Knights.

  Kerian returned to them a different person than they had known. She had been Jeratt’s student in the arts of living, the hunter he must coach, the fletcher who couldn’t fletch, the Kagonesti servant of Qualinesti masters too far gone from her heritage.

  “She is not that now,” murmured Briar, a flame-haired elf woman, to the young man who shared her sleeping furs. “Look at her, all golden and tall and-” She shook her head. “Damn if the woman hasn’t learned how to stride.”

  Kerian thought there might be some tension over Jeratt, once the leader of the band, now deferring to his student, but none resented that because the half-elf made it clear that he didn’t mind.

  “She’s what she is,” Jeratt said, quietly to his old friends while she lay sleeping. “I’m what I am. We’re good enough, the two of us, for what’s coming now.”

  Elder, that small huddle of an ancient elf woman, said nothing to either of them upon their return, but Jeratt knew her of old, and so he knew by the feel of the forest, the air, the very stones that made the basin behind the falls, that Elder was pleased. The two began a strange conversation.

  Kerian didn’t know for sure, but she imagined that Elder was a shaman of some sort, a sorceress who practiced the kind of earth magic the Qualinesti and their aristocratic kin the Silvanesti had long ago forgotten. In a world from which magic had vanished, where even talismans of legend sputtered into unreliability, Elder kept hold of something made of the ancient whispers of the land itself. Her conversations with Elder were never easy, sometimes as wrenching as tumbling into a maelstrom, for she spoke with a woman who smelled of magic in a world from which magic leaked like heart’s blood from a wound. Yet painful as these conversations could be, confusing, often as terrifying as the very first one which had left her on her knees and vomiting, Kerian never came away from Elder without feeling that she could-here and far away-create a force of men and women who would stand against the Knights and for the elves, who might, one day, be useful to an embattled king.

  They settled into winter, the rounds of hunting and trapping, of preparing food and seeing to weapons. Kerian forbade raids on hapless travelers and on Knights.

  “Leave them alone, for now,” she said. “Let the winter settle in peace. The Knights will know we’re here when I’m ready.”

  Now and then, because he was not known to Knights here or to villagers, she sent Bayel to learn the news. He visited taverns, the forges at the river crossings where folk came and talked, he went among farmers as they used to do in the dales, a hunter come with bounty for the table in exchange for local gossip and a night by the fire. In this way Kerian learned that Headsman Chance still quartered his Knights in the taverns, that he had not forgotten the outlaw maid Kerianseray, and that he continued to hunt Kagonesti, who were seen less frequently now in the this part of the kingdom.

  Kerian learned only one stubborn tribe remained, far away in the high forest, and Briar told her this was Dar and his White Osprey.

  She learned, too, that the king was well in his palace. The mention of his name woke a longing to see him, to feel his arms around her again. Those longings she kept to herself and changed into dreams. She learned that the Queen Mother remained in health, and that the lords and ladies of the Senate were no different from seasons past. Surprisingly little had changed in Qualinesti politics. The highborn elves played a game of small losses, counting each day they hadn’t lost all as a gain. It was not a difficult game right now, for Sir Eamutt Thagol had been keeping himself and his Knights and draconians in the eastern part of the kingdom where the snow fell thickly and few traveled on the roads or even gather
ed at taverns. In the cold season after his humiliation, there was scant news of the Skull Knight.

  * * * * *

  Kerian dropped the fat brace of hares to the ground, careful to keep it well away from the bloody snow and the four dead elves. She slipped her longbow over her shoulder as she bent to crouch over the largest of the scattered corpses, the armor-clad man from whose throat sprang six arrows. Her breath hung on the icy air, gray plumes drifting over the carnage, weaving around the shafts of the white-fletched arrows. Winter arrows of the Wilder Kin.

  “Kagonesti must have got the Knight,” Jeratt said. She didn’t look up or acknowledge the obvious, and he added, “The Wilder Kin didn’t get the others.”

  The others, three elves dressed in the leathers and furs of hunters, had been sword-hacked. These were folk who lived in winter on their wits, not villagers, not farmers, but elves who supplied taverns and the tables of the wealthy. Luckless, this time. One had bled out his life from a throbbing artery severed when his left leg had been hacked off. It hung now from his flesh, a dark fat thread pulled to unravel a life. All around him the snow carried a frozen overlay of bright red blood. Another of the hunters had died of a slit throat. The third had been trampled by steel-shod hoofs, his neck broken, his skull shattered.

  The Knight who had killed them …Kenan’s lips curled in a wolfish smile. He’d been made to pay the blood-fee.

  “Y’got a bad look on you, Kerianseray.”

  Kerian pointed to the frozen spread of blood. “Knights are killing elves all over the hills, Jeratt. Qualinesti and Kagonesti. How sweet should my expression be?”

  Jeratt said nothing to that. He picked up her bow and handed it to her.

  She looked at him long, and whispering in the silence between them were the ghosts of conversations past, arguments about politics, about the occupation, about knightly abuses like that before them, and worse. The dragon’s tribute, thinly disguised as taxation, was bleeding a rich kingdom like sickness. Over the winter, the cold nights and ice-gleaming days, they all had talked of ancient hopes, the history of the elf kings right back to Silvanos himself who united all elves in Silvanesti. They spoke of ancient glory and ancient wars. They were elves and though they had lived outside the law, some for decades, they knew their history.

  Their hearts and imaginations were enchanted by ancient tales. One thing remained unknown. Would all the outlaws fight the dark Knights when she asked them to? Would they lift their swords for a king they despised? Or had they come to be so comfortable in outlawry that in the end they cared for nothing but their own survival?

  Count on them, Jeratt had told her each time she wondered.

  Kerian snatched up the brace of fat hares. “Come on, Jeratt. You want to give these to the widow, or shall I go do it alone?”

  Kerian started away down the hill, Jeratt following quickly. The crisp wind in their faces made breath stream out in wisps behind them. It scoured their faces until their cheeks shone red. At their feet it blew the snow into little dancing white devils. They went strongly, swiftly, each knowing the way over snow-covered ground. They knew the markers that had nothing to do with slender trails, a particular bend of a tree, a boulder where-if there were ground to see-the path would have split. At this boulder they went west and ran beneath the snow-laden boughs of pine trees until it seemed they went through a tunnel, so low did the trees hang with their burden. At the edge of it, in the place where the over-arching trees fell away, they stopped and stood to gaze down into the dale, where a sprawling stone house sat. It had once been the home of a prosperous farmer and his family. The farmer now was dead. He and his son had been killed in a hunting accident years before, leaving only Felyce, a widow who would not give up her homestead.

  “Well, y’know,” Jeratt had said, once in early winter when Kerian had asked how it was that Jeratt, such a strong hunter, came often back to camp with far fewer kills than might be expected, “I knew the son, and I knew the father. I’m not going to see the widow Felyce go starving.”

  Smoke rose up from the chimney closest to the front of me house. Chickens minced though the mud in the door-yard, dipping low to find the leftover corn from the morning’s feeding. The outbuildings, a stone byre and a wooden hayrick, squatted at the edge of the clearing to the north of the house. Nothing moved near them, and no one seemed to be within.

  Kerian looked for other signs of presence and saw none. She listened for the cow that must surely be in the byre by now, for Felyce did not like to go late abroad after her milker in this season when the night fell swift and sudden. Of the cow, they heard nothing. Jeratt came close, his breath warm on Kerian’s cheek.

  “Too quiet down there.”

  It was. The muscles between her shoulders tightened. Kerian dropped one shoulder, let her strung bow fall to hand. Jeratt’s long knife hissed free of its sheath and whispered home again, tested. In his own hand, with the swiftness of long-gone magic, his own bow sprang.

  The wind shifted, turning a little and coming to them from the forest behind. The tang of pine hung on that breeze, and the sudden musk of a deer. Kerian lifted her head, thinking she caught the thick odor of horse. The wind dropped then stilled. She smelled nothing. The sky darkened with a noisy wing of crows, and below a light sprang in the window beside the front door.

  “All right,” Jeratt said on an outgoing breath.

  Kerian heard, She’s all right, but hid her smile as she hung back. Jeratt loped ahead. Long-legged strides took him swiftly down the hill. Half-elven, his human parentage aged him well before an elf who bore the same years. In the last light his silvering beard shone, and his eagerness lent youthfulness to a face weathered by the forest and the seasons. Kerian followed, keeping a closer eye on their surroundings. She sniffed the wind, caught the scent of deer again but no whiff of the stable.

  Neither did she catch the scent of cooking, of soup, stew, or roast that any farrnwife would have simmering on the hob or sizzling over the fire at this darkening hour.

  Kerian stopped, still and listening. The crows had long flown over; the sky hung empty of all by dying light Again, she noted no sound of Felyce’s milk cow, no comfortable lowing.

  “Jeratt,” she called, but low.

  He heard and stopped to turn. Stopping, he saw her eyes widen in surprise as Felyce came out of her door. Even from this distance, Kerian noted the woman’s pallor, the way her hands moved in restless wringing. Jeratt moved toward her, and Kerian leaped to hold him back.

  “Wait,” she whispered. “Something’s wrong.”

  He moved again, spurred. She gripped hard. “Wait.”

  Jeratt quivered under her hand. Feigning a casualness she did not feel, Kerian called, “Good evening, Felyce!” Deliberately casting the lie, she said, “I know we’re unexpected company. I hope we aren’t intruding. We’ve been hunting and came by on the way home to share our take.”

  “Aye, who’d thought to see you, Mistress GeBis,” Felyce said, improvising a name even as she yet wrung her hands. “I thought you’d gone to kin out by the sea long before now.”

  “The winter caught us,” Kerian said, following Felyce’s lead. “I’m here for the season, like it or not. Come spring though”-she elbowed Jeratt “-come spring I’m poking up my old father here, and we’re bound for Lauranost and the sea.”

  Jeratt’s eyes widened to hear himself described as Kerian’s “old father,” but he managed to keep still. He held out the brace of hares, and Felyce came close.

  “Go,” she whispered, white-faced, her eyes bright and glittering with fear. “There’s a Knight inside. More are coming.”

  A dark shape crossed before the window. Kerian’s blood ran quicker as Jeratt said, “Are you all right, Felyce?”

  “Yes.” She pushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “I’m all right. He’s offered no harm, and he seems content to wait peaceably for his brother Knights.”

  “Why are they here?”

  Felyce shook her head. “I don’t know
. He says little. I think they are scouts, Kerian, but the why of it doesn’t matter. They hunt Kagonesti, these Knights, but they haven’t forgotten what brought them here last year, the hunt for you.”

  Again, the whiff of the stable. Kerian slapped Jeratt’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  He hung on his heel, reluctant to leave.

  “Go,” Felyce said, and now she spoke only to the half-elf, her pale cheek tinged with a flush of rose. “For the game, my thanks. Go!”

  They did, before Felyce’s unwanted guest could come again to the window, curiosity growing, but they did not go far. Up the hill and around into the forest they found a place of concealment from which to watch. Neither spoke. Neither had to. They found a shelf of stone high above Felyce’s little dell, above the low, running breeze, and wedged themselves into the stony shelter.

  Night fell. Three of Lord Thagol’s Knights came riding down the hill, following the same track Kerian and Jeratt had lately taken. They went in silence, no sound but the snorting of their horses, the clatter of hoofs on stone. The look of them, horses and men, spoke of a long ride. One pointed to the lights in the dell and rode swiftly down the hill to Felyce’s stone house. The others spurred to foflow.

  Kerian watched them, narrow-eyed and thinking.

  When they’d reached the dooryard, she leaned close to Jeratt and said, “They’ll be there all night. I don’t think they’ll hurt Felyce. “

  Jeratt growled and snatched up his bow. Kerian stopped him. “No. If we go in, they’ll kill her right now. You can count on it Go back to the camp.”

  There were, in all, but a dozen and a half outlaws there at this time, eighteen in all not counting Elder.

  “Get me ten fighters and come back here.” Her eyes on the Knights, on the stone house below, Kerian said, “Nothing will happen to Felyce while you’re gone, and we have the bastards trapped.”

  Jeratt grinned. He took up his bow and with no word slipped away into the night. He was not long gone.