by John Brown
Talen pushed the cart and the empty chicken baskets through the three miles of the muggy woods to Stag Home. When he finally broke onto the broad valley, he was so refreshed by the sunlight and breeze, so soothed by the smooth, sun-warmed dirt of the road under his bare feet that he didn’t immediately notice the fields and orchards.
Instead, he basked in the glory of the day and the fact that not only had he escaped being maimed this morning, but he’d also avoided a number of hours sweating in the barley. The peppercorns hung in a pouch around his neck. It had been two years since any merchant had sold peppercorns in the New Lands and the value of pepper had risen.
Talen looked forward to seeing if the alewife’s daughter would be selling her vegetables again. She was a looker, that one, with her dark hair, jade eyes, and the fabulous lines of her long neck. During his last visit, he’d ended up returning to her table thrice, buying a bunch of carrots each time, just so he could fix her features in his mind. And it hadn’t all been one-sided. She had glanced his way when he stood across the road eating some of her wares.
Talen’s reverie of the alewife’s daughter broke when he pushed the cart past an orchard of apple trees bent with clusters of red and yellow fruit. There should have been children climbing with baskets in the tops of those trees. Instead, the apple baskets lay scattered on the ground.
Across from the orchard a yearling calf bawled outside a field. The calf searched along the fence separating it from its mother and a dozen others who stood with their noses down among the ripe white oats mixed with peas. There should have been a harvest master there promising someone a proper beating for letting the cattle in, but there wasn’t even a beggar to chase the greedy guts out.
How could that be? Talen searched the fence lines and long rock walls. He searched the fields-nothing but a small carpet of blackbirds picking through a swath of barley that had been harvested and left to lie where it fell. There wasn’t a body to be seen. It was as if the villagers had fled the fields.
Alarm scuttled like a crab up his neck. This was the fat season for pillaging. Of course, the Bone Faces hadn’t attacked Stag Home or any of the surrounding villages for years. But that’s precisely why Stag Home would be a perfect target. The villagers would have grown overly secure, just as Talen had.
What’s more, the Bone Faces took more than livestock and goods. They took men, women, and children. Lords, he thought, if one of those Bone Faces got him, he will have wished he had fallen out of that tree and broken his back. He scanned the fields again, this time looking for signs of a raiding party.
It was said that when the Bone Faces kidnapped you for their slave ships, they cut off the pinky finger of your right hand. Then, with some black and feral magic, they used your finger to bind you to them. And so perverting was the binding that you never once wanted to even pine after what you’d lost. All your thought was to serve your master every day that blood flowed in your veins.
One of the first things they’d ask you to do, which you would do with joy, was to trick your own kin into their traps. And so it was that whole families disappeared. Some were enslaved, others were sent to the fearsome altars of Ishgar as sacrifices, for the Bone Faces were a bloody people. But Talen figured those who went to the altars met with a better end, for if the rumors were true, the Bone Face bindings were strong enough to compel a slave beyond this life and into the world of the dead.
He imagined the fate of his pinky. The Bone Face slave masters hung the fingers of their most valued slaves about their necks. The rest they locked up in a special room. And when guests came to call, especially if the slave master was wealthy with dozens of formidable slaves listed among his assets, he would take his guests into the finger room and show off his collection of desiccated and rotting digits, just as a good Koramite wife might show off her collection of dishes or lace.
There was no sign of struggle in the fields. The clans sent patrols along the coastlines during the harvest season. Last year there had been battles, but those had been far out on the Finger Islands, not on the mainland settlements. Nothing this year. But it had to be Bone Faces. What else would make the villagers flee the fields on such a fine day for work?
Goh, but how he wished Da and Ke were here with him. If he only had his bow; that would improve his odds. Da, a Koramite bow master, had taught his sons well. Talen could shoot eight arrows a minute, and not to simply fill the sky with a haphazard rain of death. No, Talen could fire at that speed and hit what he was aiming at.
But he didn’t have his bow. All he had was his knife and a pile of chicken baskets, which meant he’d have to slice open his own neck if the blighters got to him, for he wasn’t going to be turned into a villain, nor would he allow himself to be used as feed for their terrible gods.
Talen thought he might be able to lose any pursuers in the thickness of the woods. But who was to say they hadn’t already circled behind him? Besides, the safety of the village with its embankment walls was much closer.
Smoke trailed into the sky from behind the walls of the village. But it was thin, not the thick smoke of burning homes. Upon the timber and earthen wall he saw the glint of three men wearing helmets and carrying spears. The gates stood closed, which only confirmed his assessment of the situation.
Talen looked back at the woods once more. He searched along the tree line following the river that snaked its way through the valley, but saw no shallow-bottomed ship’s mast. Perhaps they had landed farther downriver. Perhaps the village had been forewarned and the raiders had yet to attack.
He quickened his pace. He did not want to be caught outside the gates. The cart and chicken baskets clattered along the dirt road as he went. He watched the shadows and trees. He kept an eye on the fields. He prepared himself, at the first sign, to run.
He passed two large wicker creels on the bank of the river. One had toppled over. Its lid hung loose, and a tangle of fat, brown eels wriggled their way back toward the water. The sight raised the hackles on the back of his neck, and Talen began to run.
Down the dirt road he went, and then it was over the bridge. On the far side of the bridge, one of the chicken baskets bounced off, but Talen paid it no mind and let it lie in the grass on the side of the road. He didn’t stop until he stood outside the gates.
The Mokaddian guards up on the wall were not looking out-they were looking in. The beef-heads were not going to see any threat coming that way. “Hoy!” Talen called.
The three guards turned.
One was that maggot Roddick, the cartwright’s son who had tormented Talen with rotten plums when he was a boy.
“Let me in,” said Talen.
“You,” said Roddick in disgust. “Stay right where you are!”
3
CHASE
Technically a Mokaddian village couldn’t refuse entrance to Talen just because he was a Koramite. Even though the Koramites had been conquered and paid tribute to their Mokaddian masters, they still maintained some rights, and refuge was one of them. But that didn’t mean they would open to him. Roddick yelled down to those within.
This village had fallen once, before it had a wall. The Bone Faces had rowed two of their small galleys up the river to a bend at the edge of the fields. They attacked just before dawn, setting the homes ablaze, running many good men through with their curved swords, and stealing anything of value, including fifteen young girls. The next year, the village built the wall.
The wall had been made by digging a wide ditch and throwing up an embankment of earth about three times the hight of a tall man. Timber spikes had been planted into that steep slope and at the bottom of the ditch. Grass and tall thistle now hid many of the spikes, but any host charging up that hill would find the spikes’ power to impale undiminished. And if the host reached the top, they’d face a timber palisade and tower. The timbers had been new when Talen was a boy. Pale yellow lichen now clung to much of the wood, but it was sturdy nevertheless.
He expected they’d be happy to give
him a bow and set him up on the wall with Roddick. But there were no raiders, no sign of any struggle whatsoever. So why had they closed the gates?
The crossbar that held the gates closed scraped. Then the gates swung open.
Out walked a dozen Mokaddian men holding their scythes, sickles, and forks like weapons. About half had shaved their heads and dyed their scalps with henna, bearing witness that they’d performed their harvest worship.
Talen glanced over his shoulder, fearing the Bone Faces had decided to attack, but there were no Bone Faces, only the river glistening in the sun and the fields of grain beyond, rolling with the breeze. When he turned back, one of the beef-heads on the wall was stringing his bow.
“It’s one of Hogan’s half-breeds,” said farmer Tilth. He held his hay fork before him as if Talen were the Dark One himself. “What are you doing here, boy?” asked Tilth.
“I’ve come to trade with Mol,” said Talen.
“He’s spying!” Roddick called from above.
Spying?
“Cast your weapons from you,” Roddick commanded. “Then lie down in the dirt.”
“You bum brain!” Talen yelled up at Roddick. “Who would want to spy on you? And I don’t have any weapons. Unless you think I might kill someone with these chicken baskets.”
“Give yourself up,” said Tilth.
Long Lark, the cooper’s son, stood next to Tilth. He tied a cattle noose at the end of one rope.
Talen looked at the men. There were the Early brothers, the one-eyed tanner and his two sons, and the young hayward who had killed a wurm not two weeks ago and received the intricate tattoo around the wrist of his right hand that signified he was no longer a boy, but a man of the Shoka clan.
These people knew him.
The men began to fan out.
“I’m honored,” said Talen, “but isn’t this a bit much for a runt like me?”
“He’s going to run,” Roddick called.
“I’m not running,” said Talen.
“Come on, son,” Tilth said.
They approached him like one might a boar caught in a trap: careful and bent on injury.
A flash of orange caught Talen’s eye, and he spotted a tall, bald man with an enormous black beard standing in the gateway. He was an official, wrapped in the blue and orange sash of the Mokaddian Fir-Noy Clan.
Fear shot through him, and Talen took a step back.
The Fir-Noy had shed plenty of Koramite blood over the years. That was not to say the Koramites hadn’t defended themselves. But everyone knew that Koramite and Fir-Noy didn’t mix. Lords, Fir-Noy didn’t mix with half of the Mokaddian clans, especially not the Shoka of Stag Home.
But there stood that Fir-Noy official, acting like he owned the place, and here the Shoka village men had their tools pointed at him as if he were a rabid dog.
By law, if a Koramite heard a Mokaddian cry out for help and did not run to the Mokaddian’s aid, the Koramite would be punished. Depending on the urgency of the situation, he might be whipped. The law, however, did not go both ways. Talen’s cries to be rescued from these madmen would go unheeded.
“I’m here for chickens,” he protested.
It was then that Long Lark broke from the pack and set himself to throw his noose.
Talen hesitated for a fraction of a second.
Long Lark adjusted his grip on the noose.
By the farting lord of pigs, Talen thought. I’ve done nothing. Nothing at all.
Koramites had been dragged behind horses before. Not here, of course, in a Shoka village. Not yet. But these were Mokaddians, after all. Fir-Noy, Vargon, or Shoka-did it matter which clan they belonged to?
He looked into their eyes and saw it did not. Talen took a step backward.
Long Lark swung his noose.
In his mind’s eye, Talen saw himself hanging from the village wall with that noose around his neck. The thought jolted him. And despite his earlier protestations, he turned tail and ran.
A shout rose up behind him so full of menace that it almost loosed his bowels.
He stretched his stride, expecting that noose to fall about his shoulders or to catch an arrow in his back. He ran like a thief, like a rabbit coursed by dogs. He ran with the speed only fear and bewilderment bring.
He sprinted back over the bridge and thought he saw the flash of an arrow out of the corner of his eye. He needed to make the woods, the only place where he might have a chance to lose these madmen. Back up the road he ran, the dirt hard under his bare feet.
Talen was not the fastest runner in the district, but he wasn’t the slowest either. He knew he should measure his pace, but he’d seen that lazy-eyed Sabin among them, him and his shaved head and violent speed, and Talen sprinted for all he was worth.
He could hear the men behind him and pushed himself until his breath came in ragged gasps and his head felt dizzy. But it did not last. By the time he reached the oat field the rogue cows had broken into, his lungs and legs were burning, and he had to stop. He panted and turned.
Sabin, a look of murder in his eyes, was almost upon him.
Movement farther up the road drew his attention: a rider galloping toward him on a horse. They were boxing him in.
Lords, but he had to make the woods.
Two more ragged breaths and he hopped the fence on his left and the fieldstones piled up next to it and struggled up a fallow field of knee-high grass.
The tall grass pulled at his feet. The slope sapped his strength. But neither seemed to slow Sabin.
The woods stood only a few paces away.
Talen glanced back to see Sabin reach out with his long tattooed arm for Talen’s hair.
River loved Talen’s hair. Loved it long. And at that moment he wished he’d never listened to his sister and her stupid appraisals of men.
Sabin grabbed a handful of Talen’s hair. He yanked, brought Talen up short, then backward to the ground.
Talen scrabbled to his knees, but Sabin kicked his side and knocked the breath right out of him.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. By the time his body finally remembered it had lungs, the rest of the men were rushing up the hill.
Sabin kicked at Talen’s face, but Talen curled up and the blow glanced off the back of his head.
Someone struck him with a staff. Another kick caught him in the hip.
Talen tried to get up and lunge out of the circle, but before he could get his legs, one of the tanner’s boys landed a blow to Talen’s head that dazed him and knocked away all sense of balance. He turned, falling, and saw a sea of men.
Someone kicked him in the back and the pain made him gasp. Someone else went for his neck.
Talen brought his arms up to shield his face.
“Where’s that rope?” one of them shouted.
Talen tried to roll over.
“Out of the way!” someone shouted.
“Now you’ll get it, half-breed,” a man said.
The blows lessened and then stopped. Talen glanced up.
Sabin stood above him, lifting what must have been a forty-pound fieldstone the color of fresh liver.
He raised it high, preparing to crack Talen’s head like a nut.
4
BOUNTY
Talen rolled away, trying to escape Sabin’s stone.
“Hold!” someone shouted.
A horse snorted.
Talen tried to dart through the legs of the men surrounding him and was flung back to the ground. He froze, cringed, waiting for the crushing stone. But it did not fall.
“Twenty stripes, Sabin,” a man said. “I swear it!”
Talen glanced up. The men were not looking at him. They were looking at the bailiff of Stag Home who sat upon his dappled gray horse, glaring at Sabin. It was he who had been the rider bearing down on Talen from the other direction.
Sabin hesitated, and then, almost in defiance, he dropped the stone perilously close to Talen’s head.
“That,” said the bailiff, poi
nting at Sabin, “has just made you my riding horse.”
The bailiff was not a large man. But he was strong and fearless in battle. His face was shaven close, which revealed three scars where a bear had tried to take off his jaw. But it was his eyes, as pale as the horse upon which he rode, that fixed Talen’s gaze. Those eyes had scared Talen as a boy. He had thought the man was full of evil. His father had convinced Talen otherwise, but, faced with those eyes, Talen could never maintain his certainty.
The bailiff directed that hard gaze at the other men. “What is this here? Why are the fields empty?”
“There are Koramite Sleth about,” someone said.
Sleth? Soul-eaters?
Sleth were those who had given themselves over to Regret, the one Creator of seven who, when he’d seen what he and the seven other Creators had wrought, recognized that it was flawed and despised the work of his hands. To the men, women, and children who came into his twisted power, he gave horrible gifts-unnatural strength and appetites, odd growths and manifestations of beasts, and the power, with a touch, to steal Fire and soul. The stories of Sleth and the hunts the righteous led against them were legion.
Had Talen heard that right?
“This one ran like a monster,” one of the men said.
“Yes,” said the bailiff. “But it appears you caught him anyway.”
Talen looked up at the bailiff, but a wave of pain and nausea slammed into him, and he was forced to turn and vomit into the grass. He hurt everywhere.
“Get up,” said the bailiff.
Talen gagged once more, spit. He took three breaths to steady himself. He was dizzy and shaking.
He got to one knee. Something was running out of his nose. He wiped his face with his sleeve expecting blood, but it was nothing more than snot. There was a ringing in his ears, and he didn’t know if he could stand.
But he did know one thing: he would not show weakness. Not in front of these men.
Two more breaths. He could barely open one of his eyes.
