Seer's Blood

by Doranna Durgin

  Keeping a wary eye below — but knowing his own noise wouldn’t travel downhill as well as theirs came up — Dacey crossed behind the barn to the other point, checking out the back of the hall. There were no windows in the back wall — sassafras logs, with a sweet cinnamon tint to the old wood — just a few high transoms. If the Annekteh managed to hole up in this hall, it would be difficult to get to them. The building was inviolable from the rear and a frontal approach from the river flat would leave the attackers in the open. The only successful strike against this structure would be a burning campaign from the rear.

  If there were hostages, they would die.

  So there could be no hostages. And he would have to figure a way to get any confrontation away from this building, or far too many people would be lost in the taking of it.

  He would have liked to get a closer look at the east slope, to see how approachable the timbering area was, but that would require several hours of maneuvering, and it was time to leave here — before he pushed his luck too far. With a careful eye to the men who sparred in front of the barn, Dacey headed back up the point.

  He was the most vulnerable here, climbing away with his back to the enemy, and his heart hammered harder from the tension than from the work of the climb. Once atop the ridge, he found the patrol path and moved himself well to the other side of the ridge flat from it, for even though he had seen the plainsmen heading the other way, there might certainly be more than one patrol out. When he reached the head of the hollow, he would head west again, back to camp.

  But the ridge widened as it reached the head, and this side of it curved gently west, threatening to disorient him. The only way to check his position was to head to the other side and sight in on the seam of the two ridges where he’d started out, and that would mean passing over the patrol path again.

  Couldn’t be helped. Cautiously, he moved crossways over the ridge, discovered he’d indeed come as far as he should have, and pointed himself west again.

  Voices.

  Dacey froze, pointing a commanding finger at Mage that stopped the dog in mid-step. Indecipherable snatches of conversation, but with an accent that made them instantly identifiable. Close, and getting closer. Dacey slid off the path and down the hill, making good use of the rhododendron that so loved any hint of a north-facing curve. Mage crouched down beside him, lifting his nose to the scent of the newcomers but unconcerned by it. They approached without paying him any mind, not even raising their gaze from the path as they searched for purchase in the slanted ground.

  Dacey waited, knife in hand but at the ground, between leaf layers where it would create no tell-tale glint of metal. Only his eyes moved, following them as they drew abreast. Go on, he urged them. Only a few more steps, and he was safe....

  A few more steps he wouldn’t get. One of the men stopped and said something Dacey couldn’t catch, starting off-trail. Mage lowered his head, his hackles rising in threat.

  Dacey gave an inner groan as the guard, still walking, fumbled at his pants; the man had only left the path to relieve himself. He spotted Dacey before he even came to a stop. Dacey erupted from his camouflage, knife first, barreling through the astonished plainsman’s hasty defense. Just a man. Not even Annekteh. He buried his knife deep under the man’s ribs, jerking it out again to slash across his throat, blinking against the spray of warm blood that washed across his face as they tumbled to the ground together.

  A yell of anger warned him of the second man; he turned, still half entangled in the first, scrubbing his eyes clear with his forearm. The man was almost upon him before he realized it, and he scrambled backwards, crablike, clutching stickily at a knife that was no match for the sword sweeping down at him. A quick roll; sharp metal hit the ground and chipped up bits of dirt and leaf that stuck to his face. Another quick roll, downhill, sliding more than turning, nearly out of control —

  He clawed himself to a stop as Mage’s angry snarl filled his ears. The plainsman’s bellow told him the dog had scored, and suddenly all he could think of was that heavy sword cleaving his dog in two — sharp fear fueled his scramble back up the hill. The two were sparring, the man limping and slashing, the dog snapping, leaping in and out of range with an agility that belied his handicap. Then Dacey was no longer thinking at all, as he snatched up the dead man’s sword and ran the plainsman through from behind.

  The man slowly turned to face Dacey, his disbelieving gaze on the sword point sticking out of his body. He dropped his own sword, touched the bloodied metal that was killing him, and gave Dacey one last look of clear astonishment. Then his knees gave out and he folded lifelessly.

  Dacey turned away, his chest heaving with exertion. Only men. Revulsion washed over him; he closed his eyes, closed them tight. Then he stumbled to the knife he’d dropped, wiped it roughly against his leg, and walked away from the slaughter. Not Annekteh, not this time. Men, just men, wanting just as much as he to live through this thing.

  Dark confusion, dark pain, silent screams...Blaine screaming, Blaine terrified...

  And this was just the start. Dacey’s walk turned to a jog to a run, a run that couldn’t put the last few minutes behind him no matter how long he kept it up.

  Mage followed at his heels.

  ~~~~~

  Blaine lay quietly on top of the high rock. With her eyes closed, she could pretend it was her rock. The breeze that blew across her face was the same, and once again she was hidden from the world below, impervious to its problems. Her rock. Above her homestead. Where Sarie and Willum played, and Cadell waited on her with some chore or lecture. Completely lost in the fantasy, she sighed contently, shifting her arm to dislodge a pebble from beneath her shoulder blade.

  Twenty feet below her, Blue gave a bellow of warning that nearly stopped Blaine’s heart. She jerked over on her stomach and peered over the edge of the granite as the other dogs, lost in the trees, joined in the chorus, more than making up for tardiness with enthusiasm. By the time she spotted them, they were beating their tails against trees and each other with the sincerity of their apology to Dacey.

  For the first time, he gave the animals only a perfunctory greeting. His face was set and closed. Hard. He hadn’t even noticed her. And...were his clothes wet? Pleasant as it was — warm, almost — it sure wasn’t warm enough to take a dunking.

  Questions. Always he presented her with more questions...but with that look on his face, she wasn’t about to ask them. As he straightened from the dogs and glanced around the camp to locate her, Blaine called to him, giving him a little wave as he looked up and tried to find her.

  He lifted his hand in greeting, and sat down by the warm ashes of the morning’s fire.

  That was it? After all this waiting? Placing her feet sideways on the extreme slope, Blaine made her way down the hill that butted back up against the rock, getting only halfway down before she called out, “Well? What did you find?”

  “What Trey told me I’d find,” Dacey said.

  Nope, not talkative.

  Not that he was ever what she’d actually call talkative.

  “I guess that means we can trust him. Some.”

  Dacey retrieved two partially burnt sticks from the ashes and laid them as the base for the evening fire, then seemed to realize she had spoken. “Some,” he repeated. “Tomorrow, Blaine, don’t wander off. We’ll go talk to Trey together.”

  “If you like,” she said, being clear it was agreement and not acquiescence. A tiny prod, to see what she could get from him.

  Nothing.

  “Dacey —”

  He gave her a sharp look, cut her right off. “No.”

  Maybe it was her hurt that spoke to him; maybe his own innate sense of fairness. But something made him look away, to say, his voice tight and strained, “I’m too used to doing some things on my own, Blaine.”

  That was it. Not enough to suit her...but it was a request, and she honored it.

  He laid the fire and cooked in silence; they ate in silence. Blaine
took a short walk south along the ridge with Blue, stretching her legs, giving Dacey some time to work out whatever had grabbed him up so bad. When she returned she found him no less troubled, and for a while she sat away from the fire, with only her thoughts and Chase, who lay on her feet, for company. Dacey sat opposite the fire from her, and she watched him, not caring that he was aware of her scrutiny.

  Something had happened while he was scouting, that was for sure, but she might never know what it was.

  Blaine sighed and found she was stroking Chase’s homely head; she pulled her hand up and put it in her lap with the other, sitting quietly. There was no need for conversation, after all; there was enough of that in the woods already. Since early twilight two horned owls had been booming back and forth at each other, one on the top of her ridge, the other halfway up the hill opposite them. Their cries wavered and echoed against the hills, sometimes lost in the rustle of the rising breeze in the trees. The air had grown damp as well as chill, catching the odor of the ground and holding it close to the earth.

  Weather coming.

  Blaine checked the sky and found that the stars were mostly hidden behind a layer of clouds. But the moon, almost directly overhead, was at its strongest, and its light pushed through. Blaine slid to her knees to get a better look, leaning back on her ankles in a limber way she took for granted.

  She stifled a small cry of delight, for the moon was circled by a hazy halo of light, shaded faintly by the colors of the rainbow. A glance at Dacey confirmed that he was still deep in his own thoughts, and though she’d have rather shared it with him, she contented herself with watching the haloed moon while the owls quarreled at one another.

  Never mind that it all meant rain for the next day.

  Blue ambled in from whatever investigating he’d been up to, and settled heavily by her side. Mage appeared from the darkness with him, but circled the camp restlessly, casting the breeze. For once, Dacey seemed to pay him no mind. The hound circled and mumbled, and when he finally stopped, it was to throw his head up and moan his way into a howl.

  Dacey looked up from the fire to regard his dog with surprise; Mage’s cry hung in the air, shocking the owls to silence. Suddenly Whimsy gave a little yip and added her voice, and then Blue’s rough tones joined in. From wherever they sprawled, Dacey’s hounds joined the chorus; it echoed around the two humans with an eerie command of the night. Unearthly, mesmerizing...gooseflesh raised on Blaine’s arms.

  The song ended as suddenly as it had begun, and Mage limped back to Dacey.

  Blaine nearly lost her balance when Blue shoved his head under her arm to demand petting in the wake of his song, but she was not distracted from the fact that Dacey checked the air with a bit of shaved tinder. Nor was she too busy with the petting to remember that the breeze had also been from the north the last time Mage had called.

  Chase, apparently dissatisfied with the conclusion of the last howl, started another, and the others quickly joined him; Blaine had to shove Blue away from her ear. This time the howling was innocent, devoid of the quality which had bemused her moments before — almost invigorating.

  When she heard a new voice, Blaine glanced, startled, at Dacey. Not only was he grinning, he was imitating the dogs with an accuracy that told her it wasn’t the first time. She laughed, and after a moment, tried it herself, following Blue’s intonations and surprised at the sudden wild, happy feeling coursing through her. No wonder the dogs sang so often, if it made them feel so free, yet so completely part of each other!

  When the chorus ended, the night closed in again, dark and silent. Blaine looked at Dacey, who hesitated on the brink of retreating back into his own silence. But then she couldn’t help it; she giggled. How silly, to howl with a bunch of dogs! How...remarkable that it was so fun and easy to do!

  After a moment, he grinned back at her. The owl on the opposite ridge grew bold and called softly into the darkness, and despite the coming rain, the air seemed clearer.

  ~~~~~

  Nekfehr grimaced at the howling, flinging the contents of his ’bacco spit-cup on the fire with a vehemence borrowed from the annektehr’s unwilling, unnamed human vessel. A disadvantage, he realized for the first time, of the Annekteh commonality — hearing that howling from so many ears at once.

  The sound had somehow — so quickly — come to represent Shadow Hollers resistance. Come morning the humans would perform their tasks with renewed secretive, grim determination. He wasn’t even sure they understood why.

  Nor did the Annekteh. But they knew someone worked against them. More than just the petty sabotage, more than dark looks of defiance. Someone had killed, had turned plains blade against plainsman, an unmistakable act of rebellion.

  It was not to be tolerated.

  Only one of the Shadow Hollers men carried the guilt of it...but all of them would pay.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 13

  “You got something particular in mind, you want me along?” Blaine negotiated the ridge behind Dacey, speaking to his back as they walked the faint trail to the clearing and their meeting with Trey. She wasn’t much looking forward to it, although she didn’t distrust him. Not exactly. It was more a matter of not knowing him well enough to trust him.

  Dacey seemed to have made some peace with himself today, but his natural reticence was still at the fore. “Just...didn’t want you sitting alone today, is all,” he said, waiting long enough that she thought he wasn’t going to answer at all, and she wasn’t at all sure of the one she got.

  The rain she had predicted was falling on them, a drizzle that had taken a while to work its way through the trees but now put a faint sheen on the branches and buds around them. Blaine’s shoulders were long soaked through and the front of her shirt clung to her slight frame; she plucked it away from her skin in annoyance, wishing it had at least been cool enough to close up her jacket. Mage, his fur spiky wet, stalked stiffly at Dacey’s side with complaint in his eyes. Dacey himself seemed resigned.

  As they sighted the clearing and headed down to it, Mage hesitated and took a few steps uphill, his eyes on Dacey. “All right,” Dacey told him, and the hound moved up to skirt the edge of the woods while they entered the clearing and felt the full force of the rain.

  And full force it was, opening up on them with apparent malicious glee. Trey called to them; he was standing out of the rain, in the windbreak of several young pines at the lower edge of the clearing. Memory assailed her — standing in the rain outside a trio of young pines...

  Blaine hesitated, startled, even as Dacey lifted his hand in greeting and moved ahead. She stumbled after him, struggling with the briars, with her wet and damaged boots on the slick ground. The rain ran down her face, dripping off her brows and lashes; she could barely see Dacey stepping into the shelter of the pines, and —

  Sudden commotion, a sound of surprise and anger, a swirl of motion in between the trees pines —

  Blaine squinted through the rain, alarmed, uncertain. “Dacey?”

  “Blaine, git —”

  A boy’s shout cut him off, a shout and a cry of protest and an unmistakable grunt of surprised pain.

  “Dacey!” She lunged for the trees, would have plunged right into them — if a substantial, unfamiliar figure hadn’t stepped out and brought her up short, almost yanking her off her feet. Angrily, she pushed away the tendrils of wet hair that plastered to her face and tangled in her lashes, and discovered a grim-faced stranger — a huge dark-haired young man who held her tight, his big hand latched onto her arm.

  Blaine twisted away — or tried to. She might as well have been held by stone. The young man only pulled her closer and shoved the wet gleam of his knife at her, a swift and silent warning. She drew in a startled breath, frozen at the sight of it so close to her eyes.

  Not so Mage. His bad leg hoisted out of the way, Mage charged down the hill. The big youth gave a shout of warning, jerking Blaine around as he aimed a solid kick at the dog. Yelping, Mage skidded sideways,
half-lifted off the ground.

  Mage! Blaine didn’t think, didn’t consider the consequences or the odds...she just did, while the boy was still off-balance, while she had the chance to yank at him and make it worse, at the same time kicking him behind the knee; the leg went right out from under him. He fell heavily, and she was on him in an instant, jamming one knee in his stomach and the other on his groin.

  Not all of Lenie’s advice had been useless.

  The youth turned greenly white and writhed beneath her, but Blaine rode it out, scrabbling up the knife he dropped and holding it right at his throat, holding tight to the slick-wet, pine needle-covered hilt.

  Mage, half in, half out of the pines, growled steadily. No one else said a word.

  She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all. She shoved the knife right up against the boy’s throat — big as he was, he was still a boy, probably not any older than Blaine herself, and that gave her courage — along with the marked paleness of his face. “Don’t you move,” she warned him, and then raised her voice. “Dacey?”

  The reply came in Trey’s voice, equally wary. “Burl?”

  Trey.

  Traitorous, mold-brained Trey!

  Blaine scowled down at the screwed-up face of the boy beneath her; he still fought to control his pain. She hoped he couldn’t pee for a week. “You’d better tell ’im you’re in trouble,” she said, and the rain dripped off her nose and onto his face.

  After a moment, working hard to raise his voice with all her weight on his stomach and keeping a wary eye on the knife, he called, “Trey!”

  Trey pushed his way out from beneath the heavy boughs and stopped short at the sight of them, his alert expression turning into a scowl. “Burl! I told you to watch for her!”

  Blaine glared at him. “You traitor — we trusted you!” Burl wiggled beneath her, and she hit him. “Keep still!”

  “If you don’t get off my stomach I’m gonna throw up,” he groaned.

  “Then throw up!”