Redemption of Thieves (Book 4)

by C. Greenwood

  Terrac headed our group in the first row and I managed to place myself beside him. Despite the calm I tried to project, I was as frightened as anyone, and it was reassuring to be near him. The ropes binding my hand to his were so tight they bit into my skin, but I scarcely minded that. His presence was familiar and comforting. More, it brought out the competitive streak still strong between us, helping me put a brave face on my feelings and wrestle the encroaching panic into submission.

  Escape. I had to focus on that hope. I looked at Terrac’s face, strong in the glow of the distant fires, and when he caught me watching him, he offered a faint, encouraging smile. He wasn’t afraid. So I wouldn’t be either.

  But it was frustrating to be free of our cage yet prevented from running by both the cord binding us together and the vigilance of our enemies.

  Our line attached itself to the end of similar rows of prisoners moving out of the clearing. We followed a lightly beaten path leading a short distance through the trees and into another larger area where the bonfires were located. As our destination came into sight, a commotion broke out ahead. Some of the prisoners, possibly sensing the approach of a horrible fate even if they didn’t know what it was, broke into a frenzy. The line shifted and churned and the rest of us, being bound together, were pulled into the confusion. Suddenly we were all stumbling into one another’s backs, tripping over our ropes.

  The Skeltai guards were swift to restore order, their spears darting into the crowd to punish instigators. Cries sounded from the prisoners. The man before me was downed by a spear. In the same instant Terrac dropped limply to the ground. I hadn’t seen any blow fall on him. No one had touched him, yet he had collapsed. And now his dead weight dragged at my wrist, forcing me to fall to one knee and crouch over him.

  “Terrac? Terrac!” I cried, my voice going high as I used my free hand to shake his shoulder.

  There was no response. I bit my lip with no idea if he was truly hurt or if this was some ploy. If it was a game he was playing at, it was a dangerous one.

  The Skeltai moved through the disordered crowd, arranging us into lines again. The commotion quickly calmed as the responsible parties were dispatched. Our captors commenced cutting away the handful of dead from our rope lines so we could move forward again. When a pair of savages reached us, they muttered to one another, the larger of the two nudging Terrac with his foot.

  My friend didn’t move or show any sign of feeling, appearing every bit as dead as the others. I held my breath, praying it truly was only a trick—one he wouldn’t be caught in.

  The larger Skeltai laughed and said something unintelligible to his companion. Then he was kneeling to cut my wrist free of Terrac’s and to sever the ropes joining our ankles. I was hauled to my feet and shoved roughly so that I stumbled forward. The Fists bound behind me had no choice but to follow.

  We left Terrac behind, lying motionless on the ground. I didn’t dare take even a backward look at him for fear of calling attention. But there was nothing to prevent me stretching out my magic after him, straining to sense his life force. I breathed a sigh of relief when I felt it still burning steadily within him.

  I wasn’t bitter at his abandoning the rest of us. At this point it was each of us for himself. I only hoped he succeeded at whatever escape he had in mind, even as I stumbled forward to face my own fate.

  We passed through the screen of trees and entered a larger clearing, ringed by torches and alight in the hotter glow of the bonfires. Bodies filled the space—men, women, and children of all ages, easily identifiable as Skeltai by their bloodless coloring and scanty clothing of animal hides.

  They congregated with unnatural stillness and silence for such a great audience, their cold eyes turned on our party as we were led into their presence. This was clearly a solemn occasion for the crowd, their grave attitude doubtless a sign of respect for their shaman and their gods, rather than we who were about to lose our lives.

  I ignored the strange, unreadable faces turned my way and focused on finding a possible exit from this place if the opportunity came. I looked for a thin point in the crowd, an opening through the mass of bodies ringing us. But there was none.

  Fighting down despair, I tried to think instead of Terrac running free somewhere out there. At least one of us had escaped this horror. Would he ever find his way home, or was he doomed to be picked up by the enemy?

  As we prisoners were forced through the path opened by the crowd, the heat of the bonfires drove away the chill of the night. The skins of my fellow captives and those of our silent observers gleamed with sweat beneath the eerie torchlight and I imagined mine did too. The roaring fires were built on piles of dried logs, their flames reaching so high if there had been any overhanging branches from the forest trees they would have caught the flames. Cinders and black smoke swirled on a draft that carried them up into the night sky.

  It was a long time since there had been a break in the overhead canopy to allow me a glimpse of the stars. Now I took comfort in the familiarity of the starlight and my brief glimpse of the moon as it slid behind a silvery cloud. As long as I kept my eyes fixed on the skies, I could forget how I had fallen into this new world of nightmares and shadows.

  We were led in a double line through our audience. Their faces were expressionless masks, their eyes deep and pitiless. Something uneven crunched beneath my boots, and when I looked down, I discovered we walked a path made of crushed bones. I wondered if these were the victims of past years’ sacrifices and if my bones would be joining these gory paving-stones before the night was over.

  But no. Best not to think of that. Best to look straight ahead and pretend they were only ordinary pebbles and stones I trod over.

  A small hand shot out to touch my arm, startling me. The Skeltai child didn’t grab me or try to slow my progress. She just stared up at me with large, serious eyes over shockingly hollow cheeks and trailed her fingers wonderingly down my skin—as pale as hers—as I passed by. Perhaps she was unaccustomed to seeing one who appeared to share her ancestry sacrificed.

  I looked ahead and realized the way was edged on either side by outthrust hands reaching to touch us or bits of our clothing as we made our final walk. I guessed this was customary but the touch of so many cold, unfamiliar hands was disturbing. When I whipped my head around again in search of the child’s face, so disturbing in its emaciation it stirred even me to pity, it was gone, swallowed in a sea of more thin, white faces.

  These people were on hard times, I realized. So many looked half-starved. It was no wonder they believed they were out of favor and needed to appease their gods.

  I looked past the wall of human bodies on either side of our ragged procession and ahead to what awaited us. A high platform of stone stood above the ground, taller than the heads of the onlookers and accessible by a wide set of steps leading to the top. The great platform was wide enough to accommodate dozens. A canopy of green leaves and willow fronds had been woven in a wood frame to shelter one area and beneath this stood a solemn row of six men.

  The shamans of the tribes. I somehow knew that without being told. Wearing feathered robes and hideously decorated headpieces of animal skulls, they were hardly recognizable as man and not beast. They held scepters of wood and bone with the dried heads of small animals affixed to their tips and their bodies were painted scarlet, not even a glimpse of pale skin visible beneath.

  They made such a ghastly sight lining the head of the steps, their nightmarish features lit intermittently orange and black by the flickering light of the bonfires, it wouldn’t take much imagination to believe they weren’t mere mortals, but horrifying beings conjured from the depths of another world.

  One of the shamans signaled our guards, and I found myself being cut free of the rope that bound me to the rest of the prisoners.

  Was this it then? Was I to be the first to die? I squared my shoulders but inside I was trembling as I was herded forward by a pair of Skeltai and pushed up the steps. I stumbled as I cli
mbed up to the platform and one of my guards caught me before I tumbled.

  “Thank you,” I said, struck by the incongruity of thanking one who was helping me to my death.

  The savage inclined his head and I wondered if I was imagining the flash of respect in his eyes. Surely so. How could he feel respect for someone he was about to slaughter like an animal? Yet now that I cast out my magic sense, I felt it in all of them, the surrounding spectators. It was there in their silence, their solemn gazes. It was the kind of reverence you sensed at the burial of a good man, the stillness of a sickroom where a friend lay dying. But I was no friend of these people. I was an enemy, a sacrifice for their bloodthirsty gods.

  The bow, still slung over my shoulder though I had no arrows, burned warm on my back. It came to me then. The admiration these people felt wasn’t for Ilan of Dimmingwood. It was for the bearer of the bow. The barra-banac.

  I looked back at the upturned faces of the audience, wondering if I could use my newfound status to save myself. But my guards shoved me onward.

  When I reached the top step, the shamans emerged from their willow-woven canopy and surrounded me. I looked into their nightmarish faces and tried to slow the pounding of my heart. They were men of flesh and blood, no matter how their paint and feathers suggested otherwise. I recognized the old shaman I had previously spoken with among them. It was he who placed himself directly before me.

  “You come to offer us the barra-banac?” he asked.

  I stared. Why had he pretended not to speak my tongue before? To throw me off balance?

  Recovering from my surprise, I said, “You know I haven’t come to deliver the bow. I told you before I’ve no intention of handing it over.”

  The old shaman’s eyes revealed nothing but I sensed my answer wasn’t unexpected.

  He was quick for an old man. In a flash, a narrow-bladed knife appeared in his hand and he pressed it against my throat. My guards grabbed me, their strong hands leaving me helpless to shrug an inch to either side, even had I been foolish enough to try it.

  The shaman’s voice was level as if we had exchanged pleasantries as he said, “You think about it, kinswoman. Maybe change your mind?”

  I resisted the urge to swallow, feeling the pressure of the sharp blade poised to slice into my skin. It was an effort to speak as if it wasn’t there.

  “My decision is made,” I said. “You would use the bow to destroy the people of the provinces—my people. Death is preferable to placing so powerful a weapon into your hands.”

  I held my breath, feeling the pressure on the knife deepen. The shallowest of cuts opened on my skin, wetness trickling from the wound and down my collar. I kept my expression smooth and met the shaman’s stare, eye to eye. Neither of us was going to give way.

  Another shaman stepped up. He was a big fellow, a head taller than his companions and the only one of them who didn’t look as if he had lived through a hundred hard winters. The level of cruelty I sensed in him made the hairs on my arms stand stiff.

  Addressing the crowd, the big man raised his voice in the Skeltai tongue. The old shaman translated for my benefit.

  “My people of the feather and the hoof, this traitor to her ancestors, this holder of the magic bow, shows contempt for our ways and our gods. Although we would treat her as a lost sister, she refuses to embrace our traditions and to return the bow to its rightful people. So I say, let her serve us in another way. Let us make a sacrifice tonight that will surely please the gods more than the blood of all these insignificant cattle.”

  The speaker’s eyes raked disdainfully over the Fists and other prisoners gathered below the steps.

  “Tonight we offer the blood of the bow’s bearer, and through her, the life force of the first barra-banac himself.”

  Whispers of unease rippled through the crowd and the big shaman held up his hands for quiet.

  But at that moment, another form of disruption stirred the audience. People parted or were shoved aside to make way for a handful of Skeltai warriors who approached the dais, dragging along a battered and disheveled-looking prisoner. Despite his injuries, the new prisoner somehow managed to walk with a straight back and his head held high.

  My heart sank as I recognized the brave figure.

  Chapter Eight

  “Terrac…”

  I was hardly aware of the dismayed murmur escaping my lips until I felt the older shaman’s sharp eyes on me. I quickly smoothed my expression to one I hoped didn’t betray too great an interest in the fate of the newcomer. I watched as he was drawn forward. Some guttural words were exchanged between his captors and the other Skeltai guards and I saw they were about to add him to the line of Fists.

  But the old shaman interrupted the proceedings, calling out an order. Nobody translated for me, but whatever he said gave pause to Terrac’s captors. Instead of attaching Terrac to the line of Fists, they dragged him up the steps and onto the platform.

  “Wait a minute. What’s going on?” I demanded of the old one, forgetting for a moment the need to seem unconcerned. “I thought sacrificing me was going to be the high point of the ceremony. What are you doing with him?”

  No one paid any attention to my questions. The shamans were conferring with one another. The old one seemed to be the leader of the lot and it was he who did most of the talking now.

  When Terrac reached the top of the steps, I managed to catch his gaze for an instant. He smiled weakly as he was hauled past me but I could see by the paleness of his face and the way he sagged between his captors that he was in pain. He had the look of one fighting to remain on this side of consciousness as he was taken directly to the stone altar at the heart of the dais.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” I repeated, sweat breaking out on my upper lip. I would have grabbed the old shaman’s arm and forced him to answer me if my arms hadn’t been pinned firmly behind me.

  When the old one turned to face me, I detected a gleam of triumph in his eyes.

  He said, “Your friend attempted to escape, I am told, and was then doubly foolish in returning with the hope of freeing the rest of you. For that mistake he has earned the honor of beginning the blood rites.”

  My stomach lurched but I summoned what defiance I could. “No. Let it be me,” I said. “What is the need of killing any of these others? Surely the bearer of the bow is a great enough sacrifice?”

  The shaman bared sharp, yellow teeth. “I think not. Maybe when you see your friends die you will have a change of heart concerning our offer.”

  I knew he was toying with me. He knew full well what it would do to me to watch this particular prisoner die. It was not by accident Terrac had been chosen to go first. I cursed whatever foul magic let the savage see into my heart and mind. But I held my tongue. If only I could buy a little time, just a few minutes to form a plan…

  But that opportunity wasn’t given to me. As I stood heartsick and frozen to the spot, Terrac was tied across the altar.

  The old shaman said to me, “Do not stand back. I think you will wish to miss nothing of what is to come.”

  He motioned my guards and I found myself dragged forward to stand directly before the altar. I looked down on Terrac lying bound and helpless across the stone, already stained dark with the blood of a thousand past sacrifices. His face was taut with pain but he betrayed none of the fear he must have felt. His captors had removed his armor, exposing a bright patch of red spreading across his shoulder and the tear of a jagged wound beneath his ripped shirt.

  The shamans ringed the six-sided altar and each produced a long, jagged dagger. The old one raised his hands to the night sky and shrilled a short speech I couldn’t understand. The audience answered with enthusiasm, the night erupting into the noise of stamping feet and animal-like screams that echoed around the clearing.

  When the head shaman made a sharp cutting motion the crowd instantly stilled. The old one threw back his head and began a bone-chilling chant, that same chant we had first heard back in the ca
ges. When he paused, the younger shaman next to him took up the song and was followed by a third, until the singing passed around the entire circle. Then silence descended. I felt the audience holding their breaths and realized I was holding mine.

  The head shaman towered over Terrac but his attention was on me, a question in his eyes.

  If I intended to stop this, it must be now. I opened my mouth to speak the words that would stay his hand, to give away the bow. But then my gaze found Terrac’s, and he looked at me as if there was no audience around us and no knife hovering over him.

  Don’t give them what they want. Hold firm.

  I could almost hear his voice in my head. He didn’t want me to give our enemies the means to destroy the province, not even if I could save his life by doing it.

  So I swallowed my protest and pressed my lips tight.

  The shaman hesitated no longer. His knife flashed, severing fingers from his victim’s hand. Terrac screamed in pain and I squeezed my eyes closed.

  I tried to shut out everything around me. Clenching my jaw, I saw Terrac and I swimming together in Dancing Creek and climbing the rocks near Boulder’s Cradle. Terrac sitting on the grass helping me learn to write my letters. Terrac hunting alongside me and Brig. I summoned my magic to blot out the pain and impending death, even as I drew to mind another ordinary scene—the old campsite at RedRock, where Terrac and I had spent so much of our youth. I was atop a rock over the cave, looking down. For an instant I saw the familiar green clearing and campfire. Then, suddenly, I was soaring impossibly high and it was no longer Dimmingwood spread out far below but a dark forest of strange, towering trees. At the heart of that black forest, I saw a clearing where a scene from a nightmare unfolded before my eyes.

  A great stone altar stood before a crowd of people so tiny they seemed like ants. I saw a suffering figure stretched across that altar and a handful of evil little men bent over him, tormenting him with small, shiny blades. Beyond them waited dozens of other frightened captives bound together and awaiting the moment when they too would be led up those stone steps and bound across the bloody rock.