Hinterland g-2

by James Clemens

  Brant slowed them and drew Dart into a niche. He pulled a bit of scarf from an inner pocket of his cloak. It was mere roughspun. He nodded for her hand. She held it out, and he deftly wrapped her palm, cinching it tight to hold the wound closed.

  “Can you move your fingers?”

  She demonstrated that she could, though it hurt.

  “Nothing appears deeply maimed,” he mumbled. “But you should see a healer.”

  She withdrew her hand from his, suddenly uncomfortable with his touch. “I will.”

  They stepped back onto the stairs. Voices echoed from above. Inquiries called out, from shadowknights drawn by the commotion. A voice rang through, edged with panic.

  “They fled that way with the daemon!”

  Pyllor.

  Brant sighed through his nose. Dart sensed that maybe he was reconsidering his mercy. They headed down before any pursuers closed in on them.

  With the shock worn away, the enormity of what had happened struck Dart. Pyllor and his two cohorts, members of the Fiery Cross, would soon have the story of Dart and her daemon fluttering to the top of Stormwatch, to the Warden’s Eyrie and the castellan’s hermitage. Kathryn would be furious. Dart despaired. In a moment, all had come to ruin. There would be no hiding from accusations of summoning daemons. Her life here was over. She would either be exposed or have to flee again.

  Until then, she needed a moment to sit, to think.

  “They don’t know me,” Brant said. “We have to go somewhere where they won’t think to look for you.”

  But where? Dart could not force her thoughts into any order. She simply ran, winding down the stairs, bumping her shoulders due to the narrowness, dodging a few of the under-staff who were busy with their own labors. Their flight was ignored.

  Brant finally slowed her. “I might know a place. I was headed to the Citadel’s houndskeep and kennel. My lord arranged a private pen, one under guard. We could hole up down there.”

  Dart nodded. She had been down to the houndskeep only once. It was unlikely anyone would recognize her. “I know a shorter route through the courtyard,” she said.

  With a goal firmly in mind, she headed off at a faster pace. Once safe, perhaps she could get a letter to the castellan. Kathryn would know best how to handle this matter.

  They fled another three flights to reach the level that separated the upper Citadel from the subterranean realm of the masters. She escaped the stairs through a warren of kitchens, passing baker’s ovens, simmerpots, and spitted roasting fires. Savory scents assaulted them at every turn: rising yeast, bubbling spiced oils, spattering fat, brittling sweetcake. They had to skirt around a team of cooks lifting a full boar from a massive hearth.

  “Mind the tusks!” the chief cook hollered, meaty fists on his hips.

  Then they were gone, out a door, escaping the ringing din of banging pans and sweltering heat. Brant closed the door against it. They sheltered a moment in an arched doorway, open to the central courtyard.

  The cold struck Dart first, like jumping into a cold creek. She shivered all over and must have made some sound, for Brant turned toward her.

  “Storm’s already here,” he said quietly and shifted his attention to the gray-cloaked skies above.

  Snow sifted down, softly, gently. Sheltered by massive towers on four sides, the winds failed to reach here. Heavy flakes, like downy heron feathers, floated and drifted, almost hanging in the air, refusing to touch land. The snowfall filled the courtyard like sand in a well. Dart could barely discern the giant wyrmwood tree that graced the center of the courtyard. Its lower branches were caked with mounding snow. Its upper branches stretched upward, toward the top of Stormwatch, as if the ancient tree were trying to claw its way out of the courtyard, smothering under the thickening blanket.

  Brant held out his hand and let a few flakes settle to his palm. The heat of his body melted them. He dried his hand on his pants. Dart noted a glint of suspicion in the narrowing of his eyes as he studied the skies for another breath.

  “The true storm has yet to strike,” he mumbled and headed out into the snow. “The worst is yet to come.”

  Dart bundled her cloak tighter and led the way across the courtyard. As she aimed for the far side of the massive trunk of the wyrmwood, she noted one of their party holding back, still sheltered in the archway.

  “Pupp-to me,” she said and patted her hip.

  He huddled his molten form low to the ground. His usual ruddy bronze had dulled to a wan shine. The spikes of his mane trembled as he shook ever so slightly.

  “It’s only snow,” she said, stopping fully to turn to face him.

  Brant halted with her. “Your daemon?”

  “He’s not my daemon,” she said with a note of irritation. “He’s…he’s…” What could she say? “Never mind. It’s complicated.”

  Dart had no desire to tell this emerald-eyed boy who she actually was. And unlike the gods of Myrillia, she was born whole and unsundered. Then again, maybe that wasn’t totally true. Pupp was birthed with her, joined to her, and in some aspects, a part of her. In fact, she grew deathly ill if Pupp was too far separated from her. Sundered yet still together was how Master Gerrod had once described it.

  But for as long as Dart could remember, Pupp was just Pupp, her ghostly companion, champion, and forever a piece of her heart.

  That was good enough for her.

  Though right at this moment, his stubbornness piqued her growing impatience. She didn’t want to be in the storm any longer than necessary.

  “Pupp, come here!”

  “You can still see him?” Brant asked, his brows pinched as he searched the snowswept courtyard.

  Before she could answer, Pupp finally obeyed. He shot out from under the archway and sped low to the ground, skirting side to side, as if trying to avoid any snowflakes. But the path he scribed formed a sigil of panic. He hurried to Dart and past, continuing across the yard.

  Now Dart followed, almost running, dragging Brant with her.

  At least Pupp must have understood where she wanted to go. He aimed for a short flight of descending stairs. He vanished down them.

  In her hurry, Dart’s left boot slipped on a bit of black ice on the top step. She tumbled into a headlong fall-but Brant caught her around the waist and righted her back onto her feet. She hung a moment in his arms.

  “Are you all right?”

  Despite the cold, Dart felt her face warm. “Yes…sorry…”

  Brant released her and led the way down the stairs to a low, wide door. He hauled the door open for her. Pupp had already passed through it in his haste to escape the snow.

  “It’s not far from here,” Dart said, sliding past him. She kept her eyes from his, lest they betray her. She pushed into the dim hallway.

  The heat inside stifled after the icy storm.

  She headed to a cross passage and turned left. Already the barking and bawling of the Citadel’s stalking hounds reached them-as did the smell of wet dog and soiled hay. The entrance to the houndskeep lay only a few steps farther down the hall. The door was a gated grate of iron.

  Dart stepped up to it.

  Beyond stretched a cross-hatching of low passages, lit by torches, carved out of the stone that underlay Tashijan. It was said that the kennels here were once the dungeons of the original keep, before the coming of the gods, during the barbarous time of human kings.

  Dart had a hard time imagining such a dungeon. Each carved niche barely held room enough for a pair of hounds, long-legged though they might be.

  As they stopped before the gate, their arrival did not go unnoticed.

  “’Bout time you got your hairy arse down here!” The keeper turned from a slop bucket. He was naked to the waist and appeared half bear himself with a back and chest covered in a pelt of curly hair. In some cruel trick of nature, though, his head was bald, his pate shining with sweat. “Like I have time to sit a couple wild whelpings-”

  His eyes finally took note of who stood at his
door.

  He threw his hands in the air.

  “Off with you…no time for gapers…’nough problems of mine own.” He waved them off.

  “Good ser,” Brant said loudly, “I’ve come to inquire about two loam-giants, represented by Oldenbrook.”

  His words only deepened the scowl on the keeper’s face, but he tromped over to them and swung open the door. “So you heard then, have you?”

  Brant walked through with a frown. “Heard what?”

  The answer came from down the passage. “Ock! Master Brant!”

  A broad form pushed out of a side passage, hunkered from the low ceiling into an awkward crouch. It was one of the loam-giants Dart had spotted with Brant earlier. He approached, almost knuckling on the hay-strewn floor. A few hounds howled at him as he passed, unaccustomed to such giants down here.

  “I just sent word up a mite ago. Did you jump from a window to get down here so fast?”

  Dart didn’t know the giant, but she still read the deep unease in the man’s manner.

  “Malthumalbaen,” Brant said, “what’s happened? I’ve heard no word. I’ve only chanced to come down here to see how the whelpings are settled for the night. One of Tashijan’s pages was kind enough to escort me.” He nodded to Dart.

  The giant shook his thick-necked head. “Disaster, ser. Bad as they come.”

  “The wolf cubbies?”

  Malthumalbaen lowered his head and his voice. “Gone, ser.”

  “Dead?” Worry etched his words, but anger narrowed his eyes.

  “No, ser. Thank the gods for that good bit of Grace. You’d best come see. Dral is still trying to salvage the matter.”

  “And it weren’t no fault of mine,” the keeper groused and called after them as they headed down the passage. “Just so it’s clear to one and all! If’n you had let me know you had wild whelpings, I could have better prepared.”

  Malthumalbaen let out a long sigh and grumbled under his breath. Still it had to be loud enough to reach the keeper’s ears. “Gave us a place near the back. Ill-kept, it was, with nary a torch to see much by.”

  The loam-giant turned the corner and led them down the cross passage.

  Dart glanced to the small cells on either side, where tawny-furred forms lay curled at the back, two to a cage, piled almost atop each other for warmth. She noted an eye or two peek open as they passed, wary and watchful. A few others, younger and more exuberant, stalked back and forth in the front of their cages, hackles half-raised in warning. In the dimness, their eyes shown with a bit of Grace. Air and loam, she had been told. It gave the hounds especially keen noses and ears.

  Then down near the end of the hall, a form lay splayed on the floor, as if dead or brought low by a blow. But the figure stirred at their approach, struggling, it seemed, with something out of sight. A growl of curses accompanied the effort.

  “Dral!” the first giant called out. “Look what I found! Master Brant himself!”

  The other giant, redheaded like the first, rolled to his side. Dart saw his arm was jammed down a hole at the base of the wall. He fought to pull his limb out. “Got myself stuck.”

  Malthumalbaen went to his aid. It took a moment of yanking, twisting, and cursing to finally free the snared giant. Once that was accomplished, the one called Dral rolled to his seat, cradling his head in plain misery.

  Pupp had sidled past the loam-giant and sniffed around the opening. Since stone blocked Pupp as surely as any other, the opening proved too small for even him to nose much deeper.

  Malthumalbaen narrated their story. “We were just getting ’em outta that skaggin’ crate. They looked near on death themselves, all wet with their own piss. Scared to a lick, they were.”

  He lifted an arm and pointed to a cage door that hung crooked on one hinge, the other broken. “We were just shutting them up, when off it comes.”

  “I should have been more careful,” Dral moaned.

  “Them little ones, they were out like arrows. We tried to snatch ’em back up, but down that rat hole they both went. Like they knew where they were going.” The giant shook his head. “Don’t even know where it goes.”

  “I tried to see if I could reach them,” Dral added, then shrugged and covered the top of his head with his hands.

  “The blame is not yours,” Brant said.

  Dart had been so busy listening to the giants and watching wide-eyed, that only now did she note how dark Brant’s face had become. Looking into his eyes, she could almost smell the burn of brimstone off him. But he kept his fury locked inside him. His words to the giants were gentle and firm.

  “I should never have brought them here,” he added to himself. He bent a knee to study the hole. It was cut smoothly into the back wall and plainly canted down at a steep angle. “Do you know where this leads?”

  “We asked the keeper. All he knew is that when they swamped out the keeps here, they washed everything down that rat hole.”

  “Into the sewers?”

  Malthumalbaen shrugged. “Keeper seemed not to think so. Says his houndskeep is older than all of Tashijan. Before they plumbed and dug sewers for this place.”

  Brant stood up. He held a fist tight to his side.

  “But the keeper called for some help. They should-”

  The entire houndskeep suddenly erupted with howls and baying barks, drowning out the giant’s words. Loud snatches of cursing accompanied the cacophony.

  “That must be him,” the giant said.

  Brant headed down the passage toward the commotion. He held off both giants with a raised palm and Dart with a stern look of worry.

  Still, Dart trailed him. She kept a few steps back, fearing she might be recognized.

  Brant reached the corner and peered around.

  Dart noticed him flinch in shock. As the hounds continued to howl, curiosity overcame fear of discovery. She moved behind Brant and stared down the passage.

  “Git that monster out of here!” the keeper yelled.

  Near to filling the low passage stood a shaggy-furred beast that could have challenged the two giants in size and stature. A bullhound. It padded deeper, heading toward them. Its head was the size of a shield, and the remainder of its muscled form was banded in fur the color of burnt copper and ebony. Ropes of drool dangled from its half-snarled lips, capable of etching stone with its caustic touch if the hound were riled.

  Brant reached behind him, intending to push Dart back to safety, but she avoided his hand and ran past him and down the hallway. With all the demands on her time, she had not seen the bullhound in ages.

  “Barrin!” she called out, too delighted and relieved to care who might see her.

  The bullhound snuffled and tossed its head a bit. Saliva flew to the walls, etching the stone. It then lowered its muzzle to accept Dart’s affection. The stub of its tail wagged in a blur.

  Dart hugged the great beast, grabbing both ears, which required a full spread of her arms. She tugged a bit and heard a rumble of contentment.

  “You’re going to spoil the kank,” a voice growled behind the bullhound’s shoulder.

  A familiar figure stepped around to the front. He wore his usual furred breeches and knee-high mud brown boots. But it was his face that was the most welcome, a friend after the horrors of the past bells. The lower half of his face protruded in a slight muzzle, marking him, like the loam-giants before, as one touched by Graced alchemies in the womb. But only Tristal, god of Idlewyld, produced such men and women, wyld trackers, blessed with air and loam like the hounds here, creating the most skilled of Myrillian trackers and hunters.

  “Lorr!” Dart called out happily.

  She released her grip on the bullhound and hugged the wyld tracker with as much enthusiasm, though she didn’t tug his ears.

  All around, the hounds continued their baying.

  The houndskeeper stalked around, keeping well clear of Barrin’s haunches. “Got ’em all riled up! Your beast is going to put ’em all off their feed.”

&nb
sp; Lorr shifted out of Dart’s embrace, but he still kept an arm around her. She felt a tremor deep in his chest, and while not a sound came from him, the hounds quickly quieted as if commanded.

  The houndskeeper kept his fist on his hips, but he nodded. “That’s better.”

  Lorr glanced up the passage. By now, Brant and the two loam-giants had stepped into view. “So someone brought a gift of Fell wolves to the knighting-and now you’ve gone and lost them.”

  Dart heard the disdain and thread of anger behind the tracker’s words.

  Dart touched Lorr’s arm. “They-he’s a friend of mine from back at the school in Chrismferry.”

  Lorr studied Dart, then nodded. Some of the anger drained from him, but a trace of disdain remained. Friends or not, the tracker had little use for fools. “So then tell me what happened? Where have these whelpings gone off to?”

  Brant pointed to the side passage. “Over this way.”

  “Show me.”

  Brant, trailed by the two giants, led the way back to the hole in the hall.

  Lorr shifted closer to Dart and whispered to her. “I smell blood on you. Fresh blood.” He nodded to her hand. “What happened?”

  “There was some trouble,” she offered lamely, avoiding the longer story.

  Lorr nodded forward. “That boy didn’t-”

  “No!” Dart cut him off. “The opposite. He saved me from worse harm.”

  Lorr seemed satisfied, and Dart was happy to let him move to other matters. How was the castellan faring? Had Dart heard about Tylar’s bumpy arrival? Moments later, they reached the last cell in the passageway. Lorr noted the rusted and broken hinge, and as the story of the escape was related again, Lorr inspected the hole in the wall.

  “And you’re sure they were Fell wolf cubbies and not loamed rats?”

  Brant stood off to the side, arms crossed. Dart didn’t like the way his nose had pinched since Lorr’s arrival, as if he smelled something distasteful. Lorr, in turn, was unusually hard and abrupt with him during the telling of the tale. An unspoken tension remained between them. Dart could not understand why.

  A new voice called from behind them. Dart jumped slightly, surprised by the sudden appearance. She had not heard a single booted tread. And no wonder. When she turned, she saw the stranger was also a wyld tracker, muzzled like Lorr, though perhaps slightly less protuberant. Then again, it might be the new tracker’s age. Fourteen winters at best. Also, while Lorr’s hair was a match to his brown boots, the younger tracker had long locks the color of a raven’s eye, black with a hint of blue. His skin shone with a ruddy blush and was as smooth as river stone worn by rushing waters.