by Greg Keyes
“I’ll get you some water,” she heard the man say.
“No,” she growled. “I won’t drink anything else you give me.”
“As you wish, Your Highness.”
She felt the surprise dimly through her sickness and confusion.
“I’m sorry,” he added, and began crying again.
Anne groaned. She was missing time again. The demon hadn’t killed this man as it had killed Ernald, but it had done something.
“Listen to me,” she said. “What’s your name?”
He looked confused.
“Your name?”
“Wist,” he murmured. “Wist. They call me Wist.”
“You saw her, didn’t you, Wist? She was here?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“What did she look like?”
His eyes tried to bug from his head, and he gasped, clutching at his chest.
“I can’t remember,” he said. “It was the worst thing I ever saw. I can’t—I can’t see that again.”
“Did she untie me?”
“No, I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m supposed to,” he whimpered. “I’m supposed to help you.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t say anything,” he said. “Not that I can remember. That is, there were words, but I couldn’t make them out, except that they hurt, and they still hurt unless I do what I’m supposed to do.”
“And what else are you supposed to do?” she asked suspiciously.
“Help you,” he said again.
“Help me what?”
He raised his hands helplessly. “Whatever you want.”
“Really,” she said. “Give me your knife, then.”
He clambered to his feet and presented her the weapon, hilt first. She reached for it, expecting him to withdraw it, but instead she grasped the smooth wooden handle.
She gagged, bent double, and began to vomit again.
When she was done, her head hurt as if struck from the inside by a hammer. Her chest felt ripped in two, and her vision was blurry. Her erst-while captor was still whimpering before her, holding out the knife.
She arranged her clothes again and stood, finding the pain in her leg only slightly dulled.
“I’ll take that water now,” she said.
He brought her water and bread, and she had a bit of both. After that she felt better, calmer.
“Wist, where are we?” she asked.
“In the cellar of the beer hall,” he said.
“In Sevoyne?”
“Yes, in Sevoyne.”
“And who knows I’m here?”
“Myself and the captain of the guard. No one else.”
“But others are coming, and they will know where to find us,” she pushed on.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Yes, Majesty,” she corrected gently. That simple act helped her find her center.
“Yes, Majesty.”
“There. And who is coming?”
“Penby and his lot were supposed to waylay you in the woods. They should be back by now, but I don’t—I don’t know where they are. Did you kill them?”
“Yes,” she lied. One of them is dead, at least. “Is anyone else meeting them here?”
He cowered a bit more. “I shouldn’t.”
“Answer me.”
“Someone is supposed to meet them, yes. I don’t know a name.”
“When?”
“Soon. I don’t know, but soon. Penby said by this afternoon.”
“Well, then we had better go now,” Anne said, picking up the knife.
His features contorted. “I…Yes. I’m supposed to do that.”
Anne looked him in the eye as hard as she could. She didn’t understand what was going on here. Was the demon, terrible as she was, an ally? Certainly she had killed one of Anne’s enemies and seemed to have…done something to this one. But if whatever had followed her back from the land of the dead was friendly, why did she fear it so?
And there was still the possibility that this was some sort of a trick Wist was playing on her, though she couldn’t see the point of such a ruse.
“They didn’t tell me who you were,” he began, but stopped.
“If you had known who I was, would you have tried to rape me?” she asked, anger flaring suddenly.
“No, saints no,” he said.
“That doesn’t make it better, you know,” she said. “It still makes you a worm.”
He just nodded at that.
For a moment she wanted to reach into him with her power, the way she had reached into Roderick back in Dunmrogh, the way she had reached into the men at Khrwbh Khrwkh. To hurt him, maybe kill him.
But she rejected that. She needed him right now. But if it turned out to be some strange trick, she wouldn’t have any mercy.
“Very well,” she said. “Help me, Wist, and you may earn my protection. Go against me again and not even the saints can preserve you.”
“How can I serve you, Princess?”
“How do you think? I want to leave here. If the captain of the guard sees us, tell him the plans have changed and you’re supposed to take me someplace else.”
“And where will we go?”
“I’ll tell you that once we’re out of town. Now, bring me my weather cloak.”
“It’s upstairs. I’ll go fetch it.”
“No. We’ll go get it together.”
Nodding, Wist produced a brass key and fitted it into the lock on the door. It creaked open, revealing a narrow stair. He took a candle and started up. Anne followed to where the last stair ran apparently into the ceiling. Wist pushed, and the ceiling lifted into another dark room.
“It’s a storehouse,” he whispered. “Hang on.”
He went over to a wooden crate and reached in. Anne tensed, but what he came out with was nothing other than her cloak. Never taking her eyes off him, she settled it on her shoulders.
“I have to blow out the candle now,” he said, “else someone will see the light when I open the outer door.”
“Do it, then,” Anne said, tensing again.
He brought the candle near his face. In the yellow glow his features looked young and innocent, not the way the face of a rapist ought to look at all. He pursed his lips and blew, and darkness fell. It crawled on Anne’s skin like centipedes as she strained her eyes and ears, her hand on the hilt of Wist’s knife.
She heard a faint creak, then saw a widening sliver of not so black.
“This way,” Wist whispered.
She perceived his silhouette now.
“You go first,” she said, feeling for the door and catching its edge.
“Mind the step,” he whispered. She saw the shadow of his head drop a bit.
She felt for the ground with her foot and found it. Then she stepped into the street.
It was bitterly cold outside. No moon or stars looked down; the only lights were lamps and candles still burning here or there. What time was it? She certainly didn’t know. She didn’t even know how long she had been in this place.
The alcohol was still in her. Rage and panic had cut through it, and now she was starting to feel achy and sick, though the stupid feeling remained. The boldness it had brought was starting to fade, leaving a dull fear.
The shadow that was Wist moved suddenly, and she felt his hand close on her arm. Her other hand tightened on the knife.
“Quiet, Majesty,” he said. “Someone is coming.”
She heard what he meant: the clopping of horses’ hooves.
Wist pulled her against the side of another building, and then slowly they backed along it as the sound grew nearer.
Anne couldn’t see anything, but she felt suddenly as if something were being pressed against her eyes. It wasn’t light but a presence, a weight that seemed to draw everything toward it.
Wist’s grip on her arm was now the most comforting thing in the world.
She heard someone dism
ount and felt feet strike the earth like sledgehammers. She heard a brief whispering she couldn’t make out, and then the door creaked, sounding very near.
She backed away more quickly, aching to simply turn her back and run. But Wist wouldn’t let her. He was trembling, and his breath seemed incredibly loud, as did her own.
The door clapped shut, and she felt the presence fade.
Now Wist tugged more urgently on her arm, and they did turn their backs. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and she began to discern vague shapes. They made their way into what looked to be the village center, a broad square surrounded by the looming shadows of multistoried buildings.
“We have to hurry, he said. “It won’t be long till they find us gone.”
“Who was that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I would tell you if I knew. Someone important, the one who hired us, I think. I’ve never met him.”
“Then how do you know—”
“I don’t know!” he hissed desperately. “They said he would come. They didn’t know what he would look like, but they said he would feel, ah, heavy. I didn’t know what that meant until now. But you see?”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” she said. “I felt it, too.” She gripped his arm. “You could have called out to him. Why didn’t you?”
“No, I couldn’t,” he said miserably. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Now, where are we going?”
“Can you find Glenchest?”
“Glenchest? Auy, that’s just down the road.”
“How far on foot?”
“We could be there by midday.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“He’s likely to search that way.”
“Nevertheless.”
In the gray of dawn Wist looked tired, worn beyond his years. His clothes were dirty, and so was he, and it was a pervasive sort of filth. She believed he could be scrubbed for a year and somehow still be unclean.
He seemed dangerous again, too, though in a subdued way, like a vicious dog that had been beaten into lying still for a time. He kept glancing at her in a manner that suggested he was wondering exactly what he was doing and why.
She wondered the same thing.
The landscape was rather drab. Farmsteads and fields crowded to the road, but beyond them were flat plains with little relief or sights of interest.
She wondered again if any of her friends were alive, if the road to Glenchest was the right course, whether she ought to go back toward where she had been abducted. But if they were dead, there was nothing she could do. If they were fighting for their lives, she couldn’t do much about that, either, not with only one very untrustworthy companion.
No, she needed to reach Aunt Elyoner and the knights she commanded.
Assuming they still existed or were at Glenchest. What if they already had gone to Eslen to fight the usurper? Or worse, what if Elyoner had thrown in with Robert? Anne didn’t think that was likely, but then, she didn’t really know what was going on.
In truth, she had always rather liked her uncle Robert. It seemed strange that he had taken the throne while her mother and brother yet lived, but that was the news that had come to Dunmrogh.
Perhaps Robert knew something she didn’t.
She sighed and tried to push that thought away.
“Keep still,” Wist said suddenly. Anne noticed that he had a knife in his hand now and that he was near enough to use it on her without any trouble. He was glancing around. They had passed into a small grove of trees full of lowing cattle, and visibility wasn’t good.
But Anne felt and heard the horses coming. A lot of them.
“SLINDERS,” Stephen said.
Aspar had his gaze fixed across the valley, watching for one of their newly arrived opponents to show themselves.
“Coming from the east,” Stephen clarified. “Moving quickly—and, for them, quietly.”
Aspar strained his hearing to catch what Stephen’s ears had heard. After a moment he had it, a sound like a low, hard wind sweeping through the forest, the sound of so many feet that he couldn’t discriminate the individual steps, and with it, a faint humming in the ground.
“Sceat.”
“Slinder” was the name the Oostish had given the servants of the Briar King. Once they had been human, but the ones Aspar had seen did not seem to have retained much Mannish about them.
They wore little or no clothing and ran howling like beasts. He had seen them tear men limb from limb and eat the raw, bloody flesh, watched them throw themselves on spears and pull their dying bodies up the shafts to reach their enemies. They couldn’t be talked to, much less reasoned with.
And they were close already. How could he not have heard them? How had Stephen not, with his saint-sharpened senses? The boy seemed to be losing his knack.
He glanced quickly around. The nearest trees were mostly slender and straight-boled, but some fifty kingsyards away he saw a broad-shouldered ironoak reaching toward the sky.
“To that tree,” he commanded. “Now.”
“But Neil and Cazio—”
“There’s nothing we can do for them,” Aspar snapped. “We can’t reach them in time.”
“We can warn them,” Winna said.
“They’re already over there,” Stephen said. “See?”
He pointed. Across the narrow valley, bodies were pouring over the rim and down the steep slope. It looked as if a flood were carrying an entire village of people down a gorge, except that there was no water.
“Mother of Saint Tarn,” one of the Dunmrogh soldiers gasped. “What—”
“Run!” Aspar barked.
They ran. Aspar’s muscles ached to bolt him ahead, but he had to let Winna and Stephen start climbing first. He heard the forest floor churning behind him and was reminded of a cloud of locusts that once had whirred through the northern uplands for days, chewing away every green thing.
They were halfway to the oak when Aspar caught a motion in the corner of his eye. He shifted his head to look.
At first glance the thing was all limbs, like a huge spider, but familiarity quickly brought it into focus. The monster had only four long limbs, not eight, and they ended in what resembled clawed human hands. The torso was thick, muscular, and short compared to its legs but more or less human in its cut if one ignored the scales and the thick black hairs.
The face had little of humanity about it; its yellow carbuncle eyes were set above two slits where a nose might be, and its cavernous, black-toothed mouth owed more to the frog or snake than to man. It was loping toward them on all fours.
“Utin,” Aspar gasped under his breath. He’d met one before and killed it, but it had taken a miracle.
He had one miracle left, but looking past the shoulder of the thing, he saw that he needed two, for another identical creature was running scarcely thirty kingsyards behind it.
Aspar raised his bow, fired, and made one of the luckiest shots in his life; he hit the foremost monster in its right eye, sending it tumbling to the ground. Even as Aspar continued his flight to the tree, however, the thing rolled back to its feet and came on. The other, almost caught up now, seemed to grin at Aspar.
Then the slinders were there, pouring from between the trees. The utins wailed their peculiar high-pitched screams as wild-eyed men and women leapt upon them, first in twos, then in threes, then by the dozens.
The slinders and utins were not friendly, it seemed. Or perhaps they disagreed on who should eat Aspar White.
They finally reached the oak, and Aspar made a cradle of his hands to vault Winna to the lowest branches.
“Climb,” he shouted. “Keep going until you can’t climb anymore.”
Stephen went up next, but before he had a firm foothold, Aspar was forced to meet the fastest of their attackers.
The slinder was a big man with lean muscles and bristling black hair. His face was so feral, Aspar was reminded of the legends of the wairwulf and wondered if this was where they had com
e from. Every other silly phay story seemed to be coming true. If ever there was a man who had become a wolf, this was it.
Like all of its kind, the slinder attacked without regard for its own life, snarling and reaching bloody, broken nails toward Aspar. The holter cut with the ax in his left hand as a feint. The slinder ignored the false attack and came on, allowing the ax to slice through its cheek. Aspar rammed his dirk in just below the lowest rib and quickly pumped the blade, shearing into the lung and up toward the heart even as the man-beast rammed into him, smashing him into the tree.
That hurt, but it saved him from being knocked to the ground. He shoved the dying slinder away from him just in time to meet the next two. They hit him together, and as he lifted his ax arm to fend them off, one sank its teeth into his forearm. Bellowing, Aspar stabbed into its groin and felt hot blood spurt on his hand. He cut again, opening the belly. The slinder let go of his arm, and he buried his ax in the throat of the second.
Hundreds more were only steps away.
The ax was stuck, so he left it, leaping for the lowest branch and catching it with blood-slicked fingers. He fought to keep the dirk, but when one of the slinders grasped his ankle, he let it drop to secure his tenuous hold, trying to wrap both arms around the huge bough.
An arrow whirred down from above, and then another, and his antagonist’s grip loosened. Aspar swung his legs up, then levered himself quickly onto the limb.
A quick glance down showed the slinders crashing into the tree trunk like waves breaking against a rock. Their bodies began to form a pile, enabling the newer arrivals to drag themselves up.
“Sceat,” Aspar breathed. He wanted to vomit.
He fought it down and looked above him. Winna was about five kingsyards higher than the rest, with her bow out, shooting into the press. Stephen and the two soldiers were at about the same height.
“Keep climbing!” Aspar shouted. “Up that way. The narrower the branches, the fewer can come after us at a time.”
He kicked at the head of the nearest slinder, a rangy woman with matted red hair. She snarled and slipped from the branch, landing amid her squirming comrades.
The utins, he noticed, were still alive. There were three of them now that he could see, thrashing in the slinder horde. Aspar was reminded of a pack of dogs taking down a lion. Blood sprayed all around the slinders as they fell, dismembered and opened from sternum to crotch by the vicious claws and teeth of the monsters, but they were winning by sheer numbers. Even as he watched, one of the utins went down, hamstrung, and within seconds the slinders were dark crimson with its oily blood.
