Skin

by Peter Fugazzotto

  Skin

  Peter Fugazzotto

  Copyright © 2018 by Peter Fugazzotto

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Also by Peter Fugazzotto

  The King Beneath the Waves

  The Witch of the Sands

  Black River

  Five Bloody Heads

  Into Darkness

  Alien Infestation

  The Rise of the Fallen

  The Cellar

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Free Book Offer

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  The sound of the dogs barking was not enough to draw Hemming out of the warmth of his chamber. But the screams were.

  Weary from staring at an unsolvable problem on his chessboard and dulled by several before-dinner cups of mead, Hemming grabbed his axe and his helmet and shuffled out of his room and down the dim hall towards the central courtyard.

  He joined the others on the catwalk, a rickety wood scaffolding that clung to the inside wall of the keep. Dressed in furs against the coming winter, the handful of others who occupied the border keep gathered on the catwalk and stared north across the great blinding expanse of snow.

  Hemming felt a twinge of guilt that he was the last to arrive. He was the head guard. He should have been first. He had been hired for his experience, his years served in the war between the countries. He had already been warned by Arne about neglecting his duty to establish regular patrols along the border. But he preferred to sit in his room and drink and stare at the chessboard. And stay warm.

  Hemming nodded to the others ignoring their scowls and joined them looking north. He squinted. His eyes had not yet adjusted from being inside so he could not really make out anything except painful whiteness and the looming black peaks beyond.

  The sun was beginning its descent, and soon the blue shadows would race across the snowy plateau. Even so, the snow reflected the light. He scanned the landscape for the barking dogs. He pinched his eyes narrow against the brightness. Nothing.

  The keep that Hemming and the others had been charged with holding was located on a high mountain range just south of the Svergish border. This ancient political boundary existed only on a few crumbling maps scrawled on parchment paper, a line drawn through land of no value except to lay claim to the size of a kingdom. On the other side of several ridges and the imaginary border demarcation, armed counterparts huddled in a Svergish keep similarly mandated with defending the border against all enemies. But it was freezing, the land unforgiving, and the walls impenetrable. No enemy force was coming. In fact, Hemming on reading about the history of their keep had never seen any evidence of as much as a skirmish. Knowing this fact was part of the reason Hemming had been more inclined to stay in the relative warmth of his chamber, idling away the hours, rather than trudging, axe in hand, uselessly patrolling along the border with the unbearable Magne and Sigurd.

  The closest town, Riverton, was a brutal three-day march away from the keep and at no risk of attack either. He and the others had overnighted there on their way to the keep. It was a bleak settlement of squat houses and barracks that existed only to lay claim to the disputed border province. The town’s most memorable distinction was its low crown of haze and the pervasive smell of burnt metal. There was nothing in Riverton that the Sverges would want.

  “What am I looking at?” Hemming asked. His breath was still loud with the effort of climbing the catwalk. He wondered if he would ever adjust to the altitude. He always felt sleepy and out of breath.

  “There,” said Elof, the Svergish hostage and the only red-haired one among them.

  Hemming followed where Elof’s velvet-gloved finger pointed, and then he saw it. A lone figure emerging from behind a snowdrift. And pursued by a pack of howling dogs.

  “Oh hell,” muttered Hemming.

  “Why would anyone be out there? And alone?” asked Elof.

  “Not to mention being pursued by hounds.” Hemming released a string of curses. He brought his hand over his brow to shield his eyes. “And naked. Some damn fool running across the ice naked and pursued by dogs. I came up here to get away from crazy and it follows me wherever I go.”

  Arne, who had somehow already strapped on his eagle-emblazoned breastplate, tugged at his pale mustache. His eyes were bloodshot and weepy. “Hemming, Magne, Sigurd.” His words left his mouth slurred. “You three go out there and deal with this.”

  Hemming was about to argue that they wait it out on the catwalk, partially sheltered from the bitter wind, but Arne had yelled at him earlier in the day for the inconsistency of his perimeter patrols. Better not to cross him again.

  Hemming cursed all the way down the catwalk and stood back from the gate in the keep wall. Magne single-handedly slid the heavy wooden beam along its track. The man’s face turned bright red with the effort and a bead of sweat lined his brow. Hemming was grateful that big Magne was going with him to see what fool was running naked through the snow, but still Hemming would have rather retreated to his chessboard and his bottle.

  “Finally, a little bit of excitement,” said Sigurd, sniffling and shifting his too-long spear back and forth between his hands.

  “Stupid farm boy,” said Magne.

  Sigurd’s shoulders slumped.

  “Wish for dull days and drunken nights,” added Hemming. And no people around, he thought to himself.

  The wind was stronger outside the gate. It penetrated his shirt, slipping icy tendrils up his sleeves and around his neck. Hemming wished that he had thought to put on his sheepskin vest. But he had not expected to be venturing outside the walls of the keep. Ribbons of snow slithered across the icy ground. He blinked but could not make out the runner anymore. Drifts of snow lay before him, larger than they had looked from the catwalk. Even though he had lost sight of the runner, he could still hear the barking. That would guide them.

  He glanced at the billowing clouds, dark, gray, rolling at the tops of the jagged black peaks. They foretold a vicious storm. He knew they rode the front edge of winter and the first big storm of the season. Apparently the storms of the past few weeks were nothing according to the hunter who lived here year round. She had said, in a few days, they wouldn’t be able to walk a dozen feet from the keep without getting lost. The path back down to Riverton, a struggle even in fair weather, would be impossible, treacherous to foot and nearly invisible. They would be snowed in for the winter.

  “Do you think it’s someone from the Svergish keep?” asked young Sigurd. Frozen snot clotted beneath his nose, crusting the scant whiskers he checked every morning in the reflection of his spoon when he thought no one was looking.

  Magne slapped the sword in his scabbard. “No Sverge would be dumb enough to meet Blood Taster.”

  “Or Rusty Old Axe,” added Hemming hoisting his weapon.

  Magne stopped to stare from beneath his heavy brow. “You make fun of me again. I did not fight as many years as you but my steel tasted Svergish blood just the same. This sword earned its name.”
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br />   Hemming groaned inwardly. “Fine, fine. You’re a great warrior. Blooded and all that. Can we keep walking? Get this over with?” He blew hard into his fist. The cold bit the tips of his nose and ears. Why hadn’t he thought to put on his wool cap beneath his helmet?

  Someone shouted from the wall. The wind strangled the words. Hemming could not make out who it was or what they yelled. But they all pointed repeatedly in the direction of the barking dogs.

  Magne snorted, turned away from the keep, and doubled his pace.

  Sigurd and Hemming struggled to keep up. The snow had piled higher. As Hemming trudged through wind-blown drifts, the cold soaked through his trousers, awakening the old injury in his right knee. A dull pain crept down the outside of his shin.

  “He gets so angry with you,” muttered Sigurd beneath the whisper of the wind.

  “He gets angry with everyone. I had hoped I would get away from his type up here.”

  “What type is that?”

  “Living, breathing person. One who asks too many questions and talks too much.”

  Sigurd opened his mouth to say more and then caught himself. He scowled and shook his head.

  Hemming didn’t care. He wasn’t here to make friends. Better if they just avoided him by their own volition.

  He bent his head and followed Magne’s footprints. He began to sweat beneath his clothes but the cold still bit his skin. The minutes stretched.

  The barking turned into snarls and as Magne crashed through a drift, he shouted over his shoulder. “It’s a woman. The dogs are attacking a woman.”

  Hemming charged away from Sigurd, legs pumping through the snow, following in the furrowed path that Magne had laid out. Hemming reached the top of the drift. The big man had not been exaggerating. The dogs had caught up to the naked woman.

  She clutched a branch in her hands and swung wildly but the dogs attacked in a desperate way that Hemming expected more from wild animals cornering prey than domesticated dogs after a human.

  The woman was already cut and bloody, and Hemming wondered what horror she had already faced.

  He raced forward, passing the panting Magne. One of the dogs slipped past the woman’s swings and sunk its teeth deep into her thigh. She tilted to one side, dragged down by the weight of the dog. She released a low, inhuman moan.

  The other dogs darted in, all claws and fangs.

  But Hemming had crossed the distance and he swung that old axe into flesh with a remembered ease. In a few seconds, Magne was steps from him, his sword tasting blood, and even Sigurd was there, the tip of his spear retreating redder and redder.

  Finally, a blow from Hemming’s axe cleared the last of the dogs from the woman. She collapsed to the ground, her skin jagged, the muscles of her belly and thigh exposed and glistening, and Hemming feared her skin would just fall from her into the widening circle of red snow around her.

  The last dog was not dead. Instead, front leg broken, it crawled low to the ground towards Hemming, whimpering and whining, its tail madly wagging as if it were glad to see him, as if it had nothing to do with the attack on the lone woman.

  When it came close enough for Hemming to reach out and pet its head, he dropped the blade of his axe through its skull.

  “It’s the hostage,” said Magne who had gathered the woman into his arms.

  Hemming glanced back towards the keep.

  Magne lifted the woman to carry her. “This is Brit. The hostage we left at the Svergish keep. The one we exchanged for Elof.”

  Hemming said what the others were thinking. “What the hell is she doing out here?”

  2

  Half an hour later, back in the walls of the keep, Hemming pushed at the door to the witch’s room. Its squealing hinges gave him away.

  “Get away. You, go away,” said Runa, white haired, wrinkled like dried fruit. She stood just behind the door with a ceramic bowl cupped in both hands. “You are not needed here.”

  “Will she live?” asked Hemming, wincing at the smell of bitter herbs. “Why can’t I come in? I know Arne is in there.” He could see Brit, the hostage, lying beneath a thick blanket on a low pallet in the witch’s room. Twists of smoke rose from smoldering powders on a shelf lined with jars. Even bound in bandages, her wounds stained the sheet dark with blood. He wanted to find out what had happened: why she had left the Svergish keep, why she was out in the snow field alone, and why the dogs had been trying to kill her.

  During the hurried rush back to the keep, Hemming had thought Brit would die. An impossible amount of blood had soaked Magne’s arms, chest, and thighs. Hemming had jogged behind him, careful to not step in the red snow. But Brit had survived, and they had brought her into the safety of the keep and into the chamber of their witch.

  “Away, black-haired demon.” Runa waved twiggy fingers at him and then kicked the door. Hemming pulled his hand out of the way before it slammed shut.

  “She’s never going to forgive you your hair color.”

  Hemming turned to the voice behind him. Liv, her golden hair falling in braids over each shoulder and smelling of wet dog, stood in the hall. She spent more time in the kennel with her dogs or out hunting than with the others at the keep. She was a loner like Hemming.

  But there was a difference. Where he had come to the keep to get away from the madness of society, Liv had been living up here at the edge of the world for her whole life: a hunter from a village deep in the mountains.

  “We need to find out why the hostage left the Svergish keep,” he said. “Naked, hunted by dogs. Something is wrong over there.”

  “Maybe the peace is not everlasting.” She brushed dog hair from her dark pants. Her hands were pale, red knuckled, and thick with strength. “Our hostage is probably fretting in his silks, twisting his handkerchiefs into a knot.”

  “I don’t want trouble. I don’t want to be pulled back into bloodshed. I came up here to escape all that.”

  “If war comes again, it will be down in the plains. Not the mountains. You weren’t here, but during the war both armies sent wings up here as if there was a border to enforce, as if anyone would battle in the ice fields. Once they arrived, no one left the warmth of their fires. Only me and the dogs ventured north towards the Svergish keep. They never came out to challenge me.”

  “Why would the dogs follow her all that distance? And attack her like that?”

  Liv shook her head. “Did they look rabid? Or wild? My dogs stick with me, to my word. Those other dogs, it was as if something possessed them.”

  “There was one dog left, and he was acting like he was glad to see me. Wagging his damned tail. His mouth still dripping with her blood. Weirdest thing I ever saw.” He shuddered at the memory. “What would make dogs turn like that?”

  Before Liv could answer, the witch’s door creaked open.

  Arne slipped out. His breath still smelled strongly of caraway and alcohol. Hemming wondered if Arne had drunk so much booze that it oozed out of his pores. Arne blinked hard several times and wiped the back of his wrist against his eyes. “Not good. Not good at all.”

  “Did she say anything?” asked Hemming. “What happened back at the Svergish camp?”

  Arne covered his lips as if he were about to throw up. “What those dogs did to her. It’s ungodly.”

  “She should not have been out there alone. And the dogs.”

  “Hemming, I need you to go to the Svergish keep. See what happened over there.”

  “It’s an enemy camp.”

  “We have a signed peace accord.”

  “They’re not going to welcome me with open arms. And if they did this to Brit…”

  “I want you to go over there.”

  “You want me to die.”

  “I want you to do what I tell you.”

  “Arne, it makes more sense to send word down to Riverton. Get a message to the garrison. Our hostage showing up bloody on our doorstep worries me. Do we know if the peace still holds?”

  Arne tugged at his whiske
rs. “We’ve got no time to send a message to Riverton. It will only take half a day for you to get to the Svergish keep. Riverton is at least three days away, and a storm is coming. You can see it rolling in. Winter is on us. A column would never make it up here. They’ll be snowed in. You have your orders.”

  “It’s a bad idea, Arne.”

  “I’m not asking for your opinion. I lead this keep and you do what I tell you. No questions. Go to the Svergish keep and see what this is all about.”

  “If I don’t come back, I guess it’ll be obvious then.”

  “Hemming, I want you on your way at first light. You can make it there and back before nightfall.”

  Arne squeezed past Hemming and Liv. He extended one hand towards the wall to steady himself as he disappeared down the hall.

  “Son of a bitch is drunk,” murmured Hemming. “And stupid. Ordering me what to do. An idiot.”

  He did not want to go to the Svergish keep. It made more sense to get reinforcements or, failing that, to bolster the defenses at their own keep. Why wouldn’t Arne listen to him? Hemming was the only one with deep experience in sieges and fighting. He was the veteran that stood at the shoulder of a general. If they were at war with the Sverges again, the best place they could be was behind stone walls, not knocking on the enemy’s front door. Did Arne think the Sverges would welcome him with open arms?

  “If I don’t make it back,” Hemming muttered to Liv, “put a blade into Elof’s belly. We’ll know the Sverges aren’t to be trusted.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Is this place filled with fools?”

  “I don’t mind keeping you company, Hemming. Plus I need to see what’s going on. I need to see if the peace is broken. If war is coming.”