by Ellyn, Court
She wondered if, one day, riding into unavoidable battle would come to trouble her less, or if the anticipation would always leave her feeling as taut as a lute’s strings. The last time she faced ogres on open ground, things hadn’t gone so well. She’d had only Laniel’s dagger to defend herself with, and the great brute had flung her into a boulder, knocking her senseless.
She had learned so much in the weeks since. Was she to fill Rhian’s shoes today, fighting at Thorn’s back, unleashing waves of bone-crushing energy? Fat chance. She could barely chill a beer mug.
Imagination, will, execution. It was the will she needed today. She held the image of Rhian at the forefront of her mind: amid trees taller than castle towers and among a crush of bloodthirsty ogres, his face was a calm mask of determination and focus. If he can keep his head, so can I.
She was unspeakably grateful that she wasn’t alone. Having Alyster and Uncle Thorn with her filled her with immeasurable comfort. She hadn’t considered that holding Windgate Pass would have been one of Lothiar’s chief objectives.
Was she the only one who dreaded what lay in wait at the pinnacle of the mountain road? Uncle Thorn was sober and silent, his glance rising frequently to the dawn-gilded cleft between the peaks. Alyster kept checking the hatchets attached to his belt; it was an unconscious, nervous motion of his hands.
The Silver Mountains were rugged and bald this time of year, though old snow clung to the deep crags and lingered in ravines where the spruce trees grew thick and tall. For Alyster, entering the mountains was like returning home. He grew impatient with the tedious winding of the switchback, handed Duíndor’s reins to Carah, and trotted off on foot, into the trees and up the slope.
“Don’t run too far ahead!” Thorn called after him. “Saffron, scout the road with him.” A gold tracer of light sped after the highlander.
Scout the road, indeed, thought Carah. You care for him, admit it.
“I do. Because he cares for you. If he didn’t, we’d have issues, he and I.”
A wordless shout descended the mountainside. A tree shuddered. Uncle Thorn swore and urged Záradel to a gallop. Carah raced after him. An ogre’s irate braying bounced down the road like boulders. Aye, the switchback climbed tediously. They rounded the bend to find an ogre sprawled across the road, orange-tinted blood soaking into muddy ruts.
Alyster lay on the ground beside the corpse.
Carah sprang out of the saddle and ran to him. He groaned through clenched teeth but didn’t appear to be wounded. “I found a sentry,” he grunted and laughed at the understatement.
Saffron hovered over the highlander’s head, humming with a sigh of relief. “The na’in tossed him into the mountainside. I shielded him, but only barely.”
Carah checked him for bruises and breaks. He reached for his right shoulder. His arm drooped.
Thorn crouched, muttering curses, and prodded the shoulder joint. Then without warning, he grabbed Alyster’s wrist and gave his arm a sharp tug. The joints popped back into place. Alyster cried out and rolled around in the dust.
Thorn stretched out a hand to summon Záradel. “Cocky. Get yourself killed, why don’t you. Stay close from now on. Eh?”
Alyster’s striped cloak served as a makeshift sling. He retrieved his hatchets, one of which was buried in the ogre’s skull. Despite being chastened and sore, he still preferred to walk, though now he stayed at Carah’s knee.
Late in the morning, Thorn pointed toward the cleft in the mountains. A black cloud circled. “Ravens.” The crisp mountain air was soon laced with the stink of death. Signs of battle began to appear on the roadside: a discarded helm, a broken shield bearing Helwende’s X, bones stripped of meat, both horse and human. The ravens picked at scraps. The approaching horses spooked them; they took wing and wheeled, complaining.
Carah searched the shrinking trees unceasingly for the muddy lifelights of ogres.
“Dismount here,” Thorn whispered. As he stepped out of the stirrups he freed his staff from its saddle-sheath. The horses puffed and sweated. They had come to the last bend in the switchback. Beyond, the road ran straight, climbing gradually and hugging the mountainside on the left. On the right, the mountain plunged into a boulder-strewn chasm, littered with the remains of carts and crates.
Gales of funneled wind buffeted Carah, pawed at her clothes, trying to fling her over the cliffside.
Saffron blinked into view at Thorn’s shoulder, her light pulsing excitedly. “There are two dozen naenion stationed at the top. They look lazy and listless.”
Thorn frowned up at the rocky, barren summit as if it offended him. “What I wouldn’t give for several feet of snow.”
“An avalanche?” asked Carah.
As they started toward the ogre encampment, Thorn wrapped them inside a veil. For a few steps more they might have surprise on their side. But the winds were against them. “Did I tell you of the time I survived an avalanche here in the Pass?”
“Maybe later?”
“No, I think now is a good time. Your mother was there. She lost a handmaid that day.”
“Uncle Thorn, if you’re trying to frighten me, I assure you, I’m already—”
A slash of his hand cut her off. “Thing is, if it’s obvious an avedra burned up these ogres, Lothiar will know we’ve been here, and there’s only one reason for us to come this way. If we’re to buy time, it needs to look like an accident, a natural phenomenon.”
Suddenly Carah’s feet were rooted to the roadway. “But we’ll bury ourselves!”
“Keep the energies focused in one place. If you get the earth moving fast enough, maybe it will keep going—”
“If I get the earth moving?”
“You’re the Lethryn expert. You raised bedrock. What’s a mountainside but bedrock in the sky?”
“But, Uncle Thorn, I might bring down the whole peak!”
“You think I wouldn’t?”
Alyster huffed and massaged his shoulder. “Aye, you got us into this mess. You do it.”
Thorn jabbed a thumb toward the highlander, in full agreement. “If any of them get past you, we’ll take care of them.”
“Damn you both!” Carah glared at the craggy face of the mountain. Ravens arced, scores of them, slicing the sky with black wings. She picked her way angrily through the scattered remains of soldiers and couriers and hapless merchants. The gusts churned the reek of rotten flesh. Scraps of clothing fluttered like abandoned banners.
Reaching the top of the slope, she came within full sight of the ogre camp. The grunts milled about a pathetic excuse for a campfire. Bored. Sleepy. Some dozed with their backs pressed to the mountainside. Others gnawed meat off bones.
Carah laid her hands to the cliffside, fingers splayed. She recalled the lesson Uncle Thorn had given her in her grandmother’s garden and the translucent yellow pebble she kept in her pocket. The pebble had once been a mountain. Mountains could be moved. Down through fissured rock her awareness dived, seeking the weaknesses where water seeped and ice pressed. Stone as sluggish as time itself eased aside for her, embraced her, hearkened to her. “With but a whisper,” she told it and outlined boundaries.
Then she tugged.
The mountain began to tremble. Through the skin of the mountain itself, she felt the ogres stir, their feet shuffling, their great bodies heaving up out of slumber.
Scree began to slide and bounce down from the peak. The ogres ran, heavy footfalls pummeling over Carah’s head—no, over the mountain’s shoulder—but a line of fire sprang up, halting them. “ ‘Vedra!” they shouted and fled back the other way. The firewall chased them, scorching their bootless heels. In their panic, few glanced up to see the landslide bearing down on them. Rocks and earth crashed upon the road, a tidal wave of liquid dust, interring the ogres. Under the mountain’s weight, they were small, delicate.
With a roar and a sweep of her arms, Carah propelled the tumbling earth over the edge of the road and down into the chasm.
All that remained on the roadway we
re scattered boulders and mounds of mud. A great divot had been carved from the mountainside and new rock lay exposed under the sun. Dust swirled, chokingly thick. The ravens had fled.
Carah found herself gripping her uncle’s wrist, afraid that she too might be swept into the chasm.
~~~~
15
Valryk hobbled into the weeds that grew thick behind the barn. A broken fence rail made a decent crutch, even if his hands were now prickly with splinters. He had wadded up his thick velvet doublet to pad the blunt end under his armpit.
His left foot was worse off than his right. Setting it down, putting an ounce of weight on his heel or toes, sent spikes of agony shooting up his leg and into his groin. One of the lesions had begun to turn black. All were hot with fever, and the entire foot was red and swollen. Pus oozed from the sores, discoloring the filthy wrappings. He had found a well to wash the bandages, but the stains and odor had become infused into the linen.
With every lurching step he cursed Lothiar and Paggon and Kethlyn.
His stomach grumbled as he pressed himself against the barn’s sun-warmed planks. Chickens clucked in the adjacent henhouse. If he was lucky, the loft would be full of hay. He could bury himself and sleep for days.
He had watched the farm since mid-morning. Only a child, perhaps three years old, had appeared in all that time, running between the barn and the cottage. Her parents were surely nearby, but Valryk had little choice. Though abandoned farms provided good sleeping places, they provided nothing in the way of food.
His first attempt at demanding shelter and sustenance had ended in disaster. He’d learned his lesson. His goal now was to avoid being seen at all. If his people refused to give him food, he would take it. And so the Black Falcon stole eggs from coops, apples from orchards, milk from startled cows, and water from wells. Once, he followed his nose to a smokehouse and nearly had an entire slab of bacon in hand, but the butcher saw him lurking and chased him with a cleaver. Fortunately for Valryk, the old man’s limp was worse than his own.
Thieving was easier after dark, but the ground was more treacherous. He needed to plan each step carefully, lest he be forced to set down both feet. So he risked approaching buildings during the day.
He peered around the side of the barn and watched the cottage with a single eye for some time before sidestepping quickly toward the henhouse. He unlatched the little hatch and thrust his hand into one nesting box after another. The front of his shirt provided a pouch for five eggs.
He ducked behind the barn again and lifted each egg to the sunlight. Did they contain yoke or chick? He shook the promising ones, then punched his thumb into the fat ends and sucked them dry.
Once his belly stopped complaining so loudly, he was able to think. The barn at his back was larger than most. The farmer was (or had been) prosperous. How had the place escaped the ogres? Four in five farms had been set to the torch. Or at least their granaries and stores had. But this great façade remained.
Valryk geared himself up to ignore the pain, perched himself upon his crutch, then slipped into plain sight of the cottage. Quickly, carefully, he hobbled to the barn door and slipped inside.
Pigeons cooed in the rafters. Feathers and hay and dust drifted in soft golden clouds through slats of sunlight. Only one animal occupied the stalls. A big blond draft horse. The rest were empty, the livestock likely requisitioned by ogres. The horse eyed him and whickered contemptuously, then turned a blind eye to his trespassing.
From one beam hung a wire basket laden with onions. Valryk stuffed four inside his shirt, then flipped open the lids of wooden bins. Potatoes. Apples. He needed a bag to carry so much bounty.
A child’s high-pitched shriek sent the pigeons flapping and Valryk reeling. The little girl he’d seen that morning stood in the doorway, eyes as big as eggs.
He waved his hands ‘No’ at her. “Shhhh!”
She spun around and fled, bare feet slapping the hardened earth. “Meggaaaaaaa!” she cried.
Valryk stuck his crutch under his arm and hobbled fast for the barn door. More feet came running. He swore and looked for a place to hide.
An older girl burst into the barn, a pitchfork poised like a spear. She took one look at Valryk, wrinkled her nose, and lost her conviction. The tines of the pitchfork lowered a fraction.
Valryk held out a hand in a placating gesture, his glance darting between the girl and those wicked tines. “Please. I need food. I’m starving to death. Haven’t eaten decent in weeks.”
Disgust twisted her mouth. “I can see that. You can take what you want from them bins there. But not all of it. The food here is for them monsters. They’ll be back, and we have to give ‘em something, don’t we. Greedy bastards.”
Valryk didn’t need to be invited twice. He dug out a handful of apples and another of potatoes. As he did so, the onions rolled out of his shirt.
The girl raised her eyebrows. With the deftness of a warrior wielding a pike, she flipped the pitchfork around, stabbed the tines into the dirt, and braced a forearm on the haft. She wore a man’s trousers and hefty mud-crusted boots. She didn’t seem old enough to be the younger girl’s mother, maybe fifteen, but such things happened.
“Can I…,” Valryk began, “…mind if I sleep in the loft?”
“Only if you ain’t got fleas. Sam here, he don’t need to inherit your fleas.” A nod of her head indicated the draft horse. “Lice neither.”
Valryk shrugged as if vermin weren’t a problem. Best not mention the critters he had plucked from his hair.
“Right, then. You become a nuisance, and you’re out on your arse. Stay away from the house. I don’t want you in there.” The girl jerked the pitchfork from the ground and waggled it at him. “I warn you. It’s just us. Me and my little brother and sister. Them monsters killed my mum and da, and my older brother. I gotta protect what family I got left. So you play nice or I’ll stick you through.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Her eyes narrowed as she considered the validity of his word. “Stay here. I’ll bring you bread.”
Relieved beyond measure, Valryk sank to the hay-packed ground and sobbed and breathed and laughed. A haven at last. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt safe. Happiness made him delirious. The barn spun, and the pigeons wheeled. His cheeks felt tight, his eyes hot and strange. He must be feverish all over.
The girl returned with an entire loaf of coarse black bread, a pitcher of water, and a thick woolen blanket. She stood over him, watching as he tore into the bread and shoved handfuls into his mouth. He had never tasted anything so fine. His throat clogged up with it. He guzzled the water.
How undignified he must look, but he didn’t care.
“What’s your name then?” she asked.
Valryk swallowed a dry lump of bread. If he gave his real name, this girl might stab him with the pitchfork after all. He blurted the first name that came to mind. “Rhorek.”
Her face brightened. “Named after the Benevolent? So was my brother. Lots of Rhoreks running around. The king did good by us. Everyone loved him. Not like his stupid son. We heard it was Valryk set these monsters loose on us. I’m Megga.”
Valryk stared at the bread clutched in his fingers. Everyone loved him. I loved him. I hated him. I murdered him. I murdered my father. My father…
The girl was frowning at him, but it wasn’t his ravenous appetite or his sudden stillness that concerned her. “You ain’t got shoes neither. Those look bad.”
Valryk glanced at his feet, shoved more bread into his mouth. “The ogres had me. They did it. Be lucky if I don’t lose them both.”
Megga gasped. “Them monsters tortured you?”
He nodded, wincing at the remembrance of flames.
“I got a little medicine, and you can have my older brother’s shoes. Cai, he’s too little for ‘em yet.” Her nose wrinkled again. “But you gotta clean up first. No point doctoring them feet till you’re somewhat cleaner’n a pig.” She point
ed, proving herself more than adept at giving orders. “You can wash your clothes in that barrel and yourself in that trough. Leave Sam’s trough alone, you’re like to poison him.”
Valryk frowned at the barrel in the corner as if it had insulted him. “I don’t know the first thing about washing clothes.”
Megga cocked her head. He might as well have claimed he could turn his head all the way around. “Only beggars and gentlemen are that helpless.”
“I am! I mean, I was. A gentleman.”
The girl let out a burdened sigh. “ ‘Course you are. Right, give it to me. I’ll show you. But I ain’t got time to baby you, so you’re washing the rest yourself.”
Valryk raised the wadded doublet.
Megga pinched it between a thumb and forefinger. “Velvet, eh? ‘Course. Tip over that barrel and roll it to the well.”
By evening, Valryk smelled of soap. His skin tingled after the vigorous scrubbing he’d given it. Megga had brought him her da’s razor and a mirror. With the growth of beard gone, he saw how gaunt he’d become. Lothiar had meant to starve him, he was sure of it. Curse you to hell, Kethlyn. You left me in the dark…
“You’re younger than I thought,” Megga said, returning to the barn to reclaim the razor.
Twenty-one this fall. He hadn’t needed a lifetime to mess things up so badly. He’d worn the Falcon Crown for only one year. If his feet didn’t kill him, he might have a lifetime to set things right. But where to begin?
While his clothes dried on the line, he bundled himself in the woolen blanket. As warm as the evening was, he fought chills.
Megga brought a tub of salve and muslin scraps for bandages. The soap and water had stung badly enough. The salve was agony. Megga smoothed it on the lesions gently while Valryk bit into the heel of his hand and swallowed whimpers.
“You realize,” the girl said, “you might have to cut off that black part before the poison spreads?”
The small toe of his left foot was as dark as frostbite. The discoloration was creeping into the meat on the bottom of his foot. “My mother is skilled with medicine,” he said. “If I can reach her, she can help.”
