by Ellyn, Court
Wagons trundled along the road. Ogres leaned into the yokes, pulling. Others strode alongside, edges of axe blades grinning with slim slivers of sunlight.
Valryk grabbed the crutch from the grass and tried to haul himself onto his right foot. Too slow, too slow. He’d be seen.
Megga took his arm, flung it around her neck and pried him up. “Edi!” she called.
The little girl threw her onion but saw the approaching wagons and was running for the house before the onion hit the ground.
The ogres had passed yesterday as well. Most marching, some riding in a handful of wagons. Their mottled skin leaked strange orange-red blood.
Valryk had been practicing in the barn with the crutch, legs trembling, head spinning, when Megga stopped nodding in approval and dragged him down into the hay. He’d cursed, cradling his left foot. Megga had scuttled to a window. “They’re wounded!” she hissed at him.
Joining her, he’d seen she was right. “There must’ve been a battle.” Glee had surged into his chest. “Give ‘em hell, Kelyn.”
The wagons of wounded had rolled past without pause, bound north for Bramoran. Today, the wagons were southbound, and empty.
Megga shoved Valryk through the backdoor of the cottage. Cai raced around them, dived to his knees, flung back a rug. Grooves in the planks and an iron ring announced a cellar door. Cai grunted as he raised it.
Edi was crying as she climbed down the ladder. Her brother clambered down, agile as a monkey, and waved frantically for his older sister to hurry.
The wagons turned into the barnyard.
Valryk tossed the crutch into the dark hole and hopped down the ladder on his right foot. Megga lowered the cellar door as she followed him down. A tug on a length of twine slid the rug back into place.
“They’ll take what they want and leave,” Megga whispered.
Barrels and crates and burlap bags took up much of the cellar’s floor space. Boxes and sacks filled shelves lining the walls. The children had stashed most of their eggs, potatoes, flour, and onions down here. The bins in the barn were merely an offering to bogeymen.
Edi crawled into her sister’s lap; Megga’s hand covered her little mouth to stifle her crying. Blue eyes large with tears clung to Valryk, as if Edi expected the ogres to kill him too.
Unable to take his eyes off her, he lowered himself onto a barrel, legs bloodless, shoulders weighted beyond bearing. Look what I’ve done.
Guttural shouts rumbled through the floor. The cottage door swung open with a bang. Edi squeaked. Megga’s hand tightened.
Heavy footfalls clomped on the planks, dust sifted down in thin shafts of daylight. Glass shattered, furniture overturned.
“Bastards,” Cai said, fists knotting.
A mutter like gravel underfoot filtered down. “Smell dem sweetmeats?”
A second voice answered. “Dem here. Dis naeni see dem.”
Breathy, snuffling noises disturbed the shafts of sunlight, sent the dust swirling. The light multiplied as the rug was thrown back. The twine snapped. The cellar door squealed open.
Valryk dropped down beside his barrel. Cai tried to follow, but an arm reached down and snagged the boy by the hair. He kicked and wailed as he was dragged up into daylight. Valryk shouted something inane and dived to catch the boy by the foot. In his panic, Cai only kicked Valryk’s hand aside.
“Hide, Edi!” Megga ordered, then shoved past Valryk and raced up the ladder. “Stop! Please!”
“Damn it. Edi, stay here!” Valryk tried hopping one-legged up the rungs. One of the ogres seized him by the scruff and raised him the last few feet. He was frog-hopped into the yard, tossed headlong into the dirt. Pain lashed through his left foot, but he didn’t have the luxury to dwell on it: Megga was screaming. An ogre dragged her by the ankle toward the wagons. Another clutched Cai by the throat, watching his face turn purple. The boy’s fingernails gouged bloody stripes into the ogre’s forearm, but the creature seemed to feel no pain.
A third ogre strode toward Valryk, axe bared.
Valryk pressed his forehead to the ground. “Cap needs these sweetmeats!” he bellowed. Many times he’d heard Lothiar reason things out for Paggon, coaching him into thinking what he wanted the ogre to think. Valryk had to try. “Cap wants food! These sweetmeats grow food. They make food. For Cap!”
The ogre dragging Megga paused to listen. Valryk peered up at the ogre wielding the axe. He raised his hands in a placating gesture. “You want to make Cap happy. Aye? And Chieftain Paggon?”
The axe-wielder grunted. Red eyes raked Valryk like coals. “Dis sweetmeat know Ironfist?”
Did he ever. “Lothiar, too.” He raised himself up a little taller. “Cap needs these sweetmeats to make food. Eat them, and Cap will be angry. Paggon angry too. You want Paggon to be angry? Big hands, Paggon. Big.”
The ogre nodded.
Valryk half-glanced at the ogre slowly strangling Cai. The boy’s feet kicked three feet above the ground. “Cap will tell Paggon to use those big hands to hurt you. Yes? Don’t harm the boy. Please. Let him go. You’re killing him! Take the food! The cellar is full of food. It’s the food Lothiar wants. Not the boy. The boy will make more food for Cap. Yes?”
The ogres exchanged a glance, and Cai’s feet eased toward the ground. No doubt, the ogres wanted to eat well before returning to Bramoran. Were Lothiar’s desires more important than that of their own bellies?
The great clawed hand released and Cai tumbled in a choking, gasping heap on the ground. Megga twisted and won free and crawled to her brother, swept him up and held him tight.
The third swung his axe. Valryk ducked. The flat of the blade struck him in the shoulder and sent him hurtling. By the time he righted himself, the ogres were walking away. Several carried armloads of potatoes and onions from the barn. Another pair pushed their way into the cottage and began tossing out barrels and sacks.
Megga sobbed, watching her family’s hoarded bounty slipping through her fingers. Their winter provisions.
“What’ll we do?” she cried as the ogres heaved the wagons back onto the road.
Standing big-eyed on the threshold, Edi looked to her sister, to Valryk.
Cai’s throat was already darkening, and his windpipe was bruised. His breath rattled in his throat.
“I’m sorry,” Valryk said.
Megga turned away from the sight of the wagons dwindling northward. “Sorry? But you saved us! Whatever you said to them … we’re alive because of you—”
“Don’t!” he blurted, startling her. “Goddess’ sake, don’t thank me.”
He hobbled across the yard and into the barn. The bins were empty of all but a wrinkled potato, a half-rotten apple, a couple of small onions. The pigeons cooed, softly discussing the pillaging. Sam shook his blond mane and nodded his broad nose in invitation, but Valryk wasn’t in the mood to offer solace. Why hadn’t the ogres made off with the draft horse or the chickens? No bloody telling. If worse came to worse, Megga could butcher the horse. Aye, she was resourceful.
And Valryk would make it up to her. Somehow. Once he reached Rhyverdane, he would send provisions enough to last several winters.
A soft step crunched hay. “You know them by name,” Megga said. “Their leaders.”
Resourceful and quick. Valryk shrugged, attempting to bluff her. “They tortured me for my cooperation, and I gave it to them. Of course I know their leaders.”
Her robust voice had become very small. “You’re him, ain’t you. The Black Falcon. The king his very self.”
King Rat, a haunter of ruins, a thief of onions.
“If you are, the rumors are lies. You ain’t a friend to them monsters.”
Could something be true and false at the same time? “Everything went wrong,” he said, staring at the empty bins. “It wasn’t supposed to affect people like you. Maybe it would have, and I was too stupid to see it.”
He waited for Megga to go for her pitchfork, to jab a finger like a lance and order him off her prope
rty. She merely turned and walked out of the barn in silence.
At sundown she brought him a wooden trencher with a slice of bread and a boiled potato. Already she started to ration the little left in her larder.
“Cai all right?” Valryk watched her set the trencher down, then stared at the grubby knees of her trousers.
She nodded. “It’s Edi I’m worried about. She’ll have nightmares.”
Valryk took up the trencher, clutched it as he would a gift. “I’ll leave in the morning. More food for you. Eat the pigeons if you have to.”
A long while Megga was quiet. The weight of her eyes finally drew his gaze. “You should stay. The road is perilous. You’ll be killed.”
The pardon of a farmgirl was suddenly more precious than all the jewels he’d ever owned. However far the road took him, he’d never hope to find someone as forgiving again. But he couldn’t stay, not now. The foraging party might speak of him. Lothiar might learn where he was hiding. He might send a war party to fetch his escaped prisoner. If they came, when they came, they would find only children. And Megga and Cai and Edi would pay for hiding him. He couldn’t bear to see them suffer because of him.
“You should leave too.”
Megga was shaking her head before he finished. Such foolish loyalty.
She left him to eat in peace.
He slept only a couple of hours. It was Edi’s screaming that woke him. Would she ever understand that it was his fault that monsters crept into her dreams?
Moonslight pooled in the hay. Forath sulked red, and Thyrra beamed unblemished silver, sharing the night sky. The feud between them was ending. The seas would settle. Men would stop going mad. For a time.
Valryk hobbled to Sam’s stall. The horse welcomed him with a gentle nudge of his nose. For a long time Valryk stroked the thick neck, convincing himself he had no choice, then he opened the stall door. It was the final cruelty, the ugliest betrayal, taking the draft horse. But he had to make miles quickly, and he could not yet walk on his own.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered as he tied sacks together and flung them over the horse’s withers like saddle packs. Into them he stuffed the rotten food the ogres had left behind; he would add a couple of eggs and anything else he might find along the road. “Soon as I find a proper horse, I’ll let you go. But you have to promise to come back. They’ll not make it without you. Understand?”
Sam whickered.
As Valryk rode from the barnyard, he glanced back at the cottage. A pale face peered out the window. Or maybe it was only Thyrra’s reflection.
~~~~
26
Upon his release, Kethlyn’s first order of business was to visit the infirmary. The battle for the trenches had cost him nearly a hundred soldiers, most of them cavalry. And none from Blue Company had returned from Upton Mill.
Early in the morning, he rode through town to the Bastion. His father had assigned two Miraji soldiers to guard his back. They never spoke, not even to one another. Their amber eyes were sinister stars glinting inside their helms. The broad tufted hooves of their golden horses clomped heavily on the cobblestones.
When they reached the Bastion’s north tower, one Miraj remained at the door; the other trailed Kethlyn inside. The stench of blood and sweat filled the lower floor like soup. The heat made the air a burden to breathe. Young squires waved giant fans of woven reeds to make the wounded comfortable, and to keep flies from settling. Nearly two score men and women occupied the main room. Kethlyn recognized no one, and no one hailed him. Their identifying surcoats and colors had been removed to make way for bandages and salves. Where had these soldiers seen action?
He meandered through the rows of cots, seeking a familiar face, and heard whispers in his wake. “… he goes, the walking dead.” Someone spat.
Kethlyn turned and found two wounded men leaning furtively together. When they saw they’d been caught, one rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling; the second boldly met Kethlyn’s eye and jutted his chin as if issuing a challenge.
Kethlyn ensured the Miraj followed close behind him, then continued on his way.
Finally, in the back corner, he glimpsed a face he knew. Not one of his own, but at least, once, a friend. One of Drys’s legs was elevated and snuggly swaddled, and a nasty gash bloodied one side of his head.
Kethlyn understood now. The wounded soldiers were all Aralorri, under the banners of Blue Mountain and Zeldanor. No wonder they eyed him with hostility.
Orderlies surrounded Drys. “…won’t move me!” he declared. Poppy wine slurred the syllables. “These are my men. With them I’ll stay.”
A young woman with curling black hair waved the orderlies away. Drys settled and let her dab ointment onto his lacerated scalp. He leered drunkenly at her. “Will you be my girl?”
“Kalla tells me you already have a girl,” said the young woman.
Drys aimed his starry-eyed grin at the ceiling. “Aye, Ebha. Loveliest creature I ever did see. She has this nose. Like a … like a button.”
“You told me, m’ lord.”
“Aye, and freckles. Stars on her cheeks.”
“Yes, I know. Hold still now.”
Kethlyn stood at the foot of the cot and nudged Drys’s elevated leg with the toe of his boot. “Lord Zeldanor? You look terrible. Where were you wounded?”
Drys floated down from his reverie among star-colored freckles and scowled. “Who the hell are you?” His eyes widened as awareness set in. “Goddess, Aisley, get this traitor away from me.” Drys tried to roll off the cot.
The young woman struggled to hold him down. “Don’t excite yourself.”
“If I get to my fists, traitor, you’ll eat both my feet.” The poppy wine worked wonders at keeping him incapacitated.
The woman glanced tentatively up at Kethlyn. She was younger than he’d thought, maybe Carah’s age. Against her raven-black hair her skin was as fair as seafoam, and flushed with the exertion of managing her irate patient. “He took his wounds at Lunélion, m’ lord.”
Drys forgot his loathing of Kethlyn in an instant. He smirked in triumph. “A glorious feint. Worked too, War Commander assures me. That fucker in Bramoran fell for it. Sent his ogres to us instead of wherever, and they stomped us good. But Drona reached Some-such Bridge, and Johf is nearly at … where was he headed?”
“Graynor,” the girl said.
“Right. Good to know my blood wasn’t spilled for nothin’. Why am I telling you, you lousy son of a bastard? Shouldn’t you be hanging somewhere?”
“Maybe later.” Kethlyn patted Drys’s foot and resumed his search for his own troops.
He located a stairwell spiraling to the upper floors. He hadn’t climbed two steps when a woman’s voice bounced down. Something familiar in its command. Recognition struck him just as toes kicked a blood-stained skirt into view. Kethlyn turned fast, but he had no time to find a hiding place before Queen Briéllyn rounded the central column and spied him.
“Well, well,” she said. Her fists knotted on her hips, and the heat of her eyes seared him. Her auburn hair was coiled inside a hairnet, and her apron was stained bosom to knee. “What do you want?”
Kethlyn afforded her the mandatory bow. “Your Majesty. I’d like to find my men.”
“We put the Evaronnans in the backrooms, some upstairs. For their safety.”
Kethlyn peered down the narrow corridor that the queen’s flapping hand indicated and there glimpsed the raven-haired girl. Her arms were stacked with jars of salve and rolls of fresh bandages. “Who is that?”
Briéllyn leveled a glare that screamed, Really? Girls? Now? “That is Lady Mithlan. Her grandfather was slain during the battle for Tírandon. I hear she’s inherited a wasteland, thanks to you.”
Kethlyn was resigned to carry the weight of Valryk’s sins in addition to his own, but such a blatant accusation brought the fire of anger into his face. “I didn’t inspire your son’s schemes, ma’am. You can thank Lothiar for that. My mistake was agreeing to go
along with them. And I hope Her Majesty is praying as diligently as she’s accusing. Last I saw Valryk, he looked like death itself.”
That changed Briéllyn’s tune. She grabbed his wrist and drew him into a room no larger than a closet, among stacks of boxes and piles of soiled linens. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t be sure but … I think … I think Lothiar was torturing him. Knowing Valryk, he resisted, and Lothiar hurt him or starved him until he played the puppet.”
“Then my son could be innocent, too.”
Too. Did she realize what she had said? That single word filled Kethlyn with hope that he might yet be forgiven. “All those months ago, Valryk didn’t seem to be in duress when he brought his plans to me. Any more than I was in accepting them.”
Briéllyn wrung her apron in both hands. “Did he confide to you … anything about … how his father died?”
The question struck Kethlyn like a lash. “No, ma’am. I never asked. I never thought to ask. I just assumed … you think he…?” It was only days after King Rhorek died, moments after his coronation, that Valryk came to Kethlyn with his grand vision. He and Lothiar must have been conspiring for weeks, maybe months, before his father took ill.
Briéllyn gripped his shirtfront. “Never, never repeat what I asked you. I’ll ask Valryk myself.” She eyed Kethlyn’s Miraji shadow as if gaging his ability to understand their conversation. “If I … if I find the courage. It takes madness to confront a king.”
“Or to tell him no.”
That sapped the conviction from her glare. She whirled from the storage closet, abandoning Kethlyn to his search.
He found his soldiers languishing in the airless heat of the backrooms. A bony middle-aged woman with a pinched face poured water into cups and nearly shoved them into each soldier’s hand. She bypassed those too weak to hold their own cup. “Lord Tírandon is dead because of you,” she told them. “Drink up and no complaining. Lucky for you, Her Grace decided what she did, or I’d have the lot of you tossed out on your arses.”
