“Nothing has ever come out of the ruins but bats and snakes,” said Shim.
“That’s not true,” said Bosser.
Shim waved off his objection. “If anything lives in those warrens, then it’s had decades of opportunities to come out and feed. Someone would have seen it before. No, this is something else.”
“Whatever it is,” said Argoth, “it finds us in a precarious state of affairs. We can only hope for an embassy from Mokad.”
“Mokad,” said Shim in disgust. “Our Lords in Mokad will send nothing. The war with Nilliam has them on their hind legs. Any new Divine they might have raised has been sent to fight. If they were going to help us, they would have sent a Divine months ago. No, we cannot count on them.” He rubbed a weathered hand across the stubble on his jaw in frustration. Then he paused. “But that doesn’t mean we’re lost. Sometimes extreme situations demand extreme measures.” He put his hand on Argoth’s shoulder.
“What measures?” demanded Bosser. “What have we left undone?”
Shim looked meaningfully at Argoth. “There are ways to combat both dreadmen and wizards, aren’t there Captain? There are alliances that can be made.”
“Alliances?” asked Bosser. “Mungo will not lend their wizards to help us.”
“I’m not talking about that type of an alliance. If the events at the village of Plum were not the result of some Bone Face plot, then that means there are . . .” He paused to find the right words. “Other powers abroad.”
Shim had come perilously close to speaking treason. But then Shim was always one to take risks. Shim’s eyes glittered in his leather face. Argoth knew that look. He’d seen it a hundred times as he and Shim had fought and drunk and laughed together.
Neither Bosser nor Argoth spoke.
“Such things would require great delicacy,” Shim continued.
“What are you talking about?” Bosser asked. “Allying with sleth?”
Shim shrugged.
Bosser was indignant. “Lords, man. I’d rather die, rather run every member of my house through with my own sword than join myself with abomination.”
Shim said, “Our good captain here saved us last year with his seafire. Of course, the Bone Faces obviously have adjusted their tactics. Still, he might save us again. So I’m not talking about casting our lot with monsters”—he cocked an eyebrow at Argoth—“or am I?”
A warning shot through Argoth like lightning. Shim knew. At the very least, he suspected. What was Shim doing? Talk like this would get Argoth killed.
Bosser turned to Argoth with a look of disbelief and indignation on his face. “What is he going on about?”
Argoth had done all he could to not reveal his lore, to make his fighting look like that of an unmultiplied man. He stroked his neck and felt the husk of the brilliant, blue beetle one of his daughters had found and made into a necklace for him. She and her sisters, his son, his courageous wife—they would bear the brunt of the violence that would be directed against him. Even if some individuals in the Clans trusted him, many more would fear him. And they would exercise their fears upon his children.
Argoth relaxed, looked as surprised as he could muster. “Lord Shim, I do not know what you suggest.”
“Don’t you?” asked Shim.
Arogth looked at his Lord, his friend. Well, as much of a friend as one might have and still keep the kinds of secrets Argoth did. He bowed his head. “I am sorry, Lord. I truly wish I knew how to help.”
11
Hunters
DA RETURNED IN the early evening and whistled Talen and the others in from the fields. Talen was more than happy to oblige. Most of the injuries from the villagers had receded to a dull throb. But one close to his kidney had not. It hurt every time he tried to stand straight.
They loaded the saws, axe, billhooks, hoggin, and bush knives into a push cart and began to walk back, Prince Conroy following behind. As they approached the yard, Conroy must have heard the new hens, for he let out a squawk, made an end run about the dogs, and raced to the yard.
Talen put away his tools and joined his father. Conroy stood on the handcart eying four golden hens in their baskets and vocalizing whatever thoughts roosters did to their new ladies.
“Only four?” asked Ke. “I thought we had enough for six. Has Mol raised his prices?”
“No,” said Da. “Mol’s in a bad way. So I advanced him a payment for a load of goose down and a few hat feathers.”
“Did you see anything in the woods?” asked Talen.
“In fact, I did.” Da paused and took on an air of one about to tell a harrowing story. “Trees. There were lots of trees.”
Ke laughed. Talen shook his head and sighed.
“Of course, there was that one hatchling swinging about on a vine. But he wasn’t bothering anybody.”
Da’s joking in the face of danger had worked when Talen was younger, but this wasn’t funny. Talen had almost been brained into oblivion this morning, a monster was running about, and people had died.
“Your trees are nothing,” said Ke and pointed at Talen. “The mighty hunter here saw one in the yard.”
“Did you now?” asked Da.
“Oh, yes,” said Ke. “He got a fine view of its leg and wicked bum.”
Talen folded his arms. “I also found a spoon wet with fresh porridge.”
“I wondered where that had fallen,” said Da. “I got to the barn this morning with my bowl, but no spoon. And I knew I’d put one in.”
So much for the spoon. “I saw somebody,” Talen said.
“I’m sure you did,” said Da.
But Talen could see he was going to give him the same lecture River had, and so he decided not to push it. Still, something odd was going on; if they didn’t want to take him seriously, fine. He’d follow the evidence and find the truth of it on his own. “Come on, Nettle,” he said. “Let’s go check the weirs.”
Nettle handed his hay fork to Ke with a smile and followed Talen down to the river. The river ran so low this time of year that the gravel bars stood high and dry. Frogs croaked back and forth to each other from the edges of the slower pools. There were a number of fish caught in the weirs. Talen fetched eight pan-sized trout out, and then he and Nettle took the fish back to the house. They filleted them, throwing the bones and guts into a bucket for the garden.
Talen looked over the meadow where they kept their mule. That person he’d seen today, if it was a hatchling, could be out there in the shadows of the forest line right now looking at him, and he’d never know it. And the dogs were clearly not going to be any help.
Talen said to Nettle, “I’ve been working this through. I’m thinking a snare is the way to go. We have a bunch of hunters working the whole district. Let them beat the bushes. We’ll sit back and let the hatchlings walk right into their own doom.”
“If it was a hatchling today,” Nettle said, “I don’t know that a snare will hold them for long.”
“We’ll have to be ready,” Talen said. “Have to have our bows at hand and shoot first. There can be no hesitation.”
Nettle nodded.
They went in the house and laid the fish fillets on the table. Ke sat in his chair mending a tear in his tunic. He looked up at the fish. “You’ve got to make it hard for me, don’t you?” he said.
Ke was beginning yet another fast to purify his heart. He’d started fasting after the battles last year where one of his best friends had fallen and been taken by the Bone Faces. The Bone Faces hadn’t removed his finger and enthralled him. Nor had they fed him to their gods. Instead, they put out his eyes, shredded his ears, broke his feet so he’d be lame for the rest of his life, and cut off his manhood. Then they left him by the side of the road to die or tell his tale.
Ke had killed with a ferocious rage after that. And even though there was something new in Ke’s eye that scared him, Talen had still wished he could be like his brother. And then Ke began to fast and ruined it. At first, his fasts consisted of passing up r
ed meat. Now he would go without food or water for a day, sometimes two.
Talen didn’t understand all the fuss. It was right and good to defend home and hearth. It was right to take pleasure in the death of an enemy.
When he’d brought up this obvious fact to Ke, his brother had said, “Yes, but what happens when you begin to relish it like a roasted apple? What happens when you cannot slake the hate?” And so Ke fasted. But the fasting didn’t appear to give Ke any new insight. The only thing it produced, as far as Talen could see, was a loud stomach and a short temper. Besides, Da had killed, and he didn’t fast.
Talen jiggled the basket of fish a bit. “They’re going to be tasty,” he said. “Are you sure you can’t wait? Given what’s happened, I would feel more comfortable with you at full strength.”
“You’ve got to get the weeds when they’re small,” said Ke.
Talen grunted. There were things about Ke he just couldn’t understand. He went back out to the well to wash up. Da had picked up this Mokaddian washing habit from Mother. Talen wondered if Da demanded they clean themselves because he truly believed in cleanliness or because it was his way of remembering her. Either way, Talen wouldn’t eat until he’d scrubbed with soap.
A large basin sat on a table next to the well. Da had lined the ground around the well with bricks. He’d also laid a brick path from the well to the house. Another was half-built from the house to the privy, all to keep the boarded floor of their house clean.
Talen took off his shirt and scrubbed his arms, neck, and chest. He dumped a bucket of cold water over his head, and that’s when he saw the footprint in the soft dirt at the edge of the bricks.
He walked to the edge of the bricks and looked down. There were three footprints heading away from the well toward the old sod house. The prints weren’t deep. In fact, you had to be standing just right to see them, but they were most assuredly there.
“Nettle,” he said.
Nettle was slick with soap.
Talen pointed at the footprint. “What do you make of these?”
Nettle walked over. He took a wet cloth, wiped his chest, and looked down.
“They’re not mine or yours,” Talen said.
“The toes looked a little long,” Nettle said.
Long toes made Talen think of the woodikin. When the first settlers arrived in these lands, they found a number of small, hairy creatures sitting in a wild apple tree eating fruit. The first settlers had considered the creatures pests, but over time things had turned deadly, for the woodikin were not simple and dumb brutes. There had been much bloodshed between the first people and the tribes of the woodikin.
“Woodikin?” Talen asked.
“No,” Nettle said, “this foot is too fat. And the toes aren’t nearly long enough. They’re human.”
“The prints are too small for any of us,” said Talen.
“So it could be the sleth children or someone else. If it is sleth, you know we’re bound by law to report it to the authorities.”
“And have them take all the glory and the reward?”
“I’m just saying we need to think this through.”
“What’s there to think? We get my da out here and execute a plan. We’re not talking about some ancient sleth. We’re talking about children.”
“I know,” said Nettle. “But I also know you don’t give some things enough time. You jump to conclusions. Look at your father’s spoon.”
“Are you saying you don’t want to help?”
“No,” said Nettle. “I’m in. But we need to have a solid plan. Not some half-baked thing. This one-legged hatchling snare scheme of yours is about as good as your running up the tree to escape Ke and River. This is one print. One hatchling. How many others might there be? We have to take that into account.”
Nettle had a point, but sometimes you didn’t have time to reconnoiter and strategize. “If you’d been in my shoes this morning,” said Talen, “River and Ke would have had you before the chase began because you’d still be deciding which way to run. Sometimes what’s required is immediate action.”
“Yes, just do the first thing that comes to mind. That will win wars and conquer nations.”
Nettle heard a lot from his father and his men about battle. But just because his father was a man of battle tactics didn’t elevate Nettle to the same level. “You only get a perfect plan after the fact, Nettle. A good plan, boldly executed now, is far better than a perfect one next week.”
“If they’re sleth,” said Nettle, “then a hasty plan will get us both killed. I just want to make sure we do this thing in a way that will show everyone what we’re capable of. Not a way that backfires on us.”
Nettle was right, but that didn’t make his resistance any less annoying. “Fine. Are you going to help me look for more spoor or are you just going to stand there dripping on the bricks?”
* * *
Talen and Nettle found two other sets of prints: one by the privy and the second in the mud by the pig pen. Nettle had just measured the one by the pig pen with his hand and concluded they had found prints that belonged to two different people, not one, when a man spoke from behind them.
“What have you got there, boys?”
Talen jumped. A huge soldier stood only a few paces away. Two others stood behind him. The one in front had a dark beard that was long and unkempt like the fur of a shaggy dog. A blue hand was painted on the right breast of his cuirass. Each of the Nine Clans had many orders; the blue hand was one of the smaller Fir-Noy orders, but it was not made up of common men. This was an armsman, a professional soldier. His military belt with its ornate buckle and honor discs confirmed it. Only an armsman was allowed to wear that belt and the leather apron straps signifying his seniority. The other two men carried the blue hand on their armor as well.
Talen looked at the lead armsman’s wrist. It was marked with a tusk tattoo that extended up his forearm—the same design as the tattoo on the Fir-Noy that had sicced the Stag Home villagers on him. Talen had expected some reprisal from the Fir-Noy at Stag Home. But he thought it would come as a fine levied by the Shoka authorities. He didn’t think the Fir-Noy at the village would send his men, certainly not so quickly.
“Boy,” the armsman said, “I asked you a question.”
“We don’t have anything, Zu,” Talen said. “Just talking about some wildcat tracks we found over the hill today.”
The man looked down at the prints Talen and Nettle had been discussing and took a step to get a clearer view.
The dogs began to bark. Moments later a number of soldiers filtered out of the woods on one side of the farm. A few others approached from the fields on the other side.
“Nothing terrible needs to happen here today,” said the armsman. “We just need your cooperation. You ought to start by calling your dogs before they get hurt.”
Talen didn’t believe a word of it. Somebody was going to get hurt. Something valuable was going to be taken.
The cords of the muscles on the soldier’s arms and neck stood out. Most soldiers were levied from the ranks of the common people for a battle or watch, but it was always temporary; they served, and then went back to their lives. Commoners practiced regularly, it was true, but that could not be compared to the armsmen who did nothing but practice war. And not only was he an armsman, but the dark feathers in the tubes on either side of his untied helmet marked him as someone who held authority. Not a leader of a hundred, but a Hammer, someone marked for his performance in battle, someone who had proved himself and was marked for others to follow. Talen suspected this one had probably killed many men. The armsman had tied a piece of black cloth around his left upper arm. It signified he was a sleth hunter.
“Call your dogs,” the man said again.
Talen whistled for the dogs, but they only barked more viciously.
Nettle looked up at the armsman and put his hands on his hips. “You have no authority here. This is Shoka land.”
It was rude for Nettle to
address the armsman without the formal “Zu” even if Uncle Argoth, as a Captain for the Shoka, outranked this man.
The man grinned a surprisingly rot-free smile. Then he stepped up to Nettle and backhanded him in the face, knocking him to the ground.
Talen turned to help Nettle up, but Nettle only pushed his hand away. When he gained his feet, his face was red, eyes tearing from the pain of the man’s blow.
The armsman drew his sword and pointed it at Nettle. “Argoth’s get, aren’t you? Well, I’d watch what I said. None of daddy’s men are here to keep you from stubbing your toe. And we wouldn’t want any accidents.”
Nettle clenched his jaw in anger. He was going to say something, but Talen cut him off. “What do you want, Zu?”
“You’re going to round everyone up. I want them standing by the well.”
Suddenly Queen’s and Blue’s barking rose to a pitch by the old sod house, and then one of them screamed.
“I told you to call your dogs,” the armsman said.
“Blue!” Talen yelled. “Queen!”
Talen ran toward the old house. Three soldiers stood in the yard between the old house and the new one. One stood with a drawn sword over Blue. Blue cried out in pain, eyes wide, and tried to scrabble away from the man, but the dog’s back legs were injured. Blood ran out of a wound in his hind quarters. Queen stood back, cowering. When she saw Talen, her courage rose, and she barked at the soldiers again.
Ke and River rushed out of the house to the yard, looks of concern and alarm on their faces, River still wearing her cooking apron. Da strode out of the barn with the Hog in his hand, then saw the soldiers. “What’s going on here?” he asked.
“You’ll put that down,” said the big armsman, “and tie your other dog up.”
Da turned to the armsman. “Who are you?”
“I’m here in the name of the Council. You will stand and account.”
“I’ll do no such thing, not to the likes of you.”
The big armsmen grinned. “Oh, I think you will.”
The two soldiers with him raised crossbows and pointed them at Da. Then the soldiers by the privy and the others over by Talen fanned out in a wide semi-circle around Da and the others.
Servant: The Dark God Book 1 Page 11
