“I have had many words with our father of late,” said Rogan. “Now I must bring him news of Trisken, but I do not think that will change his mind. In fact, I think it will make him even more resolute. We cannot yet declare ourselves openly, but our period of subterfuge and intrigue is over. The time has come for war. We will strike from the shadows, as we always have—but we will strike with blades and arrows, and no longer with secrets.”
The effect on all of them was immediate. Nian looked at Rogan in wonder, her eyes shining. Kaita’s hand tightened on the back of her chair, and Tagata seized her greatsword again, as if she meant to march off to battle at once.
“Brother,” whispered Tagata. “Are you saying… ?”
“Yes,” said Rogan. “Nian, you have ridden far and long, but I must ask you to deliver yet another message. Rouse the captains. Order the troops to ready themselves. We make for war, and Northwood will be the first to fall before our might.”
“And I will have my vengeance,” said Kaita, her eyes shining.
Rogan fixed her with a look. “I do not think so,” he said.
She flared with anger. “Rogan, you cannot expect—”
“Unless I am very much mistaken,” he said, “Northwood will not be the end of your shadowed road. But you may try, Kaita, so long as it does not interfere with the battle. I only give you one command: stay alive. Our father needs all of us, now more than ever.”
Kaita scoffed. “You worry for my safety? It is our enemies who should be worried.”
Rogan sighed. “Then you may have your vengeance.”
ON THAT SAME NIGHT, NEAR the Dorsean town of Lan Shui west of the Greatrocks, a dark evening had come.
A woman named Zhanu lived on a farm just a few spans beyond the walls of Lan Shui. Zhanu was a veteran of the Dorsean army and had fought in the king’s wars. Then, one day, she had retired with much honor and a gift of the king’s gold, and she had settled near the town where she had been born. In the years since, she had taken a wife named Shu, who had died old and happy, and had mothered three children, all of whom had grown and left Lan Shui to live their own lives elsewhere. Now Zhanu lived alone on her farm, working the land each day and visiting the town’s taverns each night.
Except that recently, she had not been visiting the taverns. Like everyone who dwelled outside the town’s walls, she had been spending her nights locked up in her own home, a weapon near at hand.
Zhanu stumped about her house, ensuring the windows were closed and shuttered and the front door was tightly secured. She grumbled as she fidgeted with the lock. It was new, having been added only a few days ago by a blacksmith from Lan Shui. Never in her life had Zhanu felt the need for a lock on her door. Lan Shui had never been that sort of town.
“All the nine lands going to darkness,” she muttered. Zhanu had taken to talking to herself sometime in the last few years, and though she despised the habit, she could not seem to break it.
A single candle burned in the main room of her house. Zhanu lifted it and brought it into her bedroom, the only other room in the house, and nothing very grand. She had never felt the need for fancy lodgings—truthfully, even two rooms in her house seemed a bit grandiose to her. But her wife had insisted.
Zhanu set the candle on her bedside table, stripped down to her underclothes, and crawled beneath her thick blanket. It had been a long day in the fields, and she looked forward to a good night’s rest. She snuffed out the candle and closed her eyes.
Not quite an hour later, they snapped open as something scratched on her roof.
Skritch, skritch.
She lay perfectly still in her bed, her whole body tense, waiting.
Skritch, skritch.
The sound had moved. Whatever was making the scratching, it was moving from the rear of the house towards the front.
Come for me, have you? thought Zhanu. Well, you will find no frail old victim here.
Zhanu slid from her bed, moving as quietly as possible. She lifted her sword from its place on the wall, trying to remain as silent as possible, and crept into the house’s front room.
Skritch.
The scratching sound came again, but this time it seemed to cut itself off abruptly. Zhanu paused a step away from the door, listening.
There came a soft thump, like something landing on the ground outside. Whatever was making the noise had leaped down from the roof.
Zhanu stole to the wall just beside the door. She gripped her sword in both hands, holding it ready to swing.
All was silent for a long moment.
KROOM
The window behind Zhanu exploded inwards, showering the room with splinters.
With an old soldier’s instincts, she whirled and stabbed out with her sword. There was a sharp shunk as it slid deep into flesh.
Zhanu froze, staring at her intruder in horror.
The creature would have been as tall as she was if it stood upright, but it was hunched over on all fours. Its skin was pallid white, mottled with light grey, and it wore no clothing at all. Its long, thick limbs ended in claws as long as her hands, and its wide, red mouth was rimmed with sharp teeth designed for ripping and tearing into flesh. It had long, pointed ears, like an Elf’s.
Zhanu had buried her sword in its chest halfway to the hilt. Her thrust had been pure reflex. Yet the creature stared at her, and its yellowing eyes were filled with hate, not pain.
“What in the dark—”
Zhanu’s words cut off as the creature struck her a heavy backhanded blow. She flew through the air before crashing hard into the wooden floor. Nothing broke, but she bit her own tongue hard enough that she tasted blood.
She pushed herself up on her elbows just in time to see the creature seize the sword by the hilt and drag it out of its own flesh. It hissed with discomfort, but the wound did not seem to slow it at all. And as Zhanu watched, the skin and the flesh beneath began to stitch together, until soon there was no sign there had been a wound there at all.
The creature threw the sword past Zhanu. The steel sank into the wall and stuck there, quivering. Zhanu tried to push herself away, but the creature stalked towards her on all fours, its shredded ears twitching, a rasping hiss sounding from its throat.
“Dark take you,” said Zhanu. “Shu is waiting for me anyways.”
She spat, and the bloody spittle struck the floor just in front of the creature. It stopped in its advance for only a moment, stooping to lick up the spit.
A hungry gleam came into its eyes. It leaped for her, and Zhanu knew nothing more.
Constable Yue of the family Baolan was summoned to Zhanu’s farm the next day.
One of her neighbors had not seen her in the fields that morning and had gone to investigate. Once he had seen the horror inside her house, he had run straight to Lan Shui and found Yue in the constables’ station. Even as a dark foreboding seized her, she summoned Ashta and Sinshi, the town’s other two constables, and set out for the farm with them in tow.
Yue had no illusions about what she would find. Zhanu’s neighbor had been too afraid to describe what he saw, but it was not the first such grisly murder she had investigated in the last few weeks. Zhanu’s home looked just as she expected it to. The window beside the door had been broken open by something attacking from outside the house. The front door was still closed and locked; Zhanu’s neighbor had not been able to open it, and had looked in through the smashed window. The constables forced the door open, and inside they found a scene all too similar to others they had seen recently. Zhanu’s corpse lay in the corner, her head propped up against the wall, her eyes staring sightlessly at them. Her sunburnt skin was unusually pale. There was blood on the floor and on the wall, but not nearly as much as one would have expected, considering how the woman’s throat had been torn open.
“Again,” said Sinshi, averting his eyes. “Sergeant, is it the—”
“The creature,” said Yue. “Yes.”
She winced at her own unwillingness to name the thing
. It was a foolish superstition. But then, Yue had been born and raised in Lan Shui. She had no illusions that she was anything other than the simple child of a small town, and among such folk, superstition died hard. It was her opinion that such traditions had been started for a reason, and she would not change them unless she, too, had a reason.
“Should we send another messenger, Sergeant?” said Ashta.
Yue looked at her. “Would you go, if I asked you to?”
Ashta and Sinshi both grew visibly paler, and Sinshi swallowed hard. But Ashta lifted her chin. “I would.”
“As would I,” said Sinshi, his voice shaking.
“Then the two of you are idiotic, if brave,” said Yue. “I would not send you even if you begged me to, because you would die—just like the last two. And if I do not send one of you because I do not think you would survive, I have no right to ask another of the townsfolk to go.”
“What do we do, then?” said Sinshi, voice thick with despair.
“I wish my answer were otherwise,” said Yue. “But we have to keep waiting. I have not sent a report to Bertram for three weeks now—nor the Mystics, for that matter. The king’s collectors have received no taxes. That cannot go on forever without prompting an investigation. We may not be able to leave the town, but that does not mean others cannot come here.”
“That could take weeks,” said Ashta. “And the attacks are coming more—”
“Do you think I do not know that?” snapped Yue. “We have warned the townsfolk, and we have warned the farmers. Many have retreated inside the walls, as we suggested, but others are more foolish—like poor Zhanu here, may she rest in the dark. When you have been a constable for a while longer, you, too, may learn that you cannot protect everyone from themselves.”
Sinshi stared at his feet now, chagrined. But Ashta still held her sergeant’s gaze. “I have been thinking—”
“When did this start?” said Yue, raising an eyebrow.
Ashta heard the joke in her tone and pressed on. “I have been thinking. No one has tried riding east. A messenger could reach the Greatrocks in less than a day.”
“Where do you think it is coming from?” said Yue. “It is far more likely to have its home in the mountains than in the western spur. And even if I am wrong, and a messenger made it deep into the mountains, they would never survive. Satyrs are plentiful there, and harpies, and other, worse things that humans have never named. I have thought of all of this, constable.”
At last Ashta averted her eyes, joining Sinshi in his awkward discomfort. “As you say, Sergeant,” she muttered. “We will remove the body, and burn her.”
“I will write a letter to her eldest son, so that we may send it when the road is safe again,” said Sinshi. “He is in Bertram.”
“Good. Do it quickly, and return to the station when you are through. And do not despair.” Yue looked through the shattered window at the world beyond—too bright for such a solemn day. Too sunny.
“Someone will come. Eventually.”
And she was right, though she would not know it for some days yet.
OF COURSE, WE IN NORTHWOOD knew nothing of all these dark events, and so our lives went on quite uninterrupted.
I had thought that Loren and Xain would be eager to leave the city and make their way east. But for some reason I did not know, they remained in Northwood for some time. Loren spent long hours walking in the woods with Chet, the children helped Mag around the inn, and Xain skulked about the place as he recovered from his illness.
Others have asked me, and I have often wondered, why we all did not feel a greater urgency. We had defeated a great evil in the mountains, but we had not wiped it out. I have been called foolish for being so lax about our situation. And indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, I was foolish. But what I said earlier, about stories, and believing them, is never more true than when speaking of the story we live day to day. And we are always prone to believe that which we think will make our lives easier. I thought, as I am sure Loren did, that having defeated our enemy, we would be free from them for a time. After all, they had been hidden in the shadows for so long—why would they reveal themselves now?
That was our notion, anyway. And so, for my part, I spent much time revisiting my old haunts in Northwood and the lands around it. I visited old friends in the town, for of course I knew more people than only Mag and Sten. There was Len, a distant cousin of Sten’s. He was a somewhat shifty fellow, and he often got into trouble with the constables after being found with small valuables that did not belong to him in the strictest sense—or in any other sense, truth be told. But he was always a joy to play Moons with, as long as you did not wager any money against the outcome, for he was both bad at the game and a poor loser. And there was old Elsie, who had been wizened and wrinkled even when I first came to Northwood with Mag. Now she could barely walk, even with her stick, and yet she did not let that stop her from managing her farm, from which came the best butter and cheeses that could be found for a hundred leagues. She had hired hands to help her with the milking and the mucking, for that was quite beyond her, but she oversaw all their goings-on with a sharp eye and an unwavering attention to detail.
One day, over an afternoon snack and more than one cup of wine, Elsie and I fell to talking about Mag. She had long been friends with Mag and Sten, of course, and in the midst of all our talk—Elsie’s being mostly gossip—she said something that troubled me, and upon which I thought often afterwards.
“It shall lead to trouble, you see if I am wrong.”
“What shall?” I asked, cocking my head.
“You. Mag. All this.” Hefting her stick, she swung it around generally at our surroundings, so that I had to duck to keep from being brained. “She has been sitting still too long.”
“Not as long as you.”
“Hah!” barked Elsie. “Peace and quiet are meant for some folk. Folk like me. Not for your kind, or Mag’s.”
That made me smile. “And what, pray tell, is our kind? What makes us less deserving of the rest you enjoy?”
“I said your kind, or Mag’s.” Elsie took a sip of wine and a large bite of cheese before continuing around a full mouth. “You are neither of you alike, and neither of you is meant for stillness. And what is this talk of deserving? Deserving has nothing to do with it. A silly notion, if ever I have heard one. It is something inside you that is different, not anything you have done. All the important things about us are on the inside. And what is in you has never been in me. I never was a mercenary, you will notice.”
“I shudder to imagine it,” I told her. “Any enemy would have thrown down their arms in terror upon seeing you across the battlefield.”
“Why do you think I never took up the life?”
I laughed, and she chuckled, and our conversation turned down another path that was not important, and which I cannot remember. But though I did not show it, my thoughts grew heavy, and they remained so for a long while.
Mayhap I could not stop thinking of her words because they echoed what I myself had come to fear.
The day came at last when Loren decided to leave Northwood. Xain had been growing more and more impatient the longer they delayed. At last he had had stern words with Loren, well outside the inn and away from the rest of us. I did not know what he said, but when he and Loren returned that night, Loren told us she meant to leave—the next day, if she could possibly manage it.
I have thought often, in the years since, what might have been different if she had made her decision just one day earlier. It is useless to consider such things, of course, and yet our minds will not let us be sensible at all times.
But just like that, our spell of inaction vanished. Mag broke into furious activity at once. That night, though Loren and her party went to bed early, Mag and Sten stayed up late into the night, listing what supplies the children would need, and where they could find them for the best price. The next morning, we went over the needed supplies with Loren and Xain. They agreed to
all of it, and they gave us their heartfelt thanks for our help.
Mag waved a hand. “Do not be silly. We are old hands at long campaign roads. It would almost have been cruel of us not to share some of our expertise.”
“I will take care of procuring everything,” I told them. “I know the town, and if indeed you wish to leave before sundown, you will need to purchase everything quickly.”
“Mayhap I will come with you,” said Sten. “You shall have to carry a great deal, and your arms are scrawny.”
“With shoulders like yours, you could say that to anyone, oaf.” I slapped his broad arm. “But I would welcome your aid.”
“One of us should help,” said Loren quickly. “Let me send Chet.”
“You will need Chet’s help more than we will,” I said. “Be ready to go by the time we get back.”
Loren sighed. “Very well. Here.” She pulled a few gold weights from her purse and put them in my hand. “Will that be enough?”
“It will. Go see to the horses.” As soon as she had left, I turned to Mag and handed over the gold. “Sneak these into her saddlebags, will you?”
“Of course,” said Mag.
Sten and I went about our task quickly, and before long we had returned to the Lee Shore with food and many skins of water, as well as new blankets and bedrolls. With the help of Xain and the children, we packed these as well as we could and distributed them between the saddlebags of the horses. Before long, Loren and Chet came to eat with the rest of us.
“I have fetched as many provisions as I thought the horses could carry,” I told her. “It should see you at least halfway through Dorsea, though you shall need to stop for more supplies at some point.”
“We will stop as rarely as we can afford,” said Xain. “The fewer people who mark our passing, the better.”
“Once you are deep into Dorsea, I think the danger shall lessen. In the south their kingdom is preoccupied with the war, and in the north they remain as untroubled as ever at the goings-on of the nine lands.”
Blood Lust Page 5
