The Valkyrie (Raxillene's Rogues Book 2)

by Max Keith

  “Shall I?” By this time the poker was glowing orange as she held it before his eyes, and whoever was still awake at Lord Jurren’s manor would have heard that scream, too. “You can keep my silver,” she’d decided. “Dinner and your fire, plus all the rest of this business; you need it more than I do.” Her eyes searched the little cottage, and then she slashed a few strips from the rough blanket she’d used and tossed them to the floor beside the man. “Make a splint from your axe handle,” she advised, and then she was off into the night.

  Already the rain had slackened, but the moon remained stubborn behind thick clouds and she knew it would be a soaking night. She stood in the courtyard and gave a piercing whistle, three curiously discordant notes. She heard Pixie respond at once, battering against the door of the shed. Alorin seized two chickens on the way to get her horse, and another on the way back out through the palisade; she was obscurely glad when Pixie paused in the gateway and, very solemnly, shat.

  Three

  When at last they halted, still in the patchy upland thickets well west of the Priest’s Wood, the sun was high above the bank of storm clouds now rolling out to the far-off sea. Alorin unsaddled Pixie; both had been walking all night, so at least the horse had been spared the indignity of being ridden, but she seemed grateful to have the saddle off anyway. There, beside a waterfall running out of the Black Mountains, Alorin built a quick fire, pulled out her little pans, sharpened her cooking knife, and devoured one of the woodsman’s expensive chickens.

  Amazing, she thought as she sat there, how lawless the Realm was. There was a King (and a Regent, now), with everything he should need to make sure young ladies didn’t need to stab woodcutters in their own homes after fighting off three highwaymen. There was, she was told, a Lord Chancellor to make sure the peace was kept, helped by the Justiciars and the Sherriffs and the Deputies, all of them scattered up and down the Realm’s cities, towns, and manors, and every one of them drawing a Royal paycheck.

  There were courts, she knew; her own employer, the Princess Raxillene, was also one of the Justiciars, and Alorin had seen plenty of cases brought to the Tower for judgement. There were misdemeanors and felonies, fines and mutilations, beheadings and hangings, all in glorious profusion every market day. Alorin even knew what would have happened to the woodsman and his wife, in the right kind of world: for the “middle crime” of Alorin’s rape, the bearded man would have lost an ear and a finger, plus a fine. Then, for her murder, both man and wife would have been subject to death, either by hanging or by torture; it depended on the Justiciar hearing the case. Though the wife might, presumably, have been allowed to sell herself into lifetime brothel slavery, although Alorin wasn’t sure a Justiciar would let her; she’d been a right ugly bitch. Though, supposedly, brothels had a use for even the ugly ones.

  And yet, the Realm was as lawless as if there were none of that. Every time Alorin or her friends left the tower on the Princess’ shadowy errands, they rode arrayed as if for war; the Realm really was at war, but that wasn’t the reason. The roads were just that unsafe. Scores of times they’d killed people all over the place, with no worries about being caught or questioned or punished by whomever the local Justiciar might be. For sure, the Princess would have likely been able to intervene and get them disentangled, if she heard of their plight, but still.

  For instance, Alorin thought as she gnawed at the scrawny chicken, take her own example. She’d just killed one of her hosts and maimed the other, and had then simply strolled away into the night. She was not afraid that the woodsman would do anything about any of it, and even if she had been, she’d have had no legal qualms about killing him too, though it would have left her with two debts.

  She sighed and wiped her fingers. No point worrying about any of that; she had problems enough.

  Before her stretched the broad, lovely valley of the Mudwater’s north fork, leading down toward where the Priests’ Wood smudged the horizon with its dark green haze. Somewhere in there rode Lord Whitemar and his entourage, awaiting Alorin’s knife. She dug into the sparse autumn grass, chiseling out a grave for her chicken carcass, and thought about what lay ahead.

  Her original plan, insofar as it went, had been to meet Whitemar at his castle, away on the other side of the Wood. She’d be Madame Lyria, wandering soothsayer, and would gain admittance to the court that way. Then, when the opportunity presented itself, she’d strike. The news that his lordship was out hunting had stymied that plan, but not too much: even hunters needed their fortune told, and escaping from the dark woods would probably be easier than from his own castle, even if finding him in the vastness of the Wood presented something of a problem. But surely there’d be woodcutters in there to give her direction; recent problems aside, Alorin found most woodsmen to be generally honest and forthright, if suspicious.

  She leaned back on the hillside, sighing, for her Seed-Debt had changed everything. She couldn't, now, rove around Count Clerent Whitemar and his staff, knifing him whenever she chose; now, she’d need to find and fuck a man before she could even think about the murder. There was always the chance of a decent-looking woodsman on the way, but one couldn’t count on that. And even then, once she’d repaid the debt, there would still be the killing; Lord Whitemar would still need to be seeded before he was killed. That might mean Madame Lyria would need to stay away; the new job might well call for Mistress Lyria, she of the Thirteen Pleasures, an itinerant whore. She’d disguised herself that way before when needed, but she never liked selling her vagina. It seemed seedy, though the spending money was excellent.

  Quite against her will, Alorin felt her eyes drooping and her senses dulling. The sun was rising toward noon now, the day hot and fine, and she’d been up all night walking. So she dragged herself upright, glanced around the countryside, and decided it would be safe to take a nap; there was nothing here in this part of the Realm, nothing for miles. She’d be in the Wood before nightfall in any case, so she collected herself, walked to the little spring she’d found nearby, and sucked down as much water as she could hold: her bladder would wake her in a few hours, and then she and Pixie could get on with their day.

  Alorin slept alone on the moorlands under the disapproving gaze of the Black Mountains, and the spring lulled her tired limbs to an easy rest.

  * * *

  At a crossroads the next day, she came upon a felon.

  The crime must have been a high one, probably rebellion; that, or raping your lord’s wife or daughter, was the only thing Alorin had ever heard of being punished this way.

  Never, neither back home in Lammorel nor down here in the Realm, had she actually seen a live man on the starve-stake. They only put you there if you’d done something really, really bad; indeed, nobody but the King himself could pass that kind of judgement, though she supposed his son the Regent was doing it these days. The tales said that once upon a time there’d been a dozen starving-stakes permanently set up at the Palace, though in these latter days lords tended to just put them up wherever the roads crossed.

  The idea was simple enough: the high felon would be fastened to the stake and left there to die. It was a commendably inexpensive and satisfactorily exemplary form of execution, gruesome enough to really make you think whenever you rode past. The victims could not be helped in any way, even after their deaths; the skeletons stayed there for ages, through the seasons, growing more and more ghastly.

  Anyone silly enough to interfere would, naturally, be put on a neighboring stake in due course.

  This rebel seemed to have been put up some weeks ago, long enough for the skin to start sloughing away but not long enough for the maggots to leave; they seethed and heaved within his eyes and nostrils, busily nibbling even as Alorin leaned in to watch with a certain professional fascination. He’d been nailed to the stout, stained post through his pelvis and his solar plexus, and she suspected the wounds had been more fatal than the starvation; most starvers got chains through holes in their arms and legs, or iron staples throug
h their trunks. This fellow was not as emaciated as he should be; he’d died sooner than he was supposed to.

  Maybe the executioner had been trying to do this man a favor.

  The corpse stared sightlessly, held upright by an iron collar hinged against the stake. She paused awhile, reflecting, looking into the scraggly face; most mercenaries are fascinated by death, and she was no exception. Chances were excellent that she’d wind up in this sort of situation, or hanged or burned or thrown into a pit, but in any case she’d more likely than not end up slain violently somewhere where she’d lie unburied, wasting away to maggot-food like the man on the stake.

  She studied him, Pixie moving well away to crop the grass, and then she looked down at her own body. Only a matter of time, really, before her own hips and elbows were dangling from strips of sun-tanned gristle like this man’s were. She thought about how her face would look once something ate her nose, and then she sighed and turned away.

  * * *

  The villagers at the edge of the Priests’ Wood must not have known what to make of the beautiful, richly-dressed woman on the big grey horse. Mistress Lyria favored bright, swishy fabrics and lots of copper bangles, so her shortsword was packed away and her silks had come out. The village itself was a huddle of three or four little homesteads grouped around their pity-pole, their muttonlike owners gawking openly as she rode in. Traveling whores did not often come their way, so to speak. She arrived as the sun was falling.

  “Good evening to you all!” Mistress Lyria was a bright and merry soul, most un-Alorin-like. “I seek a night’s rest, and to find your lord tomorrow. Who can help me?”

  Plenty wanted to, she could see easily enough; the menfolk all would have been most pleased to give her whatever she wanted, if they weren’t paying such close attention to the scowls of their wives. She kept a bright smile on her lovely face, and reflected that it didn’t really matter anyway; none of the men here looked enough like the third thief to account for her debt. An older man, stooped and with white hair combed wildly across his shining scalp, stepped forward.

  “Not sure what kind of lodging you’d expect, Madam,” he said courteously enough, “but this is just the village of Raughn. The nearest town is Ockfield, down away over the South Fork. Must be twenty miles, at the least.”

  “Lord Whitemar’s not there anyway, if indeed you’re seeking him.” This speaker was a quick-eyed, red-haired young woman, comely enough in a grubby, inbred sort of way. “He’s off hunting, so they say. In there.” She jerked a sharp chin toward the darkening trees around them, and Alorin cocked her head prettily. A baby wailed in a hut nearby.

  “Is he! Is there a road or a path nearby, where perhaps I might wait upon him? It is told Lord Whitemar hunts many kinds of quarry, and I think he might like to catch something more colorful.” She giggled at that, fingering her silks and hating herself and the mistrustful glares of the inhabitants. The old man and the young woman looked at each other.

  “As it happens,” the old man began, frowning slightly, “my granddaughter here had been seeking his Lordship too. She’s got a grievance to present.”

  “I do.” The young ginger shook her head. “I’ve been waiting by the roadside for the past week, looking out for him and his band. They always come past here while hunting, but I haven’t seen him yet.” She scratched at herself. “I’m off again tomorrow, to wait.”

  “Indeed!” Alorin was very curious what sort of grievance a young lady could possibly have for a great lord, but Lyria could not ask. It was none of her business. “May I wait with you tomorrow?” This could work out delightfully: a local traveling companion, some advance knowledge of where the Count would be... “I can build a shelter beneath the trees,” she added doubtfully, wondering which of the village’s men would be bold enough to offer her a roof.

  None, naturally. Not with their wives present.

  And yet breakfast cost her no silver, just the unwanted attentions of a large, smelly man in the night, who came to her as the moon was going down and insisted she follow its lead. She obliged him joylessly, grateful that he looked nothing like the third thief; she’d not need to take his sperm, as mucky and clotted as it undoubtedly was, instead letting it splatter warm and slippery across her breasts. “You said there’d be bacon,” she reminded him as he tied himself back up in the dark. She did not wait for a response. “And fresh eggs.”

  “I did,” he replied, unable to contain his excitement; even an unenthusiastic Alorin Kaye was twice the woman he could ever have expected from this tiny shithole of a village; she’d sucked him for breakfast and a sidesaddle. A soothsayer could be expected to make an appearance before a noble with a normal saddle, but a whore would never ride astride if she asked the rates Alorin intended to charge. No, she’d need to carry herself as a woman who expected to spread her legs for men, not for horses. “You’ll be wanting to leave at sunup, I suppose.” With difficulty, he’d tucked his cock back into his pants.

  “I shall leave whenever your lady with her grievance leaves.” She waited, reclining in the leaves, but the man was too dense to take the hint. “When does she usually leave, Engbert?”

  “Who?” He was still breathing hard, damn him. A man with such poor stamina ought to be living in a town, not out in the woods. “Oh, the ginger? Annalene?”

  “Ah yes. Annalene.” It was a lovely name, a proper daughter’s name. “I’ll be leaving when she leaves.”

  The man grunted. “Sunup, then. Annalene doesn’t like to let the grass grow underfoot, that’s certain. Always busy, that bitch.” Alorin’s eyes narrowed at the hatred in the man’s voice, but she soon guessed the reason.

  “She won’t fuck you, Engbert, is that it?” She laughed lightly, and he made a face.

  “Not by half,” he sighed, shaking his head. He finished doing himself up, then looked back down at her in the starlight. “Still,” he added, and she could see his gap-toothed smile, “who needs the village ginger, when I can stick it into a mouth like yours?” And so, cackling, he lurched off toward his hut.

  Behind him, Alorin rolled her eyes. Lyria of the Thirteen Pleasures was very good, but she didn’t enjoy her work.

  * * *

  The ride was silent, awkward even. At last, the sun a few fingers above the hills yonder, the girl spoke. “That’s Engbert’s saddle, it is.”

  Alorin, once more shining in silk, barely looked down. “Whatever do you mean, miss?” She let the lie flow smoothly. “I bought this off one of the villagers.”

  Annalene let the silence stretch longer than was decent. “I’m sure you did,” she said at last. The girl was walking; Pixie was no doubt the first saddle horse the village had seen in years. “He made you a nice big breakfast, as well.”

  “It was delicious,” Alorin agreed innocently. “It was kind of him and his wife to welcome me into their home.” The forest pressed close about them, filled with the sounds and smells of a peaceful late-summer morning; the horse made little noise as she picked her way through last year’s damp fallen leaves. “Is the road far?”

  “Another three furlongs, say,” the girl sulked, and once again Alorin wondered what her grievance was. Not just against the Count, either.

  “Do you and Engbert know each other well?” she asked diplomatically.

  “In some ways.” Annalene’s glance was vicious, so Alorin shrugged and let it go. There were things being unsaid here, important things, but probably not anything of consequence to her job. No mere village dispute could possibly have anything to do with the killing of Lord Whitemar. So she decided she could safely ignore the bitter little girl, and she promptly did so; she and her horse held their heads regally high as they approached the road, really just a sandy beaten track through the Wood. Annalene had plainly been waiting here for every one of at least three days; Alorin was trained to notice things like the matting of brush, the breaking of twigs, the smell of old urine behind a tree.

  The girl parked herself precisely where the valkyrie knew she w
ould, upon a tiny knoll with the road before her outstretched feet. Alorin glanced around, seeing a fairly good spot for an ambush of the armed or unarmed variety: a nice straight track, running east and west, with an excellent view both ways. There was plenty of wood piled by the path, and a little brook ran nearby. And so, having no idea how long she would be waiting here, Alorin did what she always did when unsure how long she’d be stopped: she made a shelter using her cloak and a series of sticks cut from the trees beside the brook. Annalene, her knitting needles clacking, watched closely.

  “You build a quick shelter,” she called at last. Alorin smiled, though unwontedly; it was not a comfortable expression for her.

  “Your approval is suitably grudging, but vastly appreciated,” she beamed. “Shall I build you one?” And so they at last settled down in Alorin’s shade, the sandy road unrolling on either side, and the next day they were there once more. Annalene had gone home to sleep, returning in the dawn light with the day’s provisions, which Alorin duly paid for; the goodwill of Raughn was not a bridge she felt she should burn, at any rate not until the Count’s hunting party rode past.

  This they duly did, past noon the third day, as the girl began knitting her second hood and Alorin worked her shortsword to a murderous edge. If Annalene had any interest in why a high-priced prostitute would be roaming the Realm with a saw-backed shortsword, its grip well worn, she hid it well. This was, after all, the Borderlands. Most folk carried blades outside the cities. Alorin, her ears long attuned to the sounds of men moving on roads, caught the shuffle of his party while they were still out of sight. “Mind, Annalene,” she called cheerfully, pushing the shortsword back into its sheath and hiding it away in her bedroll. “They come.”

  “Eh?” The girl was paying no attention. “Is that a whore joke?”

  “Get your grievance ready,” and then she and Pixie were up, her gear loaded behind the saddle, the silks and satins dripping from Alorin’s slender, firm body as she leaned casually against a tree. She was certain she’d be scooped into the Count’s retinue; there was a reason why whoring was so often the best available disguise. Men found her difficult to resist. “Here’s the way of it, love. You stand in the middle of the road with the grievance unscrolled in front of your face. That’s the custom. You’ve not done this before, I should guess.”