by K. Eason
Ollu threw a hard look at him. Kenjak pushed his chin up and nodded and squeezed out his own scowl. Never mind the hammering in his chest, or the sudden premonition of bloodshed. He angled into his place on the tripoint formation. Drew his sword. Anyone trying to run would have to get past him or Ollu or Salis. He hoped they’d try it. Hoped they wouldn’t.
His hand shook enough that the sword wobbled, and he steadied his blade with the other hand. Caught another look from Ollu, and a wink.
He could just make out voices from inside, male and female—
“You. In the tent. Out now, and slowly.”
—that got quiet before Salis finished. No response.
Maybe they don’t speak Dvergiri.
Except everyone did, even raiders. The Illhari Republic made that its price for doing business.
One beat. Two. Twenty, while breath steamed and snow turned from sprinkles to steady flakes.
Salis peeled a smile. Took a step forward, toward the tent flap. “I said come out. Savvy that? I’ll shoot if you don’t.”
Kenjak pulled a deep breath. Closed his eyes for the exhale, willed his stomach to settle.
And in that moment’s darkness, he heard the long, ragged sound of tearing canvas, and the thud-twang of a firing crossbow, and another ripping sound. A wet thud that sounded like steel in flesh, and a man’s choked-off gargling scream.
She got one.
He opened his eyes in time to see Salis lurch sideways. See the hole in the tent, where her bolt had torn through. A second hole, wider, below it, where something had torn its way out.
Salis dropped to one knee. Her crossbow spilled out of her hands and into the firepit. So very few gaps in legionnaire armor, but a knife’s hilt poked, triumphant, from just above her hip. Someone inside throwing metal at them, someone with good aim.
Kenjak broke formation. Instinct swung him sideways, out of range. Just the right angle to see the dull black flicker of Illhari steel come through the back of the tent and slice down. A long-legged shape stepped through. Dvergir-black skin, Alvir-fair hair, an eyeblink of nervous indigo turned on him.
Half-blood.
And then she was over the stones and into the trees. He took a step after her. Hesitated. Snow falling heavier by the heartbeat, they’d lose all trace if he didn’t go now. But Salis was hurt, and you didn’t leave your partners, and Ollu—
“Kenjak.”
—was right on his shoulder. Flat-voiced fury: “The fuck is your problem? Got one dead inside, and Salis—”
“She’s”—he stabbed at the forest—“running.” He processed Ollu’s report. “A second one. Running away.”
“Shit.” Ollu scowled. Glanced back at Salis, on her knees, fingers wrapped around the dagger hilt. Blood turned the snow red underneath her. “Can’t leave her.”
Salis swore. Spat: “I’ll. Be. Fine.”
“Light a fire,” said Kenjak. “Rurik will see it, he’ll send someone up.”
Ollu’s turn to hesitate. He looked from forest to Salis and back. “I don’t think we can leave—”
“Listen to the green, Ollu, get that motherless toadfucker.” All of Salis’s breath at once. Ragged inhale on the back end, and a rough, “Order, savvy?”
“Savvy,” said Ollu, and clapped Kenjak hard on the shoulder. And then they were running again, through trees this time, and Kenjak didn’t notice the cold at all.
CHAPTER TWO
It was the dogs who warned him. First Helgi, then Logi, went stiff and still and sniffed. Then Helgi growled, barely a mutter, and ghosted ahead, with Logi silent and tight on his flank. No barking, which meant Veiko did not drop his armful of dry wood and string his bow or unsling his axe. A man could freeze to death without a fire. That was certain. Whatever the dogs had upset—far less so. An animal, maybe a fox or a lynx. There was no reason to rush unless the dogs made noise.
Which they didn’t. Veiko trailed their pawprints and their silence to the clearing, where he found Logi stalking, stiff-legged, around the spruce’s wide skirt. Helgi, always braver, had thrust his head into the dark gash where the branches split. His tail poked up straight and furious.
Veiko considered. Something in there, yes, but there were no tracks besides his and the dogs’ in the snow. Nor—he crouched and balanced the wood against his flat thigh—nor had whatever it was bothered his gear. He could see it, hanging where he’d left it, with none of the contents spilled out.
A less cautious man would have ducked under the branches and looked first. Whatever ran from dogs was not that dangerous. But there was a village smoking in the next valley, Illhari soldiers on the march, and only a fool rushed into things he did not understand. Men died from bad judgment.
He brushed a patch out of the snow. Stacked the wood carefully, one piece after another. There was no sound from inside the tree, no sound from Helgi, only Logi’s breathless whining. A lynx, perhaps. A squirrel.
Veiko clicked his tongue, once and twice. Helgi returned without protest. Logi kept circling, until Veiko said his name. Then he whined and crept back, ears flat, darting glances over his shoulder. Veiko frowned. Grant that the younger dog wasn’t Helgi’s quality, but he wasn’t a puppy, either. Something up that tree that was not squirrel or cat. He straightened. Stepped around the wood and strung his bow. Notched an arrow. The dogs were watching him now, hunter-tense.
“Go,” he bade them, having neither hand free for signals.
Helgi mirrored Veiko’s caution. Ears forward, ruff and tail stiff, careful stalking back to the tree. Logi abandoned all sense, bolted under the branches and hurled himself against the trunk, and, merciful ancestors, woofed up at the branches.
The branches hissed back at him.
Veiko had startled snakes before, sunning themselves on rocks. Had teased cats, as well. This hiss belonged to neither snake nor cat. A deeper sound, more resonant.
A bigger animal, then. And angry.
Helgi growled. Sat beside Logi and stared pointedly up. Veiko ducked under the branches. Gave his eyes a moment to adjust to green-blue shadow, and looked.
He might’ve been wrong about the snake. Maybe two man-heights up, where the branches were too slender for weight greater than squirrels, an arrowhead skull swiveled on a long black neck. Big eyes, ember bright in the storm-light, twin slit pupils. It hissed again, and Veiko saw fangs slivering white against black lips and gums. But no, not a snake. Wings, he saw, bat-fragile and folded, the claw joints dug into the bark. Tiny hind legs meant for tucking, for gripping, clinging to the branch. A tail as long as its neck, looped for balance around the trunk. The creature was almost as long as a rock leopard, he estimated, nose to tip, but not heavy. Not with the small branches stiff and unbowed.
No idea what it was, but that did not alarm him. The world below tundra and glacier held many new things. And yet. He had heard tales.
And Hakkon the Brave did face the wurm with only his father’s axe.
Hakkon the Brave had been a fool, then. Small as this creature was, Veiko didn’t want himself within range of jaws or tail. Nor did he wish to share his campsite with it. He raised the bow, pulled the arrow back to the corner of his mouth.
The creature squeaked. Recoiled and reversed and put the trunk of the tree between itself and his arrow. Peered around and hissed again, a much smaller sound. Protest. Indignation.
Unexpected.
Veiko angled the bow sideways. Kept it notched and drawn. Waited as his arms began slow, shivering protests, while the bat-snake ventured a little bit farther around the trunk. Veiko swung the arrow back, slow and deliberate. The creature ducked behind the trunk again and hissed like a sackful of vipers.
He relaxed his draw.
The head reappeared. Orange eyes looking at him now. Appraising.
“Chrrip?” Long utterance that ended on an up-note, that sounded for all the world like a question.
He had been alone too long if he was imagining conversation from an animal. And yet. Veiko released t
he arrow and replaced it in the quiver. Rested the bow against his leg and showed empty hands.
“I will not,” he said softly, “shoot you.”
“Chrrip.” It came around the trunk. Paused on the branch and looked down, this time with its wings spread partway. For balance, maybe, or to make itself seem more impressive. It worked. Wings wide as his arms if they were fully stretched. Membrane and bone, like a bat’s. Talons on the wing joints, on the hind limbs. Had he seen it flying, he would have dropped for cover and worried about shooting it later.
Which was, he suspected, one of its better defenses.
“You could fly away.” His voice seemed too large for the evergreen quiet, like a drunken man’s attempt at whispers.
The bat-snake came down the tree a bit farther, face-first. Slow blink, first one eye and then the other. Veiko swallowed sudden dryness. Animals did not talk. This creature did not, either, but it managed to make itself understood better than some people he’d known. And it seemed to understand him.
Spirit-touched.
And then he had a vision: of firelight dusting yellow off the branches, and snow sheeting solid on the other side of the branches. There, the dogs on the fire’s far side. There, himself, stirring something in a black iron pan he did not own. And there, beside him, a woman with ice-colored hair and black Dvergiri skin stretched over a hostile nose and aggressive cheekbones. Not young, not old, and no one he had ever seen before. And yet his chest warmed and tightened, need and affection tangled together.
“Chrrip.”
The vision faded. There was only the spruce-colored shadow now, and the luminous threat of the storm. No fire. No heat. No woman.
The bat-snake dropped suddenly. Plummeted like a stone for an arm’s length before its wings snapped open. It streaked over Veiko’s head, shot past into the snow. And came back in a tight circle to cling again to the tree trunk. That long neck twisted to find him. Eyelock and
“Chrrrrrip?”
He had the sudden impression of trees flashing past him, of someone or something fleeing through the forest. His guts clenched around an urgency he had no business feeling. Not, he realized slowly, his fear at all.
“Chrrip.” Softly now. Veiko thought its eyes might be glowing, faint and hot in the shadows.
Curiosity had much in common with bad judgment and could get a man just as dead. He didn’t know what the bat-snake wanted. He did know that he needed supplies, and now the nearest village was a day south and west. He should camp. Wait out the storm. Find another village and resupply, because winter did not forgive curiosity.
Logi whined. Helgi pressed against Veiko’s knee and sighed. As usual, the dogs already knew what action he’d choose.
“Go,” he told the bat-snake. “I will follow.”
Snow thought there might be two troopers after her. Hard to tell, between the pounding in her ears and chest and the rattling as she stepped on every dry twig in the forest. Tsabrak would laugh at her if he saw her now.
Didn’t I teach you better, Snow? with his garnet eyes slitted and smiling.
Better, yes, and the lessons had stuck. There weren’t many more-skilled than she was at quiet, at speed . . . inside walls, yeah, boots on stone, with or without a sky overhead. But this toadshit forest wasn’t Cardik or Illharek, was it? There was fresh snow, and she had no shadows, and she’d left Drasan choking on a crossbow bolt back at the tent.
She ran along the top of a fallen log, paused at a bare place, and jumped. Left a mark that time, smudged on the border between snow and dirt. Doubled back and went the other way on the log and leapt again, from the other side. Uphill, this time, which they might not consider, not if they saw the first track. Might
please, Laughing God
assume she’d go down, headed for the road and the valley crease. Instead she pelted upslope, skidding and jumping from one needle-slick patch to another. Reached back one-handed and pulled up the hood on her cloak. Greys and browns and threaded black, meant to blend with stone and wood. With walls, of which she was painfully short at the moment. Only trees between her and them, trees and snow and the better part of a hillside. But the ridgeline above—that was rocks, scoured smooth in the wind, and her tracks wouldn’t show. Had to get up there and over it before they caught her.
She fetched up against a tall pine. Crouched and dared a moment to breathe, with the cloak pulled across her mouth to hide the steam. And to watch as her pursuers flickered and dodged through the trees. And stopped, there, at the log. Heads leaned together, close enough she expected to hear helmets clink. Two men, yes, and armed, yes. But no evidence of crossbows on either of them. Swords and javelins, which they couldn’t cast well in a forest. Small blessing, yeah, they’d have to run her down and spit her or catch her in the open.
She eased the seax around, took comfort in the solid curve of the hilt in her palm. Black steel from the mines under Illharek, and it held a wicked edge. Meant for Illhari street fights, turns and cuts in tight places. But it also had nearly the reach of a legionnaire’s sword, and she knew where their armor was weak. She was tall, even for a Dvergir woman. Had reach on them both.
And both was the problem. Two of them, one of her, which meant an ugly fight that she might not win.
So you don’t fight, yeah?
Yeah. She resettled the blade on her hip. Five steps between tree line and ridge rocks, another half dozen before she’d be over and out of sight. She needed only a few moments, a brief diversion, two backs turned just long enough.
“. . . she went.” The smaller one turned, dragged his voice with him and threw it upslope. Young face, young voice, and not at all out of breath. The half-light smeared his features a uniform Dvergiri black, his skin only a shade or two lighter than the queue rattailing from the helmet’s lip. He had a highborn accent, too, fuck and damn. Some senator’s whelp on a purchased commission.
“She’s not far.” The second voice, older and a little breathless. Another Dvergir face, shadow-dark in the helmet, but a Warren accent, which meant native Cardik, which might mean career soldier and someone less interested in risk and glory than a transplanted Illharek boy with his family honor to maintain.
The second one coughed, gut deep. He braced one hand on a tree, the other on his hip. Blew plumes of exhaustion into the snowfall and sent the flakes swirling. “Just hold. A minute. Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Barely concealed impatience in the younger one. No—anger, slicing his movements short. He paced the length of the log. Stopped at the top and stared up at the ridge, and the bare rock. Didn’t see her, no, she knew that because he didn’t rush headlong. And this one would, damn sure, the moment he saw her. Entirely too young, just like Drasan had been, entirely too confident.
“Ollu! If she got up to those rocks, we wouldn’t see tracks.”
But smart. Fuck.
The older one
Ollu
had already started downslope, one hand still on his ribs. He twisted around. Shook his head and made his armor rattle.
“There’s a print, boy. Down here. This end of the log.”
“But—”
“This way.” Ollu gestured sharply. “Rot your eyes, Kenjak, she left a track.”
Kenjak hesitated. Snow watched his mouth open, watched his shoulders square up for argument. And watched his arm drop, fingers rolled into a fist. He turned around, started back toward Ollu, reluctant and stiff and obedient.
Something to be said, after all, for inbred male compliance.
Thank you, Laughing God.
Snow rocked onto the balls of her feet. Mapped and remapped her path to the rocks, through them, and over the ridge. Put her feet there, clear patches, keep low and hope the God’s favor held.
Please.
Three, two, go. Short out-breath and then straight dashes from point to point, don’t look back and don’t think about javelins. Hard to hit a moving target. The boy wouldn’t have the skill yet. Ollu might, but he’d be too far downslope and throw
ing against the wind.
Please.
She cleared the first of the rocks, the snow melting dark on the grey. It was slick, but she managed. City streets got wet, too, cobbles and bricks, same kind of treachery. She compensated for the pack’s bulk, took shorter strides, kept her weight centered, hand on her blade’s hilt to steady it.
Please.
Three steps from the summit now, lungs tight around air and fear, yeah, because the rocks here were slush-glazed. Couldn’t slow down, couldn’t afford injury, and oh Laughing God, so fucking exposed. That highborn brat might look back one more time, might see her. She was certain of that, suddenly, spreading-chill-in-her-guts convinced that he’d look up and—
please
“Ollu! There she is! Ollu!”
motherless God
—see her. Hell with caution, then. She overstretched, made two steps out of three. Fell and skidded over the summit, on ass and hip and one palm stinging through its glove. The other hand flailed and put itself between her face and an unexpected branch: knobby pine, twisted and lurking, growing out of a crack in the rocks. She bounced off it, wished her pursuer a faceful of branches and needles. Because that little toadshit was coming, damn certain. Wouldn’t wait on Ollu, no, he’d be too afraid of losing her, confident he’d catch her up.
“Kenjak, wait!”
“I got her!”
No great gift to be right all the time, yeah.
Snow bared teeth, grin and grimace. Sucked air between them. Kept her momentum and slithered feetfirst down the slope. Smoother on this side, better and worse. Less chance she’d snap an ankle. None at all that she’d stop herself before the tree line. North-facing hill, storm-facing, slush hardened to ice. She pulled her knees up, tried for a controlled spin off the rocks and into the trees, tried to take the impacts on the pack and that motherless pan. Managed a half-turn that fetched her up hard against a taller, less knobby pine, with broken-off branches studded like spears about head height. She wished those on her pursuers, too. Grabbed one and pulled herself upright. Protests rippled through her hip, where the skin felt numb and the muscles too tender, where she wasn’t entirely sure the leather breeches had held against stone and friction.
