Ran dropped the rabbit in the snow and fled.
Chapter Twenty-two
Graupen, Southern Orthia
Ran rode the horse as fast and as long as he dared. He knew deep in the recesses of his mind that what he saw in the forest could not be outrun and could not be left behind. His magic had opened a door to something and it was a portal he could not close. It was a part of him and would go wherever he travelled, but he would be damned if he was going to spend another night in the frozen mountains at the mercy of his magic and his dreams.
By sundown, the outskirts of Graupen blinked into view through a hammering fall of ice and snow. Thin slivers of light glowed from behind shutters closed tight against the wind, not enough to banish the night, but enough to lead Ran through the howling storm towards the little mining village.
He guided the horse along the road, their heads bowed low against the sting of ice, their steps heavy and laboured. The mount shied at a drift and yanked the reins in Ran’s hand, the jolt tipping his balance and sending him diving to the ground. He bit back the curses and screams at the ache in his knees and the hunger in his belly and staggered to his feet, soothing the horse and regaining the reins.
Graupen had no wall or gate, no outer defences or guardhouse. The road ran straight through town and out the other side, and by the look of the lights winking in the distance, it ended almost as soon as it began. They stumbled up the street, Ran squinting up at the timber-clad buildings as they passed, searching for any sign of an inn. One building somewhere near what he thought might be the centre of town seemed to glow stronger than the others, emitting a smell that could be roasting meat, or a burning corpse.
They passed a well, the steel pump beside it frozen solid, a bucket hanging above the black abyss swinging with a quiet creak in the wind. If it weren’t for the light escaping the buildings, Ran would have sworn the place was entirely deserted. He stopped several feet from the door of the large building and swallowed his thumping heart. Graupen was a speck on any Orthian map, if it was mentioned at all. The chances of encountering the duke’s men here, in such weather, were slim to none. He would have to keep telling himself that as he stepped through the door, or else he’d draw the eye of every cart-driver and pick-swinger by dint of looking nothing short of terrified.
The horse gladly slipped into an empty stall in the inn’s stables and set to scoffing a pile of hay in the far corner. Ran looked for a stablehand to take the tack but the attendant’s small room stood empty. He shrugged his coat closer to his shoulders and supposed travellers arriving in such a foul squall were uncommon. Why sit out in the cold waiting on no one? For a moment he considered unsaddling the horse himself, then thought better of it. If he needed to leave on short notice, he’d not have time to faff about saddling the beast and convincing him to take his bit. He took the saddlebags, and left everything else in place.
The entrance to the inn beckoned and he pressed one gloved hand against the door. He tried to ease it inward, but the wind snatched the panel from his grip and whipped it into the opposite wall with a loud crack that echoed through the smoky taproom.
The noise was enough to shake the filmy glasses lined up behind the bar, and Ran’s mind flew into a panic, but hardly anyone in the dim room looked up to wonder at him. He swallowed his heart again and heaved the door closed at his back, willing his face to relax and his eyes to not appear quite as startled as he knew they seemed. He couldn’t afford to stand out—he was a messenger, nothing more or less. Less would be much better in this case, but the messenger story had held up so far against the drunken enquiries of tavern types. By now he was close to comfortable with the mummer-act he put on when slipping into the unsavoury watering holes of Orthia’s towns and villages.
The keeper glanced up and placed a tankard on the bar.
Obviously, the glass is kept for the respectable folk…
‘Ale?’ asked the keeper, his jug already hovering over the tankard.
Ran nodded in a nonchalant way, the kind of shrug he’d seen a thousand times in other taverns, followed by a grunt of neither agreement nor refusal. ‘And whatever food you’ve got going.’
The keeper turned to bellow the order through a doorway and Ran took his tankard of dark beer to a seat in the corner. Corner seats were the rarest and most sought after in a tavern. They ideally gave you somewhere shadowy to hide and watch the rest of the drinkers with both eyes without the worry of a knife finding its way between your ribs.
A man in a greasy apron lumbered towards him with a plate of ham, a heel of bread, and a small bowl of soup balanced beside them. They were deposited on the table and Ran glanced up to mutter the obligatory thank you. He expected to see the man’s retreating back, not his dark eyes staring down as he wiped his hands on the soiled cloth at his waist.
He had a similar look about him to the barkeep—a wide, crooked nose and heavy brows. His forearms were thickly muscled and better suited to swinging a pick and shovel than the finer arts of preparing food fit for human consumption. When the man’s hands came to rest on his hips, Ran noticed at least half of one was missing, along with the thumb and first two fingers. Now he understood why the giant toiled in the inn’s kitchen rather than a mine.
‘You a messenger?’ the man asked, folding his arms over his chest so the injured hand vanished into the shadows behind his elbow.
Ran blinked. ‘Pardon?’
The cook leaned forward. ‘I said, you a messenger?’
He rolled the words from his tongue slowly, as if to help Ran understand them better.
Fear slipped a hand around Ran’s neck and began to squeeze. Had they heard of a messenger coming this way? Had they been told to watch for one?
‘What makes you say that?’ His voice was hardly more than a squeak and only a speck louder than a mewling kitten.
‘Int no one else daft enough to travel in this weather.’ The man might have been making a little joke, but there wasn’t even a glimmer of humour in his eyes.
‘O’course…’ Ran mumbled. He drew heavily on his tankard and tried to spark his tired and terrified mind into action.
‘Got any news?’ The cook persisted and Ran ground his teeth against the rim of the cup. He had news, but nothing he wanted to share with these folks. All he wanted was a quiet meal and to sleep for a few hours out of the wind.
He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and shrugged, hedging his bets and hoping his acting skills were better than his disguise. ‘Not much. Not been near many settlements lately. Chartered messages only this time of year.’
‘Oh,’ said the cook, turning to nod at the barkeep, who must surely be his brother. ‘Chartered, eh?’
He wandered off at that and took a seat on a stool at the bar, the gentle murmur of conversation resuming as the keep poured the cook an ale. Ran’s fingers reached for his tankard but the low rumble of conversation was again cut by a voice, this time from the opposite side of the room.
‘You know how the duke’s boy escaped? Tha’ Black Prince? The one with the curse?’ Silence killed the conversation and every eye turned to a man of middle years with greying hair poking through holes in his well-worn winter cap. He hesitated at the sudden attention and the muscles in his neck twitched as he swallowed his nerves. ‘I heard tha’ Duke’s offerin’ a bounty.’
Ran bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from choking on his bread. He took another long, casual draw on his drink and settled into his chair. A bounty? The duke was still hunting him and had a bounty on his head? Ronart must be desperate to bring him in if he was willing to offer cold coin for the transaction. For an odd little moment Ran wondered how much was on offer.
‘You been in the strong stuff again, Thom?’ The barkeep looked down his nose at the man.
‘Ain’t no drink talkin’. It’s true!’ Thom insisted and waved his tankard in a wide arc. ‘I got word from my niece in Lisor. Duke’s men are all over the place.’
Lisor was a few weeks to the north of G
raupen, maybe longer if the storms kept the roads thick with snow. But if the weather slowed his father’s men, then it was bound to slow him. That decided it then. No more towns or villages. He’d have to hole up somewhere and steal enough supplies to get him through. He’d go into the hills, find a cave—
‘S’that what you heard, messenger?’ The cook’s rumbling voice stripped away Ran’s thoughts and left him staring across his plate at a room full of filthy miners all waiting on his word.
‘Dunno,’ he replied automatically. He’d given the answer to his mother enough that it came as a natural response when he had no idea what to say. ‘Like I said, haven’t been that way.’
The cook gave him a dismissive wave and returned to his ale, muttering to his brother as the rest of the taproom’s occupants decided he wasn’t all that interesting and turned away.
*
The taproom cleared as the night ground on and the wind continued to moan along the street outside. Ran extracted himself from his seat and eased his aching legs and back between the tables to the bar. He slid three copper coins towards the man and nodded at the stairs. ‘This enough for the drink, food, and a bed?’
‘Aye,’ he scooped the coins into his calloused hand quicker than a dealer collects his cards. ‘End of the hall.’
The stairs creaked a little more than Ran thought safe as he climbed to the landing and limped past closed doors to the end of the hallway as instructed. He was a good rider, and a fit one, but he’d never ridden or walked in weather like this. The warmth of even the coarsest blankets called as he closed the door and dropped his saddlebags to the floor. What passed for a bed in these parts wasn’t much, but the lumpy mattress across the room was better than a thin mat on a cave floor.
He used the flint from his bag to strike a flame amongst the logs laid in the hearth, and flopped down on the bed. His eyelids fell heavily across his vision, blurring the darkness and the faint light of the flames. He hadn’t expected to see the ghost there, sitting in the corner with her knees to her chest, but she appeared and stared at the fire.
‘The fuck happened to you?’ he muttered, lying face down on the bed, his feet still in his boots and hanging over the end of the frame. ‘Back in the forest?’
‘The magic…’ she replied, her eyes trained on the fire. She rocked, ever so slightly, back and forth where she sat. He’d never seen her this agitated before and Ranoth’s blood ran cold.
‘What?’ Frowning, he pulled an elbow under him and sat up a little.
‘What you did in the forest, with the rabbit… the magic… you held it in place…’
‘To shoot it for food.’ What could be so wrong about that?
She shook her head.
‘That’s what they did to me… Used the magic to hold me in place while they...’ Her eyes met his, cold and angry, tears sparkling like diamonds falling through water. ‘There is untold agony in staring at your death without the power to run for your life.’
‘It was only a rabbit!’
The ghost sprang to her feet and rushed over the floorboards. He flipped onto his back and scrambled across the bed until he toppled off the other side, the ghost scything through the wooden frame with her translucent form as if it wasn’t there at all.
She leaned over him and sneered, a red spark of rage flashing in the pupils of her eyes and a dark shadow further hollowing her already gaunt features. ‘Aren’t we all rabbits, powerless to stop the strong from doing us harm? Aren’t we all hunted, like frightened rodents through the forest? It was only a rabbit, but it was no different from me, no different from you!’
She vanished. Her departure sucked the warmth from the small dusty room and left him frozen to his very core, his face stinging as though she’d slapped him. The fire guttered but held in the embers, glowing and returning slowly to life as breath filled his lungs and slowed his heart. Despite the icy air and his exhaled breath clouding like smoke, sweat dribbled down his neck and forehead, his fingernails biting the boards of the floor. His hands shook—a slight tremor that vibrated through his entire body until it built into a sob and escaped his lips with a falling tear.
The ghost was right. She was always right.
He was no different to the rabbit, no different to any game animal pursued through the woods, whether for sustenance or pleasure. He was as hunted as that rabbit, and he’d turned his power on it, despite his already superior strength. What might he do if his pursuer cornered him the way he’d cornered the rabbit? Was it only a matter of time before the walls closed in and the escape routes vanished, only a matter of time before his father’s men tracked him to a dark corner and he too stared at his death without the power to run?
He curled his knees to his chest, lying on his side on the floor, and knew not even the softest blankets or feather down covers could ease the chill shivering in his bones or quiet the sobs choking in his throat. Ran wrapped his arms around his chest and held tight to his coat, burying his tears in the worn, oiled leather and ignoring the smell.
He was as alone as he’d ever been in his short life.
He’d lost everything, and he was nothing.
A hard kernel of loneliness and hate solidified deep in the well of his soul, near where the magic dwelled. It swirled and he slammed a door on it. He had no time or patience for it now—it was, after all, the reason he was running for his life.
Just like a rabbit…
Chapter Twenty-three
Graupen, Southern Orthia
It wasn’t the creak of the door that woke him.
Something else, something he couldn’t quite trace, whispered along the fibres of the boards to his ear, pressed hard against the floor. Only his eyes responded to the call, easing open while the rest of him, from crown to sole, remained silent and as still as stone.
The door knob turned until the latch gave way, the aged metal protesting as a strong hand pressed it into service. The panel swung inward without admitting more light than the struggling fire already gave, no illumination to flood the bed or reveal his whereabouts. Whoever stood at the threshold valued stealth over sight.
Ran swallowed and licked his lips, flexing his fingers against the leather of his coat. His hand ached for a knife, but it lay sheathed in his saddlebag on the opposite side of the bed, between him and the intruder. A real messenger would have slept with a weapon in his hand, especially in an unknown village surrounded by drunk strangers. In lieu of a material weapon, his magic swirled to life and tingled up his cold fingers. It coiled and pooled, collecting itself and preparing.
A foot stepped through the doorway, a soft whisper of movement on the boards without a hint of a creak in the timber. Another pair followed, less carefully, clipping the leg of the room’s solitary chair with its heel. A voice cursed and hissed, scolding the noise the chair made as it scraped over the floor. Another voice swore a whispered apology.
There was a thump as a fist hit a chest, and a whispered, ‘Shhh!’
Silence.
The feet edged closer, shuffling across the room as carefully as two giants could manage until Ran saw them through the space under the thin bed frame, halting together in two pairs of enormous leather boots. Ran guessed the owners to be the barkeep and his greasy cook of a brother, the latter a little too drunk for the covert operation his sibling enlisted him in. His ankles swivelled and his feet stumbled, while the other pair stood solid and sure in a wide stance.
‘You sure ‘bout this?’ The drunken cook asked.
‘You heard him—chartered messages only. He’ll have more than coppers on him for sure. ‘Less you want to be an inn cook the rest of your life?’
‘No, but—’
‘Then quit your whining!’ The cook must have agreed with his brother at that, because he didn’t offer another word in protest. ‘Ready,’ the barkeep said. ‘Now!’
The business end of a sword scored through the mattress and slammed to a halt beside Ran’s nose. His arms arced up, hot magic catching the bed frame l
ike wind in a sail and flipping it into the wall above the fire. The cook and the barkeep fell back howling, the splinters of the frame catching their faces and exposed arms. The drunker of the two landed on his backside and shattered the chair on the way down, his weapon clanking across the floor, out of reach.
Ran snatched his saddlebag and looped it over his shoulder as he bolted through the doorway into the hall. A roar echoed in his wake, the barkeep recovering and realising his quarry was escaping through the inn. He ordered his brother to his feet and the heavy running steps of the giants pounded after him, thundering in the cold silence and stirring other guests from their slumber.
‘Get him!’ The barkeep bellowed as a door swung open and a bleary-eyed miner from the taproom appeared, gawping at the commotion. The daze cleared from his eyes quickly as Ran sprinted towards him and a gnarled hand shot out to grasp at his coat. Ran shoved a hand at the man’s chest, meaning to shunt him back into the room, but the magic flared and a blue burst of light hit the old fellow square in the sternum. He soared back, crashed straight through the opposite wall and wheeled down into the street below. Ran didn’t stop to hear if his scream ended abruptly in the snow.
His ears rang with a pitched whistle that drove him on, the voices of his pursuers growing louder as he scrambled down the stairs into the empty taproom. He pushed forwards, tables and chairs skidding untouched from his path like water parting before a prow, collecting in a tangle at the far edges of the room. He spun at a crash at his back and saw the drunken cook lying face down at the foot of the stairs, and the keep glaring from the top.
Ran retreated until his back was against the door. He glanced again at the barkeep, skidding down the stairs and stepping over the groaning man at the bottom with a snarl of murderous intent. Ran raised his hands and urged the magic forward, imagining a wave rising under the toppled tables and carrying them into the path of his attacker. They hit the man with enough force to lay him out beside his brother.
Blood of Heirs Page 21
