by Julia Knight
“Petri’s going to kill you,” Maitea said. Her voice was loud and oddly inflectionless.
“I was rather hoping he wouldn’t.”
“He’s going to take your head and send it to Bakar along with Kass’s. As a message. And good riddance.”
Vocho opened his mouth to say something smart-arsed, but Maitea dropped to a crouch in front of him and leaned in.
“He’s going to do it personally,” she whispered. “In a duel. I’ve seen it in the shadows, seen him bring you out to kill you. It might be your chance to escape.”
She took a furtive look over her shoulder and Vocho took her meaning.
“I wish people would stop talking about my head on a plate. I like it on my shoulders,” he said.
Maitea nodded at his understanding. “And I’m going to enjoy watching very much. Everyone’s going to watch our man beat Vocho the Great,” she said loud enough for the guards to hear, then, whispering again, “A distraction so the others can escape. I’ll help you. Be ready.”
She stood up suddenly, her face bland again. “It’s going to be ever such a thrill,” she said and left.
When the door shut behind her, Vocho let out a low whistle. “I have no idea what just happened. I thought she hated all our guts.”
Carrola watched Maitea walk away before she came and sat next to Vocho. “She cut Dom’s ties, didn’t she?”
“Well, yes, but she also said a lot of not very nice things while she did it.”
“That’s not the point–the point is she helped him escape, and the rest of us might have made it too if Scar hadn’t been so quick. Now she’s offering to help us. She’s not the person she’s pretending to be to Petri and the rest.”
They sat in silence for a while as they digested this.
“I think it could work. Seems to me like Petri has a personal grudge against you,” Carrola said in the end. “That he’ll want to do it himself, like Maitea says. Does that sound like him?”
“Oh yes. Pretending to be honourable Petri. We’ve never been friends. It sounds very likely.”
“Well then, maybe she’s telling us the truth, and we can use that. If you can piss him off enough, make a really good distraction.”
“Oh, I can do that all right. I can piss people off without even trying.”
She grinned a little lopsided grin, and Vocho went funny inside, all sort of flip-flop. “Then maybe we’ve got a chance,” she said. “Maybe the talents of Vocho the Great will get us out of this yet.”
Maybe they would, but Vocho didn’t rate his own chances very highly. He had to survive a duel against Petri, and he could barely stand up. He was going to be skewered in short order, by Petri bloody Egimont of all people. But he looked at Carrola, at her grey eyes smiling at him, and very uncharacteristically thought that it would be worth it if she made it out of this alive. He wouldn’t last, but she would, and that was the important thing. He had just enough jollop for one last blast of fabulous, and he’d use it making sure she got out of this icebox even if he couldn’t join her.
Instead of saying any of that, he gave her a grin and said, “Did you ever doubt me?”
Petri had no idea how long he lay in the snow struggling to breathe, how long it was before he heard Scar’s voice, before the snow began to melt around him. When his eyes cleared, the first thing he saw was Morro’s face, mouth hooked into a curl like Petri tasted bad.
He sat up and saw that everyone else was already out of the avalanche. He’d been an afterthought, and maybe Morro wouldn’t even have bothered if not for the fact that letting him die would show his hand to Scar.
Scar herself hadn’t waited around for Petri to be freed, but was directing her crew in their efforts to gather the horses together. Unsurprisingly, Kass’s beast was nowhere to be seen. He recalled its whicker an instant before the avalanche had taken them, blown them downslope so that the boulders they’d stood next to were far above. Kass had been there, he was sure of it. But one look at Morro as he slid across the slope to Scar, who was gazing at him like he held all the answers, and he kept silent. Kept his mind from it too, just in case.
He must have been under the snow longer than he thought because the sun had slipped far past noon and was well on its way to dropping behind the higher peaks, the temperature plummeting with it.
“We must assume it’s them,” Scar said to Morro as Petri approached. She spared him a glance but no more. “And three of the horses are missing, including hers.”
“Horses won’t help them much in this,” Morro said.
“Really?” Petri nodded back the way they’d come to the wide swathe of cleared snow. Morro had filled some of their trail as they went but had run low on blood, and now a clear path led at least halfway back to the camp. “I think you’ve given them a fine helping hand, not to mention a signpost.”
“Get this arsehole out of my way,” Morro snapped at Kepa, and the big man grabbed Petri’s arm and threw him back down into the snow as Morro and Scar stalked off to the horses that her crew had managed to recapture.
“Kepa, what are you—” Petri struggled upright and stared up at a man he’d considered a friend.
“He says you talk too much.” Kepa’s ample brow furrowed as though he was struggling to remember. “Which sounds stupid now I come to say it, because you don’t hardly talk at all excepting when you have to. But he says you’re using us. Using Scar. That you want us to fail. He’s going to get us everything–houses, food, beer. Respect. He’s like us, see, no one wants him excepting us. Just a dreg, like we are. He’s going to help us. He showed me.”
“Showed you? On his hands?” Petri got up warily. Kepa wasn’t the best with a sword, but with his height and reach he could be devastating, and Petri wasn’t sure if he meant to be devastating to him.
“That’s right. On his hands.” Kepa nodded sleepily. “Showed me, showed all of us in the barn. Showed Scar too, oh he showed her lots, he did, when you wasn’t looking.” A lewd chuckle at that. “It’s going to be grand, what he tells us. Grand. And warm too. I haven’t been warm in years, it feels like. And there’ll be food and beer and… It’ll be grand. So you just keep your head down. I don’t want to hurt you, even if what he says is true, but I can’t let you spoil it. Just keep quiet and maybe slip off when he’s not looking. Else you’re going to get hurt.”
Petri felt the ice inside grow. Cast out by outcasts…
Kepa rubbed at his forehead and frowned. “What was we talking about? Come on. We need to grab a horse if we don’t want to walk home. Morro says that Kass woman’s bound to head to camp now, and we’d best catch them up.”
Petri followed him, his heart stuttering in fear. Morro had them, all of them, in his hands. All except Petri, and he knew it.
By the time they got back to camp, the sky was darkening towards a bruised purple. Petri hung far at the back, having been forced to walk, and watched Morro and Scar at the head of the line. Morro had got one of the crew to donate some blood and now rode with his eyes half closed, clearing the path ahead, closing it behind, often catching Petri in flurries of snow and ice that scoured his face, ruined side and not. Scar rode alertly, sending scouts out ahead, to the side, letting some lag behind. They found nothing, no one. But Kass was there, Petri knew it. He could feel the heat of her gaze on the back of his neck, even when he knew it was impossible, and couldn’t work out how he felt about it. After a time he stopped wondering. It wasn’t important, not compared to if he’d live through the night.
Finally, with nothing except bruises to show for the day, they made it back to camp. Scar stalked over to Petri, her eyes at dreamy odds with the energy of her walk. She hesitated when she reached him, some spark of her still alive behind whatever Morro had filled her head with.
“Are you with me?” she asked at last, a hint of the old Scar in her voice, wanting him to be her man when he hadn’t been for some time. “Petri, are you with me or not?”
He reached out and took her arm, turned
her so that he could see Morro behind her, keep an eye on the bastard. “I’ve always been with you, Scar, never against you. But—”
She slid her arm out of his grasp. “There are no buts, Petri. It’s time, Morro says, and I agree. Time you showed me just whose side you’re really on, because you’ve shown me nothing but dissent for a while now. I need–no… want–you with me. Or to know if you aren’t, if you still hanker after her.” Scar spat into the snow to show what she thought of Kass. “We’ve spent the day looking for her, and we’ll keep searching, but there’s some you don’t need to find that we’re keeping as bait. Some that in killing you’d sever every tie with her, for ever.” Scar’s voice was carefully level, her face blank. When he hesitated, her lip twitched the way he’d seen so many times before, just before she drew her sword. “I want you with me, but I need to know where your loyalties lie. Kill Vocho and I’ll know for sure.”
Petri looked towards the hut that held Vocho and the rest. No going back, not with Kass. He’d lost her a long time ago, and now he had other things to lose.
You are weakness.
Not in front of Scar he wasn’t, not in front of the men and women who called this valley home. Who’d been seduced by a magician but were still his friends underneath. He had only this valley, these people. His own pride, mangled though it was. A poor thing, nothing like he’d once had, but all he had left. He would kill to keep it.
A glance up at Morro, at his lidded look, the hint of menace in the smile, showed him what else he had–this one chance or Morro would have them gut him like a pig. Balanced against that, killing a man whose death he’d often dreamed of. Be canny, be careful, be strong. Show the world what they passed by.
He strode towards the hut without another thought, sword in hand.
“What the hell is going on?” Kass gasped when they came to the final ridge.
Once the cleared path had given out, Danel had brought them by back ways and goat trails that Kass could barely even see, never mind follow. The horses had helped–Kass had been surprised how much she’d missed her great bastard of a beast–but it had still been hard going. They’d had to dismount often, and Kass had let her horse pull her up the worst bits, but the strain was starting to tell. Her whole chest ached, the dressing sodden again. Her head swam, and her stomach was a small hard knot inside her.
Now they stood on a tumbled escarpment above a valley dotted with huts. Scar, with help from a magician to deal with the snow, had obviously made it back before them. In a circle spreading outwards, torches went every which way.
“Looking for someone?” Danel said.
“Us, probably,” replied Cospel gloomily. “Where have they got Voch?”
Danel pointed out a hut that stood apart from the rest, with a good assortment of people around it, gathered around a fire that would erase any advantage the shadows of the camp might give them. “There, or he was. And that over there, that’s where the Skull lives with that Scar woman. She’s right protective of him. As you may have noticed, miss.”
She had. Petri lived with her. He hadn’t wasted much time, had he?
“We have to get down there, get Voch out,” she said. Her voice sounded vague and dreamy even to her.
Danel raised an eyebrow. “There’s three of us and a lot of them.”
“And most of them are not anywhere near that hut. If we’re careful, we can get to it.”
“If we’re bloody suicidal, you mean.”
“That’s what she generally means by careful,” Cospel said mournfully. “Got their own dictionary, see, her and Vocho. In their language, careful means suicidal, a bit stubborn means immovable to the point of stupidity, and ‘Cospel!’ means will you please do something suicidal and stupid.”
“I am standing here, you realise that?” Kass looked down over the little village, one hand pressed to her throbbing breast.
A figure strode towards the hut that Danel said held Vocho. A familiar figure, a familiar walk, an unfamiliar un-face. Kass’s hands were colder than ever.
Cospel swore under his breath. “Looks like it’s now or never. You got your gun wound, Danel?”
“Nope, but won’t take a moment.”
“Good,” Kass said. “Get yourself somewhere high.”
“And shoot anyone who ain’t us or left Kastroa with us,” Cospel added. “Except Eder. I reckon you can shoot him.”
Danel looked between the two of them, his cheeks wobbling. Being a mountain guard had probably never included this. “Anyone?”
Kass looked down at the figure advancing, familiar and not. Dead and alive. Loved and enemy. “Anyone, Danel.”
He went, and Kass let herself sag. “I’m going to need that bottle.”
“Thought you might. Don’t suppose I can talk you into not… No, don’t suppose I can.” He sighed and handed it over. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet to Kass. Everything retreated except Cospel’s reliable face and the bite of the air in her lungs. Breath came easy at last, and if her limbs were wobbling, at least they had some strength in them.
“Miss…” Cospel hesitated, which was very unlike him. “Miss, you want I should…”
She conjured a grin from somewhere. “No. No, this is one thing I should do myself. I might need a bit of help though.”
“That’s what you pay me for.”
“Is it? I thought we paid you to thieve things and find things out and annoy Vocho.”
“That too.”
Petri was nearing the hut, his sword out, calling to one of the guards. From this side he looked no different to how he had been what seemed a lifetime ago. That man was still in there, but that man was also looking to kill her brother. What seems good to you, Kass? I have no idea. “Right. You got your tankard? Good. Come on, it’s time you dented it a bit more.”
Petri neared the hut. This was his chance to show his father, show Eneko, show everyone, once and for all that he was not a weak man, not a scared man. Strong as steel, harder than iron.
“Bring him out,” he said to one of the guards, “and give him his sword.”
Maitea stood by the guards, and it was she who opened the door to the hut. Vocho all but fell through, his face looking as though someone had slapped him. One of the other prisoners–Petri didn’t know their names and hadn’t cared to ask–helped him keep his feet and he nodded a thanks to her, slipping her a wink that was almost too Vocho.
Petri thought he might enjoy this.
Someone threw Vocho his sword, and he caught it, swung it, gave it that Vocho twirl that he thought was so impressive but was just ridiculous. The effect was marred by the fact he could barely move his bad leg, but that didn’t stop his mouth working, more was the pity.
“Finally got up the nerve to finish the job, then? I wondered how long it would take you to get rid of that yellow streak all down your back and grow a spine. Actually, I bet good money that you never would, but that’s a bet I’m glad to lose if it means I get the chance to put you on your arse.”
Petri let Vocho shoot his mouth off, because nothing ever seemed to stop it anyway, and watched him. The blade went through a complex series of motions as Vocho loosened his sword arm and legs–thrust, block, attack, riposte, feint. Gimp leg or not, he would be a challenge. Petri focused his mind on that, letting nothing else in–none of the fear, none of the weakness. Beat Vocho and he would be strong, no one could deny that.
Finally, thankfully, Vocho ran out of words and settled into a modified stance that would allow him to fight even with that leg.
“Ready?” asked Petri in the drawl he knew drove Vocho round the twist.
“I’ve been ready to beat your arse for years,” Vocho said and came for him.
Vocho gritted his teeth against the grind of the bones in his hip, the fire that lanced down his leg and up his back despite the last of the jollop, which he’d managed to swig before he’d come out of the hut. Not being able to pivot as he should, nor advance or retreat as normal, was hampering him more than somewha
t as Petri came forward. But he was Vocho the Great, wasn’t he? This one time he was going to have to be, gimp leg or not. He was going to die here, he knew that, die to save Carrola and the rest, but he was going to do it in style, damn it. He would die being great or not die at all.
With another opponent Vocho might have tried drawing him on, allowing him to stay in one place rather than risk his leg going and planting him on his face. It wasn’t going to work with Petri today, he saw that from the off. Still, he had Petri’s blind side to work with, and the fact that despite obviously practising with his off hand, he was still slower with it and clumsy when he extended.
Petri stood off, trying to get Vocho to move, and for a short time there was an impasse, but Vocho couldn’t stand that for long, as Petri had probably calculated. Vocho risked a lunge that left his leg struggling to catch up. Petri deflected it with ease, following up with a cut of his own that forced Vocho back again, making his leg scream. Vocho didn’t think he’d be able to keep this up for long. He hoped like crap Maitea would do as she’d said, that she was more her father than her mother.
He had to be quick before the jollop wore off and he seized up. A deep breath, a silent injunction to his leg to shut the hell up, and he went for a move that anyone would see as typical Vocho–a round cut that looked flashy but was slow, enticing Petri in for an attack. As soon as he did, Vocho changed his line, the blade dipped and came back up under Petri’s guard on his blind side. But Petri was cannier than Vocho had ever given him credit for and had learned that guild rules were for suckers. An elbow crashed into Vocho’s face, planting him firmly on his arse in the snow, to hoots and catcalls from the watching men and women. He couldn’t be having that, no matter what his hip had to say about it, no matter what the plan had been.
Petri stood back as Vocho struggled up, an odd little grin playing about what was left of his lips. Supercilious bastard. Maybe he thought Vocho would go easy because of Kass, because of what she’d say or do if he sliced up her precious Petri, but he was dead wrong. Vocho caught Carrola’s eye, tipped her another wink and spun towards Petri. His hip was bad, but with the last of the jollop not half as bad as he’d been making out. He caught the bugger by surprise in the top of the shoulder. Still his leg was bad enough, and the pain of it made his eyes cross as Petri leaped back.
