They rushed from the barracks, killed two confused jacks, and left their bodies. Catling jogged beside the men, some of them favoring the aches and wounds that prevented them from sprinting. She grasped Tavor’s hand, healing in small doses as she shielded and cleared the way of desperate Ellegeans.
Jagur, as big, fierce, and filthy as a crag bear, led his six men, barking orders. They barreled around a corner into a sprinting jack with a ready knife, and the first guardian fell. The jack leapt aside, escaping a strike from Jagur’s club that would have broken his bones. Kadan ducked from beneath Gannon’s arm, slapped a hand on the attacker’s neck, and a dead man slumped to the tier.
The other city guard slipped under Gannon’s arm, taking Kadan’s place. The pair of them took the lead, half-dragging Gannon onto the main thoroughfare dividing the tier. Catling eyed Kadan, the road a risk compared to the alleyways. He jogged ahead, hooked a right at the crossroads onto the lesser-traveled lanes, and she let her worries go.
Jagur and the guardians killed Cull Tarr jacks without pause, two men chasing down any runners. Chaos and panic echoed through the tiers, and Catling added to the frenzy, casting terror into the air without conscience. Kadan added his sway to hers. She heard it in the mad shouting, witnessed it in every face as Ellegeans scurried in her direction and spun away, mouths gaping as they screamed.
They fled around a final corner. The ramp to the dock and southern piers lay straight ahead. Four Cull Tarr jacks blocked the way.
“Catling,” Jagur said. “Help with Gannon. I need another man.”
She ducked under Gannon’s arm, freeing a guard. Kadan’s influence pelted the Cull Tarr, and she joined him, challenging their purity. One of them may have faltered, but the others didn’t flinch. Tavor limped from the man who supported him, and the odds improved.
“Keep going as soon as the ramp’s open,” Jagur ordered her.
The jacks attacked at once. Two descended on a guardian, the man backing up and unable to fend them off. A Cull Tarr knife struck true while the other jack rotated off and swung his blade at Jagur. The commander parried the swipe with a chair leg, stepped in, and jammed the end into the offender’s eye.
Kadan backed up, seeking his chance to lay a hand on Cull Tarr flesh. He lunged, got a touch, but without time for a kill. Another guardian fell to an unexpected thrust.
Tavor swayed back from an attack, ducked, and grabbed a knife from a dead man. He blocked a sideways swing at his neck and bolted up with a fist, connecting with a Cull Tarr jaw. The man staggered backward but failed to fall.
“Help him,” Catling said. “Leave Gannon with me.” The other tier guard darted out from under Gannon’s arm. Catling sank to the floor under her friend’s weight, no longer attempting to influence the fight but healing with every drop of her strength.
Jagur, Tavor, and the two Ellegean tier guards faced three jacks. Kadan stood before Catling and Gannon, his hands his weapons. Two jacks leapt toward the commander as Tavor faced the third. The tier guards shared a glance, spun, and thrust their knives into Tavor’s back. Catling gasped, her heart thundering in her ears. Tavor reared and staggered forward into a Cull Tarr blade.
“Tavor!” The roar from Jagur startled his enemies, and he slashed a jack’s neck as Catling struck the tier guards with a blast of agony, crumbling them to the floor. Tavor held on to the man who’d gutted him, pinning his arms while Kadan leapt forward and ripped open the offender’s veins. Tavor collapsed with the jack.
Jagur drove the last of the Cull Tarr to the wall, attacking with both knife and club, slicing and swinging with such force the man’s blocks yielded like feathers. A final slash scored the jack’s eyes and finished him off.
Gannon rose to his feet, Catling holding his arm as he stumbled to the two guards who writhed on the tier floor, genuine fear laid over her influenced pain. He knelt, clawed up a bloody knife, and thrust it between a man’s ribs. “Traitors,” he wheezed. “Bloody piffs.” He dropped the knife when Kadan stopped the other guard’s heart.
Her hand over her mouth, Catling met Kadan’s eyes. They should have killed the two guards at the cells, in the road, without question or mercy. He brushed her with a wave of comfort, but she wasn’t the one who needed it most.
“Founders’ Hell.” Jagur bent over, his hands on his knees, his eyes on Tavor. He blew out a breath and brushed a hand across his friend’s face, closing his dead eyes. “Cale’s going to hurt. Gods-damned Cull Tarr. Hell.”
Tavor deserved the honor of their tears and pain, but they hadn’t time. “We must go,” Catling whispered, applying a subtle trace of solace to soften their grief. When they didn’t move, she added a harsher layer of fear to remind them of the danger at hand.
Jagur pulled Gannon up. Kadan took his other arm, and they dragged him stumbling down the ramp. The evening’s fog rolled over the luminescent water. Three moons cast shadows across the fanned wings of a waterdragon that arced from the river.
“Turn left,” Kadan whispered. “My ferry has company.” Catling pivoted, stealing a glance at six Cull Tarr jacks idling on a pier farther down the dock.
“Lelaine?” Gannon asked.
“She’s not there.” Catling eyed Kadan and hurried ahead, distancing herself from Gannon. They needed a boat.
He twisted in the men’s arms. “Where’s Lelaine?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment.” Catling ran ahead, searching the piers.
“Where is she?” Gannon’s voice rose, his point clear that he didn’t care who heard.
She winced, refusing to answer, her jaw trembling. She scanned the piers for something they could handle. At first, she mistook the man on the raft as a piling. He stood motionless in the fog with his arms crossed. Then he moved, beckoning her forward. Raker.
“This way,” she called to the others.
“Where is she?” Gannon shouted. “Where’s Lelaine?”
Catling turned to face her friend, to confirm the terrible knowing in his bruised eyes. Her own grief, contained for their escape through the tiers, mangled her heart and broke through its fraying bonds. “She’s dead, Gannon. The Shiplord killed her.”
Chapter Ten
“They’re coming.” Raker shoved Jafe with his foot. “More of them than expected.” The moon-gazing rafter rose from his back to a crouch and peered up through slitted eyes. He wore trousers covered in pockets and a jerkin, his arms and hair smeared in mud. Jafe hadn’t questioned Raker’s news that they would brave the brilliant flood tides to visit a city full of Cull Tarr. The fenfolk were accustomed to his madness, and Jafe rarely squandered a chance at a perilous venture.
The goddess peered from behind Raker’s shoulder, her ephemeral arms threaded around his chest. “The one from Mur-Vallis will find his own way,” she informed him and blew through his body, raising his heat. The sensation tantalized him, but the timing of her intimacy proved annoying. She drifted off the raft in a whirl of skirts and reclined on the water, her hair streaming with luminescence.
He beckoned when he caught Catling’s eye.
Voices rose, and one of them seemed to lose his legs. They dragged him fighting down the pier.
Catling reached the raft first and halted before boarding, her face wiped of tears. “She sent you, didn’t she?”
He tightened his good eye, the other socket of pocked scars hidden behind a leather patch. “Get them over here.”
She waved the others forward. “Quickly.”
A middle-life Ellegean with a bristly beard stepped down to the raft. Nearly the size of Jafe, he wore filthy Guardian greens smeared with blood. He eyed Raker and gave his name, “Jagur.”
“Raker. That’s Jafe.” He canted his head toward the flaxen-headed rafter. “Get him aboard.”
The guardian helped the injured man down, and Raker got a view of his face. Gannon. He looked askance at the goddess, and she shrugged in reply. “He serves a purpose.”
Catling jumped down and pivoted to the last man. “Kadan, ar
e you sure you’ll be safe?”
“No one’s safe,” he said. “How do I reach you?”
“Send word with any of the rafters,” Raker replied.
With a nod, Kadan turned and loped back toward the city.
Jafe pushed them from the pier and took up a paddle. Raker mirrored him on the other side. They ghosted around the Cull Tarr ships with the fog. The goddess crept onto the raft and leaned over Gannon. “He grieves for his queen and the child that will never be.”
“How did you know?” Raker put his back into the work, the flood currents willing them downriver.
“I didn’t,” Catling replied, believing his question was for her.
The goddess giggled and rolled onto her back, the hem of her gown sweeping off the edge. “The kari know everything, Raker. How does your head know you’ve stubbed your toe? Why do your shoulders hunch when your pointy ears are cold?” She rolled her eyes. “Stop dissecting, love. You sound like an Ellegean.”
The raft twirled, carried north by the river’s current. Raker grunted, the muscles in his back straining. Jafe’s long limbs moved the water with powerful strokes, and the craft broke free of the current. They paddled into the calmer waters fringed by caliph trees. Jafe stood and used a pole to propel them between the hummocks.
“Well done.” The goddess rose to her knees and crawled to Raker as he sank onto a crate. “Did you notice her eye?”
He glanced at the Catling as she bent over Gannon, her hands on his arm. The moonlight and swamplight spilled into the night. Her eye had changed, deepened in color and contour, the curves in the petals highlighted, the edges sharp, and layers shaded.
“She’s powerful,” the goddess whispered. “Far more powerful. They’ve created their monster, and I shall have my reckoning.”
***
Gannon lay on his back, covered with a blanket, staring up at the filigreed morning sky. Caliph branches, smooth and green, arched above him like limbs of giant lizards petrified in mid step. White-barked elbrin and pale witchwood with its blood-red leaves crowded the hummocks’ higher, less soggy soil. Birds chased each other through the canopy, fire-winged and butter-yellow with jade plumes. Winged predators glided above the swamp’s roof on feathered sails.
He had hated the swamp last time—the rats and snakes and insects. The muck, dampness and filth, all mossed with age. Raker was a half-blood madman with his ice-green eye and black eyepatch, three-fingered hands, and propensity for conversing with ghosts. Jafe was hardly better though Gannon attributed his manner to his native spirit, through and through.
This time, the trees, the noisy birds, the soft voices, and rippling water soothed him as if he’d sunk into a pleasant dream or death. He swallowed down a swell of emotion and stared.
“Gannon.” Catling rested her hand on his shoulder. “I’ve healed you as best I can. It was never my specialty. The rest will simply take time and rest.”
“Thank you.” The energy required to pull those two words from his throat sapped his strength. His body no longer hurt, the beatings in Ava-Grea’s cells behind him. He’d grown stronger; yet, his bones felt hollow, his flesh heavy, his head incapable of thought.
“I brought you food,” she said. “It’s not snake.”
He almost smiled. His stomach complained of hunger, but even the idea of eating seemed like drudgery. “I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t a choice,” Jagur said, patting his pockets and sighing. He fished from a seat on an overturned crate and frowned. “Good men died there. We’ve all lost people we loved and respected, Gannon, and dying won’t bring them back.”
With a sigh, Gannon pressed himself up. Catling handed him a bowl of mashed roots and something brown that didn’t appear edible. He grimaced and pushed it at her. “Eat it,” she insisted. “It’s not terrible.”
He chewed on it. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t appetizing either. “Where are we going?”
“The swamp.” Jafe grinned and worked his pole.
“Where in the swamp?” Gannon shivered in the morning cold, unamused.
“Wherever the channels go,” Jafe replied.
Catling draped a blanket over Gannon’s shoulders and looked up at Raker. “One of the villages?”
Raker left his pole at the raft’s center and squatted down facing them. “The flood tides changed the channels and land. The villages moved, and we won’t seek them. We’ve seen Cull Tarr in the swamps before. If they want any of you, they’ll hunt you.”
“Let them come,” Jagur growled, patting his pocket.
“No, guardian.” Raker’s eye narrowed. “We won’t lead them to our people. We’ll wander the channels and see who’s brave enough to enter our world.”
“Fair enough.” Jagur blew out a sigh. “But eventually, I’ll need to return to Guardian. The Cull Tarr aren’t done out there either, and the world of Ellegeance is going to suffer.”
“You should stay here.” Jafe leaned into his pole. “This is a good life.”
Gannon stared at the soggy hummocks as they drifted by. “It’s perfect.”
Jagur pulled up a fish, worked out the hook, and tossed the wriggling thing in a bucket. He eyed Gannon. “You should travel with me. You’re a dead man if you show your face north of the Fangwold.” He jabbed his hook through a piece of bait and used it to point at Catling. “You too. The Cull Tarr know about you.”
“What about me?” Catling’s brow pinched.
“Your shield,” Jagur dropped his hook into the channel. “That was the second part of Vianne’s message. I figured you might not know.”
“How? Who betrayed me?”
“Someone who knows shared the secret.” He patted his pocket for the tenth time that morning. “Damn pipe.”
Gannon took stock of those who’d kept Catling’s secret for a decade: Lelaine, Whitt, Kadan, and the doyen. A few others like Tiler, but he counted them out. Only one conclusion made any sense. “One of the doyen.”
She turned to him. “As long as Rose is safe, I don’t care.” Despite her words, the truth glistened in her eyes and sorrow gathered in her lashes. She rested a hand on his arm. “My regrets for lying to you about Lelaine. I needed to get you out of there. She was gone and nothing could change that. I have very few people in my life to love. I couldn’t leave you.”
His hand shook as he traced the grain in the planking. “Jagur’s right; we aren’t the only ones to lose people we love.” He stared at the rough wood, the chips of bark, the dents and gouges, seeing none of it. “This one’s been the hardest.”
She tilted her head. “For me, it was everyone at the stead, and Qeyon, and Keela, maybe, because I so young when Algar hung her. Despite her failings, she was my mother.”
“My regrets, Catling.” He had uttered those words before, but couldn’t shake his responsibility in that whole fiasco. “If I hadn’t found you and whisked you to Mur-Vallis, maybe none of this would have happened to either of us.”
“Only to make way for something else.” She shook her head. “I knew Lelaine a long time too. In the beginning, I thought of her as my queen and my trap, but each year, she became all the more my friend.” She gazed at him, her eyes intense. “It’s hope for Rose propelling me forward now, but I’ll tell you what kept me alive before, through all the despair.”
He met her eyes. “What?”
“Revenge.”
Chapter Eleven
Catling climbed the hummock to dig a shallow pit and flint a fire. They’d drifted through the channels for two days, keeping their distance from the floating villages. The Shiplord had decided, apparently, that capturing the three of them was worth his effort. Based on the number of Cull Tarr hunters wandering through the swamps, she suspected he’d offered a bounty.
Near the top of the hummock, she checked for snakes and then scraped away the moist decay of ferns and moss with a sharp stick. She’d found a suitable spot, an old pit within a ring of stones, which meant the digging would go easy. Already a vi
sion of grit, she clawed her nails into the soil and ash, tearing aside the sprouting undergrowth and webbed roots to fashion a hole.
A low rumble of laughter stilled her hands. She listened, unsure where the sound originated. Behind her, near the raft, Raker and Jagur cleaned fish. Gannon rested, his deeper wounds requiring more time to heal. Jafe told stories of battling crajeks.
“…this should be easy,” a voice muttered.
“…the gold is … not the swamp.”
“Watch your step.”
“Shaa. Quiet.”
Catling listened, the voices clearly ahead of her on the hummock’s other side. She left her supplies and crawled up the damp slope. Down the bank, across a wide channel, and near the top of the next island, a party of twelve Cull Tarr men and women set up camp. Spears leaned on the branches of witchwood, and several archers held crossbows, cocked with bolts loaded.
Jagur and Gannon wanted prisoners, but this was a large party, too dangerous to face in a fight. She glanced back to ensure none of her friends followed and then snuck over the peak. Below the ridge, she quietly hid among the ferns, shielded herself, and covered her unmarked eye inviting her enemy’s true emotions into her vision.
Pleasure and discomfort, pain and fear, wrath, power and distaste, excitement and avarice, the emotions bled into each other, smeared into complex blends far surpassing the skills of the most subtle and adept of influencers. Could she simply eliminate the worst of the emotional spectrum? What would a person be like without fear?
She tried to unravel them, to pull apart the colors, but they weren’t like influenced threads in a weave; nothing stood out for her to pluck from the whole.
“You! Don’t move!”
The colors flared with a predominance of copper and carnelian, jade and emerald, all the colors writhing in an explosion of energy. She startled and severed them, blew every one of them from their source. The swamp returned to its original state, green growth, loamy soil, and luminescent water.
Catling dropped her hand and stared at the camp of Cull Tarr. They stood or sat in a strange stupor where a moment ago they’d been alive with tasks, plans, goals, and complaints. Mouths gaped, and half-lidded eyes stared into nothing. Without emotions shaping their inner worlds, they were inanimate husks, hollow and listless aggregates of flesh, sinew, and bone that would perish within days. If the crajeks didn’t feast, they’d die of cold or hunger.
Kari's Reckoning (The Rose Shield Book 4) Page 7
