by J. V. Jones
The maiden whispered the word, “Aye.” She disliked petty crimes and the people who committed them. She was not the kind of woman who sought to justify her own actions. She was an assassin, and she knew her place in hell was assured. Yet she also knew that there was more honesty to be found in killing a man swiftly than in duping him and continuing to smile in his face. The world was full of Thurlo Pikes; Magdalena Crouch depended on it. Their greed made them easy to use.
She maintained eye contact with the roofer as she said, “Where exactly does this farmhouse lie?”
Thurlo Pike rubbed his thumb against his mitted fingers. “Means, Maggy. Means.”
She took out the dogskin bag containing salt she had ground to a powder with her own hands. Pulling apart the drawstring, she showed the contents to the light. Thurlo’s hand came out to grab it, but the maiden snatched it away. “Where’s the farm?”
Thurlo’s hazel eyes darkened. “How do I know it will do as you say?”
“How do I know you have told me the truth?”
Thurlo Pike had no answer to that. With a dissatisfied shrug, he gave the details of the farmhouse location. Magdalena watched his eyes as he spoke.
When he was done, she weighed the dogskin bag in her hand. “Follow me. A deal is a deal.” Without waiting for his response she headed down the alleyway to the back of the building.
“Hey! Where d’you think you’re off to? Give me that now.” Thurlo snatched at her arm but found himself grabbing air instead.
The maiden continued walking, increasing her pace from step to step. This was the point where any other female assassin would use the promise of sex. A downcast glance, a lick of the lips, perhaps even a handful of soft flesh pressed into a waiting hand. Let’s do it out of sight. I’d be beaten if my father saw us. Magdalena raked her tongue over teeth that were perfectly dry. Seduction was not her stock in trade. She said, “I have to show you how the drug works. I need water for that.”
This statement intrigued him; she could tell from the subtle change in his breath. “Wait here, then. I’ll get a pitcher from the Feet.”
Magdalena shook her head. She was free of the building now, in what had once been the Ewe’s Feet courtyard but was now no more than a paved square with broken-down walls, littered with beer kegs, iron hoops, chairs with missing legs, women’s underthings, crates, and several dead crows. It stank of semen and sour ale. Magdalena headed for a break in the walls.
“Where you going? There’s no damn water out there.”
“Yes there is. In the pond, behind the basswoods.”
“That pisshole! It’ll be frozen hard as brass balls until spring.”
“No it’s not. I passed there along the way.” The maiden hiked over the rubble of stone blocks that had once been the courtyard wall, forcing Thurlo to keep up with her if he wanted his voice heard.
“Why’d you be passing there?” Suspicion was clear in his voice.
“Children,” she said. “I heard one of them crying as I crossed the road in front of the Feet. I ran to the back, quick as I could. They’d been playing on the pond when the ice cracked. One of them got a soaking.”
“Brats!” Thurlo said with feeling.
The maiden was facing away from him, striking out toward the stand of stout-trunked basswoods that surrounded the pond, so he was unaware of the shift in the color of her eyes. There were no children, and if he had thought to look at the snow as he trod it, he would have seen that no footprints led to or from the courtyard and the pond. Magdalena had been at the pond an hour earlier, but she had come and gone from a different route. The ice pick and hammer she had used to break the ice were two items she had no wish to be seen with.
It had not been a pleasant job, making the first crack in the ice. She’d had to lie with her lower body on the bank and upper body over the ice as she’d hammered down the pick until it hit water. The pond was small, and its water was frozen to the depth of half a foot. Magdalena had blackened her knuckles in the process. After the initial crack had been made, she’d bellied her way back to the bank and worked on the shore ice there. By the time she’d finished, the armpits of her good widow’s dress had become a pulp of wool and sweat. After throwing the pick and hammer into the body of open water she had created, she’d brushed the ice from her coat and hood and left the way she’d come.
Preparation was everything to the Crouching Maiden.
“You’d best not be playing games with me, Maggy Sea.”
Magdalena looked back. Thurlo Pike was crab-walking down the slope, his arms held stubbornly at his sides. He did not look happy. To make him feel better she feigned a stumble. “Come on. We’re nearly there.” For good measure she tapped the dogskin bag.
He was out of breath and red-faced by the time he cleared the trees. The maiden positioned herself on the bank of the pond, directly in front of the break. Water exposed to the air an hour earlier was already quickening with ice.
The roofer wiped his nose on his sleeve “Right. Show me how it’s done then, and let’s get the piss out of here before the storm hits and blows that skirt of yours up around your neck.”
From a pouch sewn inside her coat, Magdalena produced a soft leather cup. It did not hold water well, having being waxed in haste and tarred only around the stitching, but that mattered little to the maiden. She bent over the water and scooped it full of the icy gray slush. As she stood she slipped two other items from her coat. The first was the dogskin bag. With a gloved finger she agitated the cup water. “See, you have to get the water moving before you add the powder. And it must be very cold. Like this.” Magdalena did not look up as she spoke, but every hair on her body was aware of the roofer drawing closer to the bank. “Now, you must add only enough powder to salt a roast. Too much and the women will sleep like dead dogs for days.”
“Will it harm ’em?”
Magdalena almost smiled. “No. But there are degrees of sleep. You want the entire family insensible, yes?” Again, she did not need to look at Thurlo Pike to feel the air he displaced with his nod. “Then you have to be careful with the dosage, for what’s enough to lay a full-grown woman on her back might prove too much for a baby or a child. You wouldn’t want the two young girls to sleep too long past the waking of their mother and elder sister.”
Thurlo Pike grunted. He was so close now Magdalena could smell the excitement on his breath. “I want ’em all asleep until I’m finished and gone.”
“One cup of this in the well before they wake and draw water for the day will be enough for that.” Magdalena added a pinch of salt to the cup. “You should have at least three hours to do what you will. A man could uncover much hidden gold and precious stones in that time.”
Thurlo shifted his weight. When he spoke his voice was low and tight. “Aye.”
Magdalena’s distaste for him deepened. Profit was not his motive here. He did not seek to drug the family in the woods to rob them, though he wouldn’t be above poking around teakettles and forcing locks when he was done. He had seen a household of women and girls and now had rape on his mind. She had read the desire in him three nights ago in Drover Jack’s, when he spoke with bright eyes and a mouth wetted by saliva and ale. All she had done was offer him the means: drugs to render the family senseless in exchange for information. Now the deal was nearly done, and Magdalena Crouch was eager to be parted from this man.
She raised the cup. “Taste it, so that you may know the strength of the drug.”
Thurlo Pike thought himself no one’s fool. “You taste it first.”
The maiden was more than happy to do so. The taste of salt was not unpleasant to her, but she still made a face. “Here,” she said, thrusting it toward him. “I didn’t promise it would taste like mother’s milk.”
Thurlo Pike took the last step he would ever take. As he raised the cup to his lips and sniffed, the Crouching Maiden warmed her knife.
It was over in less than a instant: a blade thrust through the rib cage, lungs, and heart,
in that order. Magdalena preferred to do her killing from behind. The back bled so much less than the soft flesh of the abdomen and chest. The cup rolled into the water with a plop as a gust of wind shook the basswoods and ruffled the roofer’s collar. Magdalena held the body upright until she felt the soft slump of unsouled flesh, then yanked her knife free and let him go the way of the cup. The hole she had made in the ice fit him perfectly, and he slipped through to the cold black waters below. Within an hour the surface would be completely refrozen, and an hour after that the storm would dust it with snow. Thurlo Pike wouldn’t be found until spring.
Magdalena sincerely doubted he’d be missed.
Turning her back on the pond, she cleaned her knife, not with water or snow, but with a soft rag moistened with tung oil. She was particular about such things, and although her knife was plainly wrought and of little value, she had no wish to replace it. Its steel carried the sum of lives she had taken.
With a small movement she removed the blade from sight before her own reflection had chance to settle there and catch her eye, then started up the slope. If she was lucky she would arrive at Drover Jack’s one step ahead of the storm.
The wolves were drawn by the smell of sickness. Raif heard them call to each other, long notes that wailed in the darkness like the calls of children lost, then dropped away with the wind. Once, when he had looked back, he had seen one—high upon the basalt ridge, its eyes burning like blue fire. An ice wolf.
They smelled Ash: the wrongness in her body, the blood that had rolled from her nose to her mouth and had now dried to a black crust on her lips. She stank of weakness to them, like a lame elk, or an aging moose, or a horned sheep riddled with lasp worms. The smell meant easy prey. Raif tried not to think about it, tried to force every last bit of his strength into carrying Ash across the barren, snow-dressed valley he had entered. But the howling of the wolves took something from him. The creatures hunted, and as Raif stepped from a trench onto a shelf of hard rock and saw a second pair of ice blue eyes watching from the shadows, he knew they were sizing their prey.
There was nothing for Raif to do but continue walking. “Wolves will not attack a full-grown man,” Tem had said more times than Raif had fingers to count. “They know men from the scent they leave on carcasses and traps, and wolves learn quickly to pair this scent with death.” Raif held on to these words as he trekked through the falling snow. Sometimes his lips moved as his mind repeated them.
Ash lay motionless against his chest, her breathing so shallow that it hardly seemed as if she were alive at all. Raif watched her face. Air continued to whiten as it left her mouth: That was what kept him moving. He could not tell how many hours he had walked or what sights he had seen since Ash fell unconscious. He knew only that he couldn’t stop. The cold was something he no longer gave mind to. Within his gloves his hands were numb, their circulation slowed by the weight of Ash’s body upon his arms and chest. Another time it would have mattered; he would have paused to wrap them in a second layer or tuck them in the warm pockets of flesh beneath his arms. Now he thought only of walking until he could walk no more.
He had broken First Oath and failed his brother. He would not break the second and fail Ash.
Exhaustion was something he could not give in to. He kept his spine rigid as he walked, his mind farming the pain it caused, using it to keep him awake. He could not feel his feet and could not recall the last time he had been aware of the slow-working coldness of snow around his boots. His lips were dry to the point that to stretch them in a smile would draw blood. Good thing he had nothing to smile about.
Good thing too that he had passed no tree or rock formation tall enough to supply south-facing shelter. He did not know what he would do when faced with the decision between continuing on and halting for the long night of darkness to come. Halting would help him, but it would not help Ash.
Raif thrust the thought from him. Glancing up, he saw snow clouds the color of furnace metal. Good. There’s still an hour of daylight left. His mind was quick to allow the lie.
On he walked, forcing his body into the wind. He stumbled often, stepping into snowdrifts whose true depths were hidden by shadows or uneven ground or placing his weight on a prostrate tree only to find its dead bark turn beneath his feet. Ice was a constant danger. Clan had no knowledge of this valley, and the thick snow cover made reading the land for frozen streams, muskegs, and ponds near impossible. Sometimes Raif would spot a line of willows closely following a depression in the valley floor. Stream, he said to himself with little satisfaction. Knowing that was as good as knowing nothing at all. Mostly he kept to head ground: basalt plateaus, rocks, and moraines. The many small climbs were hard on his legs.
He had reached the midway point in the valley when he first heard the sound of wolf paws breaking snow. It was silvery dark now, with midnight blue shadows crouching behind pines and on the east side of rocks. Snow continued to fall, but a drop in the wind slowed its descent. Already newly settled flakes were hardening to ice. The wolf cracked this frozen crust as it padded downwind of Raif. Raif stiffened for an instant, then continued walking. The desire to increase his pace ran like heat through his body, and it cost him dear to control it. The massacre on the Bluddroad had taught him all he needed to know about predators and their prey. Like men, wolves preferred their victims on the run.
He could not resist glancing back. Three pairs of ice blue eyes glowed from the darkness behind him. Two other shadows moved far to his flank: long-legged, loping, their great shaggy necks thicker than their heads. Aware the eyes of their prey were upon them, the pack hesitated, drawing their forelegs beneath their bodies and lowering their heads. They wanted him to run.
Raif cracked his lips in a grim smile. He was so far past running, he doubted if he could manage to break into a trot if the devil himself were at his heels.
Slowly he brought his head forward and continued on. A crop of rocks, blunt as cornerstones and half-sunk into the snow, broke the line of the valley floor ahead. The tallest was perhaps as high as Raif’s chest. It would do.
The pack began to close distance.
Raif thought of nothing but reaching the rocks. He was too exhausted to feel fear. His arms were numb to the elbows, and his thigh muscles ached with the kind of pain that only sleep could cure. As he neared the rocks, he prepared himself to face the pack. Slowly, over the course of many steps, he turned a half circle in the snow so that his back was against the rocks and his eyes met gazes with the pack. The wolves were close now, and Raif could see the black guard hairs that ringed their eyes and their muzzles and the snow white fleece of their throats. The hackles on the first wolf rose as Raif looked at it, and its ears dropped flat against its skull. The second wolf bared yellow teeth. Another growled, a long, vibrating rumble that skimmed the snow. All slowed . . . waiting to see what the pack leader would do.
Keeping his gaze fixed upon Pack Leader, Raif dropped slowly to his knees. The wolves were nervous, excited by the smell of blood and weakness, but fearful of the creature who would turn and look them in the eyes. Raif suspected fear would hold them only so long. Pack Leader’s belly was narrow beneath its coat of silver fur, its cheeks sunk to the depth of its eyes. Watching it, Raif knew with cold certainty that his father was wrong. This one would attack a man.
The wind drove a flurry of snow into Raif’s face as he lowered Ash’s body to the ground. Her weight had been a part of him for so long it was as if he were peeling away his skin. She sank motionless into the foot-deep snow, her chest sinking to the lowest point. Raif risked glancing down to check that the bare skin of her nose and cheeks was not in contact with snow or ice. The pain in his freed arms made his eyes tear as he reached out to draw the hood around her face.
Pack Leader snarled, its blue eyes shrinking to slits. Lowering its neck, it pounced forward and snapped its jaws at the air.
Raif flinched. The wolves saw it, and the air thickened with their calls.
Rising, Raif reach
ed back and pulled the willow staff from his belt. His hands felt huge and numb, and the wood hardly registered in his grip. It nearly rolled from his glove as he stepped over Ash’s body and put himself between her and the pack.
The wolves were claiming space. Teeth bared, they charged forward, making swift imaginary strikes. The two wolves bringing up the rear were now only a short distance behind the lead three, and Raif saw dark patches of matted hair, a white ridge of scar tissue on a foreleg, and a torn and bloody snout.
Pack Leader ran at Raif. It was all snout and teeth and maw. Strings of saliva shivered between its fangs as its eyes winked out to darkness. Raif cursed the aching stiffness in his arms that made them move so slowly. He barely had time to draw the staff across his chest and no moment to brace for a blow. The heat of wolf breath pumped against his throat as Pack Leader charged at his belly. Raif wheeled back, trusting in the strength of his legs more than his arms. The wolf’s teeth hit wood and the shock of impact caused both predator and prey to jump back.
The two guard wolves moved forward as Pack Leader shook its great head and edged back into the pack.
Raif barely had time to curse the dead flesh of his arms. A second animal came for him, launching its long gray snout at the unboned flesh at Raif’s waist. Again Raif had no choice but to step back. His nostrils filled with the rangy aroma of wolf musk. Gagging, he forced his arms to raise the staff. The clack of teeth meeting wood split the night.
