Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  “Bloodba….” Trieste’s voice trailed off, and she lagged behind Aylan and Gregor. Aylan was struggling into a stout sweater and cloak even as they both headed for the stables together.

  “Grow up, Trieste!” Aylan barked over his shoulder. “Whose colors were those surrounding Aldam?”

  “Rath’s.”

  “Do you really think Torrant’s going to let any of Rath’s people live?”

  And in spite of herself, in spite of the magic with the sad and handsome boy in the moonlight, Trieste found her footsteps stalling completely as Aylan and Gregor disappeared into the stables. He was going to kill those people. Her gentle poet, the sweet, laughing lover in her bed—he was going to kill with speed and prejudice and just as coldly as those glacial eyes might suggest. He was going to spill blood in the snow and spill no tears to go with it. A sudden shudder, not at all to be confused with the cold, swept over her, immobilizing her. Standing in her wool stockings and riding boots in the gray predawn, she wondered if she could bear his touch on her skin again, knowing the things he would surely do on this day.

  Suddenly the stable doors burst open, and Aylan came out riding his own horse—a fine-boned, bay-colored, temperamental animal who could have used some of Courtland’s genetic solidity—and leading Hammer in his wake. Gregor followed him on the school’s riding horse, holding Clover’s reins

  Gregor looked at her, confused, but Aylan knew exactly what had crossed her mind.

  “I know it’s not forever, Trieste,” he said with as much gentleness as he could manage while wheeling his prancing animal in a circle and deftly avoiding entangling the reins. “But you were planning to love him for right now. Is ‘right now’ consigned to last night already, darling? Because you know I’d be glad to step up and pick up the little pieces of his heart out of the bloody snow.”

  “Aylan….”

  “You were always timid, darling”—he sneered at her hesitation–“but I never figured you for a coward!”

  And as he wheeled the horses toward the eastern side of the valley, Trieste made a decision with her feet and her voice that she had not consciously made with her heart.

  “Aylan, you arse, wait up!” she called, and although he didn’t stop his own horse, he did let Hammer’s reins fall so she could swing up on the gelding’s back—a terrifying height for someone who had only ridden occasionally—and catch up with the two men who were riding off to save her lover from himself.

  TORRANT COULD run as the snowcat. His massive, dinner-plate-sized paws padded down the snow like a child’s hands, and he floated up the gentle whitescape of the valley in winter to the jagged blizzard conditions of Cleant proper and the Old Man Hills.

  It didn’t matter. His knowledge of the map had given him Aldam’s general direction, and as soon as he’d found that, the snowcat’s sense of smell told him everything—including Aldam’s stark, gibbering terror. His muscles bunched and stretched cleanly under the insulating fur, and he pounded in a flurry of power and fury to the source of Aldam’s fear stench.

  His snowcat’s heart beat out a tattoo of death as he ran.

  ALDAM KNEW he was not brave. He hadn’t been brave when they had made their way through Hammer Pass when he was eighteen—he had just followed Torrant’s lead. As long as Torrant was there, and he took care of Torrant, Torrant would keep him safe.

  He hadn’t been brave when he was a child and the horse trader had been alone with him in a fetid, darkened horse stall. He had whimpered and screamed as those rough hands pawed over his child’s body, and sobbed when he’d been bent over and violated. He had spent years after that moment startling at shadows and refusing to leave the house alone, until his mother had lost patience with him and sent him to work with his Aunt Stella so he could be of use. Torrant hadn’t been there to protect him then, but Aldam was sure if he had been, Torrant would have made sure that afternoon of madness and terror had never descended upon him.

  And now, surrounded by guardsmen and tied to an unfriendly, bony nag who kept nipping at his bound leg, the only thing he was certain of as he jounced, head down across the white ice swirl of the mountains, was that Torrant would come save him.

  It was the only thing that kept him from dissolving into a puling wail of fear and pain and terror.

  That, and the thought that if Torrant got to him, no matter what was done to him in the meantime, he would get to see Roes again.

  It had been the thought of Roes that had called him out of bed that morning, sad and hungover, and still a bit drunk. Aylan had produced a bottle of aged whiskey that he’d mixed with the lemon punch served in the dining hall, and the results had been mostly a fog in Aldam’s mind after Trieste had left. He could remember the plump blonde who had kept wiggling closer and closer to Aylan and looking at Aldam as though he were something that needed to be laundered, and he could remember Aylan mostly ignoring her in an attempt to make Aldam feel at home. And he could remember missing Roes.

  Solstice celebrations in Hammer Village had been secret sorts of things: a few muttered prayers under a candle the color of the silver-cream moon and small, shy, and secret gifts, usually given by children who were patted on the heads by mothers and asked “Aren’t you getting a little old for this?” Torrant and Yarri celebrated the Solstice as though it were special, but until Aldam had caught their infectious excitement in the Moons’ house in Eiran, he had thought nothing broke up the grimness of winter but the books and games his Aunt Stella had played with him when she wasn’t working at the inn.

  As he’d fallen asleep on Aylan’s floor, not the least bit interested in the noises coming from Aylan’s bed, one of the last things to impinge on his consciousness was his mother’s voice saying Stella, it’s fine for you to come here and be the boy’s hero—I have to worry about what will happen when we hear soldiers clattering up the hill to take him away.

  Of course, the very last thing he remembered before he fell asleep had been his aunt’s reply: Sara, don’t let worrying about what will come take the joy away from what is right now. Right now he’s a boy who would like to laugh.

  He’d fallen asleep in an alcohol haze and had dreamt of his mother as she’d sighed that night and sat down to play a game with him and Stella. When that dream was over, he’d dreamt of Roes, as she’d been at Samhain—happy. Happy to see him, happy to dance with him in front of the bonfire, happy to play games with him, and happy to hold his hand as they’d walked by the violent and faithful salt wrath of the autumn ocean. Roes had been happy, right up until he’d hugged her good-bye.

  He’d awakened with a terrible sorrow that he would not see Roes until spring.

  He stirred a little, grunting, and had been embarrassed to find the lord’s daughter looking at him intensely from her place in Aylan’s bed.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked flatly, and he shrugged.

  “Homesick.”

  He stood then, because he was thinking he would be more comfortable in his own bed, and the girl’s eyes narrowed. What was her name, he wondered suddenly? It had a “z” sound in it—Zella? Zolna? Zorina? Those all seemed too dramatic for such a characterless creature. Aylan’s taste had been improving lately: he usually only bedded people who were fun to talk to at dinner, but this girl? She must have been a spur-of-the-moment choice.

  “Maybe if you went outside,” she said, her look becoming sly. “You know, go outside and look toward home. It will help you feel better about home.”

  It sounded like a good idea. Aldam was surprised. He hadn’t expected her to have a good idea. He certainly didn’t expect anything nice from her when she looked like she was about to drop a kitten in a dog kennel.

  “I’ll do that,” he told her, pleased, but the look that crossed her face as she nodded and turned back toward Aylan had been indecipherable.

  He’d dressed then and gone to his room, tiptoeing in to get his cloak and warmest sweater. He’d been happy to see Trieste’s dark head on Torrant’s shoulder. Sweetness, Aldam thought
fondly. His brother needed sweetness before his destiny bit him on the scruff of the neck and dragged him to face his demons. On that thought he’d gone outside into the razor-breathed chill of predawn. Feet crunching through snow that was fortunately too dry to wet his breeches, he’d traveled up the hill of the bowl valley, planning to stand and watch the sunrise on this Solstice day, knowing it would hit Roes first, and when its light hit his face, it would have her colors in its thin goldness.

  Seven soldiers were waiting behind the trees at the top of the rise, and their rough hands on his arms as they sprung on him and bound him were not nearly as terrifying as the ground disappearing beneath the hooves of the horse as he dangled over the saddle. Every step took him farther away from Torrant, farther away from Roes, and farther away from home and sanity.

  “This isn’t the one we want!” one of the men argued as he was being trussed, unresistingly, like a turkey.

  “No, but word is Ellyot Moon has a hard-on for this’un…. He’ll be after ’im.”

  “Word from who? Who do we know in this whore-loving bitch house?”

  “No one you’d be lucky enough to screw. Now get dummy there on the horse, and let’s go!”

  Aldam jounced across the horse, feeling his ribs and abdomen getting pounded to powder, and prayed to the Goddess that Torrant wouldn’t get hurt when he killed these awful men.

  TORRANT DIDN’T even yowl to warn them.

  He had smelled his brother’s tears as he’d run, and the scent of them made his fur stand up in porcupine-stiff quills along his back. The taut metal string that held any self-control he’d ever had in this form poing-snapped across his chest, and he barely felt it go.

  He could smell the horses, smell their fear as they caught scent of a predator, and then he saw them. His muscles bunched, the pain of the coiled spring releasing with the joy of controlled destruction. He fell on the last man in the pack, knocked his helmet off, and ripped his throat out before he could scream. The snow masked the sound of his fall, and when he was dead, the only sound left was the blood spraying from a shredded artery onto the nearest tree and pattering to trace bright designs in the snow.

  Torrant moved on to the next two men in the column.

  This time, one of them got out a shout, but he didn’t get his sword out in time to give more than a warning to his fellow, and within seconds Torrant had left them bleeding their last while the horses whinnied and bolted to the front of the column. The men in front of Aldam had enough to do with calming their mounts and looking for the men attacking them that they did not see the snowcat stalking under the trees, his fur a perfect camouflage in the thin sun’s cold shadows—even with the fur stained crimson at his mouth and paws.

  Torrant did not count in this form. He did not think Three down, four more to go. He just saw the men he wanted to kill and ranked which ones he would kill first. He could see the teal-and-black banner, hear the captain giving orders, smell the fear of the other prey. Shadow to tree he stalked, watching as the men gathered around the captain, all of them turned toward the rear of the column, from where the attack came.

  This time, when Torrant sprang from the top of a tree alongside his chief prey, he snarled, because he knew the sound would terrify his other victims and make them easier to kill. The captain went down easily, and the others were too surprised to see what they were fighting to do more than jab ineffectually in horizontal patterns while Torrant bounded like a kitten on bedroom furniture—from the top of one horse to the branches of a nearby tree to the tops of another horse…. Someone got a jab in, and his howl of pain and anger was punctuated with a savage rip across an exposed jugular. And another howl and another slash and a bite, satisfying with ripping of flesh and blood and screaming and writhing….

  And abruptly, it was over.

  Torrant stood, four feet splayed, chest heaving, and surveyed the damage. The humans who had smelled of anger and death were now dead, and all that survived were the whinnying, panicked horses.

  The horse that bore Aldam on its back had not gone far—it was mostly a pack animal. Without anyone at the reins, it had run a few hundred yards and then stopped, then looked around at its brethren and the stony silence of trees and snow. When Torrant tracked closely enough as the snowcat to smell the raw nervousness of the animals, he was suddenly a blood-spattered young man, barefooted, bareheaded, and bare chested in the snow.

  His vision wasn’t right, he realized. It was still cold and clear, and the horses still smelled like dinner and not like friends, but since he wasn’t shivering and he still had some ways to go before he was done, he kept his vision icy and crunched through the snow to Aldam’s horse.

  Aldam started sobbing as soon as he saw Torrant’s feet, red and chafed in the snow, and Torrant fought, hard, not to sink to his haunches and howl outrage into the champing, horsey quiet. His brother was hurting, his brother was scared, and if he could have, he would have yanked the dead soldiers back into life by the hair so he could kill them again, slower and with pain.

  He won the battle inside himself but kept his eyes cold and blue as he fought with the ropes holding Aldam trussed like a turkey. It was hard going—his fingers were stiff with the chill, and even though his gift kept him from feeling most of the cold, his body was still operating under its limitations. Finally, out of frustration, he looked at his hand and allowed it change into a lethal set of living blades in a massive paw. With one or two careful swipes, he sliced through the ropes under the horse’s girth and pulled Aldam on top of him, into a snowdrift, to get him free from the horse and the bonds and the helplessness.

  Aldam wrapped shaking arms around Torrant’s chest and wept unashamedly in relief.

  “I knew you’d come,” he said again and again, and Torrant could hardly bear it.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he said, trying to contain his self-directed anger, and Aldam pulled back and wiped a careless hand over his tear-stained face.

  “It’s not your fault, brother. I’m just glad you came for me in the end.”

  Torrant lifted his upper lip in a small version of his trademark grin. “I can’t believe you’d doubt it.”

  Aldam took a deep, shuddery breath and pulled his usual serenity around him. “I can’t believe you’d think I did.”

  His grin went from the small version to the large version, and in that moment his eyes went from blue to brown, and he suddenly contracted in a fit of shivering.

  In one smooth movement, Aldam caught his brother behind his shoulders and under his knees and swung him bareback on top of the horse before Torrant could finish his first full shudder. Then he reached into the snow and found the saddle and blanket that had come off when he had and threw the blanket over Torrant’s shoulders.

  “Th-h—t-th—th-h—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Aldam grinned quietly, secure in his boots and his cloak and his sweater as he swung up on another vacated horse. “You’re ever welcome.”

  Torrant nodded and took the reins in his cold-stiffened fingers. “We… we’re going to hav—have to come back….” he chattered, taking some comfort from the horse’s warmth and from the warmth of the itchy blanket across his shoulders. “I—I—I—need to—to—clean up—”

  “I think you’re going to need to sleep.” Together they swung the horses past the other milling animals and along the wide swathing path that marked the way the horses had come in the first place and defiled the fresh fall of snow.

  “Too many dead men.” It took an act of will, but Torrant was able to speak without chattering now. It was too bad what he had to say didn’t give him any comfort.

  Aldam blew out a breath. “If we let them stay where they are, the predators will leave nothing but greasy armor by the next time someone comes through here.”

  Torrant nodded, still troubled. “There’s a drop-off yonder,” he said thoughtfully. “I’d feel better if I could manage to push them off of it.”

  Aldam looked away, ashamed. “I can�
��t look at them again, brother.”

  His voice was fretful, and Torrant nodded in understanding. Aldam shouldn’t have to be punished by looking at the corpses of the men who had attacked him, but Torrant was unhappy about not having one last look. He needed to see it, he thought punitively. It wasn’t right to spatter justice on the heads of his enemies like blood in the snow and not look back to see what pattern it made. It would make delivering vengeance far too easy, if he didn’t imprint the image of destruction on his heart.

  After about ten minutes of riding, he and Aldam rounded a stand of trees and came face to face with Aylan, Trieste, and Professor Gregor, who were standing in the muddle of hoofprints Torrant had spawned when the horses had first spooked at his scent and arguing heatedly about which way to turn.

  Torrant’s and Aldam’s appearance in the middle of all that shocked a silence, and Torrant spoke to all of them carefully, keeping his eyes away from their stunned faces.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he murmured in a voice that sounded weak to his own ears. “Aldam—” He looked carefully at his brother. “Aldam, I need you to go with them. I need to go….” He looked behind him and made a worried face. “Can you do that?”

  “Alone?” Gregor asked anxiously, and Torrant wondered if it had occurred to his professor exactly what it was he had to do. It had occurred to Trieste and Aylan, he was certain. He could tell by the way Trieste kept looking away from him that she knew exactly what he had been doing, and it terrified her.

  “Yes.” Torrant shivered. “Although… if any of you have anything I could wear….”

  “I brought clothes,” Trieste said lowly, “But, Torrant—” Again she glanced away. “You’re going to need to wash first.”

  Torrant looked down at himself and shivered harder. The horse blanket Aldam had thrown over him was sticking to the gore of the dead soldiers, and now Torrant realized why it had been so hard for her to look at him. Aylan, on the other hand, had been staring at him with hard, fascinated eyes.