by Jim Butcher
"There's a full century of Knights stationed at Garrison," Amara said. "With a pair of infantry cohorts to cover them, they could stand off a dozen hordes. I think whoever has arranged this has a plan to assault them and destroy them before the Marat come."
"The mercenaries," Bernard said.
"Yes."
"Then there might be more people trying to stop us from reaching Garrison. Professional killers."
Amara nodded, silent, watching his face.
Bernard closed his eyes. "Tavi." He was quiet for a moment before he opened them. "Isana. I'll be leaving them alone in this mess."
She said, quietly, "I know. What I'm asking you is terrible."
"No," he said. "No. It's duty. I'll help you."
She squeezed his arm. "Thank you."
He looked at her and said, "Don't thank me. I'm not doing it for you." But he covered her hand with his and squeezed quietly.
She swallowed and said, "Bernard. Last night. What you said. You were right. I'm afraid."
"So am I," he said. He released her hand and turned to go into the cave. "Let's get dressed, get moving. We've got a long way to go."
Chapter 24
Isana heard a woman's voice say, "Wake up. Wake up." Someone slapped her face, sudden and sharp. Isana let out a surprised sound and lifted her arms in an effort to protect her face. That same voice continued, just as before, "Wake up. Wake up," and slapped her at measured intervals until Isana curled away from the blows, rolling to get her hands and knees beneath her, and to lift her head.
Isana felt hot. Sweltering. Her skin had soaked with sweat, and her clothes clung to her, likewise damp. Light was in her eyes, and it took her a moment to realize that she was on a dirt floor, that there was fire all around her, fire in a circle perhaps twenty feet across, a ring of coals and tinder that smoldered and smoked. Her throat and lungs burned with thirst, with the smoke, and she coughed until she almost retched.
She covered her mouth with her shaking hand, tried to filter out some of the smoke and dust in the air as she breathed. Someone helped her sit up, hands brisk, strong.
"Thank you," she rasped. Isana looked up to see the woman she'd seen in the Rillwater, strangling Tavi. She was beautiful, dark of hair and eye, curved as sweetly as any man could desire. Her hair hung in damp, sweaty curls, though, and her face had been smudged with soot. The skin, in rows that reached across her eyes, was bright pink, shiny and new. A small smile curved her full mouth.
Isana hissed out a breath in surprise, backing away from the woman, looking around her, at the fires, a low ceiling, smooth, round stone walls not far beyond the ring of coals. There was a door leading out, and Isana tried to stand and move toward it, only to find that her legs would not obey her properly. She stumbled and fell heavily onto her side, near enough to the coals that her skin heated painfully. She pushed herself back from the fire.
The woman helped, dragging Isana back with a cool efficiency.
"Nasty, nasty," the woman said. "You must be careful, or you'll burn."
She sat back from Isana, tilting her head to one side and studying her. "My name is Odiana," she said then. "And you and I are prisoners together."
"Prisoners," Isana whispered. Her voice came out in a croak, and she had to cough painfully. "Prisoners where? What's wrong with my legs?"
"Kordholt, I think they called it," Odiana said. "You're experiencing crafting sickness. When Kord found you by the banks of the flood, your head was broken. They made me mend it."
"You?" Isana asked. "But you were trying to hurt Tavi."
"The pretty boy?" Odiana asked. "I wasn't hurting him. I was killing him. There's a difference." She sniffed and said, "It wasn't anything personal."
"Tavi," Isana said, coughing again. "Is Tavi all right?"
"How should I know?" Odiana said, her tone faintly impatient. "You tore my eyes out, woman. The next thing I saw was that ugly brute."
"Then you're not-" Isana shook her head. "Kord took you prisoner?"
She nodded, once. "He found me after the flood. I had just put my eyes back together." Odiana smiled. "I've never managed my nails like that before. You'll have to show me how it's done."
Isana stared at the woman for a moment, then said, "We have to get out of here."
"Yes," Odiana agreed, looking at the door. "But that seems unlikely for the moment. He's a slaver, isn't he, this Kord?"
"He is."
The dark haired woman's eyes glinted. "I thought as much."
The thirst in her throat abruptly became too much for Isana to ignore, and she murmured, "Rill, I need water."
Odiana let out an impatient sigh. "No," she said. "Don't be an idiot. He's ringed us in fire. Dried us out. Your fury cannot hear you, and even if it could, you'd not be able to dampen a washcloth."
Isana shivered, and for the first time since she'd found Rill, she felt no quivering response to her call, no reassuring presence of the water fury. Isana swallowed, eyes shifting around the interior of the building. Meat hung from hooks on some of the walls, and smoke lingered in the air. A smokehouse then, at Kord's steadholt.
She was a prisoner at Kord's steadholt.
The thought chilled her, sent a quiver creeping along her scalp, to the roots of her hair.
Odiana watched her in silence and then nodded, slowly. "He doesn't
intend for us to ever leave this place, you know. I felt that in him before he brought us here."
"I'm thirsty," Isana said. "Hot enough to kill us in here. I have to get a drink."
"They left us two tiny cups of water," Odiana said, nodding to the far side of the circle.
Isana looked until she saw the pair of wooden cups and pulled herself to them. The first she picked up was light, empty. She dropped it to one side, her throat on fire, and tried the second.
It was empty as well.
"You were asleep," Odiana said, calmly. "So I drank it."
Isana stared at the woman in disbelief. "This heat could kill us," she told her, struggling to keep an even tone.
The woman smiled at her, a lazy, languid smile. "Well it won't kill me. I've drunk enough for two."
Isana clenched her teeth together. "It makes the most sense anyway. Use it. Call your fury and send for help."
"We're far from any help, holdgirl."
Isana pressed her lips together. "Then when one of them comes in-"
Odiana shook her head slowly and spoke in a cool, passionless, practical tone. "Do you think they've never done this before? This is what slavers do, holdgirl. They left enough to keep us alive. Not enough to allow one of us full use of her fury. I'd try, it wouldn't work, and they'd punish both of us."
"So that's it?" Isana said. "We don't even try?"
Odiana closed her eyes for a moment, looking down. Then she said, very quietly, "We're only going to get one chance, holdgirl."
"I'm not a gi-"
"You're a child," Odiana hissed. "Do you know how many slaves are raped within a day or so of capture?"
The thought made Isana feel cold again. "No."
"Do you know what happens to the ones who resist?"
Isana shook her head.
Odiana smiled. "Take it from me. You only get to resist once. And after that, they make sure that you never want to try it again."
Isana stared at the woman for a long moment. Then she said, "How long were you a slave?"
Odiana brushed her hair back away from her face with one hand and
said, voice cool, "When I was eleven, our Steadholder sold my father's debt to a group of slavers. They took all of us. They killed my father and my oldest brother, and the baby. They took my mother, my sisters, me. And my youngest brother. He was pretty." Her eyes grew distant, and she focused them on the far wall. Fire glowed in them, reflection. "I was too young. I hadn't begun my cycle, or come into my furycrafting. But I did that night. When they took me. Passed me around the fire like a flask of wine. It woke up, and I could feel everything they felt, holdgirl. All
of their lust and their hate and fear and hunger. It washed through me. Into me." She began to rock back and forth on her heels. "I don't know how you came into yours, watercrafter. When you first started feeling other folk. But you must thank all the furies of Carna that it wasn't like my awakening." The smile crept back to her lips. "It's enough to drive one mad."
Isana swallowed and said, "I'm sorry. But Odiana, if we can work together-"
"We can get killed together," Odiana said, her voice becoming edged again. "Listen to me, holdgirl, and I'll tell you what happens. I've done it before."
'All right," Isana said, quietly.
"There are two kinds of slavers," Odiana said. "The ones in it for professional reasons, and the ones who take it personally. Professionals work for the Consortium. They don't allow anyone to damage or use their merchandise, unless it's as discipline. If they like you, they'll invite you to their tent and give you nice food and talk and charm you. It's the same as a rape, only it takes longer and you get a good meal and a soft bed afterward."
"That's not Kord."
"No, it isn't. He's the other kind. Like the ones who took my family. For him, it's knowing he's beating someone. Knowing he's breaking someone. He doesn't want to deliver a high-quality product, ready to work or pleasure. He wants us broken into pieces. He wants us to be animals." She smiled and said, "When he takes us, that's just part of the process that he enjoys a bit more than the others."
Isana's stomach quailed. "Takes us," she whispered. "He's-"
The other woman nodded. "If he wanted to kill you you'd already be dead. He has other plans for you." She sneered. "And I saw some of the other women he keeps at this place. Rabbits. Sheep. He likes them helpless. Not fighting back." She shivered and stretched, her back arching sinuously,
her eyes closing for a moment. She moved one hand to the throat of her blouse, tugging at it, pulling buttons open, the sweaty cloth clinging to her.
"Are you all right?" Isana asked.
Odiana licked her lips and said, "I don't have much time. Listen to me. For him, the game is breaking you, and to do that he has to make you afraid. If you aren't afraid, he has no power over you. If you're quiet and reserved, you aren't what he wants. Do you understand?"
"Y-yes," Isana said. "But we can't just stay here-"
"We survive for as long as you don't break," Odiana said. "To him I'm nothing but a pretty whore to be used. You he wants broken. As long as you remain in control of yourself, he doesn't get what he wants."
"What happens if I do break?"
"He kills you," she said. "And he kills me because I saw you, and he hides the bodies. But it won't be an issue."
"Why not?"
"It won't," Odiana says. "One way or another. Hold out for a day. That's all. Because I promise neither of us will draw breath for half an hour if you break. That's why I drank both cups."
Isana fought to take a breath, and her head spun. "Why you drank both cups?"
"Have you ever tasted aphrodin, holdgirl?"
She stared at Odiana. "No," she said. "Never."
Odiana licked her lips, smiling. "Then it would have unnerved you. Wanting when you knew you shouldn't want. At least I know what it's like." She stretched again, unbuttoning her blouse lower, showing the soft curves of her breasts. She adjusted the fall of her skirt so that it bared one strong, smooth thigh, and ran a fingertip along it. "Let's review our stratagem. I'm going to make them happy. And you're going to not care. There, that's simple."
Isana felt her insides twist, felt sickened as she stared at the other woman. "You're going to-" She couldn't finish. It was too horrible.
Odiana let her lips curve into a smile. "The act isn't unpleasant you know. In and of itself. It's rather nice. And I won't be thinking about them." The smile grew a bit wider, and the whites showed around her eyes. "I'll be thinking of the pieces. The pieces left when my lord catches up to them. He will see to his duty, and then he will come for me. And there will be pieces." She shivered and let out a soft gasp. "And there. I'm happy already."
Isana stared at the woman, revolted, and shook her head. This could not
be happening. It simply could not be happening. She, with her brother, had worked the whole of their adult lives to make the Calderon Valley a place safe for families, for civilization-for Tavi to grow up. This wasn't a part of the world she had worked to build. This wasn't a part of what she dreamed.
Tears welled in her eyes, and she fought to restrain them, to hold back the precious moisture before it fell. Without thinking, she reached for Rill's help and did not find it. Tears trickled over her cheeks.
She hurt. Deep inside. She felt horribly, utterly alone, with only a madwoman for company. Isana reached out for Rill again, desperate, and felt nothing. Again she tried, and again, refusing to accept that her fury was beyond her reach.
She didn't hear the footsteps until they were immediately outside the smokehouse. Someone shoved the door open. The hulking, ugly shape of Kord and those of a dozen other men stood silhouetted by the light of the circle of coals.
Chapter 25
Being captured, Tavi thought, was a twofold evil. It was both uncomfortable and boring.
The Marat hadn't spoken, not to the Alerans nor to one another. Four had simply held spear tips to Tavi's and Fade's throats, while the other two trussed their arms and legs with lengths of tough, braided cord. They took Tavi's knife and pouch away and searched then confiscated Fade's battered old pack. Then the two who had tied them simply flung them over one of their broad shoulders and loped off into the storm.
After half an hour of jouncing against the Marat warrior's shoulder, Tavi's stomach felt as though he'd been belly diving from the tallest tree along the Rillwater. The Marat who carried him ran with a pure and predatory grace, moving along the land at a mile-eating lope. He leapt over a streambed, and once a low row of brush, evidently entirely unencumbered by the weight of his prisoner.
Tavi tried to keep track of which way they were headed, but the darkness and the storm and his awkward position (mostly upside down) made it impossible. The rain turned into pelting, stinging sleet, blinding him almost entirely. The winds continued to rise and grow colder, and Tavi could see the windmanes moving in the storm, wild and restless. None of them came near the Marat war band.
Tavi tried to mark where he was by the lay of the ground rolling by under his nose, but the storm began coating it in a layer of plain, monotonous white. He had no way of getting his bearings by the kind of rock or earth beneath him, no way to guide himself by the stars, no way to orient himself upon the lay of the land. Though he tried for an hour more, he gave it up as pointless.
That left him with only the fear to think about.
The Marat had taken him and Fade. While they appeared, outwardly, much like Alerans, they were not truly human and had never shown a desire to be so, and instead remained the primitive savages who ate fallen foes and mated with beasts. Though they lacked furycrafting of their own, they made up for it in raw athletic ability, courage that was more madness than virtue, and vast numbers that dwelt on the unknown stretches of the wilderness that began on the easten side of the last Legion fortification, Garrison.
When the Marat horde had rushed into the Valley, killing the Princeps and annihilating his Legion to a man, they had been driven out only through heavy reinforcements from the rest of Alera and hard, vicious fighting. Now they were back, presumably to strike in secret-and Tavi had seen them and knew of their plans.
What would they do to him?
He swallowed and tried to tell himself that the pounding of his heart was the result of the battering he was taking on his captor's shoulder, rather than from the quiet terror that had taken up residence in him and slowly grew with every loping stride.
An endless time later, the Marat came to a gradual halt. He growled something in a guttural, swift-sounding tongue and took Tavi from his shoulder, lowering the boy to the ground and stepping firmly on Tavi's hair with one nak
ed, mud-stained foot. He put his hands to his mouth and let out a low, grunting cough, a sound that it did not seem possible for a human-sized chest to make.
An answering cough rumbled from the trees, and then the ground shook
as huge, heavy shapes, dark in the storm and night, stepped toward them. Tavi recognized the smell before he could make out the exact shape of the creatures: gargants.
The Marat who had carried Tavi, evidently the leader of the group, slapped the nearest gargant on the shoulder, and the great beast knelt down with ponderous gentility, teeth idly working over several pounds of cud. The Marat again spoke to the others and then picked Tavi up. Tavi looked around and saw a second Marat lifting Fade.
The Marat carried him under one arm as he put a foot in the joint of the gargant's foreleg and half-jumped up to the great beast's sloped back, where he settled onto some sort of riding saddle consisting of a heavy mat woven of the same coarse cords as the ones that bound Tavi, made out of gargant-hair.
He tossed Tavi belly-down over the mat and whipped a few more cords around the boy, as casually as any muleteer packing his charges. Tavi looked up at the Marat. He had broad, rather ugly features, and his eyes were dark, dark brown. Though he was not as tall as Tavi's uncle, his shoulders and chest would make Bernard seem positively skinny, and slabs of heavy muscle moved beneath his pale skin. His coarse, colorless hair had been gathered back into a braid. He looked down at Tavi, as he settled onto the gargant, and the beast began to rise, without any apparent signal from its rider. The Marat smiled, and his teeth were broad and white and square. He rumbled something in that same language, and the other Marat let out rough, coughing laughs, as they mounted their own gargants.
The great beasts rose and set out at a swift pace in a single file, their huge strides eating up ground faster than Tavi could run, steady and tireless as the stars in the sky. Tavi could just make out Fade's shape, tied on the gargant behind them. He grimaced and wished he could at least be with the slave. Surely Fade was terrified-he always was.
