Vengeance

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Yeah,” Calfon said, glancing over his shoulder and shuddering. “Since when can Rigan hurl lightning?”

  “Since that damn thing tried to kill my brother,” came the answer. Rigan sounded tired and weakened, but there was a note of triumph in his voice that made Corran smile.

  “Once we’re safe back home, we’ll discuss the wisdom of throwing lightning when you’re soaking wet,” Aiden snapped. “You could have fried yourself as much as you cooked that thing.”

  “But I didn’t.” Rigan’s hazy tone suggested he had a slim hold on consciousness.

  “Let’s get both of you home, and as soon as you’re healed, I’ve got a mind to kick your asses,” Calfon said, bending down and helping Corran to his feet as Aiden did the same for Rigan. Neither of the injured men was steady, so the walk back took longer than the trip in.

  Corran stole a look at Rigan. His brother was pale and shaking, hair and clothing plastered to his body. Corran doubted he looked any better since his lungs burned and his shoulder throbbed from bearing his whole weight when Rigan pulled him clear. He could not resist shooting a grin at Rigan for defying the odds, and Rigan managed a tired nod in acknowledgment.

  “You know, I don’t have to thrash you,” Calfon said as they neared the end of the forest road. “I think we could just take you back to the monastery and let Polly and Elinor do it for us.”

  “Please, no,” Rigan groaned.

  “I think it’s only fair,” Aiden teased.

  Corran had no doubt that Elinor would give Rigan some stern words for taking crazy chances. As for Polly, Corran knew she would take after him with her dreaded wooden spoon on general principles.

  “Did the impact knock you out when you hit the water?” Calfon asked. “Because it didn’t look like you were trying to get out.”

  Suicides, Corran thought. Maybe the other victims didn’t go to the lake intending to die, either. Maybe it made them believe they deserved to, like it did with me.

  “No idea,” he lied, and with the nokk dead, the truth might not really matter.

  Rigan turned to him and met his gaze with a stare that told Corran his brother saw right through his deception. “Maybe we can save the talking for later,” Rigan croaked. But the look he gave Corran suggested that his brother intended to pursue the topic in private until he discovered what had happened. Corran resolved to put off that conversation as long as possible.

  To their surprise, Mahon was waiting for them at the edge of the forest. Their horses stood behind him, loaded with their gear.

  “You can’t go back to the village,” Mahon said. “They’re looking for you.”

  “Who?” Calfon asked. “The families of the victims? We killed the monster.”

  Mahon shook his head. “No. I mean, thank you. Very good that you killed the monster. I’ve brought your pay,” he said, handing off a thin pouch of coins, as well as a bag filled with vegetables, cheese, and eggs, a wooden cage with two chickens and a young goat with a rope for a leash. “But it’s not the families. Guards came, asking about strangers. I hid your things from them, but they searched the room and kept asking questions.”

  “What did you tell them?” Aiden asked.

  Corran felt a chill of an entirely different sort run down his back, at the thought that the soldiers might drag them back to the city, where they would face certain execution.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Mahon snapped. “Told them all kinds of people come through and I don’t remember any of them, which is mostly true. I warned everyone not to mention you and to slow the guards any way they could. But someone is likely to have seen something, and you’d best be gone by the time that happens.”

  “Damn,” Calfon muttered. “We’ve got two injured men—”

  “I can ride.” Corran managed to get the words out between gritted teeth. “It’s not like we have a choice.”

  “I can, too.” Rigan lifted his head, jaw set. “Don’t waste time arguing. Let’s go.”

  Corran felt his face blaze with embarrassment as he resigned himself to accepting help from Calfon to get up to his saddle. Rigan barely dragged himself into position on his own, with Aiden standing nearby, just in case.

  “I’ll stall the guards as long as I can,” Mahon said. “I’ll send them down the valley road. The bridge is out, but they won’t discover that until they’ve already traveled a candlemark and have to turn around.”

  “Thank you,” Calfon said before swinging up to his mount.

  “You’ve rid us of a monster. We’re in your debt,” Mahon replied. “Now ride quickly, and may the gods go with you.”

  Mahon’s subterfuge succeeded in getting Corran and the others past the guards, but the tense ride back to the monastery left them all out of sorts. They took a roundabout way home, in case the guards paid spies to keep a lookout, and the extra apprehension made Corran feel as if his guts were knotted by the time they arrived safely.

  When they finished telling their story to those waiting in the monastery’s makeshift kitchen, Corran longed for food and sleep. Polly put out bread, fruit, honey, and cheese, while Trent poured them all whiskey and raised a toast to their success. The memory of what the nokk had brought to the surface of his thoughts left Corran hollow and spent, but he forced a smile and seconded the toast for good measure.

  “Where’re Ross and Mir?” Corran asked, realizing that they had not been present for the retelling of the day’s hunt.

  “Mir’s on guard duty, and Ross… well, that’s a good question,” Trent replied dourly. “Slipped out again, and his weapons are gone, so he’s probably gone on some damn fool solo hunt. I figured I’d wait up for him, and slap some sense into him.”

  “Good luck with that,” Calfon muttered. “Boy’s got a death wish. One of these days, he’s not going to come back, and we won’t know what happened.”

  Corran remembered the dark thoughts that the nokk had nearly used to lure him to his death, and how easily Calfon and Rigan had also been snared. They were all still reeling from their losses and mistakes, and the new reality of being hunted outlaws. Calfon fretted over pointless slights to his authority. Polly hid her fear behind relentless wit and sarcasm. Elinor barely left their small library, while Aiden and Rigan pushed themselves to the breaking point to harness more magic. Ross proved himself with hunts, and Mir drank.

  I hope no one’s counting on us to save the world, because if they are, the world is screwed, Corran thought.

  “Keep an ear out for Ross,” Corran said with a tired sigh. “I’m going to go talk to Mir and make sure no one followed us.”

  Corran felt far older than his twenty-one years as he climbed the steep stone steps that led out of the monastery’s hidden basement. He pushed open the trap door and carefully shut it behind him, then tromped up the steps to the damaged tower where someone always kept watch.

  Mir appeared to relax when he recognized him and then frowned. “Problems?”

  Corran shrugged. “Rough day. Thought I’d come up and see how you were doing.”

  Mir turned away and looked out over the countryside. The tower gave a clear view of the surrounding area while sheltering the watcher from notice from the ground. The remnants of lunch and a jug of water attested to how long Mir had been on duty.

  “It hasn’t been exciting,” he answered. “I’m nearly at the end of my shift.” He did not turn to look at Corran as he spoke. “I kind of like it up here. Quiet. Gets me away from the tempers and hurt feelings.”

  Corran chuckled. “It’s not that bad,” he replied. “Considering what we’ve been through, and how we’ve been living in each other’s pockets, we should be stark raving mad by now.”

  “Aren’t we?” His voice sounded more lost than joking, and Corran regarded him, taking in the hunch of his shoulders, the stubble of beard and the unkempt hair.

  “Could be worse,” Corran said. “None of us ever bargained for this.”

  Mir sighed but did not turn around. “I miss my family,�
�� he said, keeping his back to Corran like a shield. “I miss the forge, and the way the coals in the furnace smelled, the heft of the iron in my hands, the sound of the hammer on the anvil. I liked being a blacksmith.” He shook his head. “Didn’t ever want to be a soldier.”

  “We didn’t think that’s what we were going to become when we started hunting monsters,” Corran said, remembering the night Kell died when Mir came to warn them, and they had all barely escaped with their lives. “And now… I hope that when things settle down, we can go back to our trades if we want. Hard to do on the run.”

  “You think it ever will—settle down, I mean? Everything we find out about the monsters makes this mess bigger. Shit, Corran, we’re tradesmen. What if this blood magic business goes up to the crown princes? The nobles? The king himself?”

  Corran leaned against the rough stone tower wall. “I ask myself the same thing, and I don’t have a good answer. But we can’t quit right now even if we turned our backs on the monsters, because we’re outlaws. We can’t stop running until they stop chasing us.”

  Mir dropped his head, and Corran saw defeat in his shoulders. He knew his friend remained sober for his watch duty, but afterward, Corran had seen Mir drown his memories in rough whiskey even more than the rest of them.

  “I wish there was some way to know that they’re all right—the ones we left behind,” Mir continued in a voice barely above a whisper. “You and Rigan and Aiden and Polly, everyone you’ve got is right here. But Elinor had Parah, and Calfon and Trent and I still had family back there. I wish I could send them a message, let them know I’m alive, even if I can’t ever go home again. And I wish something fierce they could just let me know that the guards didn’t burn them out or string them up. That’s what I can’t get out of my head, what I dream about. That what we’ve done brought destruction down on them.”

  “I don’t have an answer for that,” Corran said, at a loss for what else to say. “Maybe someday, you can go back, or it will be safe to send a messenger. But right now, trying to contact them, if anyone suspected, it would only put them in more danger.”

  “I know,” Mir said, his voice hitching. “But I still think about it.” He looked back at Corran, sorrow and longing etched in his features. His gray eyes shone with the tears he refused to shed, and his mussed black hair looked like a storm cloud. His shoulders and arms flexed as he fought the despair inside, still strong and toned from years of heavy, hard work. “If I’d never gone after the monsters, would I still be safe and with them? Or would it all have gone to the Abyss some other way?”

  Corran shrugged. “No way to tell. Even the seers probably couldn’t answer that.” He paused. “Look, tomorrow why don’t you spend some time in the forge here. You always like that, and the horses probably need re-shod.”

  “Not a good idea to be putting up smoke if someone’s looking for us,” Mir replied. “Though you’re right, beating the shit out of an iron rod does wonders for my mood,” he added with a wry smile.

  “We’ll get through this,” Corran said with a confidence he didn’t completely share but hoped to be true. “We have to stick together. Maybe the worst is already behind us.”

  “Corran Valmonde, you’re full of shit,” Mir replied, but his tone lacked any bite. “Not on the sticking together part. I’m in it for the long haul. But I can’t help feeling that we haven’t seen the worst of it.”

  By the time Corran had gotten downstairs, Ross was back, heaving for breath and surrounded by the others.

  “There’s a dozen men on their way,” Ross reported. Sweat dripped from his hair and beaded on his face, soaking the back of his shirt as if he had ridden hard, or run the whole way.

  “Who?” Calfon demanded.

  Ross bent over, resting his hands on his thighs, trying to get his breath. “I didn’t get a real close look, but the man in charge looked familiar—I think he had something to do with Machison. He was definitely from the city. He had two witches—at least they wore robes like fancy witches—and the rest were soldiers.”

  “How far away?” Trent questioned.

  “Beyond what anyone could see from the tower. I rode as fast as I could. We’ve got to get the horses out and get down to the caves,” Ross replied breathlessly.

  Polly appeared with a basket full of everything ripe from the small garden she tended behind the ruins. Elinor and Aiden had helped her plan the plantings so that the patch would look overgrown and untended should anyone come prying. “No point in wasting food,” she said in a huff, setting the basket down on the table.

  She went to warn Mir, and once he was safe below, bolted the secret trap door from inside. Trent, Ross, and Calfon went to move the horses and their few chickens and goats from the rickety stable down a narrow path to a large cave under the bluff. Aiden, Elinor, Corran, and Rigan frantically collected their belongings and shoved them into satchels, handing them in a relay down the steep steps to the caves below. With luck, the heavy bolt and hidden door would keep intruders out of their haven. If not, they would wait it out in the caves. Either way, it meant that they would move on as soon as the road was clear.

  The natural levels of salt in the rock of the cliff side would hinder any attempts for the attackers to detect them with magic. Aiden and Rigan had debated the benefits of deflection spells against the chance that the spells themselves might be noticed by a witch with nuanced power. In the end, they had placed a glamour over the cave where the livestock was penned and kept the magic to a minimum unless needed.

  Caves pockmarked the cliff side, so the openings themselves should not attract attention, Corran told himself as they waited in the dark. Aiden and Rigan and Elinor had not left them defenseless; if the intruders found their hiding place, traps awaited the unwary, and the rest of the fugitives were well-armed and ready for a fight.

  “The building’s good stone. There’s not much to burn,” Polly murmured. “At least, not that wasn’t burned when the king’s guard ran the monks off in the first place.” Corran could not see her face in the darkness, but her hushed voice sounded small and frightened, stripped of her usual bravado.

  “We knew we’d have to move on soon,” Elinor whispered. “We’ll be all right.”

  Rigan and Aiden insisted on being closest to the front, with the others packed in behind them. If everything went completely to shit, a maze of tunnels led deeper into the cliff, passageways Corran supposed had been made use of by smugglers over the years. He did not relish the idea of fleeing farther into the darkness, though the thought of being hauled back to the city in chains to be hanged had even less appeal.

  While they were out of sight of the cave’s mouth, they could hear the rush of the river below, and the sound carried through the rock chambers. A loud scraping noise made them freeze, barely daring to breathe, and Corran’s hand tightened around the grip of his knife.

  “Valmonde! You can’t run forever! I’ll find you. You know it’s true. Give yourselves up.”

  The man’s voice echoed strangely from above, and Corran’s heart skipped a beat as he recognized it from back in Ravenwood City. Hant Jorgeson, the Lord Mayor’s head of security, a hated man who was only seen in public for hangings or floggings.

  Corran had no desire to surrender, but he itched for a fight. He’d thought Jorgeson dead in the riots the night they overthrew Machison and Blackholt, then suspected the man had survived and had come looking for them when villagers warned them and described their pursuers. If he ever did have the chance to fight Jorgeson one on one, Corran had plenty of reasons to mete out his own rough justice.

  Instead, Corran willed himself to remain still. The pursuers hadn’t found the trapdoor or made their way into the tunnels, but the darkness that protected Corran and the others now felt suffocating, as they froze in their places, quieting their shallow breaths and fearing someone might hear the rapid beating of their hearts.

  A sudden curse and a surprised yelp from above told Corran that Rigan had unleashed his grave magi
c on the intruders. In the next minute, mournful, ghostly moans and ear-splitting shrieks filled the ruins above and echoed through the caves, and the temperature dropped below the cave’s cool norm. Footsteps shuffled against the rock, and in the distance, Corran caught a glimpse of a faint, foxfire glow.

  “Be gone!” Jorgeson shouted. “I’ve no business with the dead.”

  The shrieks grew louder and closer, and the low mutter of men’s voices sounded as the footsteps continued their spectral march. Corran feared that the men had made their way into the caves and tried to be as still as possible.

  “Dispel!” Jorgeson’s command echoed. “I command you—leave this place!”

  When Trent and Ross had first explored the cliff side and its caves, they found the bones and scattered belongings of men they guessed had been pirates. How they came to die here and be left behind in the caves, no one could be sure, but Rigan and Corran had confirmed that the caverns were home to a number of restless and angry spirits.

  The two undertakers had promised the ghosts help in crossing to the After, in exchange for their willingness to stand guard until the outlaws moved on. Now, the pirates sounded like they were eager to take out their long-denied vengeance on Jorgeson and his uninvited guards.

  Corran closed his eyes, silently lending Rigan his grave magic, hoping that Jorgeson and his witches would assume the ghosts manifested on their own. He heard the clatter of steel against rock, as if Jorgeson or his guards had tried to slash the revenants with their swords. The din of rocks hurled against the stone walls answered as the spirits used the borrowed strength from the grave magic to drive back the assault.

  A man screamed, and Jorgeson cursed. The ghosts wailed even louder, and Corran heard the clatter of running footsteps followed by another hail of stones. Then, silence.

  After what felt like forever, a faint white glow formed in front of where Rigan and Aiden kept watch. A short, bearded man with broad shoulders and a wide chest appeared, wearing clothing that looked to be long out of date.