Vengeance

by Gail Z. Martin

  “We don’t have time for this,” Jorgeson snapped. “Grab him and let’s go.”

  Sonders lunged for the prisoner, who fought back, struggling to get free. “No—I’m not going anywhere until I know who sent you. Where do you think—”

  The prisoner went silent and limp when Sonders brought the grip of his knife down hard on the side of the man’s head. He hefted the unconscious prisoner over his shoulder. “The hocus wanted him alive,” he said with an apologetic look at Jorgeson. “Didn’t say anything about awake.”

  Holcomb joined them in the dark street behind the jail, and they ran for where their horses were hidden on the outskirts of town. Jorgeson glanced over his shoulder. The fire had spread, consuming the large granary building and jumping to the roofs of several nearby structures. If there were the slightest wind, the entire town might be cinders by morning.

  “Did you have to burn down the biggest damn building in the village?” he huffed as they ran.

  Holcomb grinned. “I figured it would keep the constables busy longer, and by the time they finally get back to the jail, we’ll be long gone.”

  “If the wind shifts, the jail will go up with everything else,” Sonders said, carrying the convict’s weight as if it were nothing. “Doubt they’d have gone back for him. So in a way, we’ve saved his life.”

  Jorgeson snorted. “By handing him over to the witch? Hardly.”

  “Better him than us, I say,” Holcomb replied.

  No one pursued them, as the town focused its attention on the fire. Holcomb draped the prisoner over the saddle of one of their waiting horses, securing him with rope and binding his wrists and ankles for good measure. When they met up with the others, Shadowsworn gave a grudging nod of approval.

  “Very good,” the witch said. “We have all the materials that we need. It’s time to prepare the location for the ritual.”

  “Ritual?” The prisoner thrashed against his bindings, trying to see. They had tied him, but not gagged him. Jorgeson decided that had been a mistake.

  “Nothing for your concern,” Jorgeson snapped.

  “Is that Jamie’s body? Oh gods, why do you have Jamie’s body?” the prisoner cried out, spotting the corpse near Shadowsworn’s feet.

  “Gag him,” Jorgeson ordered, and Holcomb scrambled to comply. The prisoner continued to shout garbled threats and pleas against the gag until Spider walked over and touched the man’s head with his fingertips. Immediately, the convict fell still and silent.

  “He’s still alive,” Spider replied as he walked away. “Didn’t hurt him, just shut him up. Couldn’t take that yammering all night.”

  A silent caravan of horses and wagons took the steep, winding road to the top of the cliffs that overlooked the river. Jorgeson had glimpsed their destination from afar, and he liked it less with every step.

  Thornwood sat poised on a bluff above the river, dense forest behind. Holcomb and Sonders spoke of the forest in hushed tones, but Jorgeson heard enough to get the gist of their whisperings. The woods ran along the divide between Kadar’s lands and those of his rival, Gorog. Much of Gorog’s trade came from lumber, but according to the tales told, the deepest, oldest sections of the forest were off-limits and remained uncut. Those who ventured in did not return.

  Jorgeson knew enough about the outdoors to recognize the dangers of the forest: wild animals, sinkholes, sudden drop-offs, swift and treacherous streams, and disorientating vastness. But the stories the two guards told each other spoke of shapeshifters in the forms of monstrous wolves and bears, or darker, bloodthirsty guin which looked like living men and women but fed on blood and flesh like ghouls.

  Rubbish, all of it, Jorgeson thought. But as they climbed the path, their horses became skittish and easily spooked. The night air felt charged as if a storm brewed. When they reached the top, Jorgeson cast a wary glance along the lightless edge of the deep woods, and could not shake the feeling that they were being watched.

  Two strangers awaited, and by their robes and mannerisms, Jorgeson deduced they were the other witches. One was a tall, slender man in white robes with long, blond hair. His voice carried on the air as Shadowsworn went to greet him, enough to let Jorgeson know the blond mage had a heavy Sarolinian accent.

  The second witch, an older man who looked extremely nervous, made Jorgeson take a second glance. He only remembered meeting Merchant Prince Kadar’s blood witch once, several years ago, but the man had changed little since then. Jorgeson had heard that the witch—Wraithwind, if he remembered the name correctly—remained in service to Kadar because a loved one had been taken as a hostage.

  “We have much to make ready,” Shadowsworn said, raising his voice to address the entire group, including the two dozen guards who nervously watched the open meeting place. “My colleagues and their assistants will ready our workplace. Jorgeson—see to the security of the grounds.”

  With that, Shadowsworn and the other witches strode toward the dark manor house with their lackeys scurrying to catch up. Jorgeson felt the questioning gaze of the soldiers who turned toward him.

  “I want a hundred-foot perimeter on all sides of the house,” Jorgeson ordered. “Including the cliff face—send someone down with ropes; I don’t want to find out there’s an army waiting to scale them,” he snapped, cutting off any protests. “Once that’s secured, you’ll draw for watches and rest, and we’ll see about food. Get to it!”

  He folded his arms across his chest, supervising as the guards ran to their places to do as they were bid. But Jorgeson could not help the way his gaze returned again and again to the darkness of the forest or the way every instinct urged him to flee.

  “Nothing good can come of this,” he muttered.

  Chapter Thirty

  “You’re tellin’ me that the monsters that been eatin’ our children and killing our neighbors are being sent by the Princes?” The woman stood with her hands on her hips, feet wide apart as if she expected a physical challenge. Faded rags bound up her hair, leaving only a few curly gray wisps escaping. A life of work in the sun etched the deep lines on her face, but her bright blue eyes glinted with anger, and the set of her jaw spelled trouble for whoever had caused affliction for her village.

  “Yes, that’s exactly it,” Corran replied, leaning against the bar in a rundown pub in the village of Brookside, which sat amid Merchant Prince Kadar’s treasured vineyards, not far from the Sarolinian border. They had fought off a dozen higani that had been savaging the farmland and had cost Brookside most of its sheep and some of its children.

  “Why?”

  “The Merchant Princes want to get the better of each other,” Corran replied. “So they have blood witches who use dark powers to do favors for them. But something has to pay back that power, and it’s not the Princes or their witches doing the paying. It’s you. All of you, and your neighbors and your kin. That’s why we’re out here, fighting the monsters—and you can fight them, too.”

  “How do we know you ain’t tellin’ tales?” one of the men shouted from the back of the crowd. Most of the adults in the small village had jammed into the pub’s common room, the largest gathering space available.

  “We saw it ourselves, back in the city,” Rigan took up the story. “The Lord Mayor of Ravenwood used his blood witch to call down those monsters on his own people, in his own city, because the price of all that magic is blood. The higher-ups don’t want to pay with their blood, so if things don’t go like they want, they send the monsters after more and more of us to pay for the magic they steal. Those things out there, they aren’t natural. The blood witches rip open the sky and bring them here, spit them out in your fields to eat your cattle and sheep. And when they’ve killed all your herds, they come looking for you and your children. All to pay for stolen magic.”

  “That ain’t right,” the woman in the headscarf said, and the crowd nodded and murmured in agreement.

  “No it ain’t,” a young woman tending bar declared with a stamp of her foot. “We pay tax
es. We work hard to keep body and soul together. Ain’t no man got the right to take our lives, use up our blood for their magic to get them more when they already got plenty.”

  “Well none of that will change—unless you help stop it,” Corran answered. “And every time they tear open the sky to bring more monsters through, it makes the dead spots in your fields, kills the grass in a big circle in your pastures, and when it touches your cows or your goats—or your children—it makes them sick, or makes them disappear.”

  “What can we do?” one of the women in the back asked. She might have been five years older than Polly, Corran thought, with a baby on one hip, a brat pulling at her skirts and a swollen belly that told of one on the way. “We rise up to stop the monsters; the guards’ll kill us, take our men away, maybe throw us all in jail.”

  “And where will you be if the monsters come again?” Trent argued. “They’ll take your men—and your women and children, your cows and your sheep—and then what?”

  “What can we do?” A broad-shouldered man stepped up beside the woman in the bandana. His hands were broadened and calloused by work, and his hazel eyes held a shrewd glint.

  “We fight,” Ross replied. “We can teach you how to fight the monsters and win, and how to keep clear of the guards, so you don’t get caught.”

  “Can you?” the man asked.

  “We’ve done it—and we can show you how,” Corran confirmed.

  “I’m in,” the man said. He turned to the three men behind him. “And you’re in, too—’cause I’m not doing this alone.”

  “We’re all in,” the old woman in the bandana said, and Corran felt the tension in the room shift as if having the matriarch make her decision settled the matter for everyone else. “Teach us what we need to know.”

  “I’m not waiting for the monsters to come to us,” a young man declared from the back of the room where he stood with a handful of his friends. “We should go looking for them before they do any more damage.”

  “People around here weren’t much fond of Prince Kadar to begin with,” another man shouted. “He’s got no friends now, if he’s the one what profits from sending those things after us.”

  A murmur ran through the crowd at that, growing restless and angry. Corran saw the young man and his friends whisper among themselves, then slip out the back. He glanced at Rigan and Calfon, but they had no way to follow without wading through the shoulder-to-shoulder bodies. Corran wondered what the men intended to do, and hoped it would not provoke a fight.

  The hunters split the townsfolk into groups according to their interests and abilities. Rigan worked with the hedge witches. Corran and the others explained the weaknesses of the different kinds of monsters they had fought and told those who gathered how to use their farm tools and butchering knowledge to protect themselves from the creatures.

  As they packed up to leave, the smell of smoke caught their attention and they saw a glow in the west long after the sun had set.

  “That’s the direction of Kadar’s vineyards,” one of the men said, eyes wide with alarm. “Oh gods, someone’s burned the vineyards!”

  They ran outside, where the smoke hung thick in the night air and the smell of burned wood mingled with the acidic tang of overcooked grapes. They ran up a flight of stairs and crowded around a window for a better view. In the distance, rows of grapevines burned, with flames leaping high into the sky the length of the fields.

  “Those stupid bastards,” Corran growled. “They’ll bring Kadar’s guards—and monsters—for certain.”

  “And the Cull,” Rigan said quietly. “Because Kadar’s never going to make next year’s quota for shipment with that much of the vineyard burned.” He shook his head. “Those vines take years to mature. Ravenwood—and Kadar—are going to be a long time coming back from this.”

  “You need to get out of here,” Murt, the pub owner, decreed, looking to Corran and the other hunters. “You getting caught isn’t going to do anyone any good. Leave while you still can. We’ll hand over the ones who burned the vineyard to the guards—damn fool ruffians. But you hunters—get going. And, thanks.”

  Corran felt a twinge of guilt at running, but he knew Murt was right. He glanced back over his shoulder as they rode out of town in the opposite direction of the flames, hoping that the villagers would be able to protect themselves.

  They rode for a candlemark back to their camp. Kadar and Jorgeson had stepped up patrols, increasing the danger of being caught with every foray. Corran agreed with Calfon that trying to return to their base at the monastery each night made the odds of discovery much higher, so they expanded their range to a two-day ride and resigned themselves to making a cold camp in the woods mid-journey.

  To the hunters’ surprise, they found Brock and Mina waiting for them, along with two older men who had the look of Wanderers. Corran and Rigan exchanged glances, wondering what had moved the Sarolinians to cross the border and venture into foreign territory to find them.

  “We’ve got a big problem,” Brock said after a hurried greeting. “Our Crown Prince’s blood witch, Nightshade, has arrived in Ravenwood—and from the magic we’ve scryed, it looks like our guess was right that he means to summon a First Creature on the solstice.” He shook his head. “Believe me when I say I would give anything to be wrong about that.”

  “We barely managed to kill Blackholt. How are we going to go up against five blood witches?” Rigan asked, running a hand back through his hair. He and the other hunters had listened in shocked silence as Mina and Brock laid out their news.

  “You won’t be alone,” Mina promised. “I will stand with you, and we have put out word to Brock’s people.”

  “I thought he left the Wanderers and they didn’t forgive that kind of thing,” Corran said. “At least, they sure didn’t forgive our grandmother.”

  “Different people, different circumstances,” Brock replied, though his cheeks colored with embarrassment. “My people can be hardheaded, but not suicidal. Stopping a First Creature from coming through a Rift is big enough to put aside petty differences.” His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “After we save the world, they can go back to shunning me again.” Mina laid a hand on his arm, and he leaned into the touch. No matter how long ago the break had occurred, it obviously still bothered Brock.

  “Will they help?” Corran asked, his voice still sharp. “Because when we tried to talk to them, begged for help, they were too wrapped up in their secrets to bother.”

  Mina and Brock exchanged a look that seemed to convey an entire unspoken conversation. “I won’t defend their ways except to say that over the centuries keeping their own counsel has helped them survive,” Brock said. “Obviously, I had my differences, or I wouldn’t have left. But my issues were personal. My people take their duty to Eshtamon seriously. They would have sensed his hand on you both, and whether they told you, they would have looked into the matter.”

  “Looked into it how?” Rigan asked.

  “They drew sigils throughout the city, am I right?” Brock said. Rigan and the others nodded. “And everyone thought they were curse signs, I imagine,” he added with a sigh.

  He pursed his lips and frowned as if having an internal debate about how much to say. “Some are curses,” he said finally. “Others are wardings for protection, or to deflect awareness or evil. And some are what we call ‘third eyes’—spells that monitor and record what happens in front of them, which a practitioner can read, thus ‘seeing’ many places at once.”

  “Then why in the name of the Old Ones didn’t they save our brother? Or their men who were taken—Kell died with at least a dozen Wanderer men.”

  Mina leaned forward, looking at Corran intently. “I understand your grief—and your anger. We don’t agree with how most of the Wanderers do things; that’s why Brock left, why those who have joined us have also risked being shunned to do as they believed to be right. And perhaps if the Wanderers in the city had fought back with might or magic, they could have save
d their men and your brother. Or perhaps they would all also be dead. We’ll never know. But now, here, we will fight. Can you let go of the past long enough to fight beside us?”

  A muscle twitched in Corran’s jaw, and his eyes narrowed. For a moment, Rigan feared his brother’s answer. Then Corran closed his eyes, nodding. “Yes.”

  Rigan let out a breath he had not realized he was holding, and Mina relaxed, managing a hopeful smile.

  “You were going to tell us how the Wanderers you’re gathering can help,” Trent said, redirecting the conversation. “Can you use your sigils and scrying to see what the blood witches are doing? Can your magic help us stop them?”

  Mina nodded. “In a way, the Wanderers embody the Balance, the equilibrium of power between creation and chaos. Without the meddling of blood witches, Rifts would still form on their own, but it would happen once in a great while. A small number of monsters would slip through, be hunted down, or die off. The Wanderers roamed to seal and bless those Rifts, to counter any taint that slipped through, and if necessary, to destroy monsters if no one else did.”

  “So what happened?” Ross asked, “because whatever they were doing stopped working.”

  “Too much blood magic, too few of my people,” Brock replied. “The Rifts opened so often, and in so many places, they couldn’t be everywhere. So they used some of the sigils to store their power, like a bandage over a wound to hold it shut. Not perfect, but better than allowing it to gape open.”

  “Then how does all this blood magic and the taint from the rifts affect your power?” Rigan asked.

  “Yet another reason we have had to choose our battles very carefully,” Brock replied. “The pollution from beyond the Rift puts a strain on our magic. Over time, it weakens us, saps our strength. We fight if we must, but we are most powerful as healers—of energy, of fractured and damaged magic, of that which is out of alignment.”