"Shall I go along?" asked Nettle.
"No," said Da. "You"re getting back on your horse to take a message to the Creek Widow."
"The one who told you not to come around?"
"What other one is there?" asked Da. He held out a sealed letter to Nettle. The Creek Widow was a Mokaddian woman with a tenancy of almost twenty acres. She had been a family friend for years. But this last summer she had ordered Da out of her house and off her land. And try as Talen might, he could not get Da to tell him why. Talen suspected it had something to do with her perennial efforts to marry Da off. Half the time Talen thought she wanted Da herself. But Da was stubborn. And Talen was happy about that. While she cooked food fit for a Divine, she was bossy and a bit odd, talking to vegetables and rocks and always smelling a little like a goat.
Was this letter an indication that Da was making up?
"Paper," said Nettle, a tease in his eye. "You must be serious." He held the letter up to the sun as if trying to read it.
"You break that seal," Da said, "and I"ll have your hide."
"I wouldn"t dare touch it," said Nettle.
"Then go," said Da. He shooed them both away. "Be gone. And hurry back. I don"t want to lose any of that barley."
Talen pushed the cart and the empty chicken baskets through the three miles of the muggy woods to Stag Home. When he finally broke onto the broad valley, he was so refreshed by the sunlight and breeze, so soothed by the smooth, sun-warmed dirt of the road under his bare feet that he didn"t immediately notice the fields and orchards.
Instead, he basked in the glory of the day and the fact that not only had he escaped being maimed this morning, but he"d also avoided a number of hours sweating in the barley. The peppercorns hung in a pouch around his neck. It had been two years since any merchant had sold peppercorns in the New Lands and the value of pepper had risen.
Talen hoped the ale wife"s daughter was selling her vegetables again. She was a looker, that one, with her dark hair, jade eyes, and the fabulous lines of her long neck. During his last visit, he"d ended up returning to her table thrice, buying a bunch of carrots each time, just so he could fix her features in his mind. And it hadn"t all been one-sided. She had glanced his way when he stood across the road eating some of her wares.
Talen"s reverie of the ale wife"s daughter broke when he pushed the cart past an orchard of apple trees bent with cl.u.s.ters of red and yellow fruit. There should have been children climbing with baskets in the tops of those trees. Instead, the apple baskets lay scattered on the ground.
Across from the orchard a yearling calf bawled outside a field. The calf searched along the fence separating it from its mother and a dozen others who stood with their noses down among the ripe, white oats mixed with peas. There should have been a harvest master there promising someone a proper beating for letting the cattle in, but there wasn"t even a beggar to chase the greedy guts out.
How could that be? Talen searched the fence lines and long rock walls. He searched the fields-nothing but a small carpet of blackbirds picking through a swath of barley that had been harvested and left to lie where it fell. There wasn"t a body to be seen. It was as if the villagers had fled the fields.
Alarm scuttled like a crab up his neck. This was the fat season for pillaging. Of course, the Bone Faces hadn"t attacked Stag Home or any of the surrounding villages for years. But that"s precisely why Stag Home would be a perfect target. The villagers would have grown overly secure, just as Talen had.
What"s more: the Bone Faces took more than livestock and goods. They took men, women, and children. Lords, he thought, if one of those Bone Faces got him, he will have wished he had fallen out of that tree and broken his neck. He scanned the fields again this time looking for sign of a raiding party.
It was said that when the Bone Faces kidnapped you for their slave ships, they cut off the pinky finger of your right hand. Then, with some black and feral magic, they used your finger to bind you to them. And so perverting was the binding that you never once wanted to escape, but only desired to serve your master every day that blood flowed in your veins.
One of the first things they"d ask you to do, which you would do with joy, was to trick your own kin into their traps. And so it was that whole families disappeared. Some were enslaved, others were sent to the fearsome altars of Ishgar as sacrifices, for the Bone Faces were a b.l.o.o.d.y people. But Talen figured those slaughtered on the altars met with a better end, for if the rumors were true, the Bone Face bindings were strong enough to compel a slave beyond this life and into the world of the dead.
He imagined the fate of his pinky. The Bone Face slave masters hung the fingers of their most valued slaves about their necks. The rest they locked up in a special room. And when guests came to call, especially if the slave master was wealthy with dozens of formidable slaves listed among his a.s.sets, he would take his guests into the finger room and show off his collection of desiccated and rotting digits, just as a good Koramite wife might show off her collection of dishes or lace.
Talen looked for signs of a struggle and saw none in the fields. The Clans sent patrols along the coastlines during the harvest season. Last year there had been battles, but those had been far out on the finger islands, no on the main land settlements. Nothing this year. But it had to be Bone Faces. What else would make the villagers flee the fields on such a fine day for work?
Goh, but how he wished Da and Ke were here with him. If he only had his bow, that would improve his odds. Da, a Koramite bowmaster, had taught his sons well. Talen could shoot eight arrows a minute, and not to simply fill the sky with a haphazard rain of death. No, Talen could fire at that speed and hit what he was aiming at.
But he didn"t have his bow. All he had was his knife and a pile of chicken baskets, which meant he"d have to slice open his own neck if the Bone Face blighters got to him, for he wasn"t going to be turned into a villain, nor would he allow himself to be used as feed for their terrible G.o.ds.
Talen thought he might be able to lose any pursuers in the thickness of the woods. But who was to say they hadn"t already circled behind him? Besides, the safety of the village with its embankment walls was much closer.
Smoke trailed into the sky from behind the walls of the village. But it was thin, not the thick smoke of burning homes. Upon the timber and earthen wall he saw the glint of three men wearing helmets and carrying spears. The gates stood closed, which only confirmed his a.s.sessment of the situation.
Talen looked back at the woods once more. He searched along the tree line following the river that snaked its way through the valley, but saw no shallow-bottomed ship"s mast. Perhaps they had landed farther down river. Perhaps the village had been forewarned and the raiders had yet to attack.
He quickened his pace. He did not want to be caught outside the gates. The cart and chicken baskets clattered along the dirt road as he went. He watched the shadows and trees. He kept an eye on the fields. He prepared himself, at the first sign, to run.
He pa.s.sed two large wicker creels on the bank of the river. One had toppled over. Its lid hung loose, and a tangle of fat, brown eels wriggled their way back toward the water. The sight raised the hackles on the back of his neck, and Talen began to run.
Down the dirt road he went, and then over the bridge. On the far side of the bridge, one of the chicken baskets bounced off, but Talen paid it no mind and let it lay in the gra.s.s where it fell on the side of the road. He didn"t stop until he stood outside the gates.
The Mokaddian guards up on the wall were not looking out-they were looking in. The beef-heads were not going to see any threat coming that way. "Hoy!" Talen called.
The three guards turned.
One was that maggot Rodd.i.c.k, the cartwright"s son who had tormented Talen with rotten plums when he was a boy.
"Let me in," said Talen.
"You," said Rodd.i.c.k in disgust. "Stay right where you are!"
7.
Chase TECHNICALLY, A MOKADDIAN VILLAGE couldn"t refuse entrance to Talen just because he was a Koramite. Refuge was one of the mutual promises made in Whitecliff. But that didn"t mean they would open to him. Rodd.i.c.k yelled down to those within.
This village had fallen once, before it had a wall. The Bone Faces had rowed two of their small galleys up the river to a bend at the edge of the fields. They attacked just before dawn, setting the homes ablaze, running many good men through with their curved swords, and stealing anything of value, including fifteen young girls. The next year the village built the wall.
The wall had been made by digging a wide ditch and throwing up an embankment of earth about three times the height of a tall man. Timber spikes had been planted into that steep slope and at the bottom of the ditch. Gra.s.s and tall thistle now hid many of the spikes, but any host charging up that hill would find the spikes" power to impale undiminished. And if the host reached the top, they"d face a timber palisade and tower. The timbers had been new when Talen was a boy. Pale yellow lichen now clung to much of the wood, but it was st.u.r.dy nevertheless.
He expected they"d be happy to give him a bow and set him up on the wall with Rodd.i.c.k. But there were no raiders, no sign of any struggle whatsoever. So why had they closed the gates?
The cross bar that held the gates closed sc.r.a.ped. Then the gates swung open.
Out walked a dozen Mokaddian men holding their scythes, sickles, and forks like weapons. About half had shaved their heads and dyed their scalps with henna, witnessing they"d performed their harvest worship.
Talen glanced over his shoulder fearing the Bone Faces had decided to attack, but there were no Bone Faces, only the river glistening in the sun and the fields of grain beyond, rolling with the breeze. When he turned back, one of the beef-heads on the wall was stringing his bow.
"It"s one of Hogan"s half-breeds," said farmer Tilth. He held his hayfork before him as if Talen were the Dark One himself. "What are you doing here, boy?" asked Tilth.
"I"ve come to trade with Mol," said Talen.
"He"s spying!" Rodd.i.c.k called from above.
Spying?
"Cast your weapons from you," Rodd.i.c.k commanded. "Then lie down in the dirt."
What a b.u.m brain! "Who would want to spy on you?" Talen yelled up at Rodd.i.c.k. "And I don"t have any weapons. Unless you think I might kill someone with these chicken baskets."
"Give yourself up," said Tilth.
Long Lark, the cooper"s son, stood next to Tilth. He tied a cattle noose at the end of one rope.
Talen looked at the men. There were the Early brothers, the one-eyed tanner and his two sons, and the young hayward who had killed a wurm not two weeks ago and received the intricate tattoo around the wrist of his right hand that signified he was no longer a boy, but a man of the Shoka clan.
These people knew him.
The men began to fan out.
"I"m honored," said Talen, "but isn"t this a bit much for a runt like me?"
"He"s going to run," Rodd.i.c.k called.
"I"m not running," said Talen.
"Come on, son," Tilth said.
They approached him like one might a boar caught in a trap: careful and bent on injury. Talen spotted the lazy-eyed Sabin among them, relishing every moment of this. That boy had never liked Talen.
A flash of orange caught Talen"s eye, and he spotted a tall, bald man with an enormous black beard standing in the gateway. He was an official, wrapped in the blue and orange sash of the Mokaddian Fir-Noy Clan.
Fear shot through him, and Talen took a step back.
The Fir-Noy had provoked a number of fights these last years. They"d killed a number of Koramites to boot. That was not to say the Koramites hadn"t defended themselves. But everyone knew that Koramite and Fir-Noy didn"t mix. Lords, Fir-Noy didn"t mix with half of the Mokaddian clans, especially not the Shoka of Stag Home. But there stood that Fir-Noy official, acting like he owned the place, and here the Shoka village men had their tools pointed at him as if he were a rabid bat.
"I"m here for chickens," He protested.
It was then that Long Lark broke from the pack and set himself to throw his noose.
Talen hesitated for a fraction of a second.
Long Lark adjusted his grip.
By the farting lord of pigs, Talen thought. I"ve done nothing. Nothing at all.
Koramites had been dragged behind horses before. Not here, of course, in a Shoka village. Not yet. But these were Mokaddians, after all. Fir-Noy, Vargon, or Shoka-did it matter which Clan they belonged to?
He looked into their eyes and saw it did not. Talen took a step backwards.
Long Lark swung his noose back.
In his mind"s eye, Talen saw himself hanging from the village wall with that noose around his neck. The thought jolted him. And despite his earlier protestations, he turned tail, and ran.
A shout rose up behind him so full of menace that it almost loosed his bowels.
He stretched his stride, expecting that noose to fall about his shoulders or to catch an arrow in his back. He ran like a thief, like a rabbit coursed by dogs. He ran with the speed only fear and bewilderment bring.
He sprinted back over the bridge and thought he saw the flash of an arrow out of the corner of his eye. He needed to make the woods, the only place where he might have a chance to lose these madmen. Back up the road he ran, the dirt hard under his bare feet.
Talen was not the fastest runner in the district, but he wasn"t the slowest either. He knew he should measure his pace, but that lazy-eyed Sabin was back there with his shaved head and violent speed, and Talen sprinted for all he was worth.
He could hear the men behind him and pushed himself until his breath came in ragged gasps and his legs began to burn. By the time he reached the oat field the rogue cows had broken into, his lungs and legs could go no farther, and he had to stop. He panted and turned.
Sabin, a look of murder in his eyes, was almost upon him.
Movement farther up the road drew his attention: a rider galloping toward him on a horse. They were boxing him in.
Lords, but he had to make the woods.
Two more ragged breaths and he hopped the fence on his left and the field stones piled up next to it and struggled up a fallow field of knee-high gra.s.s.
The tall gra.s.s pulled at his feet. The slope sapped his strength. But neither seemed to slow Sabin.
The woods stood only a few paces away.
Talen glanced back to see Sabin reach out with his long tattooed arm for Talen"s hair.
River loved Talen"s hair. Loved it long. And at that moment he wished he"d never listened to her and her stupid appraisals of men.
Sabin grabbed a handful of Talen"s hair, yanked, and brought Talen up short and then backward to the ground.
Talen scrabbled to his knees, but Sabin kicked his side and knocked the breath right out of him, momentarily paralyzing him.
Sabin kicked at Talen"s face, but Talen curled up and the blow glanced off the back of his head.
When his body finally remembered it had lungs, the rest of the men were rushing up the hill. Someone struck him with a staff. Another kick caught him in the hip.
Talen tried to get up and lunge out of the circle, but before he could get his legs, one of the tanner"s boys landed a blow to Talen"s head that dazed him and knocked away all sense of balance. He turned, falling, and saw a sea of men.
Someone kicked him in the back, the pain shooting through him like a knife. Someone else went for his neck.
Talen brought his arms up to shield his face.
"Where"s that rope?" one of them shouted.
Talen tried to roll over.
"Out of the way!" someone else shouted.
"Now you"ll get it, Half-breed," a man said.
The blows lessened and then stopped. Talen glanced up.