A Fray of Furies, page 29
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
“Hurry up and pass out, won’t you?” she growled. “Bearbait is a pain in my ass but at least he follows instructions, not children.”
She waved it off as it tried to lick grease from her fingers. It promptly stretched, yawned and collapsed in a heap.
By the time Temba returned, she’d been watching the krin sleep for a goodly while. Her thoughts were a knot of confusion. She could not imagine Bearbait harming a soul. Like Bellem, he simply didn’t have the heart. It was a struggle to reconcile him with the ravening monster she knew lurked just beneath his surface.
Hang on, her Hunter demanded. When did it become a him?
“Anything happen while I was gone?” Temba asked.
“No,” she said, her sling a heavy weight in her hand. “Nothing.”
Though larger than Pondsprings, Reedbridge was not so large a trader’s wagon went unremarked. This was unfortunate for several reasons. For one, he’d cleared the bulk of his merchandise to make room for far bulkier cargo. Also, he’d prefer to pass unnoticed, in the event things went sideways. Reedbridge was far too small to stomach outright assault, kidnapping and murder, without upset.
He’d pulled into a coach inn. (Not the one he usually used.)
“Boy,” he’d called to one of the stable hands, leading Nomparal. “Is there a trader’s barge tied up, down the dock?”
“Might be, master. ’Tis that time.”
He’d flicked the boy a copper piece.
“Go make sure,” he’d instructed. “If you can tell me who and where the crew is, it’ll earn you another coin.”
“Right away, master.”
The wagon had squealed on its axles as he let the two bruisers disembark. For all that one was a freckled Betopian and the other a midnight-skinned Islander, they looked to have been cast from the same mold: all thick planes and rounded angles.
Despite all his charm, (both innate and sorcerous) he’d rarely had to work so hard on anyone. Not that the ex-barger brutes had taken more than token convincing. Their thick skulls were simply that resistant to penetration by polysyllabic words.
“Why’d we have to hide in there?” Midnight had demanded.
“Yeah,” Freckles had piled on. “It stinks.”
He’d been careful to not let his smile slip. Helia knew how long it would take the smell of these two flatulent fatheads to clear.
“Because it’s better,” he’d supplied, “to not be seen together.”
Midnight had frowned. Freckles had stared stoically.
Exasperated, he’d counted out some coin. “There’s a tavern across the way. Go eat something. I’ll fetch you when it’s time.”
Frowning, Freckles had pushed the coppers around his palm.
“This is less than Temba owes us…” the lump had ventured, belligerence rearing by rote.
He’d suppressed a sigh.
“I’m not paying you what Temba owes you–”
“Temba is mean,” Midnight had interrupted.
“–I’m paying you what we agreed. After you’ve done your part.”
The frown had intensified, “Who’s paying Temba’s dues?”
“Temba is.”
“Temba won’t.”
“Temba is mean,” Midnight had agreed.
“Is Temba stronger than you two?” he’d demanded, his patience wearing thin. To his horror, the two had frowned furiously.
“No?” Freckles had drawled, seeming uncertain.
“Then take what you’re owed from her by force,” he’d spurred. “Better yet, take her barge, her trade. What’s to stop you?”
Blithering idiocy, for one, he’d thought.
But slow excitement had lit their eyes.
He’d added more coins, “Now, off with you.”
He’d watched them amble away, sharp as cantaloupes.
It should have been flat-out impossible for them to get falling-down drunk off of what he’d given them. Apparently, they’d found hidden reserves of financial acumen. And filled them to the brim.
“Dread of the dark places!” his toes scraped along the cobbles as Midnight bore them both forward. “Not yet, you sodden log!”
If he’d thought them wet before, now they fairly leaked. He might as well pour instruction into a sieve.
Spying Temba coming up the main road, and bolstered by drink, Midnight had made as if to move from hiding.
“Temba later!” he reminded the moron. “First we grab the girl!”
“What g–girl?!” Freckles hiccupped loudly.
“Shhh!” he hissed. “Quiet, fool! She’ll hear us. Follow me!”
“Where are we going?!” Freckles insisted, stumbling meekly along and towing Midnight after.
The road down to the docks was deserted. He was alone in ducking among the myriad bales, bundles and crates. The two simpletons stomped along with no thought for stealth.
“There,” he breathed, gritting his teeth.
Beyond the stacked debris of the loading dock floated the barge. A lantern illuminated one figure, asleep, and another, busied with something in her lap. A familiar face.
“That one,” he pointed. “Are you ready?”
Their nods looked too practiced to be real.
“Remind me,” he cautioned. “What are you going to do?”
“Kill the–”
“No!”
“Gag the girl…” Midnight amended.
“And…?” he pressed.
The giant scratched his shorn head, “Bring her here?”
“Good enough,” he supposed. “And be careful! She’s brought down far tougher brutes than you. If you don’t want her wearing your skin, do yourself a favor and at least try to sneak?”
He watched, as the two attempted a sodden slink, stumping their toes and stumbling over each other. One or both of them, he reflected, was going to get stabbed.
He found the prospect most appealing.
Bearbait had spent his morning stacking bales. The simple beast had spent its afternoon splashing with children. The evening, it seemed, would be passed in stupor. If only the krin’s changes could fit as conveniently into every day. The river rider was sharp. She was already suspicious of all the ‘naps’ and strange behavior.
It was no wonder the woman spent so much time away.
She turned her attention back to her work. Coins weren’t good for much, among the People. She’d never traded them for goods before. Bearbait had helped her bargain with the dockers. For thick cowhide and a leather punch. It was painstaking work, hammering holes in the tough hide and threading them together with gut. It would be a piss-poor replacement for her scaled hauberk. But she’d be damned if she’d go before the Old Masters unarmored.
She was a Hunter and the Herald. She had her honor to uphold.
Ironically, one of the rare uses the People put coins to, was sewing them onto armor. She raised her head to share this tidbit…
And realized, again, that Bearbait couldn’t hear her.
She clicked her tongue in irritation. It was too easy to forget what he really was. Sometimes, she found herself staring, searching for any touch or tinge of the monster beneath the blushing cheeks. More and more often, she’d find Bearbait meeting her gaze with a worried one of his own, as though he could scent her distress.
“What’s wrong?” he would ask.
You’re a thin skin of self, haphazardly stitched from the scraps of other souls. You’re a dream, waiting to wake into nightmare–
“Nothing,” was the only answer she could voice.
It was clear he didn’t believe her. Clearer still he had no idea how to pursue the subject. Which suited her just fine. Still.
She sometimes felt like the Hunter of legend: trapped in a cave, by a blizzard, with a bear. The story could only end one way.
Yet, the strain of waiting was eating her innards. Once the citymen had seen, with their own eyes, she could return home.
Victorious. The Herald, who’d succeeded despite all the odds. The notion seemed strangely hollow–
A thick forearm dropped across her throat.
Kicking at the air, she was hauled upright. As she was wrenched around, she saw a second man fall upon the krin. A sweeping foot sent her punch and her knife’s pommel skittering across the deck.
“There’s a good lass,” a gruff voice slurred in her ear.
Panic was a potent paralytic. Beneath the enormity of the wrongness, her body betrayed her, going limp. Helplessness pounded in her head, ushering in unconsciousness.
No.
She still held the gut-spooled needle. It flitted over her shoulder.
Stab! Stab! Stab!
“My eye!”
Choking, she dropped to the deck. Pained boots trampled among the purple spots.
“My fecking eye, you bitch!”
She snatched the wooden mallet as it spun past. The kick, scything toward her, caught it full in the shin. With a pained yowl, her accoster landed beside her. Her heart sank. The lowlander was larger even than Ordula. Screaming, she leapt atop him.
He fended her blows with brawny forearms, one eye spitting rage, the other fatally deflated. Her needle stuck from his brow.
With a roar, he rolled her under, pinning her with his weight.
He stank of stale sweat and sour wine as he pressed close.
“I don’t care what he says! I’m gonna wring yer fecking–!”
Her teeth closed on the dangling thread. The needle jerked free, bringing a goodly chunk of ginger caterpillar with it.
“Aagh!” he reared, arching away.
Her folded knuckles found the hollow of his throat. Cartilage collapsed with a crack. The blow snatched his head down. For half a blink, he stared at her in utter surprise.
From behind, a pair of fists tangled in his flaming hair.
His weight was ripped from her and she had a flash of night sky, a limp body tumbling through it. There was a distant splash.
The krin was breathing like a bellows, the entirety of its chin and chest daubed red. Ginger strands wafted from its fingers.
“Bavura?” she breathed from her back, showing empty hands.
Unseeing eyes panned down toward her.
She made her way up the main road toward a favored tavern. She was on her way to celebrate. With her barge fully laden, she could bypass all the remaining, minor stops to Tongal. She’d be the first to bring in her haul after all. It was going to be a good season. Due, in great part, to her new hires.
Nemil. Ha! Not with that custard skin-tone. Or that accent.
But who would have thought? Hillmen?! Helia’s tortured teats! The last of the tribal holdouts. As close to being born a crime as was possible. And runaways to boot, if she were any judge.
She suspected the boy’s simplemindedness had something to do with it. Before Helia’s hand had gentled the plains, the tribes had met birth defects with some barbaric practices. And, by all accounts, there’d been none more savage than the Hillmen.
Well, their superstition was her gain. Whatever malady kept the simple boy in stupor obviously concentrated his strength. He ate enough for three men and was a bargain at the price.
Even the girl had a hardness to her, brittle though it was. Together, the three of them had shifted more load today than she’d managed to flog from her previous crew in–
She faltered, thinking she’d heard her name called.
But there was no one about.
Despite this, her skin crawled. She’d heard that tone often enough, over the last few years. Those dolts were doubtless still in Howford, arguing over which way was downriver. But she’d not built a successful business by second-guessing herself.
She ducked into a ramshackle alehouse.
“Gentlemen,” she greeted, “as you were…”
She hurried straight across the grimy floor and out the back.
And there were her two personal penances, being led down the road. The fellow at the forefront was unknown to her. But she didn’t need an introduction to spot trouble.
They were headed for the docks. And her barge.
Bastards, she thought, on general principle.
It seemed celebration would be premature.
Her body was not built for sneaking. But the duo were so plastered, their eyes and ears might as well be whitewashed shut.
She trailed them to the dock, where they did their level best to blend among the debris. She’d half expected to see them lighting rag-stoppered bottles. But there was little danger. No combustible liquid long survived a meeting with those two. She’d once found them, half dead, puking a rainbow patina of lamp oil over the side.
She watched the balding fellow spur them toward the barge. Light still burned aboard. Despite the Hillmen reputation, she wasn’t about to let her old employees terrorize her new. Not amid her merchandize, at least.
She’d snatch up the ratty mastermind, she decided. The two dimwits defaulted to the loudest instruction. Once they’d watched her dunk the little turd in the river, they’d turn meek as sheep.
Sounds of a scuffle sounded from the barge. She frowned. Had they actually come here with violence aforethought?
“My eye! My fecking eye, you bitch!”
With new urgency, she sped toward the waiting weasel, “Oi!”
Steel glinted in the dark. He darted at her, swiping wildly. Her boot punched him off his feet and clean through a derelict crate. She’d deal with him later.
If one of those louts had managed to harm the swaggering girl or the simple boy, she’d make them wish they were dead.
He watched her, stitching some sort of leather brigandine, her thin-fingered hands working steadily in the last of the light.
“Shall I light a lantern?”
She nodded agreement without looking up. Her silence chafed. It was an unwelcome wall that had sprung up between them. He hadn’t even noticed when its foundations were laid.
He suspected his condition was more serious than she let on. His memory was pocked, missing large divots of time. He’d go from gathering firewood to eating cured meat. One moment she was felling a likely sapling, the next, toting a fire-hardened spear. He would don his burrower cloak and look up to see her lobbing it at him, his shoulders bare. Night juddered into day, rain stuttered into fair weather, forest flashed into scrubland between blinks.
Perhaps he was dying. Everyone sought distance from death–
The earth shifted beneath his feet, time sleeting by, speeding him elsewhere.
The temporal imbalance passed. He blinked. He was on his feet. Full night had fallen. The lit lantern showed a scene strewn with debris. What he identified as Kassika’s cuirass (much further along) and the contents of Temba’s tackle box.
“I don’t care what he says,” an unfamiliar voice strained.
He looked over. A broad back, topped with an orange mop of hair, Kassika’s moccasined heels drumming distress beneath.
“I’m gonna–”
The space between them contracted. He reached out. Heaved.
A sick snap resounded up his arms. The barge pirouetted beneath him. The sky spun down. A dun shape drifted into it.
Splash!
“Bavura?”
He came completely to himself, “What–”
He choked, his mouth awash with saliva and salt and something else. Syrupy and scintillating. Fresh and…
A dream-memory beckoned. Pinning pressure. Collaring hands. Surprise on a stranger’s face as he dragged it down by its nape. His jaws yawning in anticipation. Disbelief, desperation, dread. The delicious pop of the carotid, the explosion of–
Oh, Helia’s mercy…
He raced to the barge’s edge, bracing for the desperate heave of wracked guts… which did not come.
He spat, shivered, spat again.
“What just happened?” he managed.
Mercer Ehwan staggered down the dark lane, clutching his side.
Fool woman. Fool fool woman!
He wasn’t sure who he meant. The tribal girl? The meddling barge captain? Or maybe the damned witch, who’d started it all?
Why did these things always happen to him? Just as his life started looking up, fateful cockup slapped him down.
Finally trade your handcart for a wagon? The mule up and dies.
Scrounge enough coin to invest in gold? The mines run dry.
Stumble on a mystic artifact? Summon bushels of snakes.
Finagle your way free of the snake pit? Get stabbed in the gut!
He didn’t have the heart to tug any harder at the impaling wood.
Helia’s embrace, he just wanted his life to return to normal. He’d had his share of bad luck. It was about time for something to go right for him. Something was going to go right for him, he determined. That was the trick. Not waiting for things to happen but making things happen.
He pushed himself upright. It was hard. His wound insisted he crab along. He refused. He was master of his own fate. He was…
Where was he? He glanced around. In his haste to flee, he’d gotten quite lost. Anywhere else, he might have worried over footpads. But Reedbridge had neither the pedestrian traffic nor nightlife to sustain such industry.
He needed a landmark.
If he could load his wagon and make himself scarce before sunup, he could pretend none of this had ever happened–
For a moment, he thought he’d died. That the approaching dark horse was the Neril spirit of death, come to carry him off. But this was no pony. It stood head and shoulders taller than any mount he’d ever seen. Its chest and thighs sheened with muscle. Its broad back promised to carry the world. If there were ever such a thing as a warhorse, then surely it would look something like...
Blood loss was making him loopy. Of course it was a warhorse.
He’d never seen one in the flesh. But what else could it be?
It was being led by a slip of a girl who probably had no concept of its worth. He glanced down.
Or maybe she did: the horse’s hammer-sized hooves were socked in soft wool. In the middle of the night. A thief then.
An inexperienced thief, who might benefit from his wisdom.
He sized up the horse’s massive shoulders, trying to decide whether they’d fit between the traces of his wagon.
