Horded - Kingdom Gone Book 2, page 14
“Bring him. I’ll get Maera.”
The woman. Tal bit back a snarl and looked away to where Fak lay, very still, in the grass. Torg would think of the woman first. Torg, who would never have risked his life and Fak’s so carelessly before he’d found her. He ran back to her, now, and left Tal to attend to their comrade. A deep furrow scored the fallen gobelin’s chest. It still rose and fell, but more slightly now than any hope of survival would warrant.
Tal went to the warrior’s head and slid his hands under the bigger man’s shoulders, hooking him by the armpits and heaving. His back flamed and howled in answer, but he dragged Fak toward the pocket, backwards in a crouch, while his brother fetched his tir talus. While Torg wasted the time it took to untie her.
Tal would have brought her still bound to the pole. He would have made her walk, at least, if he’d been Torg. But his brother lifted the human in his arms and cradled her against his chest while he dragged Fak painfully, slowly to the membrane and safety. Torg and his woman reached him at the same time he reached the pocket.
At least his brother set her down long enough to help drag poor Fak across, though he held her hand and pulled her along with them. Staring down into Fak’s pale, unconscious face, Tal thought, he just might have left her behind.
But when they’d stumbled back into their camp, it was the witch’s voice who called, “Lay him down gently.” It was the witch who tugged on Torg’s arm and whispered, “Tal is hurt too.”
Torg joined him and they positioned Fak beside the fire. The entire camp erupted into shouting and the horde crowded around their corner. Voices screamed for Olin, for Gutra. They whispered Fak’s name in a wave that spread to the far bonfire and back. The healers pushed their way to the fore. Prett elbowed both Torg and Tal aside and turned his attentions wholly to Fak, who still breathed, but in a rhythm that rattled and gurgled dangerously, now.
He’d die before the night was out. Tal clicked and cursed his evil luck. Fak would perish and never confirm the castle’s existence. Olin would blame him, possibly Torg and the witch as well. They’d all three be banished or executed and Rulak’s men would fulfill the prophecy before his horde even had the sense to believe in it.
Behind the healers came the Sol buta, arms crossed over their chests and with Gutra leading. She squinted at him and watched while the healers ordered a stretcher built, while the warriors slid Fak’s unresisting body onto the travois.
Olin arrived last, drunk and staggering over the top of the women who steered him along. By the time he entered their camp, Fak was ready to be removed. Tal sat on one of the logs while Torg and his woman worked at getting his tunic off. He only saw the chieftain’s face in flashes between their arms and the veil of his shirt, but even in so brief an image, Tal could see his own end.
The horde leader wore a murderous scowl. He surged forward and then tipped back to be caught and supported by a group of warriors, Vrau and Dutat among them. Olin shouted over the fray, “Where is Tal?”
His answer died in an angry hissing. Old Gutra’s voice lifted above the cacophony of questions. The matriarch didn’t scream, but only because she didn’t need to. Her words reached everyone easily enough.
“This is a matter for the Sol buta, Olin. Do you not remember?”
“Pagh,” Olin spoke, but his words slurred as much as his steps had. “Fak has been half-killed, woman! Surely the matter—”
“The matter was given to us. On your word. It is the same matter still, and the Sol buta will be the one to decide it.”
Olin argued with her, but Tal didn’t listen. The shouting of the horde covered the remains of the conversation, and though it concerned him directly, he couldn’t force himself to follow it. They had his shirt off. His straps lay in a heap on the ground around the log, and his brother’s woman daubed cool water over the punctures on his back. She held a soaking rag above his spine and squeezed rivers onto his hot skin.
He’d seen Torg’s wounds and he knew, if they’d been any worse than his, that he would be the one waiting. The damage to his back didn’t feel mortal, but injury often brought a numbing of the brain, and his body was dimmed somehow, distant. The soft pressure of the cloth made him sag farther forward and his muscles burned at even that much movement.
“We need to get him inside the tent.” Torg’s voice, hushed to a whisper by the roar of the horde or, possibly, the rushing inside his brain.
They moved him somehow. It felt like daggers in his back, but far away. His mind was slipping softly into a place where it couldn’t feel them. His ears still worked. He could hear the human talking above him, fussing about the depth of the wounds and how much salve they had left. She asked for more cloth and more water.
His brother’s voice muttered a deep background to her questions.
Gutra and the Sol buta had saved them. The tir talus had saved them. But Tal knew that wouldn’t last if Fak perished. Even if Olin had washed his hands of them, even if the Sol buta approved the witch, the horde itself would rise up, calling for their blood, when Fak died.
As he closed his eyes, he knew that death was likely. He only hoped that Torg and his witch could heal him fast enough for them all to run for their lives. Before the night was out, they’d most likely need to do just that.
Chapter Twenty-One
Maera never even saw them until they sprang from behind the brush. She screamed, but the sound wouldn’t have breached the pocket. She ran, but the gobelins had her before she’d made three strides. They tied her and hung her from a pole like a harvest lamb.
At last, fate had caught up with her. She’d expected too little of her punishment, to live as an outcast, to be scorned. Her crimes demanded a more serious payment, and now she’d be skinned alive, cooked and eaten. Maera screamed until the hillside rattled with her cries. She shouted until a slim, gobelin blade caressed her throat and a gruff voice demanded she be silent.
She’d never meant to die for her past. Pay a little, yes. Suffer, fine. But to die now, when she’d only just found…something. Her eyes burned and dripped pathetic tears across her cheeks. Tal would come for her in a minute. He’d look, and then he’d have no choice but to abandon her. She’d seen him cringe from her presence in his camp, in his life.
He didn’t want her there any more than the others did. He’d tolerated her for his brother’s sake, and now she’d given him an easy way to be rid of her. Her chest ached, but she swallowed the urge to scream again, to panic and thrash and make them kill her faster.
Faster would be better, really.
What kept her, then, from forcing that blade’s return? She only felt the ache, the dull conviction that she had nothing, was nothing in the world. She’d never feel that whispered swish again, never know what it meant, why it drove away her thoughts of punishment and made her hope for other things, selfish things she never had deserved.
No wonder she’d been thrown away from it. Fate had separated her and thrust her back on track toward paying her dues.
The gobelins hefted her pole onto their shoulders. She swung upside down between two green strangers. They sniggered, clicking and marching toward the pocket just as Torg exploded out of thin air. He came at them like a bull, charging without even a glance to either side, to the others who would surely strike him down.
Maera pressed her eyes tight against that sight. If his blood spilled, when it spilled, she’d scream for the knife without hesitation.
Her bearers dropped her. She hit the ground on her back, felt the jolt and then the pull as the slope dragged her away. She rolled over and over, the wood pressing between her breasts when she was face down and adding to her momentum when she was face up. The meadow blurred into a dance of grass and sky. Maera fell away, expecting either a cliff or a dagger to find her.
Let him live though. The thought was the first selfish request she’d admitted to in years. Let him survive this. Let no more blood stain her hands, especially not his blood. Shouting filled the spinning meadow. She closed her eyes and chanted it with each revolution. Let him live.
When the pole snagged, and the world stopped moving, she refused to look. Even when warm hands untied her wrists and feet, Maera kept her eyes tight. Only when the familiar voice whispered, tir talus, did she peek just a crack. Torg leaned over her, helped her to her feet and took her into his arms without asking. He lifted her up and carried her back to the pocket where his brother fussed over a wounded gobelin. That one looked like he’d had the worst of the fight, and she cringed at the sight of his wound, even at the sight of the enemies bleeding on the grass around them.
More death. Her debt swelled with it. Torg set her down to help his brother, but he held tightly to her hand. She might have run if he hadn’t, run for the nearest cliff, just run forever. Instead he pulled, and she followed the rhythm. It sang to her and she obeyed it, the only thing she had left to obey.
They stepped into camp and the horde began to shout, calling for vengeance. Maera tuned them out and focused on the blood she’d drawn. She focused on the dying man, on the studded wound in Tal’s back. Tal was wounded.
The sight of that woke her. She might not have the luxury of death, but she could pay by doing. Her suffering had appeased no one. Perhaps she had to work off the debt. Perhaps she’d been going at it the wrong way. The universe continued to throw injury at her. She could tend to it. Maybe that was the only thing she could do.
She grabbed Torg and steered him toward his brother. Tal had plopped onto a log in a daze. He stared at the dying gobelin and began to lean first one way and then the other. Torg steadied him, braced him against his own body while they went to work removing his straps and leather armor, the bloody tunic underneath.
The crowd around them whipped into a frenzy, but Maera ignored it. She heard the shouting, voices she should probably have marked and heeded, but her vision narrowed to the row of square punctures down Tal’s back, to the drying blood trails and to her work. Someone handed her cloth and water. She had no idea who. She saw only green skin, red blood, and the task to be done. She could help. She’d helped Torg, and now she could help his brother.
Once the wounds were cleaned, she looked to Torg. He leaned against Tal’s shoulder, supporting him, but pale in his own right. His wounds had torn again. He’d need more salve, and they didn’t have very much left. He called to her to help Tal, who sagged even more now, threatening to pass out. They moved him together with the help of other hands she wouldn’t remember later. They wrestled him inside the tent and settled him face down on his fur pile.
Torg sat on his own bedding, leaning against one elbow and still bleeding from the wound on his arm. She’d need more water, more bandages, and there would never be enough of either, nor of the precious salve. Could they trade the last of Tal’s fluff for more? Not if the shouting were any indication.
She eyed the crowd from under the awning. Gobelins milled through their camp, strangers, alien to her. They’d taken the other man away and now the mob had started to thin, but there was still a wall of unknown people between her and the fire. Except she recognized one. The woman stared at her, put the force of an iron will behind that look, and Maera knew she’d been waiting for her to notice.
The moment she made eye contact, the gobelin women bent, ever so slightly, toward the ground and dropped something dark beside their fire. She whipped back upright and was moving off before Maera could see what she’d left, but the fact that she’d left something, that it had been intentional, couldn’t be doubted. Torg confirmed it.
“Did Sorin just drop something?”
“Is that Sorin? Who is she?”
“Sol buta. Tir talus to Muk.” His voice shifted to a softer, wistful tone. “They were friends of our parents.”
That explained a bit. Maera didn’t wait for more. She slipped from the tent before anyone else might notice whatever Sorin had left for her. And she had no doubt it had been left specifically for her. The woman continued to help, perhaps for Torg and Tal’s sake. It didn’t matter to her so long as the parcel she’d dropped contained what Maera suspected.
She grabbed the pail as an excuse, wiggled her way between gobelins who moved aside quickly once they noticed who was in their midst. It helped to clear their camp, but it only deepened her sense of their hatred and mistrust. They wouldn’t look at her now, dodged even that and evacuated the camp where her evil had obviously taken root.
Maera let out a relieved breath when she made it to the spot. A leather bag waited beside the log, weathered and small but bulging with its mysterious contents. She looped the single strap over her arm and went to fill the pail from their swiftly shrinking wineskin. Torg would have to find water next. Tal would be no help tonight, and he always fetched it outside the pocket.
Suddenly, trapped inside the pocket felt a bit like safety, even with a horde of angry gobelins blaming her for their misfortune. Outside the pocket, the whole world wanted her dead. Outside, fate was already looking for her, as if it resented her escape into Old Space.
She drained most of the wineskin and returned to the tent. Their fire had been trampled. Torg would have to fix that as well. Maera had no doubt he could. He wouldn’t let them go without any more than he’d let her fall into hostile hands. The man had risked too much to save her.
He watched her now, leaning back against his furs and giving her a start of concern. Perhaps his wounds were deeper than she’d guessed. If he were seriously injured…He must have seen some of the panic on her face, because he shook his head when she ducked inside, quickly hid his grin and waved her over to Tal’s side of the shelter.
“I’m barely scratched.” Something of the grin echoed in that. “But I fear for Tal’s bones.”
“He’ll be bruised, but isn’t likely broken.” Maera dodged the look and focused on his brother. “He’s unconscious. Now’s the best time to be certain.”
She set the pail down and dropped the bag more gently onto the furs. Tal’s back lay exposed and she eyed the row of marks, clean now, barely seeping, and the purple haze around them. Bruised was an understatement. He’d taken one hell of a blow to his spine. She ran her hands along it, up and down, but felt nothing to give her more concern. They’d just need to give him time, to watch and see.
“I hope your Sorin brought more salve.” She found it inside the bag, right on top, a second flask to match the first. Under that enough bandages to do the job and more. Possibly enough to rewrap Torg too. She pulled these out and set them on the furs and found another surprise below.
“What’s that?” Torg leaned off his fur pile and over her shoulder.
“Something to do.” She held the spindle up and used the gesture to increase the space between them slightly. It was smaller than the one she’d learned on, with a thick round whorl and delicate shaft, but the roving she discovered in the bottom of the bag was fine and silky. Perfect for the weight of the spindle.
“You’ve made a friend in Sorin,” he whispered it, as if he knew how secret it had to remain. Was this Sorin her only friend here, or could she count Tal as the same?
“More likely, you two made it for me.”
“Still, Sorin will be an ally when you join the Sol buta.” He leaned back in the furs and looked at her with a spark in his eyes again.
“Excuse me?” She’d heard him wrong, or his language skills had faltered. He couldn’t mean what that sounded like he meant.
“When you take your place on the Sol buta,” he said it plain as day.
She snorted, the wrong response. His face fell into shadow. He had to know that the horde would never allow his fantasy to happen. How could he not see it? “What are the odds of that, Torg? When that man they just carried away doesn’t make it through the night?”
He opened his mouth to argue. She could see the defiance brewing in his expression, how much he wanted to insist for both their sakes. The wailing started before he could answer. Cries echoed from the farthest corner of the camp. They spread, a great morning howl that could only mean one thing. She didn’t need him to confirm it, and she could have gone a long time without hearing the resignation in his voice.
“He’s gone.” Torg didn’t look at her. He stared out over the camps and nodded. “Fak has died.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Maera tended both of them before falling asleep between their fur piles. The cold ground chilled her but kept her sleep light, and she woke twice to footsteps passing their camp. Twice more to tend to Tal’s moaning, to bathe his back and forehead with a damp cloth. She arose first, as well, and left the tent without rousing either brother.
He’d reached for her more than once during the night. She’d feigned sleep, rolled or curled away and managed to avoid him, but it wouldn’t last, and she had no idea how to handle it. She did know one thing. She wasn’t letting him, or anyone, anywhere near her in her current state.
Which meant she needed help that came from outside their camp. The timing stunk. She knew that, but her problem would only get worse, and she couldn’t stand it any longer. Torg was well enough to be a lot of trouble. Either his wounds were more superficial than she’d ever guessed, or the threat of her abduction had just willed him into a fit of strength. It didn’t matter which, he was hell bent on pushing this tir talus thing.
Before he did, Maera damn sure intended to know what it meant.
What she planned on doing might push her situation too far. She trod on thin ice and she knew it. Neither did she wish to alienate the one ally she had, no matter how she’d won the woman’s aide. She’d have to do this very carefully, and she’d have to back off fast if it didn’t go well.
But they needed breakfast anyway. She’d have to march her journey to the Sol buta cooking fire no matter what. It was an opportunity Maera had to snatch hold of.
