Horded - Kingdom Gone Book 2, page 8
He clicked, grunted and turned the crystal over in his hands. A test sounded right, now. The more he thought about it, the more it fit, though he didn't care to admit it to the human. If Torg lived, and they could bring him back together, both of them would prove something to the horde. But forty would not be easy. Forty, they couldn't take by force. They couldn't do it his way.
“Well then.” He stood up and leaned in, hoping to intimidate her. “If you're so smart, how do we save Torg?”
He waited for her to stumble, to show a sign that she'd never meant to save his brother at all. Instead, the witch pressed her lips together, making a thin, straight line that matched the creases across her forehead. She nodded and then leaned even closer. Their noses nearly touched, and Tal could feel the tickly whisper of her human breath.
She smiled and failed to let him have even a moment's victory. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial tone.
“I have a plan,” she said.
Tal wished she hadn't. He wished he'd never laid eyes on her. She'd killed Torg, and now, one way or the other, the witch would be the death of him.
Chapter Twelve
The human buildings towered over the treetops. They had hard edges, sharp corners and no art to their design that he could see. These giant, ugly boxes stood in a larger square around the well where he'd lost his brother to the witch's spell. He crouched in the pocket and held the viewing stone through the membrane with her at his side instead of Torg.
Nothing natural lived in that square. The stones had been ground smooth for walking on, and not a single blade of grass was allowed to invade between them. The walls had more squares cut into them, and they looked out over the empty well like black eyes, like death might look at you.
Tal remembered the size of the crowd when Torg had rushed out. He agreed with the witch on that much. He didn't care to rouse the town again if they could help it.
“I don't see any lights.” She whispered to him now. “Or anyone out and about. Put the cloak on.”
“It smells funny.”
“It's mine.”
He sniffed and poked at the mound of cloth. Her plan had lunacy threaded through it. It had both their deaths etched upon it, but where it went most wrong, in Tal’s mind, was in making him wear her cloak. He sniffed it again and wrinkled his nose.
“It’s a flower sachet is all.”
“It’s nasty.”
“Put it on for Torg’s sake.”
He snarled at her and she grinned back. The witch knew too much of his mind. She’d used his concern for his brother a few times and, just in case Torg still breathed, Tal had little choice but to allow it. He lifted the garment as if it might devour him and wriggled underneath.
“Stand up so I can straighten it and put the hood up.”
“No hood.” The material already scratched his back and arms. He could imagine how it would feel over his ears and cheeks.
“The whole point is to hide you.”
“Fine.”
He stood, and the view returned to normal, to a pleasant meadow that once had no town invading it. The pocket stretched in a crescent around the well. He’d explored it more slowly this time and found the edges. Now he endured the woman’s fidgeting, pressed too closely to her for comfort, in order to assure neither of them stumbled out before it was time.
She pulled the heavy hood up and forward until he could barely see through the small opening she left. The hem dragged the dirt behind him. She pulled the front tightly together and ordered him to keep it secured with his hands. None of this mattered. If they were spotted, if anyone stopped or spoke to them, Tal intended to gut them as quickly and quietly as possible.
It wasn’t a bad plan the witch had come up with, but he liked his modification just the same. He kept it to himself to avoid any unnecessary conflict. There would be enough of that when the time came for the witch to stab him in the back, to turn her own secret card and show Tal her true designs.
“Better,” she said. “Can you still get the crystal out?”
He poked the tip of the stone through the front of the cloak in answer. She nodded and waited for him to use it. He couldn’t work it out exactly, what her intentions were. She never meant to return to Gutra and the horde. That much he felt certain enough of. She still reeked of fear, would not return willingly to their camp.
So much the better. He could use her aide getting Torg out and, if she betrayed them after, at least he’d have his brother back. It might even convince Torg that she was their enemy.
“I think we should go now. See if it’s clear.”
She didn’t seem to have any trouble giving him orders. He’d agreed to her plan and, since then, the witch assumed she was in charge. Good. Maybe his capitulation would lull her into a sense of security, leave her unguarded when the time came. Tal was happy to let her underestimate him. He used the stone again, triggered the wall and saw the courtyard blossom exactly as it had been moments before. Empty. Ugly.
Possibly deadly.
“It looks good,” the witch announced. “Let’s go.”
Tal pushed her through and then slid out behind her. Who knew where her archers might be hiding? The rooftops were square, but they had chimneys, bumps along the ridges, a hundred places he could imagine an ambush coming from.
The human scuttled toward a gap between the buildings. She moved fast under all that fabric, and he had no choice but to stumble after. His own hem caught under his feet and nearly tripped him twice on the short sprint. He had to fix his gaze on her back for fear of losing her, and the hood completely blocked his view to the sides. He ran blind in the witch’s wake, and if she meant to lead him to his end, he could do nothing to avoid it like this.
He squeezed through the passage and waited while she peered into the street. She darted out, and he saw the building’s faces, slightly pointier and with a splash more color, but still unnatural, awkward cubes. The walls refused to acknowledge the wind, and Tal couldn’t fathom how anyone could sleep in so unforgiving a structure. How could they breathe without the movement of air inside?
She stopped at the street, and Tal hunched behind a fat barrel. His wicked leader whispered for him to follow and “act natural.” They walked in the open, down an empty street, past houses with dark eyes.
Dawn threatened, painting a swath of blush across the distant peaks. Soon enough, the light would turn against them. They had waited too long. They’d be found out before any chance of escape. He followed, but his head turned left and right. He watched the buildings, now sporting paddocks or squat garden plots between them. The side of the road muddied. His footsteps squished too loudly, almost as loudly as his heart pounded.
They moved downhill and the witch stopped outside a stouter building. It had a tall front but only one story. The façade stuck up like a thin, wooden fin.
“Do you have your knife out?” She hissed at him.
Her plan involved his dagger, but he still clutched the viewing crystal in tight knuckles. He fumbled it into a pouch, letting the cloak fall open at the front so as to use both hands. His knife slid free and he held it out for her to see.
“Good. This is it. You have to make it look believable.”
He could manage that. If his hands would stop shaking, that is. Ever since he’d stepped into her world, he’d been imagining how to chop off her head. Now, she bared her throat with a toss of her hair and raised one, expectant eyebrow at him. Tal had never attacked a person before. He’d killed his share of hares, one good sized marmot and even, on the best hunt of his life, a small deer. He wrestled with Torg often enough, but his brother didn’t have soft bits to get in the way. He stared at the woman. He was exposed, too green in the dawn’s advance. He’d be shot from a window before he managed to cut her.
“Come on,” she hissed and stepped closer. “Time, remember?”
How could he forget it? The sun already sent long fingers over the trees. He stepped to her and they shuffled around one another. He got his arm across her shoulders easily enough, held his blade to her pale neck, but she had to grab his other arm and wind it around her middle, to duck under and into him on her own in order to make the position look believable. Once they’d entangled, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to walk, let alone threaten anyone. Still, his knife had a wicked, jagged blade, and the sun did them a service by glinting off the metal.
The witch dragged him forward. It looked bad. He should be in charge of this. He considered suggesting a change. He could press the point into her back and push her ahead of him instead. Before he could voice the idea, however, the door ahead opened. A man’s face appeared, looked at them and paled far whiter than was natural.
“Maera.” His mouth snapped open and shut, but no other sound emerged.
“Molton, oh help.” The witch whimpered and nudged Tal with her elbow.
He growled, clicked his teeth and tried to remember what the plan was. He should have warned her about his luck. But if it failed him, at least she’d go down as well. If his curse could kill them both, he’d forgive it his unlucky life.
“He says to move back.” The witch pulled him forward, put enough warning in her tone to bring him back to the moment. He was supposed to snarl, yes, but also to make demands.
He rattled off a string of words in his own language, part nursery rhyme, part cussing and a line from a song he favored when drinking. The human’s eyes widened, and he stepped back into his building.
They had to go fast. That much, he remembered. They didn’t want to give the man time to think, she’d said. No time to grab a weapon. Tal continued forward, pushing the witch ahead hard enough that he couldn’t say if her stumbles were feigned or real.
He paused in the threshold, however, and she had to drag them inside. She hid this by whimpering as if Tal had hurt her. Or perhaps, his knife had actually bit a little. The posture, with him holding onto her and moving at the same time, didn’t seem very safe for the one who wasn’t holding the blade. And yet, she’d suggested it.
“Don’t let him hurt me, Molton,” she went on. He couldn’t remember what she’d said before. There had been too much. He snarled again anyway and rattled off a poem that Torg hated. The witch ran with it. “He says to keep going.”
“No.” The man stood in the room’s center. A candle burned in a lamp on a tall table. Tal saw the human’s eyes dart to it. He had a weapon there, meant to bolt for it and let the witch take her chances on the blade.
“Ow!” She squeaked as if he’d cut her, and Tal almost forgot himself and loosened his grip. “Please, Molton. Do what he says.”
Her tone shifted and lowered. It held an intimate note, one that suggested they might be lovers. What would Torg think of that? Tal tightened his grip and snarled with renewed ferocity. The man made up his mind. Whether swayed by her pleas or by Tal’s gnashing, he nodded and scooted backwards, away from the table and toward an open doorway in the back of the far wall.
“Get in the first cell,” the witch ordered, and then remembered herself. “He says to get inside.”
“Tell him to let you go first.”
Bad news. Tal snarled and rattled off a verse of his drinking song again, with feeling this time. He showed his teeth, curling his lip to make them look longer.
The witch squeaked again and the man shuffled into the other room. The light didn’t reach very far inside, but Tal could see the dark stripes on the shadows there. He heard movement, heard a familiar voice whisper. Not his name, his brother called to her.
“Tir talus?”
At least Torg lived. Tal let that joy register while the witch dragged him into the darker room. He heard the man’s steps, the squeak of metal. His eyes adjusted quickly, more so than the woman’s. He saw the man’s hand reaching for his belt.
“Stop!” He shouted it in their language. His knife glinted as he pulled it from her throat and aimed it at the man’s chest. “I can throw this faster than you can draw that.”
“Maera?” The human froze. His hand lifted from his belt, but his eyes slid to the witch. They held a question, and Tal could guess at it easily enough. He’d let go of her, and she still stood beside him.
“Get it the cell, Molton.” Her voice only cracked over the last word. “Get in and toss out the keys.”
“And the weapon,” Tal added.
The man slipped farther into the barred room. He snarled and reached for his belt with both hands. “You’re helping the Gentry?”
“Toss ‘em out.” The witch didn’t flinch. Tal might have. He could smell her fear, heard it in her words as well—maybe in her lack of words. Something streaked through the bars and slammed into the wall, clanking to the floorboards. “Maybe you better slide the knife on the floor.”
“Come in and take it.”
“My friends could.”
“You won’t make it to the end of town, woman.”
She didn’t answer right away. Tal could understand why. He’d been thinking the same thing. They were going to die. Finally, she sighed and spoke so softly, so levelly that he almost couldn’t make out the words.
“I bet we could make it to your house.”
“Jaymi.” The man’s voice trembled now. Somehow, they’d traded places. “You wouldn’t.”
He didn’t sound certain of that at all.
“Don’t make a sound, Molton.” The witch bent down and picked up the keys. “Don’t scream. Give us a chance, and we’ll head straight out of town.”
“Working with them.” The man pulled a dagger from behind his back. He set it on the floor and shook his head. His eyes never left the witch, not even when he pushed the weapon across the floor. “Traitor. Bitch, if I ever see you again…”
“Then we’d best make sure you don’t.” She waved for Tal to retrieve the blade. While he did, he heard her lock the cell. By the time he’d stood, she’d moved to the next one.
He tucked the knife into his belt and joined her at the second door. Their prisoner sulked and threw hateful looks at her, but he kept his mouth clamped tight. Whoever she’d threatened, the man wasn’t risking her sincerity. Tal bared his teeth to remind him.
“Tal, help.”
The witch leaned over his brother. Torg looked like he’d wrestled a warthog…again. His eyes were swollen and his lips cut, but when the witch lifted him to a seated position, leaned him against her for support, the bastard grinned like a wildcat.
“Tir talus,” he said, triumphantly, as if he’d proven something.
“Maybe.” Tal grunted and squatted beside her. “You look like dung.”
“We need to get him on his feet.” The witch shifted so that they could each drape one of his brother’s arms across their shoulders. They lifted together. Torg pressed with his legs, leaned to one side and then the other and stood, shakily, between them.
“Hurry.” She had good reason to whine. The sun would be too far up. They’d die in the street. “If the shopkeepers are awake, we’ll never make it back to the pocket.”
“No.” Torg groaned and leaned more heavily on him. They negotiated the cell door, but had to slide sideways down the hallway. “To the shore,” he said. “A short way up the slope.”
“You can’t walk that far,” Tal squeezed into the main room first. “Sun’s almost up. We’ll be seen.”
“He’s right.” The woman sided with Torg. Two of them against him. “We’ll have to move fast, but the shadows will favor us in that direction. I’m sure the weaver woman is watching the well by now. Simpson will have Tilly at the pots already.”
None of it made any sense, nor did he care to stop moving, but his brother groaned and insisted they retrieve his belt and pouches from the man’s desk. Tal held his brother’s full weight while the witch scampered to fetch the things. He reminded himself that she’d lied, that there was no possible way she really was what his brother claimed.
They’d be rid of her soon enough.
She returned with Torg’s belongings draped across her torso. Tal still struggled under the bulk of her wretched cloak. Between the three of them, they’d be lucky not to trip leaving the building. He didn’t remember any pocket by a lake, and he had no idea when Torg might have found it or why he’d chosen not to mention it to his brother.
The witch led them to the door and out, peering into a purple dawn and making noises in her throat that Tal didn’t dare interpret. They didn’t sound happy, but she led them out anyway. With Torg leaning on them both, he had no choice at all but to follow.
He expected to find a town guard waiting, armed soldiers, an angry mob. Instead, a fat pig grunted and scooted farther up the road toward town. The light had reached the tips of the rooftops and Tal could hear noises now, sounds that hadn’t been there when they’d slipped through dark streets.
“This way?”
“Yes.” Torg directed and his witch followed.
They hadn’t had a chance to talk, no time for him to warn Torg about the witch. Instead, Tal was left on the outside while they orchestrated either an escape or an ambush. The witch kept close to the building, led them along the fence between the prison and a low shed. Torg did his best to bear his own weight, but he’d taken more abuse than Tal had first guessed. His legs wobbled and, more than once, they were forced to support him while he caught his breath.
Too slowly, they hugged the road and slipped downhill, racing the dawn that already nipped at their heels. Dogs barked. A child wailed, and before they’d reached the last house, a man’s scream erupted from the building they’d just left.
“Gob-e-liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!”
“Damn.” The witch shuffled faster.
“HELP! RAMSTEN!”
“We won’t make it,” Tal said. “Stop here and we’ll fight.”
“That’s suicide,” she hissed.
“Better than letting you lead us into a trap.” Tal pulled on his brother and the witch pulled in the other direction. Torg teetered and fell backwards into the fence. He grabbed the top rail, letting go of Tal but keeping his other arm firmly across the woman’s shoulders.
