Abomination (23 page)

“Told you it was him!”

Wulfric looked over his shoulder and saw the three men standing in the crossroads. The bandits he had encountered along that slurry of a back road a few days ago, the ones who had beaten and tried to rob him. They were eyeing him aggressively now, the tall one most of all.

“Remember us?”

A little more than an hour ago, Wulfric had been gifted with a beer, his first in years—which he had been forced to leave unsupped. Now this. How quickly his luck seemed to turn these days, and only ever in one direction.

No doubt these three felt that theirs had changed for the better; back on that remote road, the chain had been too much for them to carry, but here in town they could easily take it from him and sell it, perhaps to the very smith who had just repaired it. Wulfric despised the thought of breaking his vow. But he could not, would not, allow the chain to be taken from him. Many more people would die if he did.

“Take off the chain,” said the tall man. He looked Wulfric hard in the eye, trying to intimidate, but on stepping closer it was he who had cause to be unnerved. Something was not right.

Not much of the beggar’s face was visible behind the hood and the tangled beard, and the streaks of black grime all over, but there was enough to see that he showed no sign of injury. Just a few days ago, he and his two cohorts had beaten this beggar half to death, leaving him gasping in the mud with bruises, cuts, and welts that would have, should have swollen and purpled over the days that followed. And yet this beggar had not a mark on him. Were it not for the chain, the tall man would not have believed it the same wanderer. There was no explanation for how his wounds could have healed so quickly.

More than that, there was something about this man, something in his eyes. Something that said,
Just walk away
.

But the tall man did not walk away. His companions, who looked to him as their leader in large part because of the reputation he had cultivated as a hard man, were watching. What was he to do? Back down from a confrontation he himself had initiated, with a beggar so meek he had made no effort to even defend himself at their last encounter? No, despite his unease, he had to see this through.

He shoved Wulfric hard in the shoulder, enough to push him back a step, but Wulfric did not react. Frustrated, the tall man hit Wulfric hard across the head with the flat of his hand. Again, Wulfric seemed to do nothing in response; the sleeves of
his cloak were long and nobody saw him ball his hands into tight white-knuckled fists.

“Leave him alone.”

The voice came from behind the tall man. He and the other two turned, and there stood Indra, a few yards away, glowering at them sternly.

“Fuck off,” said the tall man, with a dismissive wave of his hand. But Indra took a step closer, seemingly undeterred.

“I said fuck off! Unless you want some of this.” He brandished the cosh he carried, surprised to see this also fail to discourage her.

“This man has done nothing to you,” Indra said. “Let him on his way, or answer to me.”

That brought about a chuckle from the tall man, which spread rapidly to the other two, then grew into full-throated laughter. All the while Indra stood firm, steely eyed, until the three men realized that she was quite serious.

Their laughter waned, and the tall man moved toward her. It was for him as the leader to handle this; as well, he wanted an excuse to distance himself from the beggar, whose oddly quiet presence continued to trouble him. He looked Indra up and down with a crooked smile, and gestured to the pair of swords across her back. “Who are you carrying those for, little girl?”

Indra felt her jaw tighten. “They are my own,” she said in as firm a tone as she was able, but it did nothing to dislodge the man’s grin.

“It’s good that there are two,” he said. “So I can put one in each of the places the sun don’t shine.” That was all the cue his two companions needed to come forward and take up positions around Indra. The nearby merchants looked on, apparently happy for some free entertainment to break up the monotony of the day. The barkeep was at the tavern door, motioning keenly for his customers to come outside and watch.

Indra wanted to fight. Because she could use the practice, she told herself, but in truth she knew she was compelled by something
worse than that. It was anger that had led her to confront these men, the same anger that had often drawn her into needless fights like this one. She reminded herself that she always regretted them afterward and that she owed it to herself—and to these men, however vile they might be—to try to resolve this without violence.

“I would prefer not to fight,” she said, which was not easy, as her every fiber was screaming the opposite. “Let this man go, and—” She looked back to the blacksmith’s stall and saw that the beggar was gone. It was his second abrupt disappearance in as many hours.

The three robbers saw the same and again laughed. “There’s the thanks you get from a cadger like that,” said the tall one. “He must be laughing all the way down the road, that some stranger’d volunteer to take his beating for him.” All three men moved in a little closer, tightening the circle around Indra. They were emboldened now, mistaking her reluctance for fear.

So be it
, thought Indra, trying to pretend that she was not secretly pleased. She planted her staff in the sodden earth so it stood upright freely and squared herself against the tall man.

He looked at her, puzzled. “Draw your swords, then.”

“I hope I shan’t have to,” she said, and this was true. She would only punish herself more later if she put a lasting wound on any of these men unnecessarily. If this was to be practice, then let it be an exercise in the use of minimal force, an area in which she sorely needed improvement.
This might be useful after all
.

The tall man rapped his gnarled wooden club against his thigh excitedly, then charged at Indra, drawing his arm back to strike. As he came within range, he swung at her hard. Indra shifted her weight to one side, so imperceptibly that she barely seemed to have moved at all. But it was enough that the tall man found himself connecting with nothing but air. The unchecked force of his own wild swing threw him off-balance and sent him barreling past her until he pitched forward and landed face-first in the mud.

Now the second man attacked. This one had a pair of blackjacks, one attached to each wrist by a strap. He came at Indra fast, with a flurry of blows, but she deflected them all effortlessly, slowly moving backward as she glanced each one aside and allowing him to keep advancing while she waited patiently for her opening. Then Indra quickened her backward step, opening the distance between them just enough to invite the man to overextend himself. As he lunged at her, she dodged to one side and thrust the flat of her hand upward into his nose. He staggered dizzily for two steps before falling on his backside into a shallow puddle, nose bent badly out of shape and streaming blood. It was broken, Indra knew, but hardly for the first time, and if she had struck him any harder she would have killed him, so she had reason to be pleased with herself.

By now the tall man was back on his feet and angrily wiping away the mud on his face. He pulled a dagger from his waistband and came at her again, now joined by the third man, who was built like an ox and looked like he rarely needed to throw a second punch. But he was slow, and the tall man was angry, which made him sloppy. Indra easily ducked under the big man’s lumbering first punch, then grabbed the tall one by the wrist as he thrust the dagger at her and twisted his arm, forcing him to drop the knife and double over. Perfect position for a sharp knee to the face. His head jerked backward and he went down a second time into the mud, this time flat on his back.

The big ox was still coming, hurling clumsy left and right hooks at her. Indra ducked and dodged, letting him wear himself out as she calculated her timing, then kicked him so hard between the legs that even the blacksmith watching from across the road felt it. The ox, with a wheezing gasp, slumped to his knees, and Indra pushed her boot into his chest, toppling him over so that now all three of her assailants languished, groaning in the mud.

Indra hoped that might be the end of it and sighed when the tall one got up again, barking at the others to do likewise. He was
seething now. All of them were. They rose unsteadily to their feet, shaking off their injuries and rounding on her once again, faces red with rage. Then, all together, they charged.

Now she plucked her staff from where it was planted in the ground. She had never fought three opponents at once, and despite all the tales of heroic knights gracefully defeating multiple assailants in a melee, Indra suspected that the reality was a far messier and more difficult affair—that any three men, even three as unskilled as these, could present a challenge when taken all at once.

And so it proved. Armed with the staff, she whirled and darted, parrying one man’s strike, then another’s, then another’s in rapid succession, but still they came at her. And hard though it was to keep them at bay, it was harder still for Indra to absorb so much of their anger and still contain her own. Finally, her fragile temper could take no more and something inside her snapped.

The fight came to an end in such a rush that the rapt audience of merchants and taverngoers would not later be able to agree on the exact sequence of events. But it was something like this: Indra let out a furious battle cry and surged forward in a fearsome whirlwind, first felling the big man with a blow to his skull so hard that he went down like a marionette whose strings had been cut; then the second man, the one with the blackjacks, who took an open-handed shot to the throat followed by a low sweep of Indra’s staff that knocked him clean off his feet and sent him crashing onto his back, rolling and gasping for breath. The tall man actually managed to grab a fistful of Indra’s hair and momentarily pull her off-balance before she brought her staff down on his arm with such force that all present heard the bone break. He instantly let go and collapsed in a heap, wailing and clutching his arm.

All three men were felled so quickly that Indra herself barely knew what had happened until it was done. She blinked and took a step back. She was breathing hard, less from the exertion than from the rage that had so suddenly and violently taken hold of her. She tried to take measured breaths, to calm down. But the sight
of what she had done only made her more angry—at herself. She had shattered the tall man’s forearm, she knew—not only because she had heard the sickening crunch when it happened but because it was now horribly and unnaturally crooked, with a jagged and bloody shard of bone protruding through his skin. It was more than any physician could put right; he would probably never use that arm again.

She was supposed to exercise restraint, self-control. She was supposed to avoid leaving any of them with a lasting injury. She was supposed to be better than this. As the three beaten men lay on the ground before her, she paced up and down, muttering angrily under her breath. Finally, she expelled a bellowing roar, spun around, and violently set about the first thing she saw, which was a large sack of carrots on the vegetable merchant’s stall. Wildly, she pounded it with her bare fists, over and over, as she cried out, lost in her own fury, until the sack split apart and carrots spilled out into the mud. Only then did her rage at last subside, and she looked up to see the merchant staring at her, wide-eyed.

She took a deep breath and composed herself, trying to hide her embarrassment. “I’m sorry about that,” she said, brushing aside a lock of hair that had fallen across her face. “I’m afraid I can’t pay for the damage, but if—”

“That’s quite all right, miss!” said the merchant, holding his palms out in front of him as he backed away a step. “Don’t you worry about it at all.”

Indra turned and saw the blacksmith and the skinner on the other side of the road gawping at her, openmouthed. Outside the tavern, the barkeep and his customers were doing the same. And all Indra felt now was a deep sense of shame, that her own stupid—what was it? pride? arrogance?—had led her to this ignoble public display of her inability to control her own anger. True strength lay not in conquering one’s enemies but in conquering the foe that lay within. She had tried to prove that to herself, and had found herself wanting.

She placed two fingers to her lips and gave a short, shrill whistle. Venator flew from his perch outside the tavern onto her shoulder. Keeping her head low so as not to meet anyone’s eye, she turned and marched away down the road. As she left the crossroads behind her, still quietly berating herself, she tried to find consolation in the knowledge that it could have been worse. If those men had been skilled fighters, she might have had to use her swords, and then there would have been real blood on her hands.

Indra walked faster than usual along the road, keen to get away from the crossroads behind her and all that had happened there. The short time she had spent in that little hamlet might have brought her closer to her prey, but it had also exposed and made raw all her frailties and left her more uncertain of herself than ever.

Such anxiety made little sense to her. In the face of actual danger, she never quavered. She had confronted and done battle with three armed brutes without fear or apprehension—in part, she knew, because her anger left little room for anything else. She hated her anger, but at least she understood it. Anger was simple and pure, a base element, like fire. She knew exactly where hers came from and how she planned to do away with it. There was no mystery. But these episodes of suffocating anxiety that crept up on her without warning or reason . . . they defied explanation and thus troubled her deeply.

What if it were a form of madness? On her travels, she had seen men in towns and by roadsides who rocked and gibbered and stared at things that were not there, their minds turned to porridge. Nothing could be done for them. A sickness of the mind was not like that of the body, which could often be diagnosed and remedied. A madman never got better, and no doctor knew of a cure for such a malady or even its cause. Was this how it started? Was that the fate that awaited her? Indra could think of nothing more
terrifying than her own mind failing her. Yet the crippling spells of dizziness and trembling, the inability to breathe, as though being smothered, the vivid, uncontrollable thoughts and fantasies of her own impending death—