Abomination (25 page)

Indra nodded in agreement. These were dire times, and most folk had far too many troubles of their own to worry about others. But then, wasn’t that when simple acts of selflessness were needed most? As she saw it, it was easy to give of oneself when it cost little or nothing to do so. It was in times like these, when generosity meant sacrifice, that one’s true character was tested and revealed.

“What happened with the men at the crossroads?” Wulfric asked. The question had been eating at him since she arrived in the clearing. He had assumed they would leave her beaten or dead where she had challenged them. To see her here, unharmed, meant either she had somehow talked three belligerent cutthroats out of a fight that she herself had picked with them, or . . . No, there was no other explanation he could think of.

“I didn’t want to fight them,” Indra said, looking away, into the fire again. “Alas, I could not persuade them otherwise.”

Wulfric looked hard at her, trying to divine something beyond her words. All he could sense from her was a strong unwillingness to speak of it further. This puzzled him. He had half expected her to tell some tale of how she had valorously defeated the three of them in mortal combat. In his time, he had seen plenty of that—braggarts and liars who spun elaborate yarns of daring and heroic feats of battle, woven entirely from their imaginations. With no one to refute her account, this girl could easily have done the same, perhaps to earn his gratitude and a longer stay by his fire.

Instead, she had responded in the manner of men who had actually done the deeds about which others falsely boasted. She had answered without answering, speaking only indirectly and with a tone of reluctance and humility that suggested she knew what violence really was—and that it was nothing to sing about, even in victory.

Was it possible? That this girl, little more than a hundred pounds soaking wet from the look of her, had fought those three thugs and bested them? Wulfric could not in any way imagine it, but everything suggested it was so. He had another question for her that might reveal more.

“How did you come by the seal?”

She looked up from the fire. “Excuse me?”

“The seal of the Order,” Wulfric said. “I saw you with it at the tavern.”

“I know what seal,” said Indra, her tone now as quizzical as Wulfric’s. “I don’t understand what you mean, how did I come by it?”

“That seal is carried only by paladins, by knights of the Order.”

“That is true,” she replied flatly as she looked across the fire at him.

Wulfric regarded her a moment longer, wondering how far she was willing to go.
Fine, let us see
, he thought. “Or by those who have acquired one dishonestly.”

Indra’s eyes widened. “Is that what you are accusing me of?”

“Paladins never travel alone,” Wulfric replied matter-of-factly. “They are none of them women, and certainly none of them children.”

It was all Indra could do not to leap to her feet and kick burning embers at the man. Instead, she set her jaw and said, through clenched teeth, “I am not a child. I am an initiate.”

“An initiate?” said Wulfric, bemused. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” Indra snapped. It was the minimum age at which the Order would accept a new initiate, a paladin-in-training.

Wulfric scrutinized her, dubious. She looked to him younger than that, though what she seemed to lack in physical years she more than made up for with maturity and confidence, so who was he to say? But there was more that did not ring true.

“So, you are out here on your Trial?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Indra. Any initiate, to be accepted into the Order as a full paladin, must complete the Trial: one full year spent in the open country, learning to survive in the wild, to live off the land, and most importantly, to hunt their prey. Before the year’s end, the initiate was to return to the Order with the head of an abomination they had slain. Or not at all.

“Initiates are only accepted at eighteen, and must complete two years of training before they are ready for the Trial,” said Wulfric. “And they never face it alone; always with a group of other initiates and an experienced officer to supervise them.”

Silence. Only the crackling of the flames between them. Indra groped for a response, trying to project outward confidence while wondering how this man could possibly know so much about the Order’s rules and practices. Enough to have led her into this trap. She could not know, of course, that Wulfric had played a part in creating those very rules, he and Edgard together, a decade and a half ago, while they were still hunting Aethelred and planning for what would come after. What seemed now to Wulfric like another life—someone else’s life.

“My father is a senior officer of the Order,” said Indra. “He recognized my potential at a young age and allowed me to be admitted early.” The words spilled out in such a seamless blend of fact and fiction that even she had difficulty separating them.

“The Order is a far smaller force than it once was,” she added, “and no longer accepts new initiates. Last year I was the only one, and so I was permitted to take my Trial alone.” Though her story was laced with what were half-truths at best, it was true enough, and it irked her that this man did not seem to accept it as such.
Because I’m not a man. Because he thinks I’m some stupid girl telling stories
.

Wulfric was giving her more credence than she realized. Though her story seemed a stretch in places, he looked beyond the tale itself and at the teller. There was something to this girl, and the way she spoke and carried herself. Something he had not seen
in many years. It takes a true warrior to recognize another, and though it beggared belief, Wulfric recognized one in the young girl sitting across the fire from him now.

The realization brought with it concern. If she truly was of the Order, why was she here now? Was it coincidence that she had found him, or something else? Could it be that the Order knew of him, of the abomination that hid by day within the body of a man?

Thinking on it, he had reason enough to believe so. He must tread carefully.

“How many months into your Trial are you?” he asked.

“Ten,” Indra replied. There was no point in lying about that. In two more months, if she had not returned with her trophy, she would never be accepted into the Order.

Though the prospect of that stung, acceptance mattered far less to Indra than the trophy itself. That single kill was all she had ever wanted. She would scour the land for the rest of her days if need be, with the Order’s authority or not, until she found an abomination and slew it. Then, perhaps, she could find some kind of lasting peace.

“Not much left to hunt anymore,” said Wulfric, pulling Indra once more from her private thoughts. He was right; the Order had done its job well. It had been some years since the last true sighting of an abomination. Long enough now that tales of them had begun to pass into folklore. For all Wulfric knew, he might be the last that remained.

“No,” said Indra. “Very few. But I think I may be close to one now.”

Wulfric glanced furtively up at her from the fire. What did she mean by that? Was she testing him to see how he would react? But as he studied her expression, he saw no hint of insinuation or accusation. She was not even looking at him now but gazing once more into the flames; if it had been a test, she would surely be watching closely to measure his reaction.

“Oh?” he offered, as casually as he was able.

“There are reports of sheep slaughtered in a field not far from here, two nights ago, and of a farmer savaged and killed just last night,” Indra said. Wulfric relaxed a little. He had read more into her words than she had intended. Though he knew now that it was indeed him she was hunting, she did not know it herself.

“Some of the locals don’t want to believe it, but I am trained to know the signs when I see them, and I see them here,” she said. “An abomination is at large somewhere in this vicinity.” Her eyes met Wulfric’s. “You should be watchful, especially at night. These beasts are nocturnal.”

“Mostly,” said Wulfric, and his eyes went back to the fire, and now it was Indra’s turn to stare at him and wonder exactly how much he knew. Abominations—and, with them, the Order—had been all but absent from the land for enough years now that few commoners still knew the lore. Those who did were usually older, old enough to remember the time when abominations roamed wild and free across the land, killing all they came across, and the Order’s paladins thundered from town to town on armored horseback in pursuit.

But as she studied the man across the fire from her more carefully, Indra began to think he was perhaps not as old as his appearance first suggested. His wild, bedraggled beard and face caked with black grime, and that haunted look in his eyes—more than anything, those
eyes
—gave the impression of a man far older than he actually was. Looking more closely at him now, behind his mask of dirt and matted hair, she saw a man likely not much older than thirty.

That meant he would have been little older than she when those things about which he seemed to possess so much expertise were last common knowledge. It was not beyond reason, but she now harbored a strong suspicion that there was more to this strange wanderer than he had yet told her. In fact, now that she thought of it, he had told her almost nothing at all, not even his
name. And she had answered all of his questions, hadn’t she?
Quid pro quo
.

Her eyes went to the iron chain at the foot of the tree just behind Wulfric. “I was wondering,” she began, hoping to start with something innocuous, and yet so curious. “What is the chain for?”

His eyes flared so brightly that the flames before him almost seemed to flare with them. The folds of his crumpled cloak fell away as he rose to his full height, his shadow looming over Indra where she sat.

The sky had darkened, the sun far lower than it had been, hidden now behind the maze of treetops. There was still at least an hour before dusk and the first stirrings of the beast, Wulfric knew, but more time had passed than he had realized. Certainly more than he had allowed for when he permitted the girl to sit. What had he been thinking?

He had intended to let the girl stay only a brief while, just long enough to assuage his guilt, before sending her on her way again, but his curiosity about her had got the better of him. Even more, the simple pleasure of conversation, of civilized human interaction, lost to him for so long, had led him to forget all the walls he had spent years painstakingly building around himself.

It occurred to him that he had spent more time in the company of this girl than he had with any other soul in all the fifteen years before. How had she beguiled him so, that he had lost all sense of time, all sense of himself?

No matter how. Enough was enough. He had shown her his gratitude, had satisfied his obligation to her, but night was coming, and she needed to be away from here—for her own good more than his. He kicked dirt onto the fire to snuff it out and pointed into the woods from whence Indra had first appeared. “It is time for you to go,” he said.

Indra stood. “I’m sorry, if it was something I—”

“It is nothing you said. I agreed that you might stay a short while. It has been that and more. I thank you for your kindnesses at the crossroads and wish you well. Now go.”

Indra could see that no words would move him. “Thank you for the fire, and for the conversation,” she said. “I’m grateful for it.”

“As am I,” replied Wulfric, and Indra could see in those hollow, ancient eyes of his that he meant it sincerely. This was now a riddle even greater than that of the chain; she could see that he was genuinely sorry to see her go, yet here he was, turning her away. She would have asked him why if she had thought it would do any good.

“Venator, to me.” The hawk leapt from the branch of the tree nearby and fluttered onto her shoulder. Then she saw that Wulfric was now looking beyond her, to the tree line where the clearing ended and the forest beyond it began. She turned to see what had so suddenly caught his attention.

Five men stood at the edge of the clearing, five more emerging from the darkness of the forest to join them. Indra and Wulfric did not recognize most of them, but they both recognized the three who stood at the head of the group. The big barrel-chested one with the broken nose. The one with the blackjacks strapped to his wrists. And the tall one with his arm in a bloodstained sling, pointing at them now with his one good arm.

“Them!” he hissed as he glared at Wulfric and Indra murderously. “That’s them, right there.”

All ten men were armed. Clubs, sticks, knives. One had a sword, the blade worn and chipped, but effective enough. Indra did not know where these seven new men had come from, but from the look of them they were all cut from the same cloth—all born to the same low, cold life of villainy.

The tall one staggered forward a step, and Indra saw that he was drunk. Not just him, but all of them, to varying degrees, judging by their ruddy faces and the way some of them swayed gently where they stood. She reckoned that the three she had trounced at the crossroads had retired to the tavern to nurse their wounds and their pride, and recruited these others as they drifted in for a drink throughout the waning day, and she wondered what kind of story had been told. Certainly not the truth, which would have only made the ringleaders a laughingstock. No, the tall one, the mouth, had concocted some cock-and-bull story, and the ale had done the rest. Now here they were, filled with false courage and spoiling for revenge.

This was both good and bad, Indra thought. Good because the drink would make them even slower and sloppier than they had been at their best. She knew the first three possessed little talent for close combat, and she estimated the others to be no better. The problem was that she might actually have to fight all ten of them.

Were they sober, it would be easier; make a quick example of the first few, and the others likely would see sense and flee. Most men, when push came to shove, were cowards. But alcohol had a way of separating men from their senses and suspending cowardice just long enough to make them truly dangerous. One against ten, even ten unskilled drunks, was odds enough to give Indra pause.