Bloodstone (8 page)

The splashing ceased. A low rumble broke the silence, as if dozens of clubs drummed against tree trunks. Despite his lethargy, he sat up.

Two naked spars rose gray and ghostly out of the mist, looming above the giant boats.

Keirith staggered up the slope toward home, screaming a warning. “Raiders!”

I
N HIS DREAM, he heard Keirith shouting something, but he couldn’t make out the words. Only when he heard answering shouts did Darak realize he wasn’t dreaming.

“Griane. Wake up.”

He flung back the furs and groped for his breeches. Griane sat up, clutching the wolfskin to her breasts. Urkiat was already reaching for his quiver and bow.

“What’s happening?” Faelia asked, her face groggy with sleep.

Before he could answer, Keirith appeared in the doorway, breathless and disheveled. “Raiders. On the beach. Two boats.”

Griane’s eyes locked with his. Then she snatched up her tunic and pulled it over her head.

“The forest,” he told her.

He strapped on his belt, the sheathed dagger bouncing against his thigh as he grabbed the ax. When Keirith bent to retrieve his quiver and bow from beside his pallet, Darak said, “Go with them.”

“I’m staying with you.”

“I said—”

“I’m a man now. That’s what you said last night.”

The words were a stark reminder of all the other things he had said and had failed to say and had no time to say now. “All the more reason to go with them. Protect them.”

“I’ve got my sling,” Faelia said.

“Nay! Just run.”

“Stay or go,” Urkiat said. “Don’t waste time arguing.”

Griane herded the younger ones to the doorway. Urkiat peered outside and nodded. She looked back at him, her face stricken. “Lisula.”

“Ennit will go.” Darak prayed the raiders would be too intent on the pickings in the village to notice the birthing hut.

She nodded, her eyes huge in her narrow face. For a heartbeat, they stood there: his wife, his children. Then they fled.

“A spear.”

He heard Urkiat’s words, but all he could do was stare after his family.

“A spear, Darak. Arrows will be useless up close. And their swords are twice the length of our daggers.”

Keirith handed the hunting spear to Urkiat and grabbed the smaller two-pronged one the boys used for fishing. Darak hefted the ax. “Tie it to my wrist, Keirith. Use Callie’s belt.”

Keirith bound the ax handle to Darak’s wrist with the narrow strip of braided leather. Such beautiful hands, despite the scraped knuckles—the fingers clever and quick like Griane’s, long and slender like Tinnean’s. Nothing of him in those hands, except maybe the dirt under the fingernails.

“Can you see them, Urkiat?”

“Not yet.” He left off peering out the doorway to glance back at them. “Hurry up.”

“I’m trying,” Keirith muttered.

“You’re doing fine, son.”

Keirith’s eyes met his, then returned to his task. Darak tested the bindings and nodded. He’d have less freedom of movement, but at least it diminished the risk that the first blow would send the ax flying out of his hand.

He paused long enough to gaze around his home for what might be the last time, then ducked outside. Griane and the children had already vanished into the mist. Ghostly figures of women raced past, children clinging to their hands, screaming babes clutched to their breasts, all racing for the fields and the safety of the forest beyond. Boys lingered to help the old folks who followed slowly, so slowly in their wake. Men poured out of the nearest huts, some in breeches, others wearing nothing but their belts and daggers. Somewhere in the mist, he heard Nionik frantically shouting for the men to cover the women’s retreat, but those he could see were already running toward the lake, clutching whatever weapons came to hand: spears, axes, hoes, peat cutters.

Sanok stumbled out of the next hut, looking dazed. Alada flung a mantle around her father’s shoulders. When Darak sprinted toward them, Sanok peered up at him as if he were a stranger.

“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice querulous with shock. “I thought they only came in the autumn.”

Darak seized his arm. Together, he and Alada half-dragged the old man through the village. They had just made it to the edge of the circled huts when they heard a deep-throated roar, like the howl of a giant beast. It crescendoed to an unnatural ululating shriek that sent shivers crawling down Darak’s spine. The sudden silence that followed was even worse.

For a moment, the world seemed to stop, frozen in anticipation and terror. Then the beast roared again, and this time it was everywhere.

Griane and the children stumbled through the furrows in the newly plowed earth. When they heard that awful roar, Callie whimpered once. She hissed at him, and he choked back a sob. After that, he didn’t make a sound; even when he fell and she and Faelia yanked him to his feet, her brave little boy gave only the smallest gasp, quickly stifled. But when she heard the women’s screams, even Griane moaned.

She veered north—what she thought must be north; the familiar landmarks were lost in the mist. The raiders might have spread out from the lakeshore, but surely they couldn’t have encircled the village already.

She tripped over a rock and went down hard, dragging Callie with her. She gave him a quick kiss as she pulled him to his feet. Pain lanced through her right knee at every step, but fear drove her on. If they could make the higher ground north of the village, they would find plenty of hiding places among the trees and scrub. The raiders would never search so far afield.

As the ground rose, the pain in her knee slowed her to a lurching trot. She stumbled and careened into a boulder. Stunned, she clung to it until Faelia’s urgent tug forced her to move again.

The mist thinned as they climbed. If it was easier to pick their way through the clumps of gorse, it also made them clear targets. Clinging to rocks and scraggly bushes, they clawed their way up the slope.

Behind them, Griane heard a terrified shriek. Callie screamed and Faelia immediately clapped her hand over his mouth. Griane whirled around to see a woman sliding to the ground as slow and loose-limbed as if she were dancing. Her gray hair swirled around her, obscuring her face, but it could not hide the blood pouring down the back of her tunic.

She dragged her gaze from the woman’s body to find the raider watching them.

“Run.” Although she screamed the word in her mind, only a hoarse whisper emerged.

The raider stood there, the bloodstained dagger—longer than her forearm—resting against his thigh. And then he smiled.

Rage churned in her belly, overriding the terror, fury that this man could enjoy their fear and savor the anticipation of killing them.

Still smiling, the raider started up the slope.

“Your sling. Faelia, your sling.”

Her daughter just stood there, watching the raider stalk toward them. Griane spun Faelia around, fingers fumbling with the leather straps looped through her daughter’s belt. Only when she ripped it free did Faelia come out of her daze.

“Take Callie and run,” Griane told her.

Instead, Faelia dropped to her knees, scrabbling in the loose earth. Before Griane could shout at her to get her brother to safety, Faelia rose, a stone clenched in her fist.

It had been fifteen years since Griane had used a sling. Faelia brought down game nearly every day. She passed the sling to her daughter and unsheathed her dagger.

As Faelia slipped the stone into the leather pouch, the raider’s pace quickened. One shot—that’s all she would have time for. If she missed, Griane would have to attack him with her dagger and hope that she could steal enough time for the children to escape.

Faelia planted her bare feet and swung the sling in a slow circle over her head. The raider’s smile vanished and he broke into a trot. The sling whirled faster, Faelia’s slender body swaying with the rhythm.

A dozen steps and he’d be on them. She could see the sweat gleaming on his forehead, the bloodstains spattering his cheeks.

Out of the corner of her eye, Griane saw Faelia’s body flow forward in the smooth, powerful release Darak had taught her. She could barely follow the stone’s flight. She only heard the hollow crack as it struck the raider’s forehead, saw his brief look of shock as he staggered backward. He tumbled down the slope, rolling over and over before he slid into a boulder.

For a long moment, they stared at his motionless body, one arm outflung as if reaching for them.

“Is he dead?” Callie whispered.

“I think so,” Griane replied. “But he might only be stunned.”

“I hope he’s dead.”

“So do I.”

Griane stole a look at Faelia. Her daughter was as motionless as the raider, her eyes huge and glittering in her white face.

“Mam?” Callie said in the same whisper.

“What?”

“I think I pissed myself.”

For the first time, she noticed the stain on his tunic.

Faelia giggled.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“It doesn’t matter, love.”

Faelia’s giggle became a shriek. Her face crumpled, wild laughter changing to hysterical sobs. Griane pulled her daughter into her arms. She couldn’t remember the last time Faelia had permitted such an embrace, but now her daughter clung to her, her body shaking.

Darak barely had time to shove Sanok and Alada inside the hut before the raiders came screaming out of the mist. Two went down, clutching the shafts of the arrows embedded in their chests. The others never slowed.

An arrow hissed past, bouncing harmlessly off the stone wall of the hut. Keirith and Urkiat took down two more and then the raiders were on them. Darak sidestepped the first thrust, twisting to hack at his attacker’s arm with his ax. Screaming, the raider lurched sideways, blood spurting from his severed wrist.

A sword slashed downward. Darak ducked under it and drove the head of his ax into the man’s belly. The raider doubled over, his face so close that Darak felt the spray of his spit. As he raised the ax for another blow, the raider seized the haft. Darak stared up into eyes as dark as a winter night. Yellow teeth flashed. Trapped, Darak rammed his forehead into his attacker’s, stunning them both. The raider stumbled back, knocking over a comrade who was swinging a net. They fell, tangled together, but another dodged their struggling bodies and veered toward Darak.

The shock of Keirith’s attack, the fruitless search, the gut-churning fear for his wife and children . . . all coalesced into the bloodlust that flooded his legs and burned up through his belly and chest to pour out of his mouth in a full-throated bellow of defiance.