Exile (3 page)

Draken crouched in the darkness beyond the clearing, ignoring his tightening muscles. The forest around them was quiet, too quiet. Where were the birds? The creatures of the night and their prey? For an impossibly long while he waited, joints aching, stomach clenched from hunger. He battled it out with his dry throat, clamping down his jaw until his head ached from the strain of trying not to cough. Ma’Vanni and Khellian, gods of peace and war, slowly rose in the skies. Their light shone on the bundle as it shifted and whimpered again.

The servii on watch glanced toward the prisoner before strolling away from the firelight, lifting his sword belt to get at the laces on his breeches.

Draken released a slow breath and crept forward, savoring the relief in moving again. Quietly but quickly he stole across the clearing, making his way to the sleeping form of the marshal. Draken eased the knife from the sheath, pressed his free hand over the marshal’s mouth while at the same time laying the edge of the blade tight against his throat. The marshal’s eyes opened. For a moment Draken’s vision seemed to blur. A black crescent moon imprinted itself on his mind. He blinked it away.

The marshal’s body went forward in a spasm of strength. Draken pressed the knife harder against his throat, drawing blood. The marshal froze his hand, which had been reaching towards his sword hilt. Draken shook his head and the marshal moved his hand away.

“I think we understand each other,” Draken breathed in Akrasian. He kept a close eye on the marshal’s hands. His muscles coiled at the ready as he waited for the other guard to reappear. It only took a moment.

The servii drew his sword at the sight of Draken holding his incapacitated officer on the ground. Draken let go of the marshal’s mouth and threw his sword well behind them. Then he nicked the knife against the marshal’s skin and lifted his eyebrows at the servii. “Drop the sword.”

“Do as he says, Varin.” The marshal spoke with gruff calm. Draken filed it away. He didn’t spook easily.

The servii gave his superior officer a mutinous frown but tossed his sword aside. It stuck, hilt up, in the soft dirt near the dying fire.

Draken gestured with his chin toward the bundle. “Release the child.”

“Child? That’s what you think it is?” the marshal asked.

Draken tightened the knife under the marshal’s chin. “Order him.”

The marshal sighed. “Go on, Varin. Release the Moonling.”

Draken blinked. A Moonling? Moonlings stole away babies in the night if parents didn’t keep the doors and windows barred. They were creatures from cradle tales.

Varin moved toward the bundle. “Aye, my lord.”

Now that Draken was closer, he could see it better. Wrapped in a length of fabric, grasses and dirt caught in the loose weave, and tied tight with silvery rope, the captive truly was child-sized. Dark curls poked through a gap in the end of the fabric, shining in the light of the fire. The servii untied the rope and whoever was inside leaped from the binding like a sprung coil.

Draken caught a glimpse: round face, full cheeks, serious dark eyes, a shock of curls about the shoulders, and a lithe, naked body the color of brownbark tea. She couldn’t have been four feet tall. Before he blinked she was gone. If he’d had a hand free, he’d have been scratching his head in confusion. She was no child. He’d caught sight of well-defined breasts. But she was so small.

They all stared in the direction in which the prisoner had gone.

“You just released a dangerous enemy of the realm,” the marshal said in wry tone, snapping Draken’s attention back to the matter at hand.

Dangerous. Right. From a such tiny thing.

“The rope.” Draken jerked his chin and gave the servii a withering look. “Come over here and tie him. If you try anything against me, I’ll slit his throat.”

He drew another bead of blood to punctuate the point and the marshal grunted under his grip. Draken twisted him onto his side, keeping up steady pressure on the knife, and the soldier bound the marshal’s hands behind his back, as well as his ankles. The servii scowled and muttered under his breath while doing so, casting sidewise glares at Draken.

Draken waved Varin away. He backed from Draken slowly, and stopped after ten cautious steps. Keeping the knife on the marshal’s throat, Draken tested the knots and kept an eye on the servii. Tight enough. Then he advanced on the still-free soldier, stopping to pick up more rope from the bundle.

A knife whipped into the soldier’s hand. Khellian’s balls! Draken didn’t want to kill either of them. He only meant to make amends to Zozia by freeing the abused childling, and if he was honest with himself steal some food and a horse. The swords were too far away to be of use but that was all right. His training in his cousin’s navy had made him proficient with bows, not swords, but the Black Guard had given him plenty of experience with close-in wet work.

They circled slowly, warily taking stock of one another. The servii lunged. Stinging pain, not deep, but the servii had bloodied him on his first try. No point in drawing this out. Before they circled another step, Draken leapt on him. The servii thrust out, twisting his aim slightly to find Draken’s heart. Draken ducked the blow, but let his arm strike upward, stabbing true into the soldier’s throat and jerking the knife back. Blood jutted out, black against the silver moonlight. The servii staggered and fell back. He scrabbled at the wound as he writhed in the dried leaves and dirt. But it was too late.

Draken stood over him, riding a nauseating wave of exhaustion, staring into the servii’s eyes as he fought death. Behind him, the marshal shouted, writhing in his bindings. Draken turned to look at him as the servii’s struggles ebbed.

The marshal’s refined features tightened into hate. “It seems the realm has a fresh enemy.”

“Not so fresh,” Draken replied. He met those black eyes, feeling empty and soulless as the servii’s blood poured out on the ground. It smelled of salt and churned the hunger in his gut into something sickening. This fight hadn’t eased his debt to the gods.

Then he shook himself into action. He cleaned his knife on the dead man’s leg and buckled the servii’s belt around his own waist. He collected food, the flasks, and a green cloak for warmth, packed his ill-gotten goods into a saddlebag, and began saddling the larger of the two horses, a mare.

The marshal stared at him all the while, wrath tearing all culture from his narrow features and leaving something feral in its place. Draken had no doubt his anger would become a well-kindled hatred. But the marshal spoke again.

“Now you steal from us? Bear you no shame under the gaze of the Seven Eyes?”

Father would have killed him without hesitation, Draken thought, suppressing a shiver. Nothing like putting knives into people to bring back memories of a childhood gone sour. The choice between doing the right thing and doing the easy thing was never an
easy
choice.

The bay mare seemed sound and agreeable. She stood still while he tightened the girth on her saddle and mounted. All the while, he considered killing the marshal. Maybe he should spare Varin a burial, or at least a prayer. He looked back at the dead servii.

Who was gone.

Every bit of air fled his lungs.

He urged the horse over to the tree where the man had died. The body had left an impression in the softened soil and moonlight illuminated the significant pool of blood. Draken looked around. He’d watched the man die. But there was no sign of him.

“Where is he?” he asked.

The marshal watched with a cruel, silent smile as Draken rode around the clearing and canvassed the nearby woods. He found nothing and the moons were dropping back into the Palace of the Gods to sleep for the day. He couldn’t spare another moment. With one last glance toward the marshal, he turned the horse away from the clearing. Even after he knew he was much too far away to be seen, he couldn’t shake the feeling of those lined eyes on his back.

Draken huddled in his cloak as the horse walked. The moonless moments before dawn passed slowly, silently, as if the world held its breath before the absolving wash of sun. So when a scream pierced the silence, the mare bolted so quickly he barely reined her in, his whole body stiff and jarring against her movements. She quivered beneath him, ears flat, nostrils huffing, tail twitching, neck muscles stiff under his palm.

The penetrating echo throbbed through Draken’s body, searing his veins like poison. A waft of blood fouled the air, reminding him how his house had smelled when he found Lesle. Familiar grief started to fill his soul, but this time it was like a physical thing, burrowing deep into his heart. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air, trying to displace it, but it gave no quarter. The grief squeezed his heart tightly and then released, as if to show Draken its power. The strain of fighting it left him shaking and gasping, huddled over the horse’s neck.

He’d been devastated by Lesle’s death, caught in a bewildering seastorm of accusations and abuse, trial and banishment. But this fresh grief took hold of him like a physical creature, a worm snaking inside, eating up the last of what was good and right and leaving behind only hatred and bitterness. It ached in him, gripped his muscles and chilled his marrow.

“Blessed Ma’Vanni, what is happening to me?” he gasped.

The horse turned her head to study the lunatic on her back with one eye.

Draken’s head started to fog. Cold, so cold. Pain and grief spun through Draken and tumbled him to the ground. He hit the dirt with a thud, on his hands and knees. Brambles scraped his face like tiny daggers. The sting brought him back for a breath, but grief battled back his awareness. It was all he knew, twisting hatred and bitterness bestowed by Lesle’s death.

He had to get rid of it, get it out. Dig it out with the knife, if it came to it. He scrabbled for the blade on his belt and lifted it to his throat. The tranquility of control radiated from the cold metal. He still had that much power. He could stop this thing. The knife pressed deeper into his skin—

A sharp voice cut through the night. “Free him at once, wicked bane. I am Mance and I command you.”

Draken froze beneath the voice, felt something wrench within him. The grief loosened its grip on his heart, slipped lower, clinging to his cramping bowels.

“Begone, foul spirit, back to Eidola with you.”

Draken’s blade fell to the brambles. His guts writhed and clenched as he vomited up a glowing, filmy mist that shot away through the trees. He sank back on his haunches and looked up, seeking his savior.

Gloved hands reached out for him. He squinted, saw the shadow of the man who owned the hands. Light glared in his eyes, emanating from one of the silvery, trembling trees. The stranger gripped him and dragged him across the low bracken to the bare dirt surrounding the shimmering trunk.

Chapter Three

"T
hat’s it. You’re your own man again.”

Draken opened his eyes. A pale, silvery figure squatted a few feet from him. A faded gray cloak puddled around the figure’s heels, and a cool hand rested on Draken’s forehead. Draken’s heart thumped an alarm, especially considering the silvery figure was armed with a longbow and a heavy quiver of gray-fletched arrows. The newcomer was smiling, however. Also, he was the most spectacularly beautiful person Draken had ever seen.

His skin glowed pale silver as moonwrought lit by Sohalia moons. His eyes were set wide and well-placed within a slanted bone structure. The only incongruous feature was a black tattoo of a crescent moon on the man’s pale forehead, taking on the jarring appearance of a third eye. Draken’s eyes narrowed. He’d heard of dangerous mage sects which bore such tattoos. His eyes flicked from the figure’s face to the bow on his back .

He noticed Draken looking at the bow, and laid it on the ground. “I am not going to hurt you.”

“You speak Monoean,” Draken husked out, shoving himself up to a sit.

The mage tipped his head. “No. But you do, and so I shall.”

Draken frowned. But before he could ask him to repeat himself, the man leaned forward and stuck out his narrow hand, clad in a smooth glove baring his fingertips. His silver hair slipped over his shoulder like an incandescent shawl.

“I am Osias,” he said. “Welcome to Akrasia.”

Draken hesitated. His hand was filthy, crusted with the blood of the servii he had killed.

Osias wasn’t affronted; indeed, he seemed most anxious to please. “Have I done wrong? Do Monoeans not grip each others’ hands in greeting?”

Draken nodded and, after another hesitation, accepted the outstretched hand. “Draken vae Khellian,” he said.

“It is an honor to know you, Draken vae Khellian. A noble name for a warrior. Godlike for the godly.”

Draken fought the hysterical urge to laugh. Vae combined with the name of a patron god signified illegitimacy in Monoea. Maybe things were different here, though. “How do you know I’m a warrior?”

“You bear the war-god’s name, do you not?” Osias smiled and gave a little shake of his head. “Your fingers are calloused from long years with the bowstring, as are mine. And you have the bearing of one who can fight.”

Draken nodded.

Osias sat back and wrapped one arm around his knees. “You’re Monoean, aye, but your complexion marks you Brînian.”

Draken’s father had been a Brînian slave in the Monoean Royal House, and Draken was the get of his pairing with a lusty cousin of the King. Shamed and shunned from court, the mother had left the baby Drae in his slave-father’s care with a future as body slave, maybe even for the King. But before he’d reached ten, Draken’s cousin had ascended the throne of Monoea and outlawed the slave trade. Thus freed, Drae’s father had become a mercenary; he had no use for a young son. The King took pity on his young bastard cousin and made provisions for his entry into the Navy. But Osias didn’t need to know all that.

“My father was Brînian,” was all he said.

Osias shrugged. “Ah. Well. Best claim it, then. You look fullblood enough and being sundry will only get you killed or enslaved. As the Gadye say, small secrets won’t harm a soul.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Setia will approve, I should think.”