Ink Mage (11 page)

“No,” said one of the prostitutes, the big redhead. “Tell us again about falling off the horse at the front gate. I like a good laugh.”

All the whores gathered around laughed at that. They seemed eager to laugh, needed it.

This room in the brothel looked like any other tavern he’d ever patronized: rough wooden tables, a long bar along one wall and a big roaring fireplace. Another place where the establishment could separate clients from their coin while they waited for their turn with one of the women.

Tosh titled the flagon back, drained the beer, wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand and belched. “Ladies, ladies, never fear. I will give a full account again for any latecomers. Only too happy to share my adventures with such gracious hosts.” He shrugged, smiled sheepishly. “But it is thirsty work.”

Another cold flagon appeared instantly on the table in front of him.

Tosh drank deeply, wondering if he were going to wake up and find out this was all a dream. The little girl was the daughter of one of the whores—which one again? The faces and names were beginning to blur, but he thought the little girl was the daughter of the skinny blonde with the enormous blue eyes. They fed him, let him wash and change out of his muddy, urine-soaked clothes. But it was more than simple hospitality.

The women of the Wounded Bird were treating Tosh like he was some kind of hero.

One might not think of whores as patriotic, but they were every bit as much citizens of Klaar as was Tosh, and they’d watched furtively through the cracks in shuttered windows as the Perranese troops had swept through Backgate. Many of the fallen were regular customers of the girls of the Wounded Bird, men they had known and serviced for years. Helpless women save for the two enormous bruisers with cudgels Tosh had met earlier. They were a pair of brothers and served as the brothel’s bouncers. He’d forgotten their names as well.

He drank half the beer in a gulp.

So the Perranese were not loved at The Wounded Bird. In the minds of the prostitutes, Tosh’s desperate act of self-defense against a lone Perranese warrior who’d merely wanted to relieve himself was nothing less than a defense of the honor of Backgate itself. Or at least that’s how it seemed to Tosh, the way the women were fussing over him. It may simply have been that the brothel was empty of patrons, many of whom now lay dead in the streets. And now here was Tosh, a soldier of Klaar, fighting for their pride.

Sort of.

He decided to retell the bit about falling off the horse. That seemed to be a crowd-pleaser, and he launched into it with the enthusiasm of a carnival jester. He exaggerated his clumsiness this time, the terror of the incident almost forgotten after four flagons of beer. When he told about crawling along the ground after the horse had thrown him, he pantomimed covering his head with his arms, his ass sticking high in the air as he scooted along. The woman clapped and laughed.

Another mug of beer appeared.

During a lull in the laughter, a lean, hawkish brunette with a shawl wrapped around herself leaned in and asked, “Did you happen to pass the guard station on Temple Street?”

The others turned to her, and she lowered her head, embarrassed. “My … my brother is posted there.”

Then he’s dead
. “I’m sorry. I didn’t pass Temple Street.”

That started them all talking at once.

“Did you see Tailor’s Row? My uncle—”

“My sister lives in East Side—”

“Was Boar’s Head hit hard? I have friends who—”

“My aunt is a maid in one of the manor houses on High Point—”

“My father—”

“My cousin—”

“My priest –”

“Okay, that’s enough,” said the blonde whom Tosh had identified as the little girl’s mother. “Let the poor man be.”

Tosh was grateful. Reality had come crashing back down on him, the earlier whimsy obliterated. He felt suddenly exhausted. He sipped the last of the beer slowly. “I’m sorry, ladies. I guess I don’t really know too much.”

“I just wonder if they’ll shut us down.” The brunette pulled the shawl tighter around her. “They’ll get around to us sooner or later.”

“They won’t,” the blonde said. “Armies need brothels. Even foreign savages.”

“Don’t know if I like the idea of that,” spoke up a chubby one with frizzy hair. “Men folk from strange lands might have odd … needs. All perverted like.”

“What’s it matter which sweaty bastard is riding you?” said the red head. “Long as he pays up.”

That set off everyone talking at once again, speculating about living under Perranese rule and giving detailed accounts of just exactly what some men expected for their money, which made Tosh squirm in his seat. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into the face of the blonde.

“You must be tired.”

“Yes.”

“Darshia will show you to a room,” she said. “You can rest. You’ve earned it.”

The red-haired woman lead him away from the others, down a dim hallway.
Darshia, the redhead’s name is Darshia
.

She opened a door and gestured him inside.

The room was small but clean, a double bed with a small nightstand and a whale oil lamp next to it. He pulled off his boots, thought about removing the rest of his clothes, decided he didn’t have the energy and fell face first onto the bed. It was soft. Fresh sheets. He heard the door click shut, raised himself on one elbow and turned to look.

Darshia was still there.

Tosh raised an eyebrow. “Uh …”

She reached behind her back, untied her dress. “You didn’t think The Wounded Bird’s hospitality was limited to food and drink, did you?”

“I … uh …”

She let the dress fall. Naked. Darshia’s skin was impossibly white, like fresh snowfall, nipples bright as raspberries. She pulled her coppery hair loose and it fell in waves past her shoulders. The red patch between her legs had been cropped into a narrow strip.

The less-exhausted parts of Tosh’s anatomy immediately rose to the occasion.

Darshia climbed onto the bed, straddled him. His hands immediately went to her plush backside. She leaned toward the small table next to the bed, and one of her pendulous breasts brushed Tosh’s face. He went dizzy. She blew out the lamp.

In the total darkness, he felt fingers tugging at his belt.

“Just relax,” Darshia whispered. “Let me do all the work.”

*  *  *

Some hours later, Tosh felt soft hands shake him roughly by the shoulders.

“Wake up! Hurry!” Darshia’s voice, a frantic whisper.

Tosh tangled naked in the sheets. It took him a moment to remember where he was. Ah, yes, lovely, lovely Darshia and her talented hands and amazing mouth and soft, creamy—

“Get up! Now!”

“A moment, my love,” Tosh mumbled. “I can be ready for you in a moment, I promise.” The woman was hungry for more? Well, who was Tosh to refuse a lady?

“Not
that
, idiot. Wake up.”

It donned on Tosh that something untoward was afoot.

He sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes. “What’s going on?”

She shoved his clothes into his hands. “The Perranese are here.”

He stood abruptly, attempted to put on his pants.

“No time.” She grabbed his arm, dragged him to a small closet and opened the door.

“Don’t you think they’ll look in the closet?”

She ignored him, knelt and pried up the floorboards inside the closet. There was a ladder underneath, leading down into darkness. “Get in.”

“Where does that—”

“Get in!”

He got in.

Hear heard Darshia replacing the floorboards overhead as he descended into darkness, fumbling to keep hold of his clothes and boots. Ten seconds later, the ladder ran out, his foot dangling in midair. The floor might have been two inches below or fifty feet.

Tosh was still trying to decide what to do next when strong hands grabbed him roughly from behind, another hairy paw clamping down over his mouth.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Rina watched the snow devils, appraising them deliberately even as they bore down on her, snarling, from the steep slope to the side and up the stone steps in front of her. She understood how fast they were moving, closing quickly, a deadly and efficient hunter pack.

But she watched them in slow motion—the tufts of hair curving out and up from their foreheads like horns which earned them the devil name. The flat, apelike faces, curved tusks, long arms and gangly legs propelling them through the snow. Their high-pitched wails echoed through the valley.

The lead snow devil, the bull, leapt for her.

She was already spinning, cutting it in half across the chest, blood spraying in a fine mist. Rina came around again to catch the second one at the neck, its head popping off in a fountain of gore.

The third understood in some animal way that this prey was not as easy as it had first seemed and hesitated, thought about retreating even as the point of Kork’s sword entered its chest and came out the back in a wet, bloody splatter. To Rina, the Fyrian’s sword felt like an extension of her own body—natural, easy. It was her sword now.

She withdrew it from the snow devil’s body just in time to wheel on the two coming down the slope.

Rina laughed. In the last few hours, events had given her many reasons to cry, but she set aside those thoughts until later and delighted at the ease with which she had dispatched the snow devils.

A sword through the throat. She withdrew it in a spray of blood, swung at a hairy paw reaching for her, severed it, brought the blade around to behead the beast.

The skirmish had ended before it had begun, the snow devils in a bloody semicircle around her, a scattering of limbs, intestines, blood. The spirit still hummed along her limbs. Rina held the sword over her head, ready for the next wave of foes.

None came.

She lowered the weapon slowly. She backtracked a few paces to where she’d dropped the cloak, retrieved it, wrapped it around her shoulders. She didn’t feel the cold but understood it would bite her eventually when she released the hold on the spirit within her. There would be fatigue, an eventual price to pay. But not yet.

First she needed to make it down the mountain, find shelter in one of the valleys below Klaar.

Rina hiked effortlessly. An hour took her down the stone steps. Another hour took her within the shadow of the city, and then into the forest beyond. If she had her bearings right, there was a lake to the south and an inhabited area ahead of her. She soon she found herself trudging into a small village. The snow was coming heavily again, filling in her tracks a few yards after she’d made them. A large barn to her right drew her attention. Shelter.

She entered, closed the door behind her. She noted warmth. Two cows, three goats, five pigs.

There was a pile of dry hay at the far end of the barn. Rina burrowed into it, wrapped the cloak around her as she curled into a tight ball, and released her hold on the spirit.

The world crashed down upon her.

Physically at first. Her shoulders screamed hot agony, knees and ankles burning. Even in the shelter of the barn, the cold was bitter. She shivered violently, teeth chattering. Every muscle protested.

But the physical hurt was nothing compared to the wave of emotion that slammed her square in the chest. She put her arms over her face, sobs wracking her body. She cried endlessly for her mother and father. For Kork. Everyone Rina loved—who had loved her—was dead. Her world lay in ruin.

She cried, pain and heartache blurring into an ongoing, gray misery until utter exhaustion at last pulled her into a bottomless black well of sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Alem had immediately turned off the road, spurring the gelding through the forest. He didn’t want to meet Perranese troops coming from the other direction. But to shoot the gap down to the lower valley, there was no option but the road. He sat astride the horse a moment in the trees about fifty yards from the road’s edge, tilted his head, listened.

Stillness. Calm. Quiet.

The horse clop-crunched through the snow and out onto the road. All clear.

He walked the horse down slowly, and two hours later the lower valley spread wide in front of him, the village of Crossroads already in sight.  It was one of Klaar’s larger villages, with about forty small but well-kept dwellings and a tavern and attached stable that attended to travelers and their horses. The tallest building in the center of the village was both the town hall and the Temple of Dumo.

The village was named for the self-evident fact that it clustered around a major crossroads in Klaar. If Alem kept riding west, the road would take him into the wide world of Helva. The road curving north went to fur-trapping territory and ended eventually at Ferrigan’s Tower. The road south went through the scattered lowland villages and curved distantly around the mountains, turning into the Small Road which led up to Klaar’s back gate.

Alem rode through the village and took the road south. He looked and listened but detected no sign of life. Most of the villagers would have evacuated to the city, and any who stayed behind would have been frightened off by the Perranese army marching down the northern road.

He followed the track south out of the village for a half mile then turned off onto a small path; it was almost unnoticed under fresh snow, but Alem had walked it many times. He followed it into the forest, walking the gelding slowly. An hour later the snow-crusted pines thinned into a clearing, a small, frozen lake icy blue in front of him. Since the body of water was called Lake Hammish, the village perched on its shore was also called Hammish.

For the first time ever, it occurred to Alem that the Klaarian method of naming things tended toward the direct and obvious. He made a note to be more observant in the future.

Hammish was much smaller than Crossroads: nine cabins spread along the shoreline, a score of small wooden boats pulled up on the dark sand. Eight of the nine cabins housed fishing families, who earned a living off the big tiger gars that lurked in the lake’s depths.

Alem reined in the horse and dismounted in front of the ninth cabin.