Servant of a Dark God (2 page)

“Lose something?” Talen asked.

“Where are my new bowstrings?” Ke said.

“Strange,” said Talen. “All sorts of things going missing today.” He tsked. “What a negligent bunch we must be.”

It took River about two seconds to catch on. “I want my honey,” she said.

“I want my trousers,” said Talen.

Ke looked up from his sack. “You took my strings?”

“You took my trousers.”

“What would I want with those?” asked Ke.

“What would I want with your bowstrings? They don’t fit my bow.”

River put her hands on her hips. “That honey has a special—”

“Oh, don’t act like you’re offended for the dyer,” Talen said and began to work his way toward the door.

“Who said anything about him?” River asked. “That honey’s imbued with vitality. Now, hand it over.”

“Pants first,” said Talen. He continued to move until he stood between them and the doorway.

Ke narrowed his eyes.

River cocked her head, threatening a fight. She tightened the yellow sash she used as a belt. This is what she did when she wanted to run. The two of them exchanged an evil glance, and Talen knew if he sat where he was a moment more, they’d have him.

“Trousers!” he demanded. Then he dashed out of the house in his bare feet and underwear and into the yard.

To his surprise, Talen found Nettle, his cousin, opening the door to the smokehouse to get something to eat. He was supposed to be on a patrol with his Father, but Talen didn’t care what he was supposed to be doing. He was here now, and could even the odds in this fight.

Ke and River charged out of the house hard on Talen’s heels. At this point Talen was most worried about River. He darted left, and thanked his instincts. A short length of firewood flew past him. River, in addition to being a healer, was a thrower, deadly with spoons, pots, and sticks at twenty yards. She could whip off a wooden garden clog and fling it with ferocious aim at your head before you’d even taken five steps. Talen knew: he had the bumps to prove it.

Talen ran past Nettle. “Trip them!” he said.

Nettle, the Mokaddian traitor, did no such thing. He cut a link from one of the hanging sausage chains, took a fat bite, and stood back to enjoy the show.

Talen raced toward the woods beyond, but River had the angle on him and sprinted to cut him off. Thank the Six she hadn’t had time to pick up anything but a stick. Talen veered toward the garden.

“Pick up the pace,” Nettle called out. “They’re gaining on you.”

“Coward!” Talen yelled back. He dashed around the garden fence, turned to avoid Ke, ran back toward the house, and found himself boxed in between the midden and the barn.

He had two choices. He could make a run at one of his dear siblings and hope to blow by, or he could go up the old walnut tree and hope they would stay at the bottom and do nothing more than shout insults and threats up at him.

He wouldn’t get by Ke and his long arms. Talen had enough room to get by River, but she was daring him, grinning at him to just try.

He made his decision.

Da had fashioned a wooden slab bench and put it next to the trunk of the giant walnut tree. Talen ran for the bench. When he was close enough, he took one running step to the bench then another to an old knob sticking out about five feet up the trunk. He followed the momentum upward, grabbed a branch, pulled himself up, and stood on a fat arm of the tree well out of the reach of his brother and sister.

“That’s about the dumbest place you could have chosen,” said Ke.

Talen climbed a few branches higher and looked down at the two of them. “The joke’s up.”

“We don’t have your hog-worn trousers,” said Ke. “You’re the one who loses things on a regular basis.”

Talen did not lose things on a regular basis.

He saw Ke bend over and pick up a number of rocks. “You come out of that tree or I’ll knock you out,” said Ke.

“No,” said Talen. “I think you need to give up your childish games.”

But Ke threw a rock instead.

Talen ducked. The rock flew straight and true and would have made a pretty bruise, but a small branch stood in the way and sent the rock wide. Goh, he needed to put more branches between him and those rocks, so Talen climbed until the branches were no bigger than his thumb.

He couldn’t see Ke or River from this height. Nettle stood over by the well, finishing his sausage, and using one hand to shade his eyes from the sun.

“You smelly bum,” Talen called down to him. “Do something!”

“Jump!” shouted Nettle. “He’s coming up.”

Talen heard the leaves rustling below as someone ascended toward him.

Nettle was a fine one to stand there and call out instructions. Talen must have been at least forty feet up in the air. The barn roof would have been perfect had it not been thirty feet away. There was nothing else around him but hard ground below. He had nowhere to go. He could not simply jump out of the tree at this height.

Ke was right—running up this tree had been idotic.

He caught a glimpse of Ke climbing below him and to the left.

Maybe he could get around him. Talen did not want to be at his mercy in the tree. He climbed down toward Ke. He would get close, then move to the other side and away.

“I’m going to give you one last chance,” said Ke. He looked up at Talen with that happy look that said Talen was a rabbit and he was a dog that had just found his next meal. He was maybe only six feet away.

Talen scuffed the branch and sent small particles of bark down into Ke’s face.

Ke ducked, and Talen made his move. All he needed to do was get to a branch four feet below him and to the right. It would be a quick climb from there to the ground.

He swung down, but Ke had been expecting the move, and suddenly he was grabbing at Talen’s leg.

Talen moved out on his branch. Ke followed. Talen jumped for another branch. He grabbed it with both hands, pulled himself upward, but before he could get a leg up, the branch cracked and swung him to the side.

It was dead and rotted.

Talen looked for something else to grab, but he couldn’t see anything close; then the branch popped again and broke entirely from the tree.

Talen reached out, grabbing for anything, but it was too late, and then he was falling headfirst. He yelled. He saw Ke’s face then a wide-open space beyond with nothing between him and the ground but a branch that would most assuredly break his back.

STAG HOME

I

f this fall lamed Talen, he’d be good for nothing but the war weaves. An image of him at the wizard’s altar in Whitecliff flashed in his mind, the Divine draining his Fire away, the essence that fueled the days of his life, so it could be used by a better vessel—by a dreadman. The dreadman would give Talen homage for the gift, but Talen didn’t want any homage.

He yelled, a long “
Nooooooo
!”

A stick poked Talen’s eye. Then his ankle caught, and Talen swung into the center of the tree and smacked his head.

Ke grunted. “Grab a branch,” he said.

Talen looked up. It felt like a piece of bark the size of his thumbnail was stuck in his eye; he could barely see, but it was clear that his ankle was caught not in a fork of two branches, but in Ke’s iron grip. Ke bent over a branch holding on to Talen’s ankle, his face set in determination.

“You’re slipping,” he said.

Talen twisted around and finally found a branch. He grasped it with both hands. “I’ve got it. Let go.”

But Ke did not let go. He repositioned his grip and said, “You’ll hang here until you tell us where you’ve hidden our stuff.”

Talen’s eye ran like a river. “What about my trousers?”

“Goh,” said Ke. “If I come across your trousers I’m going to burn them. Then you’ll have something to yell about.”

“Hoy! What’s going on here?” It was Da, standing at the base of the tree.

“They’ve taken my work trousers,” said Talen.

“Is that so?” Da asked Ke.

Talen still hung mostly upside down, the blood rushing to his head.

“It is not,” said Ke.

“You three,” Da said. “Today I come out of the barn to find one of you hanging naked in a tree. What am I going to find tomorrow? Get down. Both of you.”

Ke looked down at Talen. “You’re lucky.” Then he flung Talen’s legs away.

Talen clutched the branch. His body swung around like a festival acrobat’s. His grip on the branch slid. Then he reached out with one foot and caught another branch to stand on.

Talen steadied himself. When he’d finally cleared his eye enough to see, Ke stood next to him. “You should thank me for saving your neck.”

“You’re the one that put me here,” Talen said.

“I’m the one who didn’t murder you,” he said, and then descended to the ground.

Murder indeed. Talen watched Ke go and realized the truth was he
had
been lucky. Lucky Ke had been that close. Lucky he’d tumbled just the right way for Ke to grab his ankle. And Ke had held him as if he were nothing more than a sack of potatoes. Why couldn’t he have gotten at least half of Ke’s strength?

He sighed. It was going to be annoyingly inconvenient to have to wear his fine pair of pants to work in. And at week’s end, when he cleaned them and hung them out to dry, he’d have to sit around in his underclothes and bat the biting flies away.

Talen climbed out of the tree and stood before Da.

“Did you look for the pants in the barn?” Da asked.

Of course he’d looked in the barn. He’d looked everywhere. “I’m not going to ruin my good pair.”

“Then work in a leaf skirt. I’m not buying any material for another pair. Nothing in heaven or earth will make me feed negligence.”

“I wasn’t negligent.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Da. “Put on your good ones. Get the peppercorns. You’re going to the village to get some hens from old Mol the fowler. I’ve had too many days without eggs.”

“Last night you said you wanted to see us up and in the fields with the barley.”

“Well, I’m saying right now that I want some hens. And you’re going to get them.”

“Shall I go along?” asked Nettle.

“No,” said Da. “You’re getting back on your horse to take a message to the Creek Widow.”

Nettle smirked. “The one who told you not to come around?”

“What other one is there?” asked Da. He held out a sealed letter to Nettle. The Creek Widow was a Mokaddian woman with a tenancy of almost twenty acres. She had been a family friend for years. But this last summer she had ordered Da out of her house and off her land. And try as Talen might, he could not get Da to tell him why. Talen suspected it had something to do with her perennial efforts to marry Da off. Half the time Talen thought she wanted Da herself. But Da was stubborn. And Talen was happy about that. While she cooked food fit for a Divine, she was bossy and a bit odd, talking to vegetables and rocks and always smelling a little like a goat.

Was this letter an indication that Da was making up?

“Paper,” said Nettle, a tease in his eye. “You must be serious.” He held the letter up to the sun as if trying to read it.

“You break that seal,” Da said, “and I’ll have your hide.”

“I wouldn’t dare touch it,” said Nettle.

“Then go,” said Da. He shooed them both away. “Be gone. And hurry back. I don’t want to lose any of that barley.”

Talen pushed the cart and the empty chicken baskets through the three miles of the muggy woods to Stag Home. When he finally broke onto the broad valley, he was so refreshed by the sunlight and breeze, so soothed by the smooth, sun-warmed dirt of the road under his bare feet that he didn’t immediately notice the fields and orchards.

Instead, he basked in the glory of the day and the fact that not only had he escaped being maimed this morning, but he’d also avoided a number of hours sweating in the barley. The peppercorns hung in a pouch around his neck. It had been two years since any merchant had sold peppercorns in the New Lands and the value of pepper had risen.

Talen looked forward to seeing if the alewife’s daughter would be selling her vegetables again. She was a looker, that one, with her dark hair, jade eyes, and the fabulous lines of her long neck. During his last visit, he’d ended up returning to her table thrice, buying a bunch of carrots each time, just so he could fix her features in his mind. And it hadn’t all been one-sided. She had glanced his way when he stood across the road eating some of her wares.

Talen’s reverie of the alewife’s daughter broke when he pushed the cart past an orchard of apple trees bent with clusters of red and yellow fruit. There should have been children climbing with baskets in the tops of those trees. Instead, the apple baskets lay scattered on the ground.

Across from the orchard a yearling calf bawled outside a field. The calf searched along the fence separating it from its mother and a dozen others who stood with their noses down among the ripe white oats mixed with peas. There should have been a harvest master there promising someone a proper beating for letting the cattle in, but there wasn’t even a beggar to chase the greedy guts out.

How could that be? Talen searched the fence lines and long rock walls. He searched the fields—nothing but a small carpet of blackbirds picking through a swath of barley that had been harvested and left to lie where it fell. There wasn’t a body to be seen. It was as if the villagers had fled the fields.

Alarm scuttled like a crab up his neck. This was the fat season for pillaging. Of course, the Bone Faces hadn’t attacked Stag Home or any of the surrounding villages for years. But that’s precisely why Stag Home would be a perfect target. The villagers would have grown overly secure, just as Talen had.

What’s more, the Bone Faces took more than livestock and goods. They took men, women, and children. Lords, he thought, if one of those Bone Faces got him, he will have wished he had fallen out of that tree and broken his back. He scanned the fields again, this time looking for signs of a raiding party.

It was said that when the Bone Faces kidnapped you for their slave ships, they cut off the pinky finger of your right hand. Then, with some black and feral magic, they used your finger to bind you to them. And so perverting was the binding that you never once wanted to even pine after what you’d lost. All your thought was to serve your master every day that blood flowed in your veins.