Foxfire (49 page)

Keirith turned in a slow circle, eyeing the warriors closing in around him. Between their bodies, he glimpsed his comrades, fleeing into the woods, up the rise, across the stream, zigzagging left and right in a helpless attempt to evade their pursuers.

He flexed his fingers, adjusting his grip on the sweat-slick leather of his sword hilt. If he attacked the spirit of one man, he might distract him long enough to break through to freedom. But which one?

He was still drawing on his power when the man shouted, “Now!” With a snarl of defiance, Keirith charged.

D
ARAK LOOKED UP from sharpening his dagger to watch Faelia. Ignoring Sorig's order to stay low, she paced the perimeter of Black Hill. Each time she reached the north face, she paused to gaze into the distance before continuing her relentless circuit.

After listening to his report, Sorig had sent two men to intercept Temet. By nightfall, they were all gazing north, hope warring with concern. Shortly after dawn, Holtik had arrived with the rest of the recruits, but their relief leached away when midday came and went with no sign of Temet's band.

Eyeing the track Faelia's feet had beaten through the grass, Darak rose and strode over to Sorig. “We can't just sit here and wait.”

“I know!” Sorig snapped. Then he sighed. “Sorry.”

Darak shook his head, still watching his daughter. “We're all on edge.”

“I'll send out two more scouts.”

“I'm going with them.”

“You're not going anywhere.”

Darak dragged his gaze from Faelia. “You mean to stop me?”

“I won't put you in danger.”

“Good gods, man, there's danger all around us.”

For a long moment, Sorig just stared at the ground. Then his head came up. “There's not going to be a Gathering, is there?”

When Darak shook his head, a visible shudder racked Sorig's thin frame.

All his life he had relied on instinct, but lately, he had made so many mistakes—misjudging Kelik, misinterpreting the actions of the three who had sacrificed their lives for him. Instinct told him Sorig was no traitor, but perhaps he wanted to believe that because he liked the lad. They had endured long marches and scanty rations. Slept huddled together for warmth when drenching thunderstorms left the dead branches too soaked to start a fire. Traveled for miles to reach a village, only to walk away without a single recruit. Yet Sorig's confidence never waned. Now, he looked as uncertain as a raw recruit.

“If we wait for two more scouts to return,” Darak said, “it might be another day—maybe longer—before we know anything. We should all go. Now.”

Sorig's gaze swept the exhausted men and women enjoying their first real sleep in days. Then he nodded, reassuming the burden of command with a visible effort.

As Darak walked away to retrieve his pack, he heard footsteps behind him.

“You think it's me, don't you?” Sorig asked. “The spy.” When Darak hesitated, he added, “I've seen you watching me. At first, I thought you blamed me. Because I'd failed you—and the others—as a commander. But that didn't seem like you. Then I thought about it some more. I arrive alone. No one to prove my story is true.”

Sorig's voice was flat and unemotional, but his body was strung tight as a bowstring.

“My gut tells me you're not the traitor,” Darak said. “I'd stake my life on it. But not the life of my daughter. Or my son. If I'm wrong, I can only hope to make amends for my doubts.”

“And I hope to prove myself to you. One day.”

 

 

 

They discovered the two scouts first. Their bodies had been dragged off the trail and hastily covered with leaves, now scattered by the carrion eaters. A few of the recruits lurched away, white-faced and retching; the rest helped dig shallow graves and cover them with stones.

Darak knew the men deserved a proper burial; knew, too, that before the day was over they would probably have many more graves to dig. But the delay only fed his concern for Keirith.

A mile later, they found Selima sprawled unconscious on the trail. A bandage smeared with dirt and blood bound her right arm and a blood-soaked wad of flaxcloth had been shoved under her tunic and strapped against her shoulder. Faelia peeled away the bandage, revealing the clumsy stitches. Why would the Zherosi tend her wounds and then leave her behind?

“Temet might have sent her ahead,” Faelia said as she cleaned Selima's wounds. “To warn us. She might have run into the same patrol the scouts did.”

Darak nodded, unwilling to destroy his daughter's hopes. He had promised Griane that he would bring their children home. If Fellgair were here, he would have pointed out that he had never promised to bring them home alive.

His gaze returned to the small doeskin bag around Selima's throat. Some of the women who had found refuge in his village arrived with bags of charms that had belonged to their dead husbands, but he could not recall any of the women in Temet's band ever wearing them.

“Is that hers?” he asked Faelia.

“Nay.” The roll of nettle-cloth slipped from her shaking fingers. She bit her upper lip, looking so much like her mother that Darak's heart clenched. “Pedar's, perhaps. He was—is—Selima's man.”

Kelik and Mikal trotted forward with a stretcher, hastily fashioned from borrowed mantles lashed to two dead branches with spare bowstrings and lengths of rope. As they bent to lift Selima, Darak said, “Wait.”

Gently, he raised her head and slipped the bag free. The soft doeskin was warm from her body. He fumbled with the drawstrings, silently cursing his maimed fingers.

“Would you recognize them?” Faelia asked.

“I don't know. But I have to look.”

One doeskin bag looked much like another; he doubted he could tell Callie's from Keirith's. But he might recognize the charms inside. Only the boy who collected them was supposed to touch them; for another to do so would diminish their power. But he had no choice.

Faelia's hands were the steady ones this time. Big hands like his, but freckled like her mother's. Strong enough to pull a bowstring back to her ear, yet nimble enough to tie a lure on a fishing line—or wriggle into the mouth of a bag of charms.

She handed the bag back to him. With two bold sweeps of her hands, she cleared away the leaves and twigs at his feet, leaving a patch of bare earth. Darak framed a silent prayer to the Maker. Then he upended the bag.

An eagle's feather. A round, red stone. A quickthorn twig. A strand of hardened lakeweed, faded to a pale yellow-green. Any boy might have collected them. Then his gaze fell on the polished stone, its green-black surface spattered with red.

Before he died, the Zherosi Pajhit had given Keirith that freckled stone. A gift to the boy who had become a second son to him.

He lowered the fist pressed against his chest. Made himself open his eyes and look into his daughter's. Forced his mouth to speak the words.

“They're Keirith's.”

 

 

 

As they hurried along the trail, he told himself Keirith might still be alive, that the bag might have been sent as proof of a capture rather than a kill. But as he crested a rise, the sickly sweet stench of decay hit him like a physical blow.

Bodies sprawled on the slope, cut down in a futile attempt to flee. Others clogged the little stream. Through the screen of trees, he made out still more, covering the forest floor as far as he could see.

Faelia broke first, pushing past Sorig to race downhill. Mikal covered his eyes with his hand, then squared his shoulders and walked back to where the others waited. Darak heard him cautioning the recruits to cover their mouths and noses. As if wool or doeskin could possibly blot out the stench.

His legs carried him down the slope. His eyes scanned the bodies, passing over those with fair hair, those who were too tall, too big-boned. His mind cautioned him that some faces might be tanned from long days in the sun, while others—buried under a heap of bodies—would be darkened by putrefaction. But try as he might to hold himself aloof from the horror, his senses cataloged it all.

The croaking of the crows and ravens that ascended in a black cloud as they approached. The obscene buzzing of the flies that swarmed in iridescent waves over the corpses. The shit-slimed leaves and the metallic scent of blood and piss. Men's bellies swollen like pregnant women's. Tunics ripped open, spilling flyblown guts onto the leaves. Shattered skulls, leaking clods of partially devoured brains. Empty eye sockets staring skyward out of blood-caked faces.

Relentless as death, he moved among the corpses, bending close to inspect faces destroyed by swords and clubs and scavengers; pushing back the sleeve of a severed arm in search of the familiar tattoo; letting out his breath when he failed to discover it; continuing the hunt, fingertips tingling from their brush against cold flesh.

Distantly, he was aware of the living who stalked the battlefield with him: the grunt of effort as a body was rolled over; the inarticulate sound of protest when another friend was recognized; vomit spattering against leaves; the stomach-churning stink that followed; choked sobs from those who allowed themselves to weep. He wondered that his senses could remain so sharp when everything seemed utterly unreal—a nightmare, more vivid than most, from which he must surely wake.

Faelia's cry pierced the fog that enveloped him. Fear pounced, sending his heart into a wild tattoo.

She was on her knees, clawing through bodies. As he raced toward her, she flung her head back, her mouth opening in a silent scream.

His steps slowed. Even matted with blood and dirt, he recognized Temet's distinctive yellow hair.

His face had been crushed by a club, his body hacked by swords. His head lolled, connected to his neck by a few strands of muscle and the blood-encrusted column of his spinal cord. Gently, Faelia lifted his head and cradled it in her lap. She rocked back and forth, eyes squeezed shut, teeth clenched in a rictus of grief.

He stared at Temet's ruined face, recalling the expression it had worn during their first meeting in the Zherosi slave compound—dreamy with the drugs the guards had fed him, but also with memories.

Darak knelt and wrapped his arms around his daughter, swaying with her in the silent rhythm of grief and loss. But his eyes scanned the bodies around them, seeking his boy's face.

“Darak.”

He looked up to find Kelik looming over him.

“Selima's awake. We can't make much sense of what she's saying, but she keeps repeating your name.”

Darak hesitated, torn between the urge to comfort his daughter and the need to find out what Selima knew.

“Go. I'll stay with her.”

Still, he hesitated. In the wildness of grief, Faelia might do anything.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, she drew her dagger. Darak rose into a crouch, ready to seize her arm if she turned the blade on herself, but Faelia simply cut off a lock of Temet's hair.

“Faelia.”

Sorig looked as if he had aged years since he had descended the rise.

“Faelia. I need you.”

He had to repeat her name again before her head turned. She stared up at him, her eyes glazed and unseeing.

“We have to bury them.”

Darak opened his mouth to object. Then he saw his daughter's gaze sharpen.

“We'll need to dig pits. And gather rocks. I need you to take charge.”

After a long moment, she sheathed her dagger. Opened her belt pouch. Tucked the lock of hair inside. With the same dreamlike slowness, she bent and kissed Temet's ruined mouth. Then she got to her feet and walked away. Without a word, Kelik followed her.

“It helps,” Sorig said. “To do . . . something.” His gaze lingered on Temet. Darak knew better than to touch him; even the smallest gesture of sympathy would break him, and Sorig needed all his strength now.

Together, they made their way across the stream and up the rise. Mikal crouched beside Selima, dribbling water between her cracked lips. Darak squatted down and squeezed her hand, only to have it yanked from his grasp with surprising strength. She groped at the neck of her tunic until Darak pulled Keirith's bag of charms from his belt pouch.