No Quarter (37 page)

"Well, he has. And you needn't glare at me because I'm just telling you what was happening." She tucked a curl into the corner of her mouth and despondently examined the dusty toes of her boots. "We're going to have to deal with Kars first.

Vree's going to have to go over the wall because she's the only one who can."

"But just open the gate," Karlene declared before Vree could move. She stepped in front of the ex-assassin and stared down into her face. "You are not to confront Kars until we're inside."

"You promised Gyhard could deal with him."

"And he can."

"But you want to be there."

"No." She wished she knew just what it was that felt so wrong. "I want Magda to be there."

Vree dragged the heavy sweater over her head and tossed it to one side. There'd be exercise soon enough to keep her warm and she didn't need the added weight.

"Vree!"

"I'll open the gate." She checked the release on her single throwing dagger, smiled, and flicked the bard's pale braid back behind her shoulder. "You worry too much."

Half a dozen running steps and she was her own height up on the wall, clinging to a surface never meant to keep out human climbers. An instant later, she paused on the top, balanced easily between the points on two massive logs, fought the urge to look back at Bannon, and dropped out of sight.

Gerek laid an arm across Magda's shoulders as she sighed and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. "You okay?" When she shrugged, he lightly kissed the top of her head. "If anyone can heal this mess," he told her softly, "you can."

A short distance away, Bannon fought the ropes that held him.

"Hush, child, hush. Tell me what's wrong." When the demons quieted, Kait had gone into the yard but almost immediately returned. Something had upset her, but Kars didn't understand what.

*Two. Not one, two!*

"Two what, child?" When he stood, she tried to push him back away from the door, but her hands passed right through him. "Just let me look, Kait. It isn't the demon. I'd know if it was the demon."

Leaning heavily on a staff he'd found, he pulled open the door and stepped outside, eyes squinting nearly shut in the sunlight.

*Kars.*

*I know.* Vree dropped the last few feet and moved away from the wall, eyes locked on the old man. She hadn't expected this; Kars, alone, no walking dead to protect him. *What do we do now?*

Gyhard felt as though his past had him in a vise and it was closing tight around him. *Lend me your body. Let me finish this.*

She hesitated, remembering how Bannon had shoved her aside, usurped control, and refused to give it back without a fight that had nearly destroyed them both.

*I'm not Bannon, Vree.*

Kars raised a twisted hand to shade his eyes. "Who's there?"

*Vree?*

One heartbeat. Two.

*Vree, the bards consider this to be a bardic problem. If we let Karlene in,
she'll
have to do something!*

Two heartbeats. Three.

*Vree!*

*Yes.*

She felt Gyhard surge forward. One moment she was Vree. The next, Vree and Gyhard combined, a joining so intense she almost lost herself in it. For that moment, she knew everything there was to know about him—his strengths, his weaknesses, his fears— and he knew the same about her. It was terrifyingly intimate and, because of that intimacy, the most incredibly sensual experience she'd ever had. Her whole body throbbed in reaction. As they slowly began to separate again, she couldn't help but think of sweat-slicked skin, welded together by heat and passion, pulling apart, inch by sticky inch.

*Vree?*

Pushed back into a corner of her own mind, Vree struggled to gain enough control to form a conscious thought. She could still feel her body but from a distance, almost as though she were feeling an outer layer of clothing. *I'm here.*

*That was…*

*Yes.* Looking through her eyes was like looking through a window that flickered every few moments. Kars had taken a step back toward the building. He seemed older, more tired than he had.

"Go away! We don't want you here!" So desperate to protect his family from the demons, Kars had forgotten how the world could attack with other weapons. He should have kept one of them with him to keep the living away. Kait did her best, but they didn't even seem to notice her as she swirled about their…

He shook his head and peered around the yard. He could see only one person, but he could feel two. And one of them felt achingly familiar.

Distracted for a moment by the graceful play of muscle over bone, a grace he now controlled, Gyhard stepped forward, hands held out from his sides. "Kars?"

"I know who I am." He hadn't for a long time, but the knowledge had been given back to him. Stepping over the threshold, he struggled to close the door.

*Don't let him get inside!*

Gyhard raced across the yard and pushed against the planking. "Do you know who I am?"

The voice was wrong, but the kigh, he knew the kigh. "Gyhard?" Kars scowled through the wedge-shaped opening, barely visible in the deep shadows of the hall.

"You went away. You came back, then you went away."

Swallowing around what felt like a dagger stuck crosswise in Vree's throat, Gyhard nodded. "I didn't have a choice." He could reach in, grab the front of what was obviously a borrowed robe, and yank the old man outside. Vree's hands were smaller than Bannon's but strong enough for what had to be done. He
should
reach in—but he couldn't.

"They always go away." The old man sighed, fingers stroking the necklace of bone. "I thought they wouldn't, you know, but they do."

"I know." In memory, Kars, young and beautiful and so dreadfully damaged, held out a cup of poisoned wine because he believed that the dead would never leave him.

"What is going on in there?" Gerek demanded, pacing back and forth on the hard packed earth in front of the gate. "Why hasn't she let us in?"

"She isn't…" Magda dragged a wet curl from the corner of her mouth and tried again. Closing her eyes, she reached out with all her strength. "She isn't in control anymore. Gyhard is."

Bannon shrieked in wordless fury and flung himself against the ropes.

Gyhard stepped back and held out Vree's hand. "Kars, please come outside. I've come to stop the pain."

Unable to do anything herself, Kait sped toward the root cellar. She couldn't open the heavy door, but neither could it keep her out.

Five of the others stood where they'd been left. The sixth sat crumpled in a corner. It wasn't like the others. It wasn't like her. She stopped in front of it.

*Get up!*

It ignored her. She could feel it frantically struggling against the tormented flesh that held it.

Five would have to be enough.

Kars looked at the hand stretched out toward him. "I can't leave now."

"It's time."

Just for a moment, it seemed that the insanity left his eyes and he was only a very old and very tired man. "Long past time," he said softly. "But I've promised Kait I'd stay."

Gerek grabbed Karlene's shoulder, fingers sinking deep into the heavy sweater, and spun her around to face him. "Do something!"

"Like what?"

"How should I know? You're the bard!" He waved his sword at the stockade.

"Sing something!"

"There are
no
kigh!" she reminded him through clenched teeth.

He pushed his face toward hers, and spat each word at her with separate emphasis. "Yes. There. Are."

"She's too far away!"

"Try!"

Jerking free of his grip, Karlene faced the stockade and pitched her voice to carry.
"Vireyda Magaly!"

Gyhard barely held on as Vree surged forward. They meshed for a heartbeat, then separated again. *What the…?*

*Karlene's using my name, like she used it at the way station when Bannon took control.*

*How could she know which kigh is dominant from outside the holding?*

*How the slaughter should I know? I've been here with you.*

*She's going to ruin everything!*

"Vireyda Magaly!"

The second call was harder to fight.

Head cocked to catch the sound of the distant voice, Kars slid back into insanity, his eyes growing wider with every passing second.

"Vireyda Magaly, answer me!"

"Demons! A trick! A trap!" Gibbering in terror, Kars leaped backward, slamming the door.

"Shit!" Impossible to tell which one of them spoke, which one of them was in control.

The cabbage hit them just above the left elbow, numbing the arm and knocking them sideways. They turned and saw the dead approaching, their joined kigh too strong to accept the false comfort of denial.

*Gyhard, give way. You can't fight them.*

*Neither can you!* But he released her body, drawing quickly back within his original boundaries as she surged forward. The brief moment of unity brought a flare of heat that lasted long enough to be a dangerous distraction. * We've got to open the gate!*

Unfortunately, in order to confront Kars, they'd come too far in the yard. An ax balanced across her palms, one of the dead moved to stand between them and reinforcements.

Vree dove forward to avoid being brained with a stone crock of honey, rolled awkwardly because of the numb arm, and felt fingers close around her ankle, the touch so cold she could feel the chill through the leather of her boots. Writhing in the dead man's grip, she kicked up with her free leg, catching him on the point of his chin.

Teeth shattered as Ondro's head whipped back, but he didn't let go. Kait had told them the father was in danger. The father must be protected. He could dimly remember a man he'd called father being set gently into a hole in the ground, but that memory had been stripped of power by the Song that held him. If Kait said the father was in danger, then Ondro would protect the father.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Narrowly avoiding a grab by the dead man's other hand, Vree curled up and drove the point of her long dagger into his waist, sawing it from side to side, severing tendons, separating the small bones. Suddenly, she could feel the air above her being pushed aside. At the perimeter of her vision, she could still see the woman guarding the gate—obviously, someone else had stopped to pick up a weapon. There was no longer time to waste on freedom. Flinging herself to the right, she dragged the dead man over with her and left a fold of her sleeve lying severed in the dirt of the yard.

"Now what's happening?"

"They're fighting."

"Who?"

Magda blinked and looked up at her brother. "The dead."

Gerek glared at the stockade then, snarling wordlessly, ran down the path to the tree where Bannon was tied. Barely pausing, he raised his sword. As it descended, Bannon twisted to present as small a target as possible.

"GEREK!" Magda rushed forward, hands outstretched, unable to believe what she was seeing.

Two more quick cuts and the ropes binding wrists and ankles were in pieces.

Another and Bannon's knives spilled out of a split pack and onto the ground.

"Gerek, what are you doing!"

He grabbed his sister as she flung herself by him, but he directed his answer up the path at the bard. "Bannon's the only one who can get over the wall. Don't you dare call him back!"

Karlene's pale eyes blazed. "Are you threatening me, Your Grace."

The steel point lifted. "If I have to."

Bannon ignored them. Scooping up the two throwing daggers and the long belt knife out of the pile, he sprinted for the wall, swarming up the same imperfections Vree had used, pausing as she had at the top. A quick glance down into the enclosed area showed him five to one odds. When his gaze tried to slide away as his kigh refused to deal with the dead/undead kigh below, he forced his focus back onto the fight. Vree was down there. And she needed him.

He saw her sever a hand to free herself and grimaced, remembering the fight with the dead soldiers at the ford. The dead didn't feel pain. Unless the bard could get inside the stockade and do whatever it was she did, this lot would have to be chopped to pieces before they'd give up. Five to one odds were no longer survivable.

With his feet braced against the inside of the logs, Bannon scuttled hand over hand along the top of the wall, his weight hanging from the rough points hacked into the upper ends of the logs. His right arm throbbed just above his wrist where it had been broken while Gyhard controlled his body. Swearing under his breath, he moved a little faster. He dangled for a heartbeat over the gate, then dropped, landing behind the dead woman with the ax.

Straightening, he grabbed the bar, began to lift, and flung himself to one side as an ax head thudded into the wood where his right shoulder had been.
Almost like
someone told her I was there
…

Twisting the blade out of the wood with practiced ease, Anca swung again. She would protect the father.

The edges split the air an inch from Bannon's back as he dove under the swing and slammed his shoulder into her stomach. They hit the ground together, but with no air to be knocked from her lungs, she continued to flail about and managed to smack him in the side of the head with the ax handle.

Grunting in pain, he rolled clear and staggered for the gate.
Could use that pig-sticker of His Grace's in here right about now
.

On the other side of the yard, the severed hand still clutching her ankle, Vree dragged herself under a split rail fence and into the cow byre. At this moment, crawling through shit was a small price to pay. As a heavyset middle-aged man with arms like small trees chopped through the rails, she lurched toward the stable.

From the stable roof she could get to the wall. Once on the wall, she could get out.

Slipping in the muck, she twisted to keep from falling, and saw Bannon lifting the bar on the gate. Her left arm snapped forward.

The throwing dagger embedded itself hilt-deep in Anca's armpit, grinding in the joint. The ax missed flesh and it bit deeply into wood. One arm dangling uselessly, she fought to free it.

Cut off from the stable, Vree picked up a splintered rail and smashed it into the face of the charging dead man. It slowed him down a little. With all her strength, she drove her heel into his knee. That shook off the clinging hand and slowed him down a little more. It didn't stop him.