The Wind-Witch (32 page)

The tail of the bucket tile was in disarray. Half a dozen women were dipping pails into the river—or had been when they were chanced upon by a trio of sea raiders. One woman had been hurled into the chill water, where she floundered, screaming that she would drown, and the remainder faced the three men, armed only with their wooden pails. Two ran for it, choosing discretion over the unequal fight. One made it into the dark of an alley and escaped—the other was dragged back by a laughing raider who seemed merely amused by her desperate struggles.

All three men carried bulging sacks—evidently they were bound for their ship, with the goods they’d been able to carry off. And possibly trade goods weren’t all they’d deal in, for as Druyan watched in horror, one of the younger women was suddenly felled by a fist to her jaw and slung swooning over a shoulder, while two of the others were summarily dispatched with dagger blows. The last woman swung her bucket in a mighty arc, but she stumbled over a body and went headlong with no damage done to her target. The raider snatched up the bucket and clubbed her with it, then seized her wrist and hauled her to her feet, where he struck her twice more before Druyan and Valadan fell upon him.

He heard the clatter of hooves on cobbles and turned. The woman fell when he let loose of her, so Druyan’s sword had a clear path—down and back from just above shoulder height, sweeping forward in an upward circle, gaining speed and taking Valadan’s momentum, reaching the raider’s neck just as the blade began to rise once more.

Valadan’s height let Druyan catch her target in the throat, and though the raider wore a leather collar for protection, with a torc of twisted metal over it for show, the blade sheared clear to his spine. Druyan would have lost her weapon, only she had its thong looped over her wrist against such a mischance. A jolt shot up her arm—as if, scything barley, she had struck a hidden stump left carelessly in the field. Valadan leapt over the falling raider, skidded, and spun back to the battle.

The sailor with the woman over his shoulder heard them coming and tried to sprint into a narrow spot where a horseman could not follow. Instead, he tripped on a loose cobble and fell, and Druyan’s swipe at him missed by a hand’s-breadth as he went down. She sent splinters flying from the bottom of a house shutter, recovered, and struck again to keep the man occupied, but his captive did not seize the chance to escape—she lay huddled where she had been flung, moaning.

I can’t let him take her
, Druyan thought. Nor could she keep riding at the man without trampling the fallen girl. The raider had his back to the house wall, where he could fend off any frontal assault with his sword, though ’twas short as any of the Eral blades.

And he could expect aid. But the man trying to creep up behind Valadan had little knowledge of horses—or else forgot a horse sees better behind than ahead and has ears attuned to hear the softest footfall.

Hold on!

The raider was nearly close enough to try the hamstringing he contemplated, when the stallion let ily with both hind hooves and introduced him rudely to the gods of the Eral afterworld.

Druyan had seen Valadan’s ears go back and would have needed no more warning to secure her seat. But the action cost her a moment’s attention, and when she looked back at the raider by the wall, he was coming at her, screaming words she did not recognize but could hardly mistake as to their intent.

He came at her left side, and she could only chop at him awkwardly from across Valadan’s neck, her reach much shortened, while the stallion reared and stmck with his own weapons, slashing hooves and crushing teeth. His hooves touched the cobbles, and Druyan hewed at the raider.

Again the jolt of t.he blow connecting solidly with flesh and bone. Except that this time something jarred against her hand, as well. The sword fell away with its thong cut, and the hand Druyan raised was running scarlet with her own blood.

Druyan fell forward onto Valadan’s neck, clutching her right hand tight to her chest. Dimly her ears reported the doleful howl of a wolf, going on and on and on, till she could not have said whether it was truly some wild beast or only a scared dog—or whether the sound came from her own throat, which was aching and raw with the copper taste of blood in it.

Hold on
, Valadan ordered, as he had when he kicked out at the raider, and when he felt Druyan’s legs automatically obeying him, he began to run.

The world was all blackness, but that was only because ’twas night and her eyes were tight-closed, Druyan knew. The roaring in her ears was merely the wind, rushing past her head. The sparks behind her eyes were but tire-dazzle. She was not fainting—she must not, for she would fall, and Valadan was earnestly begging her not to. She must stay with him. . .

Her right hand ached, deep into the bone.
I’m cut
, Druyan thought, amazed, trying to puzzle out how that had happened.
What a nuisance. Cuts on the fingers never stay closed, and everything gets in them
. . . She kept the hand cradled tight against her breast, afraid to let loose, though she knew she should be trying to gather her reins. She ought to sit up, not ride lying along Valadan’s neck, barely in the saddle. She was making it so hard for him. . .

So long as you hold tight to me, I can carry you
, Valadan reassured her.
Only hold on
.

They weren’t in the city any longer. Valadan’s hoofbeats were muffled by soft turf. Still, they echoed loud as a heartbeat, and just as rapid. No, that was wrong, a heart should not beat so fast. But hers did; ’twas racking her bones apart one from the other.

Druyan could smell bruised grass, and mint, and sometimes the heather that cloaked the moors in a thousand shades of pink and white and lavender. But mostly the wind only smelled cold, and she fastened her senses upon that, and on the way Valadan’s mane brushed gently against her cheeks, licking at her like cool flames. He had never run so fast, Druyan thought. She had not known he could. He could carry her away from all darkness, all pain, all fear.

I could, but I will not. Not yet
, the stallion said calmly. You have years yet to live. And he ran onward, never slackening, like a cloud flying before a fresh gale.

Water splashed up to soak Druyan’s legs.

I am sorry
, Valadan said.
I dared not leap it
. He did have to scramble up the stream’s far bank, and Druyan slipped back, but she managed to tangle the fingers of her left hand into his mane, and lying close to the horse’s neck was the best way to ride up a steep slope. Her right hand was caught fast in her cloak now, awkwardly, painfully. Her whole arm ached, to the shoulder, but she was frightened to try to ease it, to shift it the least bit.

Brambles snatched briefly at both of them, could catch no lasting hold. They must be scattering petals in a cloud, Druyan thought, confused all at once about the season.

And dewdrops
, Valadan said, but she could not open her eyes to look. The wind was too loud in her ears.

When they came to Splaine Garth’s gate, Valadan leapt over it after all, for there was no one to open it before them, and he knew his mistress could never manage it. He deemed the action worth its risk, to save the last crumb of time, for he was confident he could leap gently enough not to unseat his rider, and he wanted to have her sooner to the care he could not give her.

A moment later he halted in the yard and neighed loud enough to wake the dead—certainly loud enough to bring Dalkin and Enna stumbling out of the kitchen, half dressed and utterly confused. They stood and stared at him, at his burden.

I must get down
, Druyan thought fuzzily, her ears still ringing with Valadan’s call. But how was she to manage dismounting, with her right hand for some reason useless and her left hand clenched around black mane and thereby likewise unavailable? Valadan was standing very still, but there was no more he could do to aid her. He might have knelt to let her climb aboard, had the situation been the reverse, but if he kneeled down now he would probably only pitch her to the ground, and he knew it. He could only stand steady, in an agony of distress for her.

“Lady, what is it?” A pale face, lifted up by her side like a fish’s poking out of a pond. The words sounded far away.

She could not make herself answer Enna—her breath was come too short, Druyan had none to spare for speech. Slowly she eased her right boot from its stirmp and, with a mighty effort, shifted her left hand to grasp the crest of Valadan’s neck. If she concentrated very hard, she could do this. She had to rise in the left stirnip, bring her right leg over. . .

“That’s
blood
,” Dalkin said, awestruck.

Now ’twas daylight, Druyan could see what she had before only dimly felt—the whole front of her tunic was over-dyed with scarlet, like cochineal. The ruby stain was going a dark brown at the edges, where the fabric began to dry. Not a me color, then. She ought to try a different mordant . . . She began to slide her right leg—which was heavy as a wet fleece—over Valadan’s broad back. She needed to take as much of her weight as she dared onto her left hand upon the stallion’s neck, so she might slip her left toe out of the stirrup and slide the rest of the way down Valadan’s side, to the ground. It seemed a great distance, as if the horse were tall as a house. She could feel Enna’s arms coming around her from behind, so she should not fall. But frail Enna would not be able to hold her. . .

Indeed, she staggered as she landed and shoved Enna off her balance. And though Druyan clutched frantically at her right hand with her left, still she had instinctively flung both her arms wide to save herself from falling, and as her right hand left the shelter of her blood-soaked cloak, the gentle morning light fell uncompromisingly upon it. She could not help looking at it.

Though her sight was darkening and narrowing, Druyan could see her hand plain enough. Or see what remained of it—for the last two fingers had been sheared clean away by the raider’s sword.

This once, because there had been a more than usual need for haste, Kellis had sung himself into wolf-form inside the barn instead of at the back of the far pasture. He was desperately grateful for that alteration of cautious custom now—even as a wolf he was thoroughly winded, and to have run back from the pasture in human form would have been time-wasting—while to burst into the kitchen without his clothing would have been unthinkable.

The shape-shift itself all but undid him. He came out of it on his feet, but there was a roaring in his ears, a swirling darkness in front of his eyes which was slow to pass. Kellis reached for his garments, determined not to yield to the faintness. The Lady needed him—by the signs, needed him very badly indeed. Every step of the way to the farm, the scent of fresh-shed blood had been in his wolf’s nostrils and he knew too well whose blood it was. Kellis had heard her scream, just before he had reached her side—but as he had been tearing the throat out of the man who had maimed her, Valadan had carried his mistress away with a speed no wolf could hope to match, though he ran till his heart all but burst.

He was, for all his efforts, an hour behind her. And out of breath—Kellis gasped and panted as he crossed the yard, his lungs aflame like Sennick’s streets. His legs tried to fail him, but by then he was at the kitchen door, and the jamb kept him upright, though it bruised his shoulder and his ribs when he fell against it.

The latch resisted him, till he collected wits enough to lift it rather than rnindlessly shoving at it. No one would have locked it, he realized. Enna was too busy.

Enna was wrestling with the fire crane, swinging a kettle of water over the licking flames, when Kellis burst into the kitchen. The flames hissed like cats as water splashed onto them.

“
You!
” Enna looked around for the nearest iron implement she could lift, then settled for the poker as Kellis tried to edge past her. “You get out of here this instant!”

The woman took a mighty swipe at him with her chosen weapon, but Kellis was past her by then and no harm done, scrambling up the steep flight of stairs. The topmost step betrayed his weary legs, caught a toe he couldn’t lift one last inch, so that he measured his length most painfully on the oak boards and got splinters in his hands and chin. Even so, Kellis kept his lead on Enna, whose legs were worse than his, and gained Druyan’s chamber at last, there at the far end of the short passage. He had never been so far inside the house before, but the blood scent led him surely. He shoved the door open.

Splaine Garth’s lady lay in her curtained bed, her skin much the same hue as the lavender-scented linen sheets, perchance a degree paler. Her right hand had been bound and was propped carefully upon a pillow. Even with the wrappings, there didn’t seem to be enough of it, Kellis thought—the sword hadn’t just cut, it had cloven part of her away.

The only color in the scene at all was the too-bright stain of red soaking through the white bandages. Kellis took a step toward her.

“Don’t you touch her, you filthy pig! Sending her out to run into your foul friends—”

The poker whistled at him—Kellis dodged and the iron tool hit the wall instead of his head. Enna shrieked at the impact, and the poker fell free of her hand, to clatter on the uncarpeted boards.

He had of course tried to stop her from going into that danger—Kellis thought he had, at least—but he had no breath to explain that to Enna, to say that Druyan hadn’t listened to him, or that he had in truth guarded her as best he could. Kellis glanced down at his hands, which were still glazed with someone’s blood, and thought with regret that he’d have done well to wash his face before he let Enna lay eyes on him.

He went to the bed and put one stained hand out, to feel for the blood-beat at Druyan’s throat. Twisted fingers fetched him a slap that must have hurt Enna far worse than it did him, but this time she did not scream, except to command him. “
Get away from her!
”

Kellis retreated half a step, trying to discover whether Enna had recovered the poker. Though he supposed she’d have brained him with it already if she’d still had it. “I won’t hurt her, Enna. I swear that! Let me—”