The Wind-Witch (6 page)

Enna had feared the men would come rushing out at her. But nothing within the cellar stirred, and Druyan trusted Rook’s vigilant presence to keep matters under control. She licked her dry lips.

“
You in there!
” she called sternly, keeping back from the door. “You trespassed, and you stole! My husband is dead because of your thievery, and you owe me the blood debt for his life. I will allow you to settle that debt and depart for your own homes. What say you? Will you work for your freedom?”

Only a silence for her answer. Rook whined and lowered her ears a touch.

Kellis thought for a horrible distorted moment that he had only one eye. That terror distracted him at first from the person half framed in the bright doorway—he did not take in her words at first, or truly recognize that ’twas a woman who spoke them, till his fingers had determined that his right eye was only swollen shut by the blow that had split his world apart into darkness and fire. At least he hoped only swollen shut—he could feel clotted crusted blood, but the region about his eye htut considerably less than the matted edge of his hairline, where he thought the blow had landed.

Cold iron
. Kellis whimpered, low in the back of his throat. He had the stench of it still in his nostrils, mingled with the scent of his own blood. He was lucky to be alive after being struck so, but not certain he was entirely grateful . . . He began to make out words, through the roaring in his ears.

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard voices, lying there in the dark, sick and dizzy, not sure whether he was dead or alive. But the words weren’t Eral words, and it was the first time there had been light, as well . . . he struggled to his knees, trying to listen.

“I have a crop of barley standing in the field, ready for reaping,” Druyan continued. “Help my people bring in the harvest, and I will let you go free when the last sheaf is in the barn. You have my word on it.”

No response. Druyan frowned and took a hesitant step forward. Why didn’t they answer? Were they dead? Surely they hadn’t starved? Even if the unrelieved darkness had driven them mad, they should have managed to make some son of answer. She signaled Rook to rise, and they went forward together.

Her first thought was that the little cellar did not smell nearly so foul as she’d expected. Oh, it stank, but not with half the odor you’d anticipate when several people had been forced to remain in a confined space for several days without benefit of latrines or washwater or even fresh air. Druyan could still make out the aroma of damp earth, under the other less pleasant odors.

She could see more of the cellar’s interior, too, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom within. There was the mound of loose earth at the back, and the stacks of old baskets they used to confine the turnips and the carrots. Had she brought a lantem she’d have seen them plain—but she really shouldn’t have been able to make them out at all. There was a faint squarish glow at the back end of the cellar, adding its illumination to the bit of light that spilled around her and Rook, through the door.

Someone had pushed out one of the stones of the wall and made a gap big enough to wriggle through. The root cellar was empty.

Druyan sagged, the tension going out of her. They were
gone
, must have been gone most of the while, maybe that first night. They’d escaped before anyone even remembered them. No wonder they hadn’t been screaming to be fed, to be let out . . .

“Lady?”

Startled by the croaking word, Druyan leapt back. Her left shoulder caught the door jamb, her head bumped the lintel, and she cried out, bruised and held fast. She thought she’d faint; she couldn’t tell against the cellar’s darkness whether the fest of the world was dimming, too. Rook began to bark thunderously.

The cellar wasn’t
quite
empty. Druyan saw, as her sight unblurred, a dim shape stir against the faint backlight. Her heart pounded. She couldn’t move. Rook’s furry shoulder pressed her knee. She stared at the prisoner. There wasn’t room for him to stand upright, but he didn’t try anyway. He was kneeling among the empty baskets.

“Why didn’t you go with the others?” Druyan demanded fiercely, trying to cover her fright. She shushed the dog, finding the barking more a distraction than a protection. “Why did they leave
you
?”

She could just make out the pale blotch of his face as he raised it. It changed shape—from his answer, she realized he’d put his hand up to it.

“I got hit on the head.” His speech was thick, halting. He coughed feebly, as if his throat pained him.

“When did they go?”

No reply. Either he didn’t know, or he couldn’t understand her. The light hadn’t increased, but her eyes were more used to what little there was of it—Druyan could make out a dark patch on the right side of his forehead, which might have been blood, dried and crusted. The raider was touching it with his fingers, but with what looked like great care.

“I don’t know, Lady.” He coughed again and groaned when the spasm jarred his head.

Likely he’d been unconscious, Druyan thought. Someone had given him a solid clout—the farmhands had been aimed with rakes and hoes and shovels, any of their stout handles good as a quarterstaff in willing hands. Not likely he’d be able to tell her much, even if he wanted to. Assuming the injury wasn’t feigned, to deceive her.

“I heard them talking . . . I think I did . . . but I couldn’t . . . I wasn’t awake. I’m not surprised they left me.” Kellis was, however, surprised they hadn’t killed him first. And with every heartbeat sending stabs of agony through his skull, a little disappointed they hadn’t.

“
Gone
,” Druyan said bitterly, accepting it at last. She shut her eyes on the useless tears. No matter how hard they worked, there was no way they’d other than fail to get the crop in. And if they missed the crop tithe, someone would come to see why.

“Lady?”

She startled again, having nearly forgotten him until that croaking question. Rook growled.

“I am not four men . . . but I can work. I want to pay my debt to you,” he added in that ragged voice that made her own throat burn.

“You want to get out of there, for which I certainly don’t blame you,” Druyan said tartly, straightening her spine. Hurt, abandoned, captured, he’d likely agree to anything that promised him release. She backed a step away. “All right. Come out. Keep your hands where I can see them.’ She lifted the fork just a trifle.

Druyan retreated farther from the door, into the sunlight. Even if he was shanmiing his injury, sheand Rook could deal with him, no question. One to one was a world different from four to one. She heard him scramble to his feet, groaning something that was possibly a curse.

The man had to stoop to get through the door: and when he had come under the lintel and could stand erect, he clung to the frame for dear life. No chance he was aiming to deceive or lull her—he had a palm-width cut on his forehead, and by the bruising around the wound, it had been a solid blow, no trifling scratch. The skin looked seared. Could he have been hit with a torch? Druyan wondered. His drab clothing was splotched with dark-brown stains, and he had—by the smell—been sick all over himself. He kept his eyes tight shut, as if the daylight pained him.

Rook was growling still, her hackles rising. The man tipped his head toward her, squinting in what must have been a glare to his half-closed eyes. “No need, little sister,” he whispered. “My fangs are very well blunted.”

“I’m not your sister,” Druyan said testily, wondering if the blow had bitten into his brain. He might be willing to work, but he didn’t sound as if many of his wits remained to him. And now that she’d let him out of the cellar, just where was she going to put him? Could she force him back into his prison if she offered the food she’d brought? Where else was secure enough? She tried to tally their outbuildings in her mind, to recollect the strengths of walls and doors.

Come to that, was he even well enough to work? She recalled one of Robart’s friends, ailing and useless for most of one summer after he’d taken a nimble from his horse and split his head open on an inconvenient rock. Maybe the raider was only cramped and unused to daylight—but just as likely he was too sick to do even one man’s work.

She assessed her prisoner as heartlessly as she would have a stray sheep added to her flock. He did not, in the light of day, have quite the terrifying aspect the sea raiders were getting a name for. He didn’t look as if he could raid a henhouse on his own. He wasn’t much taller than she was, and his build was on the slight side. But that meant nothing. Armed, hale, he’d be another man entirely. She should remember that, not be deceived by pity.

From a distance she’d have reckoned him aged, by his ash-color hair and the pale stubble on his jaw, but close-to Druyan could see he wasn’t age-gray. His brows—one of which was presently caked with his blood—were very dark. His weather-tanned skin was smooth where it wasn’t bruised: not an old man’s skin. His battered face was lean and narrow, with a long nose pushed out of line from right to left—he hadn’t been born with it that way, but the damage wasn’t recent, either. His teeth, blunted or not, were very white, and he had all of them, at least those that showed. A villainous face, Druyan told herself as ruthlessly as Enna would have.

He looked back at her, managing to drag his right eyelid open a trifle. That eye—like the left—was gray with flecks of gold, as open and startlingly honest as a dog’s.
That must be useful
, Druyan thought, stemly distrusting them. No reason he couldn’t be trying to put her off her guard. She held out the sack of food, the bottle of water, but she kept the pitchfork in her right hand.

“Eat that, while I ready the wagon,” she ordered. There was still better than half the day left to work with. They could make a start on the nearest field. She’d see if he could work.

He looked first at her face, then at the sack. Smart enough, maybe, to resist a grab that would set the dog on him. Rook was still tense, her back hair standing up from neck to tail.

“Go ahead,” Druyan insisted, shoving the food into his hands. “And don’t even think about trying to escape. Rook won’t let you stir a step.”

He unstoppered the bottle, put it to his lips, and gulped the liquid down as fast as he could swallow. Too fast—he began to choke, and coughed till Rook’s growl told him to desist, to behave himself. Stifling the spasm, he put the bottle down, juggled the bag around, and investigated the bread.

The door jamb was still holding him upright, Druyan noticed. She did not discount the danger of him, but it was very hard to believe there was much worry about him for the next few minutes, while she hitched the wagon and brought Valadan out. She could risk it.

Druyan made the hand signal to Rook: Hold. One sheep or an entire flock, ’twas all one to the dog, who knew her business. Rook settled happily and fixed the man with her best stare. Halfway to the barn—a dozen steps—Druyan turned back. The man had sat down in the doorway. The bread was gone, and there were crumbs from it dusted down the fmnt of him. He had the cheese clutched to his chest. Rook was watching him alertly. Probably she wouldn’t have tom his throat out if he’d tried to run, but he’d never have got past her, either. Especially not with the cheese.

Her fine scheme was seeming less and less a workable plan. Druyan sighed. Only a single man to aid the harvest, and already she was losing her fear of him, which was foolish and did not bode well. The hope-that she could hold Splaine Garth, make herself a place, seemed more and more a dream, from which she must wake and rise to unpleasant reality. What use to stmggle so over bringing in a tiny crop of grain? Her husband was dead. She’d no child of his to carry on for.

Yet go on she must—Druyan knew no way to simply lie down and cease breathing, not on her own. So she’d go on, day to day, hour to hour, as one did, and not think about it, if thinking hurt. She’d bring in her crop, and this pathetic scoundrel would help her, since he professed himself willing. She looked back at him, sitting now a bare yard from Rook’s eager face, not moving except to tear the cheese with his alarmingly white teeth.

“What are you called?” Druyan asked, wondering why she troubled with the courtesy.

“Kellis,” he answered, almost choking again on a mouthful too large and too little chewed.

The captive was clumsy at farm work. Perchance he’d never been good at such honest toil and so had taken up the more congenial career of raiding. Or maybe his wound made stooping to sever barley stems with the iron sickle a problem. There was no knowing—he didn’t complain or try to shirk, just went on slowly, with dogged concentration, striving to cut grain and not his fingers. Dalkin had needed to show him how to wield the sickle—pleased as a cock robin at owning a skill a grown man didn’t possess. The man didn’t know how to bind a sheaf, either, and Dalkin puffed still more as he demonstrated.

The boy was less willing to be sent off to fetch the shepherd girls, but Druyan was adamant and she was the mistress, the giver of orders. It was fairly obvious by then that she was in no real danger of being overpowered by her prisoner, even granted that he was armed with a sharpedged tool; and necessity pressed. Every able hand on the place had to be set to reaping. Every hour of dry daylight had to yield something for Splaine Garth. The sheep could feed unobserved, other chores could be ignored or postponed, but the grain must be cut.

Of course, Druyan herself couldn’t be reaping if she stayed primly atop Valadan, keeping Travic’s bow carefully trained on her prisoner, but Enna wasn’t at hand to protest when she abandoned that ill-conceived promise. Any fool could see it made no sense, not now there was only one man to consider in place of four. The prisoner wasn’t going to attack anyone—he could judge the odds weighted so heavily against any success. If he tried anything, it would be running, and between Rook and Valadan, that wasn’t likely to be so much a danger as a delay. And there was nowhere he might run to—Splaine Garth was a pocket farm, surrounded by moor. and marsh.