Chapter One
The air was sticky by this point, hot and thick and foul. Night brought no relief, replacing the heat of day with the screams of a million lust-ridden insects. They sweated together; the skinny horses and their weary riders, the saddle blankets and leathers and rough-stitched bags. The air and insects and leaves and prey alike, all slick with the same dank vapors.
At length, their leader halted. A few minutes of critical examination and it dropped its pack.
“Here,” it spat.
“Sure?” a smaller creature glanced around, unimpressed. “Don’ seem very safe. Supposin’ there’s bad blood about?”
“I said here. Make camp. I’m moving ahead to scout.” It was gone before anyone thought to argue. The smaller creature, a slim male child of roughly fifteen, shook his head in irritation. Including the dark, lanky leader, there were six in this group, and three horses. The boy ignored the lead horse—a skittish, untrusting mare—and moved to the last to help a woman down.
Soon there was a brisk fire, and a solid, gut-rattling smell.
“Do you think she’ll be back soon?” asked the pale man.
The boy only grimaced in response. He was tired, and his instincts had his temper up. They had passed several very good places to camp. At each place, the boy spoke up. And each statement was met, at best, with silence, and at worst, with a threat. Their leader was not patient, nor kind, nor wise. It—she, the boy reminded himself. She. Such a thin, hard, violent thing. Gaunt and scarred—she permitted no part of her to get soft. Her hair was cropped as close to the scalp as she could manage with a blunt edge, stiff and straight and black with neglect. Her clothes were little better than rags. The only tease of adornment was a twist of metal she kept around her neck. The sign of a slave. Most that earn their freedom abandon their collars, but Raie, for whatever reason, kept hers. He had no curiosity about that. He’d taken to thinking of her the way he’d view a threatening knife. Raie Solune, the She who had instigated this journey, led not through inspiration nor charm nor grace, but by fear and purpose alone.
Raie’s return was late. The night watches had already been organized, and only the boy sat awake. She kneeled by the food, picking through it.
“We’ll overtake them late tomorrow. I’ve found the tracks. They’re fresh.” She found an insect, and crushed it, before pulling out a stale loaf. “You hear me, Petrel?”
The boy sighed, stretching out a numb limb, “Yeh yeh. Hey. What if he don’ wanna hear us? This is dangerous works we got.”
“We won’t give him a choice.”
“Nnn.” He leaned back. Raie chewed a fistful of bread, and curled up to sleep.
Raie was wrong. A cooling rain set in, muddying the tracks and slowing them down. Despite this, spirits raised. The heat eased, the insects hid, and the stink of the wetlands lessened—though, only a little. The youngest of them, an acolyte clinging to her massive bodyguard, raised her hand to sky.
“See, Orin? Told you the gods like me best.”
“Naw, girl. They just did that to shut you up,” a grin split his face, “No, you wanna prove that? Tell’m I want crawdads. A mountain of’m. Drippin’ in oil.”
“I’d settle for a hot bath,” the pale man at the end said, “And clean sheets.”
Petrel smirked to himself, but kept silent. The delay had Raie in a mood, and the area looked different during the day. She couldn’t be sure they were following the right tracks anymore.
“Clean sheets, the man says.” Orin scoffed openly. “What inn you fixin’ t’find them at, noble? Jerea, stop squirmin’. Gonna fall on yer head.”
The acolyte giggled and squirmed more. Petrel doubted the big mercenary minded that much—Jerea had reached marrying age, and the gods had seen fit to announce it loudly, despite her sister-robes. Petrel masked his disinterest by mimicking the stares Orin and pale Master Larad gave her when they thought she wasn’t looking.
The boy glanced over his shoulder. Yes—there was the pale lord in the back, stripping the girl with his eyes again. Yorn, the only one in the group Petrel really gave a damn about, rode with him. Awkwardly. She never had gotten accustomed to this riding nonsense. Thought it was disrespectful to the horses. He threw her a smile, which Yorn wearily returned.
By the third day, Raie was spitting curses like thunderclaps. Petrel rode with her, behind her, her jutting spine in his face. And he delighted in every sour note that dropped from her lips. She halted the group, glaring at them, at the sky, at the gnarled trees and haphazard weeds.
“We’re lost.” She elbowed Petrel hard in the ribs. “Get down, boy.”
He almost fell over himself getting away from her.
“I’m leaving you here until I can find the trail again. I can ride faster alone.” Her mare rounded on them. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“What?” the pale master’s brows went up. Orin sputtered.
“Oh, yer shittin’ us on this—”
Petrel dusted himself off, tugging his too-large mess of chain-mail and leather straight. The protests, soaring over his head, missed their target. Raie merely grunted, and the group’s voices faded with the sound of Raie’s hoof-beats.
“… what do we do?” came the pale master’s voice. Petrel glanced at him. To his credit, Larad didn’t seem fearful. Merely perplexed. The nobleman looked anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age. He was a nervous wreck when they first met—Larad had been Raie’s first recruit, and was thoroughly terrified of the woman. He wasn’t bad looking, really—better looking now that Raie had left, and he’d begun to relax. Pale, wax-like skin. Long hair, tied back now, the color of dishwater. Vaguely blue eyes—if anything could be said in the negative, it would be that he seemed just a little too washed out. Almost unhealthy. He came from a minor noble house that already had its fill of sons and daughters, so beyond a brief stint in the military to try and court his father’s affection, he’d lead an easy life. Until Raie, anyway. He refused to talk about how or why they’d met.
In contrast, Orin was a hulk of a man. A black-skinned free son of the coast. Petrel surmised that he was so far inland to earn himself a measure of fortune. Then he’d be back to his own city to retire in comfort. At least, that was the usual story with the islanders. Orin rarely spoke of home—he’d been hired by Jerea’s parents to ensure her safety while she undertook the last trial of an acolyte. The Order of Nikale required their members to go out and learn something of the world, before accepting a position in their church. They taught that understanding was key to wisdom, and you cannot understand if you have not lived.
Orin took his charge seriously enough. He looked maybe ten or fifteen years older than Larad, and wavered between an almost filial affection for her, and the other kind of affection that all older men have for young and pretty women. He was old enough, in any case, to afford a glittering scale mail tunic that earned Petrel’s envy.
“Well, we ain’ stayin’ here.” The boy said, with some indifference, and gestured for them to follow.
Petrel himself, as small a figure as he was before the horses, was the only one of the group willing to butt heads with their sharp leader. Larad credited it to a poor upbringing—the boy obviously lacked parents. And manners. And a healthy respect for authority and class. Orin figured the lad was crazed. They had discovered him and Yorn in the woods fighting horrors. And such things happen on the road, but, the white mud painted into their cloaks indicated they made a habit of it. He’d seen such cloaks in his travels—they usually hid mixed and unmatched patches of armor, vials of water blessed by priests and more superstition than a village full of old women. Hunters, they called themselves. No, the boy was easy to figure out. Fatherless and wandering the road looking for horrors—likely lost his folks to them. It’s always the same story with hunters. It’s the woman that puzzled Orin. Yorn didn’t seem to be kin to the lad. Petrel had ice-blond hair and grey eyes. He was pixie-faced and pale and full of spit. Yorn was different—coffee-colored, honey and cream from head to foot, with wide hips and full breasts and a dark, plush mouth. Even her eyes seemed soft. Gods—the things Orin wanted to do to that woman.
But unlike Petrel, Yorn couldn’t be approached. She fled to the boy if either Larad or Orin watched her too closely. But neither did they seem to be lovers—Petrel watched out for her, but often he shrugged her off, or snapped at her. She had some talent for healing, for secrecy, for silence certainly. The mercenary wondered what her laugh sounded like.
“How’s this look to yeh?” Petrel stopped, glancing around. It was a well hidden clearing. Lots of green for the horses, plenty of shelter from a few massive trees. The boy checked it for signs of predators and nodded in satisfaction. Orin dismounted.
“Looks good.” The big mercenary roped his horse to a low branch and helped his ward down.
“How long do you think she’ll be this time?” Jerea picked out a dry spot on the roots, “Are we making camp?”
“Yeh. Help me with this, will yeh?,” said the boy. He hauled out the old black pot.
There wasn’t any question as to whether Raie could find them, now that they had moved. Fire and food and shelter were assembled in rapid order, and the group huddled together to weather the rain.
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