The Witchwood Crown
“Rayu ata na’ara,” Nezeru replied, the ancient phrase that signified “I hear the Queen in your voice.” She had to leap over one of Kemme’s fallen victims, who writhed in the doorway, trying to lift himself up with both of his arms gone and the severed ends gushing blood like a mountain cataract.
Outside, Kemme had drawn his bow; as Nezeru emerged from the building she saw him let the first arrow fly. One of the fleeing mortal priests stumbled, fell, and did not get up. A scant moment later Kemme loosed a second shaft and another escaping priest stumbled, then dropped.
Only a few of the fleeing priests were still visible on the side of the hilltop Kemme had already chosen as his field of fire, so she left them to him and headed after the others. She no longer had a bow of her own, just her sword and knife, but that only meant she would have to outrun them, something that should not be difficult for one of the queen’s death-sung Sacrifices. Following them would be even easier: The scent of the escaping mortals hung in the air, animal clouds of terror and exertion.
She sprinted swiftly down the slope, her feet barely touching earth, and ran down the first fleeing priest within a hundred paces. He was mature and larger than Nezeru, but nowhere near as fit as a Queen’s Talon. When he stopped to gasp for breath he saw her coming, grimaced in resignation, and snatched up a large deadfall branch. From the way he held it he was no stranger to a fight, and the last thing Nezeru wanted was to waste time trading blows with him, because she could smell another mortal farther down the hill. A long struggle with this one might allow time for the other to get to the village and tell his people what had happened.
“Blood of the Garden, guide my arm,” she prayed quietly, balancing her dagger. Then, before she was close enough for the big priest to swing his makeshift club, she let it fly. The priest dropped the branch and sank to his knees, clawing at the knife that now stood in his throat; by the time she had taken three more steps he was on his face, barely squirming, his blood matting the grassy earth. Nezeru put her foot on his head and shoved it to one side, freeing a last, rattling gasp from his torn throat. Then she retrieved her knife and hurried down the mountainside after her other quarry.
The scent of the next mortal’s terror was strong, but his sweat smelled curiously sweet. It also took a longer time than she had expected before she could finally hear him crashing through the undergrowth a few dozen yards below her. The fugitive was moving with surprising speed, which gave her a moment of worry. No mortal priest could have been trained and strengthened in all the ways Nezeru had been during her years in the Order of Sacrifice, so how could this one pass through the tangled brush and close-standing trees so easily?
Then, as she emerged into the open and could look out over the expanse of mountainside below her, she finally saw her quarry’s shaved head glinting in the sunshine like a raindrop on a leaf. It was a child—one of the young acolytes. Nezeru knew little of mortals, but thought this one could not have been much past the age when boys first left their mothers to follow their fathers into the field or forest.
A moment later the boy vanished behind trees once more, bounding down the sloping hillside. Nezeru sped her pace, but could see that he was far enough ahead that if she did not reach a clear spot quickly where she could take him down, he would be in shouting distance of the village before she could stop him.
She hurried toward the next open view, risking several falls that would have ended the pursuit entirely, but at last reached a place that overlooked a large part of the slope beneath her. She held a knife behind her ear waiting for the boy to appear, watching a gap as wide as a door frame between two trees. Nezeru had been one of the best in her entire rank with a throwing knife, and these blades had been a gift from her father—a beautifully balanced pair of antique daggers forged by Tinukeda’ya craftsmen. Now all she had to do was wait.
It did not take long. The child made enough noise as he hurried downward that she could almost have hit him with her eyes closed. When he appeared in the opening between the two trees Nezeru let out a loud cry of triumph, calculated to freeze him for a sufficient instant.
It did: at her shout the boy stumbled and almost fell, turning a look of blind terror toward the hillside above him as he fought to regain his balance. He was indeed small, his legs still too short for adulthood, his shaved head too large. In the fractional instant he swayed there between the framing trunks she could even see the curve of his childish belly and his eyes full of tears. Perfect. All she had to do was let her blade fly.
But she did not throw it.
A moment later the little acolyte regained his footing and was gone again, racing down the path. She heard his footsteps grow fainter even as his scent began to fade on the breeze.
Nezeru was astonished at herself. She had failed—she had not even tried! Why had she let down her comrades and betrayed her queen? She didn’t know, but something about the child—his small size, his . . . realness—had shocked her in a way she had not foreseen.
I’ve betrayed my people. That was all she could think. She could have killed the boy easily, ended the threat of his escape, but she had not done it. It was as though her own body had turned traitor without explanation.
Nezeru could not understand what had happened. All she could do was climb back up the hill to join Makho and the others. She was a traitor, and deserved death, that was the simple truth.
But Nezeru did not want to die.
• • •
“But if you saw his eyes, how could you fail your shot?” Makho was furious, as well he should have been. The five Talons were hurrying down the mountainside now, the mortal captain following them as best he could, although the sound of his cursing was already nearly too weak to hear.
“I told you, my knife struck a vine and went astray.” Nezeru had never lied to her fellow Sacrifices before. It was a bizarre sensation, like discovering that despite what everyone said, she could actually walk upon thin air. But as with walking on air, she could not believe it would last, and the knowledge of what would happen when the truth of things reasserted itself terrified her. It is bad enough that I failed—but to evade punishment like a coward by lying to my hand chieftain . . . ? She felt as though she, not the wrinkled mortal priest, had been the one whose head had been cut off. Everything she had thought, everything she had believed, had been dashed to pieces in an instant.
“Let us not waste time talking!” pleaded Saomeji. He was carrying the bundle that contained the bones as he ran, cradling them as a mother would cradle an infant.
“The Singer is right,” said Makho. “We will speak of your failure later, Talon Nezeru. Now we must be silent. The mortals may not wait until we reach the village to attack us.”
• • •
He was right: the mortals did not wait. Before the afternoon sun had fallen all the way behind the mountain the Talons were attacked by a group of men from the village. Unlike the priests, these had armed themselves with bows and arrows, with knives of bone and stone clubs. Sadly for them, they were not fighting other mortals but the trained soldiers of the Queen of the North; Ibi-Khai took an arrow wound in his arm and Nezeru herself only avoided having her skull smashed by throwing herself between an attacker’s legs and hamstringing him from behind, but in the end the armed islanders fared no better against the Queen’s Talons than had the unarmed priests; nearly two dozen bodies lay on the ground when the village men finally retreated, and none of the corpses belonged to the Hikeda’ya.
The day was all but over by the time they reached the base of the mountain, the sky purple as a bruise, but the village was bright with fires as Nezeru and the rest of the Hikeda’ya came down out of the heights. A mass of villagers waited on the beach of the bay where the Black Rimmersmen’s ship Hringleit lay at anchor. The sailors had seen what was happening and had rowed their shore boat beyond the range of the villagers’ arrows and stones to wait. Nezeru wondered how long it would take
to swim out that far.
Then she had no time to think of anything, because the villagers fell upon them in a great crowd, most of them screaming with rage. It was nothing like the armed attack on the mountainside: there were women and even children among these desperate attackers, some barehanded, but others swinging heavy stones or digging tools. In the dim light Nezeru even saw some of the women stabbing at her companions with bone sewing needles, the only weapons they had been able to find.
In the chaos of fighting her way down to the beach Nezeru had to take what came, but she did her best not to kill children or women unnecessarily; instead she pushed them away or knocked them witless with the pommels of her sword and dagger. Saomeji beside her, clutching the sacred bones against his chest, seemed to have no such compunctions. Each time an islander approached him, his bare hand darted out like a striking snake; everywhere it touched there was a flash and a thump of air, then the smell of burning flesh as another assailant collapsed to the ground. And veteran Sacrifices Makho and Kemme were like deadly whirlwinds, destroying everything that drew near them, turning living flesh into lifeless lumps so swiftly Nezeru could not always make out what they had done. At last Makho fought his way down to the edge of the beach, his face covered with bloody scratches, his long white hair pulled free of its elaborate coiffure and whipping in the breeze like a ragged banner.
The longboat began to row toward them. Makho turned and grabbed Saomeji, then shoved him out into deeper water. The Singer lifted the bones high above his head as he waded out, paying little attention to the villagers’ crude arrows splashing around him. Makho followed, backing into the bay until the waters reached his waist, protecting Saomeji’s escape.
Nezeru had fallen behind the others, and now had to fight her way clear of a group of older men and women to get down to the strand. She batted their withered arms aside as if they were tree branches swiping at her face. Kemme was in the shallows ahead of her, still dropping bodies in a wide semicircle described by the length of his blade. The beach was strewn with corpses, many with black arrows jutting from throat or belly or back. The Whisperer Ibi-Khai stumbled along just behind Kemme, holding his wounded arm close to his side, head down to make a smaller target as he splashed toward the shore boat. For a moment Nezeru thought they had escaped, but then she saw the ship’s mortal captain stumble out of the forest and collapse, clearly all but exhausted. The villagers saw him and several of them moved to surround him.
Can the ship sail without its captain? Nezeru wondered. She hastened back through the shallows and leaped into the midst of the villagers, her sword slashing and biting. As the islanders fell away from their victim in surprise, several holding bloody wounds, Nezeru dragged the captain back onto his feet and pushed him ahead of her into the surf. She waited until he was up and moving again before following him. The rest of the queen’s hand had almost reached the longboat, with Saomeji and his precious burden in the lead.
My fellow Talons will leave me here, she suddenly realized. As they should. The queen would want it so. If I cannot get to the boat, they will leave me here. She knew what being captured by the furious villagers would mean. However these people might have come to have Hakatri’s relics, it was clear that they worshipped them.
We have stolen their god . . .
Something struck her full in the back, an impact so sudden that for a moment she thought she had been arrow-shot. Then she felt hands pulling at her hair, nails scraping her face, and heard the wordless howls. Her sword had tumbled to the sand just beyond her reach, but she managed to curl her fingers around one of her throwing knives and pull it from her harness. She stabbed backward, catching something with meat on it. Somebody screeched just behind her ear and the grappling arms loosened for a moment. Nezeru smashed backward again, this time with the pommel of the knife, guessing where her enemy’s head must be, and felt the satisfaction of impact. The burden fell away from her. Nezeru crawled forward until she could reach her sword, but even as her fingers closed on the hilt she was attacked again, and had to turn and try to push her assailant away. The figure was small but fat around the middle, something she had only an instant to note before she managed to roll out from under the grasping, mad thing. She could hear Makho out across the water, calling to the sailors to hurry, but she could hear other, angrier cries from much nearer and knew that whoever had attacked her would soon have help.
Finally free, she staggered upright and saw that her attacker was a young woman with dark hair in a wild tangle and eyes red with tears. The woman’s hands curved into claws as she caught up to Nezeru again, trying to swipe at her face. Nezeru thrust with her blade through her attacker’s robe and into the rounded body, then pushed the blade deeper. The woman’s eyes bulged and she opened her mouth as if to speak; blood was on her tongue and her teeth. Then she fell heavily onto the red sand and a blood-spotted bundle rolled out of her robe. A baby had been strapped to her chest. Nezeru’s sword had pierced them both.
My father, Lord Viyeki, I am sorry, was her first thought. How shamed you will be to have such a daughter.
A bone-tipped arrow snapped into the sand near her foot, scarcely a hand’s breadth from the dead woman’s slack face. Nezeru turned and ran into the water.
13
Lady Alva’s Tale
“Enough of weeping, friends,” Simon declared loudly. “Since the good old duke died, it seems like that’s all we’ve done for days. Tonight will be different—by royal command, we will drink and laugh!”
“We hardly need a royal command for that, husband,” Miriamele pointed out. “And in any case, it’s not truly a royal command unless I add my voice.”
“Well?” He took a long drink from the cup that had already been twice refilled by helpful servitors. “Do you?”
“Do you need to ask?” she said. “With all our friends here? Yes, husband, I agree that we have wept more than enough. Let us put away our grief for one night and celebrate Isgrimnur’s life.”
“And our own lives, too,” said Eolair, smiling. “For we have all endured much to be here today.”
“And some would even say the world is a better place for it,” said Tiamak, wiping beer froth from his mouth. “Isgrimnur contributed much to that.”
Simon was amused—he could almost believe that the usually abstemious Wrannaman was getting a bit tiddly. “You speak truth, Brother Tiamak—and I salute what Eolair said as well. We are all friends here, but we are friends with a history few can match.” He looked around the hall where the duke’s great-grandchildren frisked on the rug-draped floors and a large, comforting fire burned in the hearth. “Friends . . . and the family of friends, who are as good as family—or do I mean as good as friends? Never mind.” He raised his cup. “Let us drink also to the new duke, Grimbrand, the new duchess, Sorde, and all Isgrimnur’s fine family!”
The others echoed him. Isgrimnur’s daughter Signi and her husband had brought a large array of children and grandchildren to the gathering, and Duke Grimbrand’s son Isvarr and his fair-haired wife had contributed four towheaded boy-beasts who seemed to do little except shout, run, and wrestle. Two of Isvarr’s sisters and their husbands also had broods of their own. It was hard to tell exactly how many children were present, but it was not a small number.
Look at all Isgrimnur’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, thought Simon with a momentary pang. What a fine, big family he and Gutrun made. He looked to Miriamele to see if she shared his mood, as she so often did, but his wife was on a bench by one of the fireplaces talking to Sisqi and Duchess Sorde and she looked happy enough.
Just me, he thought as he drained his cup. Just me being a mooncalf. “God bless old Isgrimnur!” he shouted, then waved for one of the servants to come fill his cup again.
“And with that,” said Grimbrand, rising, “I think it is time for my clan to head back to our chambers and leave our distinguished guests to their own conversations. You hav
e much to discuss, I think, and even more to remember.” He bowed to Miriamele, then beckoned to his wife.
As the new duke and duchess and their large party of children and servants went out they paused to greet an older couple in the doorway.
“Sludig!” Simon stood up so quickly he nearly knocked the pitcher from the serving-boy’s hand. “God bless you and keep you, you old badger, I have been looking for you since the funeral!”
The Rimmersman, who had broadened considerably since the days they had marched across the north together, spread his arms. “Am I allowed to embrace the king and queen?”
“The king would be angry if you didn’t.” Simon let himself be enfolded in the northerner’s bearlike grasp. “Miri! Come see who’s here! It is Sludig the Dour, masking as the Earl of Engby.”
“Jarl of Engby,” Sludig told him, smiling deep in his beard as he returned the embrace. His whiskers were still mostly yellow, despite all his years, but he truly had grown a bit wider than when the king had seen him last. “We also say ‘thane’ here instead of ‘baron’. We have not been entirely enslaved by Your Majesties’ overcivilized southern ways.”
“Ha!” said Sludig’s wife. “My husband has largely given up beer for Perdruinese wine brought north to us at great expense, so do not pay too much heed to his bragging about northern pride.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Simon said. “And welcome, Lady Engby.” Simon had met Sludig’s wife for only a few moments at Isgrimnur’s funeral, but had liked her instantly. She was younger than her husband, a tall, broad-shouldered woman with an open, friendly face and a swift wit.
“‘Alva’, please, Your Majesty, or ‘Lady Alva’ if you must. My old man is right about one thing—we’re not so civilized up here as some others.”
“Lady Alva, it is so good to see you again,” said Miri from her bench beside the fire. “Come and have a proper talk with me while the men bellow drunken lies at each other.”