Magic's Price

But nothing happened, and his fear ebbed a little; he coughed and took a second look, raking his hair out of his eyes with a greasy hand and peering through a thicker puff of smoke and soot that an errant breeze sent down the half-choked chimney. Lord Rendan stood blocking the open doorway, arms laden with something bulky, a scowl on his face. But it wasn't the scowl Damen had come to dread these past two weeks, the one that told of failure on Rendan's part and punishment to come for Damen -

The boy scrambled to his bare feet, slipping a little on a splash of old tallow, and scuttled through the rotting straw and garbage that littered the floor to the lord's side. “Here,” Rendan growled, thrusting the bundle at him. Damen took it in both arms, the weight making him stagger, as Rendan grabbed his shoulder and turned him toward the hearth. “Put it over there, on the bench,” the lord snapped, as his fingers dug into Damen's shoulder, leaving one more set of bruises among the rest. The boy stumbled obediently toward the bench and dropped his burden, only then seeing that it was a saddle and harness, blood-spattered, but of fine leather and silver-chased steel.

A saddle? But we don't have any horses -

The lord threw something else atop the pile; white and shining, a cascade of silver hair -

A horse's tail; a white horse's tail, the raw end still bloody.

Before Damen could stir his wits enough to wonder what that meant, the rest of the men crowded in through the keep door, cursing and shouting, bringing the cold and snow in with them. Damen rubbed his nose on his sleeve, then scuttled out of the way. He stood as close to the fire as he could, for in his fourth-hand breeches and tattered shirt he was always cold. He counted them coming in, as he always did, for the number varied as men were recruited or deserted and may the gods help him if he didn't see that all of them had food and drink.

One hand's-worth, two hands, three and four hands - and five limp bodies, carried by the rest. One cut nearly in half; Gerth the Axe -

An' no loss there, Damen thought, with a smirk he concealed behind a cough. One less bastard t' beat me bloody when 'e's drunk, an' try an' get into me breeches when 'e's sober.

The others dropped Gerth's hacked-up body beside the door. Two more bodies joined his, bodies blackened and burned; Heverd and Jess. Damen dismissed them with a shrug; they were no better and no worse than any of the others, quite forgettable by his standards.

A fourth with the face smashed in was laid beside the rest, and Damen had to take account of the other faces before he decided it must be Resley the Liar. A pity, that - the Liar could be counted on to share a bit of food when the pickings were thin and there wasn't enough to go around, provided a lad had something squirreled away to trade.

But there was a fifth body, white-clad and blood-smeared; certainly no one Damen recognized. And that one was thrown down beside the pile of harness, not next to the door. An old man, he thought, seeing the long, silver-threaded hair; but that was before they dumped him unceremoniously beside the bench. Then the face came into the flickering firelight, and Damen blinked in confusion, for the face was that of a young man, not an old one, and a very handsome young man at that, quite as pretty as a girl. He was apparently unconscious, and tied hand and foot, and it occurred to Damen that this might be what Master Dark had set them all a-hunting these past two weeks.

He didn't have any time to wonder about the prisoner, for a few of the men set to stripping the bodies of their fellows and quarreling over the spoils, while the rest shouted for food and drink.

Damen gathered up the various bowls and battered cups that served as drinking vessels, and balanced them in precarious stacks in his arms. He passed among the men while they grabbed whatever was uppermost on the pile in his arms and filled their choice from the barrel atop the slab table in the center of the hall. Drink always came first in Lord Rendan's hall; sour and musty as the beer always was, it was still beer and the men drank as much of it as they could hold. Damen returned to the hearth, wrapped the too-long sleeves of his cast-off shirt around his hands and grabbed the end of the spit nearest him, heaving the half-raw haunch of venison off the fire. It fell in the fire, but the men would never notice a little more ash on the burned crust of the meat. He staggered back to the table under his burden of flesh, and heaved it with a splatter of juices up onto the surface beside the barrel, on top of the remains of last night's meal. Those that weren't too preoccupied with gulping down their second or third bowl of beer staggered over to the table to hack chunks off with their knives.

Now the last trip; the boy picked up whatever remained of the containers that hadn't been claimed as drinking vessels, and filled them one at a time from the pot of pease-pottage he'd been tending. He brought them, dripping, to the table, and slopped them down beside the venison, saving only one for himself. He was not permitted meat until the last of the men had eaten their fill, and he was not permitted beer at all.

He sat on his heels next to the hearth, and watched the others warily, gobbling his food as fast as he could, cleaning the bowl with his fingers and then licking it and them bare of the last morsel. Too many times in the past, one or more of the men had thought it good sport to kick his single allotted bowl of porridge out of his hands before he'd eaten more than half of it. Now he tried always to finish before any of the rest of them did.

But tonight the men had other prey to occupy them. As Damen tossed his bowl to the side and wrapped his arms around his skinny legs, Lord Rendan got up, still chewing, and strolled over to the side of the prisoner. The man was showing some signs of life now; moaning a little, and twitching. The Lord kicked him solidly in the side, and Damen winced a little, grateful that he wasn't on the receiving end of the blow.

Then Rendan reached down and untied the man, who didn't seem to understand that he'd been freed. The