Shadow's master

Dray looked over with a frown. “Caim?”

As Caim fought to stand up straight, something popped behind him.

Before he could turn, a wall of heat struck him in the back, turning the air into a haze of boiling flame. The blast carried him over several tumbling chairs and dumped him hard on the ground against on overturned table. His ears hummed. Then sounds began to filter through the thunder in his head, muted screams and yelling from all sides.

Crawling to his knees, Caim looked around at the market, which had been ripped apart. The southern side of the square was a curtain of fire. Fiery cinders swirled overhead amid a cloud of dense smoke. Northmen ran, trampling anyone who didn't move fast enough. Steel flashed here and there.

Caim stood up as Aemon helped his brother out of a pile of people and furniture. Malig sported a big bruise over his right eye. By his scowl, he was ready to wreak some destruction of his own. The girls picked themselves up and scurried away.

“Mal!” Caim shouted. “Go get the horses.”

Aemon steadied his brother, who was looking around with wide, glassy eyes. Caim looked out over the crowd. The fire was spreading, and the people trapped in the market were becoming more violent in their attempts to escape. Egil emerged from the river of people, with two heavy sacks slung over his shoulder.

“Let's go!” Caim shouted, but then a flash of red from the crowd caught his eye.

Thirty paces behind Egil, a figure in a russet cloak was striding away through the mob. The Northmen didn't seem to notice him, for the figure flowed through their press as easily as a fish through still water. Caim pushed through a knot of leather-clad warriors after the cloaked individual. I must be crazy. I don't even know what I'm chasing.

“Caim!”

He turned his head at Aemon's call. A scuffle had broken out at the outdoor tavern. Four big Northmen were grappling with the brothers. Aemon bled from his nose while Dray was being choked. Shit!

Caim glanced into the crowd, but the figure in the red cloak was gone. With a growl, he shoved his way back to the tables. He drew his knives as he came up behind one assailant and punched him in the kidney with a pommel butt while simultaneously stomping on the back of his ankle, toppling him over with a bellow. Caim hoped to extricate the brothers without bloodshed, but two of the Northmen drew daggers from their belts and came at him. Caim feinted left and slashed high to the right, distracting the foe long enough to get in close and bury his seax in the Northman's armpit. The second Northman stabbed, but Caim deflected the weak underhand thrust and spun away, slicing his suete along the ribs of the Northman choking Dray. The strangler released Dray and reached for the short-handled axe at his belt, but Caim rushed in before the man could draw. His knives plunged through hide and up to their guards in soft belly flesh. The Northman yelled and tried to shove him away, but Caim twisted around behind him and cut his throat.

Caim stepped back, knives dripping. The last Northman standing took off through the crowd. Aemon helped Dray to his feet. “You want we should go after him?”

“No. We're getting out.”

With his knives in hand, Caim made a path through the crowd. They found Malig two streets up from the market. Everyone mounted up, except for Egil. Before Caim could offer him a ride, the guide strode ahead of them, making a path. Caim kneed his steed into the breach, and they rode as fast as the press of angry Northmen would allow.

As they approached the town's outer limits, Caim looked back, wondering what had happened. They had escaped unharmed, but although he tried to convince himself he was being paranoid, he couldn't help feeling the mayhem had been aimed at him. The feeling followed him onto the wastes.

CHAPTER NINE

Caim peered through the freezing rain that had inundated them since they left the northern town. They traveled on what could only graciously be called a hunting trail. The rain had left a thick crust of ice, like a glass cocoon, over everything. It crackled under the hooves of their horses and made footing treacherous. Egil walked a hundred paces or so ahead of them, as was his habit. Perhaps he preferred solitude. Caim could understand that. These lonely plains were made for silence. The horizon was a faint divider between black earth and blacker heavens.

Caim buried his face in the shirt he was using for a scarf, feeling the wool snag on his whiskers. For the better part of two days he had been pondering the explosion that had almost killed them. Yet, even as his thoughts chased themselves around and around, he couldn't make up his mind. Had they been attacked, and had it all been an unfortunate accident? Caim had heard of granaries catching fire like that, but not homes exploding without warning. More than anything it reminded him of the fire that had burned down his apartment building in Othir. Coincidence?

“For fuck sakes!” Dray yelled. “I can't feel my toes.”

Caim swallowed a sharp retort. Dray and Malig had complained nonstop since leaving the town, about the cold, the rain, the darkness, and the food, but mainly about how they had been forced to leave town before they got to “know” their lady friends. On the other hand, Aemon hadn't said more than a dozen words since they'd left. Caim looked back at the blond Eregoth riding at the rear of the party by himself. Probably brooding over that slave girl at the market. The boy's too sensitive for his own good.

But when Caim closed his eyes, he saw her, too. Defenseless and alone before the ravenous crowd. She'd looked nothing like Josey except the hair, but he couldn't put her out of his head. Now who's the sensitive one?

“We should have stayed back there,” Dray said. “What was the harm in a couple more days? Those girls! Oh gods! We should have stayed.”

“Damn right, we should have,” Malig said. “The fire wasn't even that bad. Those girls were ready to go, and I ain't had a piece of tail in weeks.”

Dray laughed. “Hell, Mal. The way you were drooling, I didn't think you'd ever had a piece.”

“Fuck you, Dray. I've had half the girls in Joliet. You remember Marsa?”

Caim steered his horse around a crater in the trail. There were a few tall boulders ahead, lying on the plains like huge snowballs. Maybe they could find a place out of the wind to bed down for a couple hours.

“Hamer's sister?” Dray asked.

“That's right. Say, didn't that girl back there look a little like Marsa?”

“Which girl?”

“The one those guys were trying to buy. You know, in the square.”

“At the market?”

“Yeah-”

“Gods!” Aemon's voice called from the back of the line. “Don't you talk about anything else?”

Caim turned around. The others had pulled up behind him.

“What's the problem?” Malig laughed. “You don't like girls?”

Aemon's face was stark white in the cold. “I never said that, but you don't need to be saying those kinds of-”

“Saying what?” Malig spurred his mount closer to Aemon. “I'll say what I fucking want.”

“Mal,” Dray said. “Let it be.”

Malig spat on the ground. “To hell with that! I want to know what your little brother thinks I shouldn't be saying. Maybe he thinks he's the one to shut me-”

Aemon's right fist connected with the side of Malig's jaw with a hard thud. Malig kicked free of his stirrups and lunged, dragging Aemon off his horse. Caim glanced at Dray, who stayed where he was even though Malig was stronger and meaner than his brother by a fair margin, not to mention Aemon had a bad leg. When Malig rolled on top, Caim wondered if he should intervene, but a sharp smack sent the big man toppling over to the ground. Aemon pushed himself to his feet.