98
The first scream got our attention. There were others, maybe three voices, a woman and certainly one girl child. I was moving before I thought about it, turning recklessly off the path and kicking the dray into a canter, it couldn't go faster. Some horses cannot gallop and the dray was one of them. The pasture ran slightly uphill for a hundred yards, then fell away. I crested the brow and didn't hesitate even though I should have. At the bottom of the slope the pasture ended in a cottage behind a small plowed field, some parts under cultivation, some bare and ready for planting. There were maybe half a dozen men that I could see or guess at; Alendi by the look of them. One held a struggling girl and was carrying her inside. The other five were busy, one way or another. One had a woman on the ground. At a window one was throwing goods out into the yard for inspection by the others. Another leaned against a wall and cut slices from a ham, stuffing them into his mouth.
A girl's scream came from inside the house. I couldn't move any faster. Anger doesn't describe what I felt, it was a cold and vicious emotion that filled me and overflowed. This was everything I hated about foreign soldiers, they rape and take, ruin and destroy, and have not the wit to build anything stable and good. They deserved to die or be made slaves for the mines, their territories ruled by the city whose laws protected people from violence against their person and theft of their property. At that moment I hated barbarians and their log longhouses and their short brutal pointless lives, and these would have shorter lives than most. Half of them were younger than me I saw as I thundered toward them, the heavy dray giving them plenty of warning of my approach. They were aware of me but not worried, the one with the ham didn't even put it down. The man on the ground on the woman barely looked up and made no attempt to stop what he was doing to her. Two reached for their spears and moved forward. I hit the plowed earth and the hooves of the dray threw up great clods of earth. One of them appeared at the door and another stuck his head out the window and watched. I wasn't stopping and of the two who faced me one shouted a warning, then I had my sword out and was on top of them.
I turned the dray at the last moment, let his spear thrust pass my side and slashed at his head, opening a wound that took his ear away with it. I spun the dray about and saw that Sapphire was there and the other one down. Sapphire was already off his horse, his sword in the man who had been raping the woman, the thrust of the sword almost casual as he passed. The barbarian with the ham had dropped it and snatched up his own spear, stepping forward. I didn't see what happened to him as I kicked myself off the dray and landed with a stumble. The boy with half his face gone was howling but still had his spear in hand; looking at me he launched himself forward and I spitted him, twisted and pulled the blade free, heading for the doorway. Sapphire leaped through the window, leaving no enemy alive outside. I went through the door, dodged at the last moment as a naked girl hurtled out the door, stepped in to the bad light and nearly took a spear in the gut. I twisted desperately and the blade of it scored me in passing, I ignored it then, stepped in and hammered my forehead into the barbarian's nose, feeling his rough beard against my face. He grunted and staggered back and I moved with him, bringing the point of my sword up level with his belly and thrusting hard. Grabbing his arm with my free hand I pushed the blade deeper and twisted it, the deep breath he gasped in would have turned into something if I'd let it. Instead it froze in his lungs when I shoved the edge left and right and I let him fall away from me, tugging my sword free through a wall of blood.
Only Sapphire and I were in the room.
“Better,” he said, calmly. “Just get the blade in them. Hit them with anything anywhere and if you can target a fatal spot so much the better but don't let it take up space in your mind, you need to be aware of everything and reacting to everything but most of all you want them to be reacting to you but not for long…” He kept up the indifferent monologue as he followed me out of the room. The woman was sitting up, her skirts pulled down over her legs, holding her girl children as all three wept, though she was trying to comfort them. “…kill them fast and move to the next,” he finished. “Anything we want here?”
“Give them some scrip.”
He looked at me, looked at them and frowned slightly, then nodded. As he went for that I brushed aside the woman's near hysterical thanks and overrode her words with mine. “There will be more. Head south, and east. This scrip is worth coin, enough to start again. Get closer to the city, it's safer. This sort of thing doesn't happen there.” She was nodding but I don't know how much she was taking in or what she would do. “Go now,” I told her and headed for my horse, who was standing nearby, stamping his feet and snorting anxiously.
“Wait!” She called out, scrambling to her feet. “Can we go with you? Please please please…”
“We are going north. Go south and east, as I said.” I looked them over, wondered at their fate for just a moment, but you can't save them all and you can't protect them all, who knew how many horror stories there would be told after this war was done. What I could do I would, but I couldn't do more and still do what I needed to. “I'm sorry.”
I turned away from the pain and despair, the red face and the tears, away from the children, one of whom was not a child any more. There must be hundreds like this.
The dogs barked frantically in my head, suddenly wild with excitement. I cocked my head to one side and she thought I was considering, maybe changing my mind. I hushed her as she began to beg again to go with us. Sapphire pressed a scrip into her hand and she closed it into a fist. “If there is money on these men, take it. Do as he says, south and east. Go.”
I was watching, standing near the dray, I hadn't even made it to her head. I was listening, frozen. Then the baying began and I knew they were loose and coming after me.
“Sapphire, we have to run.”
He looked at me, saw the fear on my face, yet still asked me calmly why we had to run.
“The dogs. They are loose and they know where I am,” I touched the stone embedded in my forehead.
He nodded. “For now we run.”
So we mounted up and ran.
99
“You think you are never going to have to kill when you are tired and drunk? Think again.”
I think he was angry. He'd thrown the practice sword at me and I'd dropped it. I could barely stand up. I was pretty wasted. The light of dusk was all we had and I could hardly see. I'd nearly fallen off the dray for the tenth time and the sun was setting. He'd dragged the packs to the ground, thrown me a bottle and walked the horses till they cooled down, then let them drink, gave them some oats and let them crop at the grass when he came back to where I lay, calling curtly for me that I get to my feet.
Now I stooped, swaying, and got a grip on the practice blade. I was down before I knew he wasn't going to wait for me.
“Get up.”
I did, slowly, watching him carefully.
It went on for a while and it wasn't pretty. The beating – who can call it anything else? – went on long after I couldn't see for lack of light and only ended when he couldn't see. I was a mess of bruises when he finally stopped. He was angry okay, but it wasn't my fault as such. Drunk worked, that's all.
I'd half noticed it before but thought nothing of it. The idea occurred to me and I thought it was worth a try. I'd been struggling to drink as little as possible, fighting the addiction as long as I could and ruthlessly putting the bottle away each time I took a pull. It was hard, especially that part. I wanted to keep drinking till the bottle was empty and then open another. This time I had.
I thought it was worth a try. When I had had a drink before, still in the prison of my room when I had caved to the demands and taken that first drink after days of deprivation, the sound of the dogs had faded a little. It happened again, the next time. And each time. I thought it was worth a try. Each sip, each addition to the alcohol in my belly and the sound of the dogs faded, they seemed more confused, whimpering, the baying gone and replaced with whining and snuffling. When I was drunk they lost the smell of me, they couldn't find me while I was drunk.
