for something on which to inflict his bitterness, Heldo-Bah sees only a creeping orange tree grub on a moss-covered log. In a startling flurry, he slices the creature into four pieces with his deadly knives. “It’s bad enough that you make these insane tales up to charm women into your bed — but to then try to pass them off as ‘history,’ as though no one would ever question you …” Heldo-Bah picks up the four oozing‡ segments of wood grub — and drops them, one after another, into his mouth, chewing ferociously and seeming satisfied by a taste that would cause most humans to erupt from both ends.
Keera watches in revulsion. “Do you never consider, Heldo-Bah, that wood boar may be the least likely cause of your ailments?”
“Oh, no,” Heldo-Bah says simply. “It is boar — I have studied the matter. And tonight, I will have beef! What do you see, Keera?”
“We’ve angled our run well — we should be at the Fallen Bridge in a few minutes, and cross straight onto Lord Baster-kin’s Plain.”
Heldo-Bah moans delightedly, seeming to forget the panther. “Ah, shag cattle … Good beef, and beef belonging to that pig Baster-kin, too.”
“And the Merchant Lord’s private guard?” Veloc asks his sister.
Keera shakes her head. “We will have to get closer before I can answer that. But—” She lifts her staff, hooks it onto a leafy birch, and pulls the fluttering green curtain aside to reveal the distant summit of Broken, perfectly framed by the trees. “All seems quiet in the city, tonight …”
At the sight of the torch-lit metropolis, fountainhead of power in the kingdom of Broken and wellspring of misery for those who dwell in Davon Wood, a passionate silence falls over the party, and, soon thereafter, over many of the forest creatures that share this sudden glimpse of the northern horizon. The eerie calm is not broken until Heldo-Bah spits out the last bit of his vile meal. “So — the Groba has
Veloc glances dubiously at his friend. “Did they consider it?”
“There was talk of as much, among that last group of foragers we met,” answers Heldo-Bah. “They claimed to have witnessed one of the Tall’s death rituals at the Wood’s edge, and sent a man back to Okot with the news. When he returned, he said that the Outragers had argued that the act required a response — for the Tall did their killing on our side of the river.”
Keera presses: “But are they certain it was the Tall who were responsible? The Groba are forbidden to dispatch Outragers unless they are sure, and the river spirits are very active, following spring thaw — they may have coaxed a forest beast to attack one of Baster-kin’s men—”
“And I might have stones the size of a shag bull’s,” Heldo-Bah answers, spitting again. “Save that I don’t. Rock goblins and river trolls …” The forager’s cynicism is answered by even louder crackling on the forest floor nearby. His face reverting to childlike fear, Heldo-Bah snatches a lit torch from the ground and glances in all directions. “The existence of which,” he declares in a clear voice, “I accept as an article of faith!”
Keera is over to him in a few bounding steps, and claps a hand over his mouth. Her eyes and head always moving, she whispers, “The panther …” Keera creeps to the very limits of the flickering glow created by the three torches, holding her maple staff at the ready. “I may have been wrong — he may be stalking us. Yet it did not seem so …”
Veloc comes to her side. “What can we do?”
“Run?” Heldo-Bah whispers, joining them in a bound.
“Yes,” Keera says, “but we will not manage fifty yards, even holding torches, unless we give the panther something else to think about. An offering — where is the boar joint from yesterday?” Veloc produces a piece of bone and meat, wrapped in a bit of hide. “Leave it here,” Keera commands. “It will draw him, and the fire of the torches should remove any lingering interest he might have in us.”
“And catch the interest of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard,” Veloc replies, even as he follows his sister’s orders.
“We will extinguish them at the Fallen Bridge,” declares Keera, her mind, as ever, solving problems before Veloc and Heldo-Bah even contemplate them. “Come now, quickly — away!”
Having resumed their characteristic pace through the Wood, the three Bane need only moments to reach the craggy, deafening banks of the churning Cat’s Paw river, where they find themselves near the thick, hundred-foot trunk of an enormous red fir, whose roots have recently given up the desperate struggle to grip the scant Earth of the high riverbank. The ancient sentinel’s mighty body now points directly north across Hafften Falls, one of the most daunting of the Cat’s Paw’s many cascades: it has sacrificed itself to provide the most reliable of several natural bridges between Davon Wood and Broken — bridges that many of Broken’s military commanders would like to see destroyed, and with them the threat posed by the mischievous and sometimes murderous Bane. But the merchants of Broken, although they despise the exiles, make enormous profits from the goods that the tribe’s foragers bring out of the wilderness: a child in Broken, for example, who does not number among his possessions a little Davon tree shrew like those that now huddle in cages in the sacks carried by Keera’s party can depend upon the disdain of his play fellows, while any woman who cannot drape herself with sufficient jewelry made of the silver, gold, and precious gems found in the wilderness will leave her house only at night, or elaborately veiled. Worse yet, a husband or father who cannot afford to buy such things is seen as faltering in his devotion to Kafra—
Nimble as ever, the three foragers prepare to cross the bridge, not so much alarmed as amused by the crashing waters below it. Their escape from the panther, the thought of enjoying a meal suitable for the wealthiest of the Tall (and above all stirring trouble in the otherwise peaceful night), combine to make them increasingly boisterous. As soon as they have mounted the bridge, they boast of how they will knock one another from it, and play at doing so, the two men finally able to shout all they want: for between the rocky banks, the roar of the river overwhelms the sound of their voices.
It would require something dire to put an end to their games; but such sinister signs are precisely what Keera has a gift for detecting. As she puts her nose to the light breeze, her body goes taut; and then, with a quick wave of her maple staff, she once more silences her companions.
“What now?” Heldo-Bah whispers. “Not that cat—”
“Silence!” Keera hisses. Then, at a run, she leaps back off the bridge, and begins to search the rocky ground on the southern bank of the river, following an unmistakable scent:
“Someone has died,” Veloc announces, following his sister.
“Aye,” Heldo-Bah noises. “And been left to rot …”
Within moments, the three are upon the remains of a young man of Broken. Once he had been as tall and well formed as any; now, he is a rotting carcass, from whose ribs protrude several beautifully crafted arrows: shafts of wood overlain with gold leaf, flights made of Davon eagle feathers, and heads of fearsome silver.
“This must be the fellow.” Veloc’s voice betrays some small measure of sympathy, although the rotting man would likely have spat on the Bane forager, had the two ever crossed paths. “The one who was slain in the ritual you spoke of, Heldo-Bah. He’s scarcely more than a boy …”
Heldo-Bah grunts, repelled: “Look at the arrows — Moon strike me dead if they did not come from the Sacristy of the city’s High Temple.”
Keera nods agreement; yet her face betrays more complex suspicions. “But there has been no mutilation — his head, arms, and legs are all intact. And they killed him on
She stops suddenly, her face wrinkling up with some newly detected aroma that makes her immediately retrace her steps. “Keep back!” she orders, holding her torch higher. “His flesh is not merely rotting — it is diseased. Even scavengers would sense as much — it’s why they have not touched it.”
“Well, then,” Veloc muses, moving away from the remains. “They killed him because he was sickly. They’ve done it many times before.”
“But it makes no sense,” Keera insists, strangely alarmed. “Look at him — there is nothing to suggest that he was anything but a perfect young man of Broken. Tall, well formed, no lameness in the bones of his limbs, a
