Beguilement, Page 3

  He moved faster than she would have guessed for a man that size, too. Before her third breath or step, huge hands clamped around her upper arms and lifted her right off her pumping feet. At this range she could see that their nails were not just dirty but utterly black, like claws. They bit through her jacket as he swung her around.

  She yelled as loud as she could, “Let go of me! Let go!” followed up with throat-searing screams. She kicked and struggled with all her strength. It was like fighting an oak tree, for all the result she got.

  “Well, now you’ve got her all riled up,” said the young man in disgust. He too slid off the horse, stared a moment, and pulled off the rope holding up his trousers. “We’ll have to tie her hands. Unless you want your eyes clawed out.”

  Good idea. Fawn tried. Useless: the simpleton’s hands remained clamped on her wrists, yanked high over her head. She writhed around and bit a bare, hairy arm. The huge man’s skin had a most peculiar smell and taste, like cat fur, not as foul as she would have expected. Her satisfaction at drawing blood was short-lived as he spun her around and, still without visible emotion, fetched her an open-handed slap across the face that snapped her head back and dropped her to the road, black-and-purple shadows boiling up in her vision.

  Her ears were still ringing when she was jerked upright and tied, then lifted. The simpleton handed her up to the young man, now back aboard his horse. He shoved at her skirts and set her upright in front of him, both hands clamped around her waist. The horse’s sweaty barrel was warm under her legs. The simpleton took the reins to lead them and started walking once more, faster.

  “There, that’s better,” said the man who held her, his sour breath wafting past her ear. “Sorry he hit you, but you shouldn’t have run from him. Come on along, you’ll have more fun with me.” One hand wandered up and squeezed her breast. “Huh. Riper than I thought.”

  Fawn, gasping for air and still shuddering with shock, licked at a wet trickle from her nose. Was it tears, or blood, or both? She pulled surreptitiously at the rope around her wrists uncomfortably binding her hands. The knots seemed very tight. She considered more screaming. No, they might hit her again, or gag her. Better to pretend to be stunned, and then if they passed anyone within shouting distance, she’d still have command of her voice and her legs.

  This hopeful plan lasted all of ten minutes, when, before anyone else hove into sight, they turned right off the road onto a hidden path. The young man’s clutch had turned into an almost lazy embrace, and his hands wandered up and down her torso. As they started up a slope, he hitched forward as she slid backward, shoved her bedroll out of the way, and held her backside more tightly against his front, letting the horse’s movement rub them together.

  As much as this flagrant interest frightened her, she wasn’t sure but what the simpleton’s indifference frightened her more. The young man was being nasty in predictable ways. The other… she had no idea what he was thinking, if anything.

  Well, if this is going where it looks, at least they can’t make me pregnant. Thank you, stupid Sunny Sawman. As bright sides went, that one stank like a cesspit, but she had to allow the point. She hated her body’s trembling, signaling her fear to her captor, but she could not stop it. The simpleton led them deeper into the woods.

  Dag stood in his stirrups when the distant yelling echoed through the trees from the broad ravine, so high and fierce that he could barely distinguish words: Let! Go!

  He kicked his horse into a trot, ignoring the branches that swiped and scratched them both. The strange marks he’d read in the road a couple of miles back suddenly grew a lot more worrisome. He’d been trailing his quarry at the outermost edge of his groundsense for hours, now, while the night’s exhaustion crept up on his body and wits, hoping that they were leading him to the malice’s lair. His suspicion that a new concern had been added to his pack chilled his belly as the outraged cries continued.

  He popped over a rise and took a fast shortcut down an erosion gully with his horse nearly sliding on its haunches. His quarry came into sight at last in a small clearing. What… ? He snapped his jaw shut and cantered forward, heedless of his own noise how. Pulled up at ten paces, flung himself off, let his hand go through the steps of stringing and mounting and locking his bow without conscious thought.

  It was abundantly clear that he wasn’t interrupting someone’s tryst. The kneeling mud-man, blank-faced, was holding down the shoulders of a struggling figure who was obscured by his comrade. The other man was trying, simultaneously, to pull down his trousers and part the legs of the captive, who was kicking valiantly at him. He cursed as a small foot connected.

  “Hold her!”

  “No time to stop,” grumbled the mud-man. “Need to go on. No time for this.”

  “It won’t take long if you just… hold her… still!” He finally managed to shove his hips inside the angle of the kicks.

  Absent gods, was that a child they were pinning to the dirt? Dag’s groundsense threatened to boil over; distracted or no, the mud-man must notice him soon even if the other had his backside turned. The middle figure surged upward briefly, face flushed and black curls flying, dress pulled half-down as well as shoved half-up. A flash of sweet breasts like apples smote Dag’s eyes. Oh. That short rounded form was no child after all. But outweighed like one nonetheless.

  Dag quelled his fury and drew. Those heaving moon-colored buttocks had to be the most righteous target ever presented to his aim. And for once in his accursed life, it seemed he was not too late. He considered this marvel for the whole moment it took to adjust his tension to be sure the arrow would not go through and into the girl. Woman. Whatever she was.

  Release.

  He was reaching for another shaft before the first found its mark. The perfection of the thunk, square in the middle of the left cheek, was even more satisfying than the surprised scream that followed. The bandit bucked and rolled off the girl, howling and trying to reach around himself, twisting from side to side.

  Now the danger was not halved, but doubled. The mud-man stood abruptly, seeing Dag at last, and dragged the girl up in front of his torso as a shield. His height and her shortness thwarted his intent; Dag sent his next shaft toward the creature’s calf. It was a glancing hit, but stung. The mud-man leaped.

  Did this one have enough wits to threaten his prisoner in order to stop Dag? Dag didn’t wait to find out. Lips drawn back in a fierce grin, he drew his war knife and pelted forward. Death was in his stride.

  The mud-man saw it; fear flashed in that sullen, lumpy face. With a panicked heave, he tossed the crying girl toward Dag, turned, and fled.

  Bow still encumbering his left arm, the knife in his right hand, Dag had no way to catch her. The best he could do was fling his arms wide so that she wasn’t stabbed or battered. He lost his skidding balance on her impact, and they both went down in a tangle.

  For a moment, she was on top of him, her breath knocked out, her body’s softness squashed onto his. She inhaled, made a strained squeaking noise, yanked herself up, and began clawing at his face. He tried to get out words to calm her, but she wouldn’t let him; finally he was forced to let go of his weapon and just fling her off. With two live enemies still on the ground, he would have to deal with her next. He rolled away, snatched up his knife again, and surged to his feet.

  The mud-man had scrambled back up on the bandit’s horse. He yanked the beast’s head around and tried to ride Dag down. Dag dodged, started to flip his knife around for a throw, thought better of it, dropped it again, reached back to his now-twisted-around quiver, and drew one of his few remaining arrows. Nocked, aimed.

  No.

  Let the creature keep running, back to the lair. Dag could pick up those tracks again if he had to. One wounded prisoner would test the limits of what he could handle right now. A prisoner who was, most definitely, going to be made to talk. The horse vanished up the faint trail leading out of the clearing that paralleled the course of a nearby creek. Dag lowered the bo
w and looked around.

  The human bandit too had disappeared, but for once, tracking was not going to be any trouble. Dag pointed to the girl, now standing up a few yards away and struggling to readjust her torn blue dress. “Stay there.” He followed the blood trail.

  Past a screen of saplings and brush lining the clearing, the splashes grew heavier. By the boulders of the creek a figure lay prone and silent in a red puddle, trousers about his knees, Dag’s arrow clutched in his hand.

  Too still. Dag set his teeth. The man had evidently tried to drag the maddening shaft out of his flesh by main force, and must have ripped open an artery doing so. That wasn’t a killing shot, blight it! Wasn’t supposed to be. Good intentions, where have we met before? Dag balanced himself and shoved the body over with one foot. The pale unshaven face looked terribly young in death, even shadowed as it was by dirt. No answers now to be squeezed from this one; he had reached the last of all betrayals.

  “Absent gods. More children. Is there no end to them?” Dag muttered.

  He looked up to see the woman-child standing a few paces back along the blood trail, staring at them both. Her eyes were huge and brown, like a terrified deer’s. At least she wasn’t screaming anymore. She frowned down at her late assailant, and an unvoiced Oh ghosted from her tender, bitten lips. A livid bruise was starting up one side of her face, scored with four parallel red gouges. “He’s dead?”

  “Unfortunately. And unnecessarily. If he’d just lain still and waited for help, I’d have taken him prisoner.”

  She looked him up, and up, and down, fearfully. The top of her dark head, were they standing closer, would come just about to the middle of his chest, Dag judged. Self-consciously, he tucked his bow-hand down by his side, half out of sight around his thigh, and sheathed his knife.

  “I know who you are!” she said suddenly. “You’re that Lakewalker patroller I saw at the well-house!”

  Dag blinked, and blinked again, and let his groundsense, shielded from the shock of this death, come up again. She blazed in his perceptions. “Little Spark! What are you doing so far from your farm?”

  Chapter 3

  The tall patroller was staring at Fawn as though he recognized her. She wrinkled her nose in confusion, not following his words. From this angle and distance, she could at last see the color of his eyes, which were an unexpected metallic gold. They seemed very bright in his bony face, against weathered skin tanned to a dark coppery sheen on his face and hand. Several sets of scratches scored his cheeks and forehead and jaw, most just red but some bleeding. I did that, oh dear.

  Beyond, the body of her would-be ravisher lay on the smoothed stones of the creek bank. Some of his still-wet blood trickled into the creek, to swirl away in the clear water in faint red threads, dissipating to pink and then gone. He had been so hotly, heavily, frighteningly alive just minutes ago, when she had wished him dead. Now she had her wish, she was not so sure.

  “I… it…” she began, waving an uncertain hand at, well, everything, then blurted, “I’m sorry I scratched you up. I didn’t understand what was coming at me.” Then added, “You scared me.” I think I’ve lost my wits.

  A hesitant smile turned the patroller’s lips, making him look for a moment like someone altogether else. Not so… looming. “I was trying to scare the other fellow.”

  “It worked,” she allowed, and the smile firmed briefly before fleeing again.

  He felt his face, glanced at the red smears on his fingertips as if surprised, then shrugged and looked back at her. The weight of his attention was startling to her, as though no one in her life had ever looked at her before, really looked; in her present shaky state, it was not a comfortable sensation.

  “Are you all right otherwise?” he asked gravely. His right hand made an inquiring jerk. The other he still held down by his side, the short, powerful-looking bow cocked at an angle out of the way by his leg. “Aside from your face.”

  “My face?” Her quivering fingertips probed where the simpleton had struck her. Still a little numb, but starting to ache. “Does it show?”

  He nodded.

  “Oh.”

  “Those gouges don’t look so good. I have some things in my saddlebags to clean them up. Come away, here, come sit down, um… away.”

  From that. She eyed the corpse and swallowed. “All right.” And added, “I’m all right. I’ll stop shaking in a minute, sure. Stupid of me.”

  With his open hand not coming within three feet of her, he herded her back toward the clearing like someone shooing ducks. He pointed to a big fallen log a way apart from the scuffed spot of her recent struggle and walked to his horse, a rangy chestnut calmly browsing in the weeds trailing its reins. She plunked down heavily and sat bent over, arms wrapped around herself, rocking a little. Her throat was raw, her stomach hurt, and though she wasn’t gasping anymore, it still felt as though she couldn’t get her breath back or that it had returned badly out of rhythm.

  The patroller carefully turned his back to Fawn, did something to dismantle his bow, and rummaged in his saddlebag. More adjustments of some sort. He turned again, shrugging the strap of a water bottle over one shoulder, and with a couple of cloth-wrapped packets tucked under his left arm. Fawn blinked, because he seemed to have suddenly regained a left hand, stiffly curved in a leather glove.

  He lowered himself beside her with a tired-sounding grunt, and arranged those legs. At this range he smelled, not altogether unpleasantly, of dried sweat, woodsmoke, horse, and fatigue. He laid out the packets and handed her the bottle. “Drink, first.”

  She nodded. The water was flat and tepid but seemed clean.

  “Eat.” He held out a piece of bread fished from the one cloth.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “No, really. It’ll give your body something to do besides shake. Very distractible that way, bodies. Try it.”

  Doubtfully, she took it and nibbled. It was very good bread, if a little dry by now, and she thought she recognized its source. She had to take another sip of water to force it down, but her uncontrolled trembling grew less. She peeked at his stiff left hand as he opened the second cloth, and decided it must be carved of wood, for show.

  He wetted a bit of cloth with something from a small bottle—Lakewalker medicine?—and raised his right hand to her aching left cheek. She flinched, although the cool liquid did not sting.

  “Sorry. Don’t want to leave those dirty.”

  “No. Yes. I mean, right. It’s all right. I think the simpleton clawed me when he hit me.” Claws. Those had been claws, not nails. What kind of monstrous birth… ?

  His lips thinned, but his touch remained firm.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come up on you sooner, miss. I could see something had happened back on the road, there. I’d been trailing those two all night. My patrol seized their gang’s camp a couple of hours after midnight, up in the hills on the other side of Glassforge. I’m afraid I flushed them right into you.”

  She shook her head, not in denial. “I was walking down the road. They just picked me up like you’d pick up a lost… thing, and claim it was yours.” Her frown deepened. “No… not just. They argued first. Strange. The one who was… um… the one you shot, he didn’t want to take me along, at first. It was the other one who insisted. But he wasn’t interested in me at all, later. When—just before you came.” And added under her breath, not expecting an answer, “What was he?”

  “Raccoon, is my best guess,” said the patroller. He turned the cloth, hiding browning blood, and wet it again, moving down her cheek to the next gash.

  This bizarre answer seemed so entirely unrelated to her question that she decided he must not have heard her aright. “No, I mean the big fellow who hit me. The one who ran away from you. He didn’t seem right in the head.”

  “Truer than you guess, miss. I’ve been hunting those creatures all my life. You get so you can tell. He was a made thing. Confirms that a malice—your folk would call it a blight bogle—has emerged near here. T
he malice makes slaves of human shape for itself, to fight, or do its dirty work. Other shapes too, sometimes. Mud-men, we call them. But the malice can’t make them up out of nothing. So it catches animals, and reshapes them. Crudely at first, till it grows stronger and smarter. Can’t make life at all, really. Only death. Its slaves don’t last too long, but it hardly cares.”

  Was he gulling her, like her brothers? Seeing how much a silly little farm girl could be made to swallow down whole? He seemed perfectly serious, but maybe he was just especially good at tall tales. “Are you saying that blight bogles are real?”

  It was his turn to look surprised. “Where are you from, miss?” he asked in renewed caution.

  She started to name the village nearest her family’s farm, but changed it to “Lumpton Market.” It was a bigger town, more anonymous. She straightened, trying to marshal the casual phrase I’m a widow and push it past her bruised lips.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Fawn. Saw… field,” she added, and flinched. She’d wanted neither Sunny’s name nor her own family’s, and now she’d stuck herself with some of both.

  “Fawn. Apt,” said the patroller, with a sideways tilt of his head. “You must have had those eyes from birth.”

  It was that uncomfortable weighty attention again. She tried shoving back: “What’s yours?” though she thought she already knew.

  “I answer to Dag.”

  She waited a moment. “Isn’t there any more?”

  He shrugged. “I have a tent name, a camp name, and a hinterland name, but Dag is easier to shout.” The smile glimmered by again. “Short is better, in the field. Dag, duck! See? If it were any longer, it might be too late. Ah, that’s better.”

  She realized she’d smiled back. She didn’t know if it was his talk or his bread or just the sitting down quietly, but her stomach had finally stopped shuddering. She was left hot and tired and drained.