“Drakthna,” he whispered. “And three roots of white iruil. Hm?”
“Thank you,” she said, just as quietly. “I will not forget Gluured.”
Kaad nodded and stepped back. “Your arm is healing nicely. Try not to plant any more arrows in it.”
He turned away, but Hweilan caught his sleeve and said, “Kaad, Maaqua said my mother’s body had been ‘taken care of.’ I want to see her.”
Kaad looked away. “If you survive tomorrow, it will be done. If not …”
Then it won’t matter, Hweilan knew. No need to say it.
The healer packed up his things and left. The sky outside the cave mouth had turned black. After finishing their meal in an uneasy silence, the Damarans stoked the fire, huddled into their blankets, and lay down.
Hweilan waited until she thought they were asleep, then walked over to one of the other fires. The hobgoblins seated around it were passing around a skin of spirits so pungent that its reek was already leaking out of their pores.
“One of the warriors who brought us here,” Hweilan said in Goblin, “Kaad said his name is Hratt. Where is he?”
“Near the entrance,” one of them replied. He stood up. He wobbled on his feet and put a hand on his companion’s shoulder for support. “I’ll take you.”
“I can find him.” Hweilan walked away, not bothering to see if he followed.
With the coming of night, the air had gone from chill to cold, but Hweilan still felt the effect of the healing concoction, and even her naked right arm wasn’t bothered.
She found Hratt huddled close to a fire near the edge of the cave entrance. Three others were with him, all wrapped in blankets but still wearing their armor. This close to the entrance, the night breeze found its way into the cave and made the meager flames of their fire dance. All four warriors looked up at her approach, but none stood.
“You always sleep in drafty caverns?” Hweilan asked Hratt.
Hratt grinned around the bit of dried flesh he was eating. His companions raised their eyebrows at one another, seemingly impressed that she spoke their language so well.
“Maaqua said to feed and free your friends,” said Hratt. “She didn’t say to make them comfortable.”
“Are you my keeper?” she asked.
“Eh?”
“The one commanded to guard me?”
Hratt finished chewing and swallowed before he responded. “Buureg says you are oathbound. He says he thinks you will keep it. You may go as you please. Until dawn. Then you face Rhan. I am to take you.”
“And until then …?”
He shrugged. “As you please.”
“Good. Then it would please me to have my belongings returned to me.”
Hratt shook his head. “You haven’t won the Blood Price yet. You have no belongings.”
“Rhan chooses his weapon for the Blood Slake, does he not?”
One of the other hobgoblins said, “If Rhan fights with anything but the Greatsword of Impiltur, I’m a gnoll.”
His companions laughed louder than the comment warranted, which told Hweilan they’d started drinking long before she and the Damarans arrived.
“You know he does,” said Hratt. “Buureg warned me-”
“I have agreed to the Blood Slake. I will choose my own weapon.”
“-about you,” continued Hratt. “Said you were no typical Damaran. Said you knew our ways too well.”
“Too well for his liking, I’m sure. Will you take me or not?”
“You wish to prepare your weapon for the morning?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t wish to rest?”
Hweilan shrugged and gave them what she hoped was her most wicked smile. “Gunhin.”
The warriors laughed, slapping their knees in approval.
Hratt stood and let his blanket fall. “Come with me.”
Hweilan looked down at the remains of the warrior’s meal. “Is that mountain hare?” she asked.
Hratt followed her gaze. “Did the slaves not feed you?”
“Goat. And just the meat. It’s been a long time since I had a mountain hare, and I have a desire to gnaw a bone.”
The hobgoblins exchanged an amused look, then one of them handed Hweilan the remains of a backbone with a few other bones and bits of flesh dangling from it.
“No leg?” she said.
“A wise beggar makes no demands,” one of them said.
“Ah, give her a leg, Gunt. She’ll be dead tomorrow morning.”
The one called Gunt dropped his first offer back into the communal pile, then handed her a leg. All the flesh and most of the cartilage had been stripped away. She took it with a nod of thanks, then followed Hratt out of the cave.
Hweilan waited until they had left the light of the fires behind and were making their way along a trail that snaked along a cliffside before she said, “I would say my farewells to my other companion. Mandan. The big one.”
Hratt stopped and turned. “He belongs to Ruuket. Buureg said nothing ab-”
“Did Buureg command you not to allow me to see to the welfare of my companion?”
“Uh … no. Bu-”
“I’ll be dead tomorrow, if you’re right. Mandan not long after. Yes?”
“You said nothing about that. You said you wished to claim your weapons for the Blood Slake. You never said-”
“I’m saying it now. There is no harm in seeing him one last time. Am I not oathbound to keep the peace?”
“Yes, bu-”
Hweilan took a step forward, looking up at the larger warrior but very obviously invading his personal space.
“And do you question my honor?”
Hratt scowled but he did not back away. “No.”
“Then lead on, Hratt.”
He stood there a while, wrestling with his own thoughts, but at last he did as she told him. Behind them, Hweilan’s ears caught the sound of footsteps. Furtive and keeping their distance. But no matter how many twists or turns they took, they did not lose the footsteps.
It seemed that Hratt might not trust her too much after all.
Under the light of the waxing moon, they walked on cliffside paths and climbed shelves of rock. Hweilan suspected that, though there were surely other ways from inside the fortress, Hratt was taking her by the most uncomfortable way possible out of pure spite. But Kaad’s healing concoction was still coursing through her, and she actually found the biting cold refreshing.
While they walked, she stripped away the last of the cartilage from the leg bone with her teeth. When the bone was as smooth as she could make it, she cracked it against the rock. It broke just as she hoped it would, with a sharp shard on one end. She pried off the knobby end, not caring about the jagged edge-glad for it, in fact-and then began to suck out the marrow. She watched the path as they walked, hoping for a twig or even a bit of stiff grass she could use to clean out the marrow, but she saw nothing but rocks and dirt.
Hweilan heard the footsteps behind them several more times on their way down the mountain, but she never caught sight of a shadow, and if Hratt heard the steps, he gave no sign.
After cresting an offshoot of the mountain, Hratt led her down a path that hugged the cliff wall to the left and dropped to the canyon floor on the right. They turned into a fissure that split the cliff and remained open to the sky, then emerged into a little valley, no more than a stone’s throw across. On the far side was a small cave. An iron door swung open on its hinges, and firelight bled out of the cave. She could hear harsh voices coming from inside.
Hratt stopped.
“In there?” Hweilan asked.
He nodded, then let her go first.
She jogged across the small valley but slowed before entering to allow her eyes to become used to the bright light.
After the night cold, it felt like walking into an oven. Beyond the door was a wide chamber that had probably once been a natural cave but had since been considerably expanded. Two closed iron doors faced her on the opposite wall. Most of the light and heat came from a fire pit in the middle of the floor, heaped high with glowing coals. But torches also burned in sconces on the walls, their inky smoke staining the stone before escaping through vents in the low ceiling.