“There’s my windflower. How’s my little one?” he said.
Blot went to her knees beside him, eyes searching anxiously before she buried her face in his shoulder and burst into frantic tears.
“Don’t die! What’s Blot without ye?”
The man brought up a hand to pat her shoulder awkwardly. It had been bound by a loop of rope to his ankle, effectively immobilizing him, though Eddis doubted he could have moved, anyway. Pain-tightened eyes met hers, then moved to the child. He does care for her, Eddis thought. More than his brother, at least, and I’ll wager he wants my assurance we’ll take her with us.
She nodded, saw the look of relief on his face as he turned his full attention to the girl.
“Why, you’ll be fine, child. It looks to me like my little windflower will have a chance to live somewhere clean and safe, just like we always wanted.”
“Don’t want that! Not without you!” The hands tightened on his arm. He winced, but when Eddis would have moved to loosen the child’s grip, he met her eyes and shook his head. The eyes shifted. Eddis followed the man’s gaze and briefly closed her own. The bandit’s pale breeches were soaked with blood. She glanced at M’Baddah, shook his head again. The man didn’t have much longer, then, and he knew it, but he was still doing his best for the poor little wretch. The swordswoman stepped back a pace and nodded. The bandit smiled his thanks at her, then gave his full attention to Blot.
“No, please don’t cry. Remember what I told you, last winter? Remember our bargain? That you’d do your best to not anger my brother, and then I’d find a way to get us free of here, and we wouldn’t be bandits anymore, you and me. I’d buy us a little house and some land, and horses, and a goat, and chickens. And we’d have a garden, and you’d have a place to sleep out of the wind and the cold, and you’d have warm water for washing, and real shoes, and clean clothes, and enough to eat. Remember?”
Silence. The child choked on her sobs and nodded.
“Well, I guess I won’t be there after all, but you will. That’s what I want for you, what I’ve always wanted, you know that, don’t you? So I want you to promise me that you’ll go with… ?” He looked up at Eddis, glanced at M’Baddah.
Eddis nodded, gave him the names he was clearly seeking. He coughed rackingly, patted the child’s shoulder again as she drew back to eye him in sudden fright. “Go with Eddis and M’Baddah. They will care for you. They’ll see you have the clean clothes, and a warm place to live, and enough to eat. I swear that to you, my small wildflower.”
Silence, except for the child’s soft weeping.
“Now I want you to go, and remember that I’m smiling at you now. Just like this. Remember that, because then I will always be smiling when you think of me.”
The child didn’t want to go, but somehow, M’Baddah persuaded her, speaking quietly against her ear, words only she could hear. Eddis knelt at the bandit’s side as the two slowly walked away, M’Baddah still talking to the grubby little girl.
“We’ll take care of her. I promise you that. Somehow, we’ll keep her safe.”
“Bless you—thank you,” the man said, his voice suddenly very weak. He coughed again, and this time frothy blood spilled over his chin. “Haven’t long, I—know. Never approved, m’brother keeping such an innocent with us. Back north and then here. Whatever her lineage, she’s better’n that. Deserves better. Not… just a drudge to evil men. Tell her that, for me. If she ever doubts.”
“I will. I swear it,” Eddis said. She looked about for Mead, but the bandit coughed again, drew a sharp, pained breath, let it out on a long, faint sigh, and was quietly gone. Eddis looked down at his shell, closed his eyes with gentle fingers.
“May that one good deed survive you and keep you safe in the afterlife, for the child’s sake,” she murmured, got to her feet, and walked away.
It was still long hours until daybreak. Jerdren was portioning out watches and fire duty when Eddis beckoned him to one side.
“We’re burying the captain’s brother,” she told him.
He frowned. “We’re… we’re what? Eddis, I thought we’d agreed everyone goes back to the Keep! What if the castellan decides to give us a bonus by body count?”
“Then we’re one short, that’s all. If you’d seen that child breaking her heart over the man, just now…”
“She’s a child. They get over things,” he said. “We agreed on this. I don’t see why you’re so hot to change things.”
“It’s no great matter,” Eddis said flatly. “You’ve got the captain, we’ll have whatever loot they’ve got up here. I don’t want that poor child to see her only friend thrown over the back of a horse and hauled into the Keep.”
“Poor child, is it?” Jerdren grumbled. “And friend, was it? True friend would’ve set her loose in some town or village—”
“Where she’d be ever after known as the raiders’ bastard,” Eddis broke in angrily, her voice low, so the child couldn’t possibly overhear her. “You don’t just take a child like this and hand her over to villagers or turn her loose in some town. There’ll always be someone who knows where she came from, or at least what she looked like when they got her, and they’d gossip, and you can imagine the kinds of things they’d say, can’t you?
“No,” he replied blankly.
Blorys came up beside him. He’d clearly heard most of the argument.
“Sure you can, Brother,” he said. “Remember that dark, skinny lad back home? One who hung himself? People like our aunt threw it at him for years that his mother had been a tavern girl and no one knew who his father was.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s different, Blor!”
The younger man shook his head. “No, it’s not. And I agree with Eddis, anyway. Whatever that man did or was, the child deserves proper memories of a man she cared enough to cry over. And rites to remember him by. She’ll have ’em. You don’t like it, Jers, you can take any share his body might’ve earned us out of my portion.” His gaze moved across the camp, settled on M’Baddah and his young charge. “Though he might have washed her, once in her life.”
“No,” Eddis said. “Maybe he did her a kindness. If she’s twelve years or more… you can wager none of the men here looked at her as a camp woman.”
“Gods,” Blorys whispered and closed his eyes.
Eddis walked away.
Jerdren’s bewildered voice followed her. “What? Leaving a kid all filthy—that’s a kindness?”
A full day and a half later, nearly sundown, the company and its captives wound their slow way up the Keep road. Eddis walked ahead, leaving M’Baddah, Mead, and Jerdren to bring up the rear, the armsmen holding drawn swords, while Mead had several painful spells ready to invoke if any of the raiders decided to try escape. It might have been difficult for any of them, since the wounded among them were horsed but tied to their mounts, while those who had escaped injury were bound together in a long line, and afoot, under the watchful eye of the Keep men. Most of them seemed to have long since given up any hope of rescue or escape. The dead men were brought in at the rear of the long column, facedown over the remaining horses.
For most of the afternoon, the child Blot had walked between Eddis and M’Baddah, but only because M’Baddah stayed with Eddis, and the child was comfortable only with him and a little with Blorys. Try as she might, Eddis hadn’t been able to breach the gap between the child and herself—the girl eyed her warily and avoided the swordswoman’s touch whenever she could.
Thank the gods I have M’Baddah with me, she thought. The man had an instinct for communicating with shy, mistreated beasts of any kind, and on that count, Blot certainly qualified.