Sceat on it. There were things to be done.
“Let me go,” Aspar muttered gruffly, pulling at Winna’s arms. “I need to talk to them.”
“Aspar, that was Stephen and Ehawk.”
“Yah. I need to talk to these men.”
She let him go, and, avoiding her eyes, he helped her the rest of the way down the tree, jumping to avoid the bodies piled up on the spreading roots, wary that one or more of them might still be alive. But none moved.
“You’re all all right?” he asked Neil.
The knight nodded. “Only by the mercy of the saints. Those things had no interest in us.”
“What do you mean?” Winna demanded.
Neil lifted his hands. “We were just attacking Austra’s captors when they came pouring out from the woods. I cut three or four of them down before I realized they were just trying to run around us. We sheltered against a tree to keep from getting trampled. When they were passed, we fought Austra’s kidnappers. I’m afraid we had to kill them all.”
Austra nodded as if in agreement but seemed too shaken to speak, clinging tightly to Cazio.
“They ran past you,” Aspar repeated, trying to understand. “Then they were after us?”
“No,” Winna said thoughtfully. “Not us. They were after Stephen. And as soon as they got him, they left. Ehawk…” Her eyes widened with hope. “Aspar, what if they’re still alive? We didn’t actually see—”
“Yah,” he said, turning it this way and that in his head. After all, they had thought Stephen dead once before, and then they actually had had his body.
Winna was right.
“Well, we have to go after him, then,” Winna said.
“A moment, please,” Neil said, still studying the landscape of bodies. “There’s a lot here I don’t understand. These things that attacked usthese are the slinders you described to the queen on our first day of riding?”
“That they are,” Aspar admitted, impatience beginning to grow in him.
“And these serve the Briar King?”
“Same answer,” Aspar replied.
“And what is that?” Neil pointed to the half-chewed carcass of an utin.
Aspar looked at the thing, thinking that Stephen would probably like to see it dissected like this so he could study it.
Instead of skin, the utin was covered in horny plates, not unlike the scuts of a tortoise. From the joints of those plates, black hairs bristled. In Aspar’s experience, that natural armor was good enough to turn arrows, dirks, and axes, but somehow the slinders had pried some of the horn up and dug into the flesh, exposing the wet organs within the thickly boned rib cage. The creature’s eyes had been clawed out, the bottom jaw broken and half torn off. A human arm, severed at the shoulder, was jammed in its throat.
“We call it an utin,” Aspar said. “We fought one before.”
“But these were killed by the slinders.”
“Yah.”
“From what you’ve been saying, then, of all of us, the slinders only attacked the utins and Frète Stephen.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Aspar agreed brusquely. “That’s what we’ve been saying.”
“But you think they took Stephen alive?”
For answer, Aspar spun on his heel and paced to where he had last seen his friend, where the oak’s unnaturally twisted branches still touched the earth. The others followed him.
“I’ve seen the slinders kill,” he said. “They either eat the dead on the spot or leave them torn to pieces. There’s no sign of that here, so they took Stephen and Ehawk with them.”
“But why would they take just those two?” Neil persisted. “What would they want with them in particular?”
“Why does it matter?” Winna challenged angrily. “We have to go get them back.”
Neil blushed, but he lifted his shoulders higher and tilted his chin up.
“Because,” he said, “I understand what it’s like to lose comrades. I know right well the conflict of two loyalties. But you are pledged to serve Her Majesty. If your friends are dead, they are dead, and nothing can be done about it. If they are alive, then they were spared for some reason also beyond your control. I implore—”
“Neil MeqVren,” Winna said, her voice cold now with fury. “You were there, at Cal Azroth, when the Briar King appeared. We all fought together there, and we all fought again at Dunmrogh. If it weren’t for Stephen, we would all be dead, and Her Majesty, too. You cannot be so unfeeling.”
Neil sighed. “Meme Winna,” he said, “I’ve no wish to hurt or offend you. But without any other bond, all of us—besides Cazio, here—we all are subjects of the throne of Crotheny. Our first allegiance is there. And if that were not so, remember that we all took an oath before leaving Dunmrogh to serve Anne, the rightful heir to that throne, and see her on it or die.
“Stephen and Ehawk took that oath, too.” His voice raised a bit. “And we have lost her. Someone has taken her from us, and we—her supposed protectors—are much reduced in number. Now you propose to divide us further, meme. Please remember your promise and help me find Anne. For the saints, we don’t even know Stephen and Ehawk are alive.”
“We don’t know she is, either,” Aspar countered.
“You’re the royal holter,” Neil protested.
Aspar shook his head. “As a matter of fact, I’m not. I was removed from that position. I’m supposed to answer to the praifec, and he charged me to kill the Briar King. Them that just took Stephen are the Briar King’s servants, and I reckon they’ll lead me to him.”
“That same praifec was behind the murders and shinecraft at Dunmrogh and likely was in league with the assassins at Cal Azroth,” Neil pointed out. “He is the enemy of your rightful ruler, and thus you owe no allegiance to him at all.”
“Don’t know it for sure,” Aspar grunted. “Besides, if I’m the holter, like you say, well, this forest falls in my jurisdiction, and I ought to find out what all of this is about.
“Either way, it’s my choice to make.”
“I know it’s your choice to make,” Neil said. “But I’m the only one here who can speak for Anne, and I’m begging you to consider my argument.”
Aspar met the knight’s earnest gaze, then glanced at Winna. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say but was spared voicing it by the sound of something else coming through the forest.
“Hear that?” he asked Neil.
“I hear something,” the knight replied, hand straying to the hilt of his sword.
“Riders, a lot of ’em,” Aspar growled. “I’d say this matter can wait until we see what new insult has come looking for us.”
9
Rebirth
The dead whispered her awake.
Her first breath was agony, as if her lungs had been blown of glass and then shattered by the intake. Her muscles tried to crawl off her bones. She would have screamed, but her mouth and throat were cloyed with congealed bile and mucus.
Her head was hammering against stone, and there was nothing she could do about it but watch the sparks that formed in her eyes. Then her entire body bent backward as if she were a bow being pulled by a saint, and the arrows exploded wetly from her mouth, again, again, until finally everything unclenched and she lay quietly unhurried breaths rasping in and out of her as the pain gradually washed away from her, leaving exhaustion behind.
She felt as if she were sinking into something soft.
Saints, forgive me, she silently prayed. I did not want to. I had to.
That was only half-true, but she was too tired to explain it to them.
The saints didn’t seem to be listening, anyhow, though the dead were still whispering. She thought she had understood them not that long ago, comprehended the strange tenses of their verbs. Now they flitted at the edge of her understanding, all but one, and that one was trying to lick into her ear like a lovers tongue.