6
Stag Home
IF THIS FALL lamed Talen, he’d be good for nothing but the war weaves. An image of him at the wizard’s altar in Whitecliff flashed in his mind, the Divine draining away his Fire, the essence that fueled the days of his life, so it could be used by a better vessel—by a dreadman. The dreadman would give Talen homage for the gift, but Talen didn’t want any homage.
He yelled again, a long “Nooooooo.”
A twig poked Talen’s eye. Then his ankle caught, and Talen swung into the center of the tree and smacked his head.
Ke grunted. “Grab a branch,” he said.
Talen looked up. It felt like a piece of bark the size of his thumbnail was stuck in his eye. He blinked, but could barely see. He blinked again and found his ankle was caught, not in a fork of two branches, but in Ke’s iron grip. Ke bent over a branch holding onto Talen, his face set in determination.
“You’re slipping,” he said.
Talen twisted around, found a branch, and grasped it with both hands. “I’ve got it. Let go.”
But Ke did not let go. He repositioned his grip and said, “You’ll hang here until you tell us where you’ve hidden our stuff.”
Talen’s eye ran like a river.
“What about my trousers?”
“Goh,” said Ke. “If I come across your trousers, I’m going to burn them. Then you’ll have something to yell about.”
“Hoy! What’s going on here?” It was Da standing at the base of the tree.
“They’ve taken my work trousers,” said Talen.
“Is that so?” Da asked Ke.
Talen still hung mostly upside down, the blood rushing to his head.
“It is not,” said Ke.
“You three,” Da sighed. “Today I come out of the barn to find one of you hanging naked in a tree. What am I going to find tomorrow? Get down. Both of you.”
Ke looked down at Talen. “You’re lucky.” Then he flung Talen’s legs away.
Talen clutched the branch. His body swung around like a festival acrobat’s. His grip on the branch slid. Then he reached out with one foot and caught another branch to stand on. Talen steadied himself and blinked to clear his vision.
Ke said, “You should thank me for saving your neck.”
“You’re the one that put me here,” Talen said.
“I’m the one who didn’t murder you,” he said, and then descended to the ground.
Murder indeed. Talen watched Ke go and realized the truth was he had been lucky. His heart was still thumping thinking about how narrowly he’d missed a broken neck. And Ke had held him like he was nothing more than a sack of potatoes. Talen shook his head. Why couldn’t he have gotten at least half of Ke’s strength? He sighed. It was going to be annoyingly inconvenient to have to wear his fine pair of pants to work in. And at week’s end, when he cleaned them and hung them out to dry, he’d have to sit around in his underclothes and bat the biting flies away. And if Ke or River hadn’t taken his pants, then who had?
Talen climbed out of the tree and stood before Da.
“Did you look for the pants in the barn?” Da asked.
Of course he’d looked in the barn. He’d looked everywhere. “I’m not going to ruin my good pair.”
“Then work in a leaf skirt. I’m not buying any material for another pair. Nothing in heaven or earth will make me feed negligence.”
“I wasn’t negligent.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Da. “You’re not going out to the fields just yet. Put on your good trousers and get the peppercorns. You’re going to the village to get some hens from old Mol, the fowler. I’ve had too many days without eggs.”
“Last night you said you wanted to see us up and in the fields with the barley.”
“Well, I’m saying right now that I want some hens. And you’re going to get them.”
“Shall I go along?” asked Nettle.
“No,” said Da. “You’re getting back on your horse to take a message to the Creek Widow.”
“The one who told you not to come around?”
“What other one is there?” asked Da. He held out a sealed letter to Nettle. The Creek Widow was a Mokaddian woman with a tenancy of almost twenty acres. She had been a family friend for years. But this last summer she had ordered Da out of her house and off her land. And try as Talen might, he could not get Da to tell him why. Talen suspected it had something to do with her perennial efforts to marry Da off. Half the time Talen thought she wanted Da herself. But Da was stubborn. And Talen was happy about that. While she cooked food fit for a Divine, she was bossy and a bit odd, talking to vegetables and rocks and always smelling a little like a goat.
Was this letter an indication that Da was making up?
“Paper,” said Nettle, a tease in his eye. “You must be serious.” He held the letter up to the sun as if trying to read it.
“You break that seal,” Da said, “and I’ll have your hide.”
“I wouldn’t dare touch it,” said Nettle.
“Then go,” said Da. He shooed them both away. “Be gone. And hurry back. I don’t want to lose any of that barley.”
* * *
Talen pushed the cart and the empty chicken baskets through the three miles of the muggy woods to Stag Home. When he finally broke onto the broad valley, he was so refreshed by the sunlight and breeze, so soothed by the smooth, sun-warmed dirt of the road under his bare feet that he didn’t immediately notice the fields and orchards.
Instead, he basked in the glory of the day and the fact that not only had he escaped being maimed this morning, but he’d also avoided a number of hours sweating in the barley. The peppercorns hung in a pouch around his neck. It had been two years since any merchant had sold peppercorns in the New Lands and the value of pepper had risen.
Talen hoped the ale wife’s daughter was selling her vegetables again. She was a looker, that one, with her dark hair, jade eyes, and the fabulous lines of her long neck. During his last visit, he’d ended up returning to her table thrice, buying a bunch of carrots each time, just so he could fix her features in his mind. And it hadn’t all been one-sided. She had glanced his way when he stood across the road eating some of her wares.
Talen’s reverie of the ale wife’s daughter broke when he pushed the cart past an orchard of apple trees bent with clusters of red and yellow fruit. There should have been children climbing with baskets in the tops of those trees. Instead, the apple baskets lay scattered on the ground.
Across from the orchard a yearling calf bawled outside a field. The calf searched along the fence separating it from its mother and a dozen others who stood with their noses down among the ripe, white oats mixed with peas. There should have been a harvest master there promising someone a proper beating for letting the cattle in, but there wasn’t even a beggar to chase the greedy guts out.
How could that be? Talen searched the fence lines and long rock walls. He searched the fields—nothing but a small carpet of blackbirds picking through a swath of barley that had been harvested and left to lie where it fell. There wasn’t a body to be seen. It was as if the villagers had fled the fields.
Alarm scuttled like a crab up his neck. This was the fat season for pillaging. Of course, the Bone Faces hadn’t attacked Stag Home or any of the surrounding villages for years. But that’s precisely why Stag Home would be a perfect target. The villagers would have grown overly secure, just as Talen had.
What’s more: the Bone Faces took more than livestock and goods. They took men, women, and children. Lords, he thought, if one of those Bone Faces got him, he will have wished he had fallen out of that tree and broken his back. He scanned the fields again, this time looking for sign of a raiding party.
It was said that when the Bone Faces kidnapped you for their slave ships, they cut off the pinky finger of your right hand. Then, with some black and feral magic, they used your finger to bind you to them. And so perverting was the binding that you never once wanted to escape, but only desired to serve your master every day that blood flowed in your veins.
One of the first things they’d ask you to do, which you would do with joy, was to trick your own kin into their traps. And so it was that whole families disappeared. Some were enslaved, and others were sent to the fearsome altars of Ishgar as sacrifices, for the Bone Faces were a bloody people. But Talen figured those slaughtered on the altars met with a better end, for if the rumors were true, the Bone Face bindings were strong enough to compel a slave beyond this life and into the world of the dead.
He imagined the fate of his pinky. The Bone Face slave masters hung the fingers of their most valued slaves about their necks. The rest they locked up in a special room. And when guests came to call, especially if the slave master was wealthy with dozens of formidable slaves listed among his assets, he would take his guests into the finger room and show off his collection of desiccated and rotting digits, just as a good Koramite wife might show off her collection of dishes or lace.
There was no sign of struggle in the fields. The Clans sent patrols along the coastlines during the harvest season. Last year there had been battles, but those had been far out on the finger islands, not the mainland settlements. Nothing this year. But it had to be Bone Faces. What else would make the villagers flee the fields on such a fine day for work?
Goh, but how he wished Da and Ke were here with him. If he only had his bow, that would improve his odds. Da, a Koramite bowmaster, had taught his sons well. Talen could shoot eight arrows a minute, and not to simply fill the sky with a haphazard rain of death. No, Talen could fire at that speed and hit where he was aiming.
But he didn’t have his bow. All he had was his knife and a pile of chicken baskets, which meant he’d have to slice open his own neck if the Bone Face blighters got to him, for he wasn’t going to be turned into a villain, nor would he allow himself to be used as feed for their terrible gods.
Talen thought he might be able to lose any pursuers in the thickness of the woods. But who was to say they hadn’t already circled behind him? Besides, the safety of the village with its embankment walls was much closer.
Smoke trailed into the sky from behind the walls of the village. But it was thin, not the thick smoke of burning homes. Upon the timber and earthen wall he saw the glint of three men wearing helmets and carrying spears. The gates stood closed, which only confirmed his assessment of the situation.
Talen looked back at the woods once more. He searched along the tree line following the river that snaked its way through the valley, but saw no shallow-bottomed ship’s mast. Perhaps they had landed farther down river. Perhaps the village had been forewarned and the raiders had yet to attack.
He quickened his pace. He did not want to be caught outside the gates. The cart and chicken baskets clattered along the dirt road as he went. He watched the shadows and trees. He kept an eye on the fields. He prepared himself, at the first sign, to run.
He passed two large wicker creels on the bank of the river. One had toppled over. Its lid hung loose, and a tangle of fat, brown eels wriggled their way back toward the water. The sight raised the hackles on the back of his neck, and Talen began to run.
Down the dirt road he went, and then over the bridge. On the far side of the bridge, one of the chicken baskets bounced off, but Talen paid it no mind and let it lay in the grass where it fell on the side of the road. He didn’t stop until he stood outside the gates.
The Mokaddian guards up on the wall were not looking out—they were looking in. The beef-heads were not going to see any threat coming that way. “Hoy!” Talen called.
The three guards turned.
One was that maggot Roddick, the cartwright’s son who had tormented Talen with rotten plums when he was a boy.
“Let me in,” said Talen.
“You,” said Roddick in disgust. “Stay right where you are!”