7
Chase
TECHNICALLY, A MOKADDIAN VILLAGE couldn’t refuse entrance to Talen just because he was a Koramite. Refuge was one of the mutual promises made in Whitecliff. But that didn’t mean they would open to him. Roddick yelled down to those within.
This village had fallen once, before it had a wall. The Bone Faces had rowed two of their small galleys up the river to a bend at the edge of the fields. They attacked just before dawn, setting the homes ablaze, running many good men through with their curved swords, and stealing anything of value, including fifteen young girls. The next year the village built the wall.
The wall had been made by digging a wide ditch and throwing up an embankment of earth about three times the height of a tall man. Timber spikes had been planted into that steep slope and at the bottom of the ditch. Grass and tall thistle now hid many of the spikes, but any host charging up that hill would find the spikes’ power to impale undiminished. And if the host reached the top, they’d face a timber palisade and tower. The timbers had been new when Talen was a boy. Pale yellow lichen now clung to much of the wood, but it was sturdy nevertheless.
He expected they’d be happy to give him a bow and set him up on the wall with Roddick. But there were no raiders, no sign of any struggle whatsoever. So why had they closed the gates?
The cross bar that held the gates closed scraped. Then the gates swung open.
Out walked a dozen Mokaddian men holding their scythes, sickles, and forks like weapons. About half had shaved their heads and dyed their scalps with henna, witnessing they’d performed their harvest worship.
Talen glanced over his shoulder, fearing the Bone Faces had decided to attack, but there were no Bone Faces, only the river glistening in the sun and the fields of grain beyond, rolling with the breeze. When he turned back, one of the beef-heads on the wall was stringing his bow.
“It’s one of Hogan’s half-breeds,” said Farmer Tilth. He held his hayfork before him as if Talen were the Dark One himself. “What are you doing here, boy?” asked Tilth.
“I’ve come to trade with Mol,” said Talen.
“He’s spying!” Roddick called from above.
Spying?
“Cast your weapons from you,” Roddick commanded. “Then lie down in the dirt.”
What a bum brain! “Who would want to spy on you?” Talen yelled up at Roddick. “And I don’t have any weapons. Unless you think I might kill someone with these chicken baskets.”
“Give yourself up,” said Tilth.
Long Lark, the cooper’s son, stood next to Tilth. He tied a cattle noose at the end of one rope.
Talen looked at the men. There were the Early brothers, the one-eyed tanner and his two sons, and the young hayward who had killed a wurm not two weeks ago and received the intricate tattoo around the wrist of his right hand that signified he was no longer a boy, but a man of the Shoka clan.
These people knew him.
The men began to fan out.
“I’m honored,” said Talen, “but isn’t this a bit much for a runt like me?”
“He’s going to run,” Roddick called.
“I’m not running,” said Talen.
“Come on, son,” Tilth said.
They approached him like one might a boar caught in a trap: careful and bent on injury. Talen spotted the lazy-eyed Sabin among them, relishing every moment of this. That boy had never liked Talen.
A flash of orange caught Talen’s eye, and he spotted a tall, bald man with an enormous black beard standing in the gateway. He was an official, wrapped in the blue and orange sash of the Mokaddian Fir-Noy Clan.
Fear shot through him, and Talen took a step back.
The Fir-Noy had provoked a number of fights these last years. They’d killed a number of Koramites to boot. That was not to say the Koramites hadn’t defended themselves. But everyone knew that Koramite and Fir-Noy didn’t mix. Lords, Fir-Noy didn’t mix with half of the Mokaddian clans, especially not the Shoka of Stag Home. But there stood that Fir-Noy official, acting like he owned the place, and here the Shoka village men had their tools pointed at him as if he were a rabid bat.
“I’m here for chickens,” he protested.
It was then that Long Lark broke from the pack and set himself to throw his noose.
Talen hesitated for a fraction of a second.
Long Lark adjusted his grip.
By the farting lord of pigs, Talen thought. I’ve done nothing. Nothing at all.
Koramites had been dragged behind horses before. Not here, of course, in a Shoka village. Not yet. But these were Mokaddians, after all. Fir-Noy, Vargon, or Shoka—did it matter which Clan they belonged to?
He looked into their eyes and saw it did not. Talen took a step backwards.
Long Lark swung his noose back.
In his mind’s eye, Talen saw himself hanging from the village wall with that noose around his neck. The thought jolted him. And despite his earlier protestations, he turned tail, and ran.
A shout rose up behind him so full of menace that it almost loosed his bowels.
He stretched his stride, expecting that noose to fall about his shoulders or to catch an arrow in his back. He ran like a thief, like a rabbit coursed by dogs. He ran with the speed only fear and bewilderment bring.
He sprinted back over the bridge and thought he saw the flash of an arrow out of the corner of his eye. He needed to make the woods, the only place where he might have a chance to lose these madmen. Back up the road he ran, the dirt hard under his bare feet.
Talen was not the fastest runner in the district, but he wasn’t the slowest either. He knew he should measure his pace, but that lazy-eyed Sabin was back there with his shaved head and violent speed, and Talen sprinted for all he was worth.
He could hear the men behind him and pushed himself until his breath came in ragged gasps and his legs began to burn. By the time he reached the oat field the rogue cows had broken into, his lungs and legs could go no farther, and he had to stop. He panted and turned.
Sabin, a look of murder in his eyes, was almost upon him.
Movement farther up the road drew his attention: a rider galloping toward him on a horse. They were boxing him in.
Lords, but he had to make the woods.
Two more ragged breaths and he hopped the fence on his left and the field stones piled up next to it and struggled up a fallow field of knee-high grass.
The tall grass pulled at his feet. The slope sapped his strength. But neither seemed to slow Sabin.
The woods stood only a few paces away.
Talen glanced back to see Sabin reach out with his long tattooed arm for Talen’s hair.
River loved Talen’s hair. Loved it long. And at that moment he wished he’d never listened to her and her stupid appraisals of men.
Sabin grabbed a handful of Talen’s hair, yanked, and brought Talen up short, and then backward to the ground.
Talen scrabbled to his knees, but Sabin kicked his side and knocked the breath right out of him.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
Sabin kicked at Talen’s face, but Talen curled up and the blow glanced off the back of his head.
When his body finally remembered it had lungs, the rest of the men were rushing up the hill. Someone struck him with a staff. Another kick caught him in the hip.
Talen tried to get up and lunge out of the circle, but before he could get his legs, one of the tanner’s boys landed a blow to Talen’s head that dazed him and knocked away all sense of balance. He turned, falling, and saw a sea of men.
Someone kicked him in the back, and the pain took his breath away. Someone else went for his neck.
Talen brought his arms up to shield his face.
“Where’s that rope?” one of them shouted.
Talen tried to roll over.
“Out of the way!” someone else shouted.
“Now you’ll get it, Half-breed,” a man said.
The blows lessened and then stopped. Talen glanced up.
Sabin stood above him lifting what must have been a forty pound field stone the color of fresh liver.
He raised it high, preparing to break Talen’s head like a gourd.