Oath Bound (Book 3) (24 page)

that evening

They were somewhere near
the middle of the park now, deep in the forest, where not even the city sounds
penetrated. A stream trickled past the new camp; there’d already been a firepit
and a little wooden roof over it, so he figured it was a park thing, but he’d
told Kessa it was a good choice. He sat on a damp, mossy rock at the side of
the stream, letting the cold water run over his bare feet and watching the
Ishlings fish for minnows—which meant he was watching a splash fight, and
getting wet, too, but the water soothed his nervous headache, and the scent of
the water, deep with wet weed and the slight tang of decaying needles, relaxed
him. He pulled one foot onto the rock so he could rest his arm on his knee and
have a place to put his head.

“Dingus, Dingus!” Peepa
squealed, leaping up by his foot and lifting a tiny minnow in both hands. “I is
catch one, lookit what I do!”

That was all it took to
lift Dingus’s heart.
You are so worth it.
“Well, how ’bout that?” he
said, smiling at her. “You did it, baby girl.”

She ate the minnow, right
down the hatch,
slurp!
“Ooh!” she said, putting her hand on her belly
with a grimace. “He wiggle in my tummy!”

Dingus laughed. “Well,
you did eat him alive!”

“Come play, Dingus!” Voo
chirped, and Dingus didn’t even have to think. He unbuckled his belt with its weight
of scabbards and swords, stripped off jerkin and tunic, and slid off the rock
into the shallow stream. In five minutes flat he was chasing sopping-wet
Ishlings and laughing his ass off. They swarmed away from him and swam around
his feet while he stomped—carefully—up and down in the stream.

He bellowed a terrible
roar. “I’m a moss monster! I eat Ishlings! And I know just where to get me
one!”

They all shrieked with
delight and scattered. He swooped an arm down and caught one around the middle:
Zeeta, who shrieked extra-loud, then squealed giggles, thrashing when he
pretended to gnaw on her. “Yum, yum! Ishlings!” He set her gently back in the
stream and straightened. “I’m still hungry!”

He leapt after them,
roaring again, but when his roar trailed off he heard Haakon say, “...need to
do this. I’ll write my boss. We can get this straightened out, Yatan, you don’t
need to do this.”

Dingus dashed back up the
stream, heart hammering as the voices approached. Downstream, Kessa leapt up
from her exercises and started to gather Ishlings. “Come on, you guys!” she
whispered.

“I’ve already told you,
Haakon, I won’t be satisfied with money. Some things are personal. I’ll settle
this with that jumped-up whore you call boss when I’m good and ready, but the
redneck boy’s gone too far!”

Dingus buckled his belt
as Yatan came past the firepit, the white streaks in his fur showing bright
against gathering dark, trailing Haakon, one of his heavies, and a passel of
Treehoppers.

“Guys!” Kessa hissed.
“Guys, no, come on! I’m serious!”

Dingus looked down. The
Ishlings clustered around his feet. “Move,” he said.

“We isn’t,” Tai said, and
Dingus cursed.

Yatan stopped near the
stream. “I’ve come for my payment.”

Dingus planted his foot
on the rock and drew himself up until he stood on it. Water dripped from the
hems of his breeches and pattered onto the moss, onto his jerkin and tunic. He
looked down his nose at Yatan. “And I told you I won’t pay. Not one copper.”

Yatan shook his head,
chuckling. “We’re quite beyond that now.” He snapped his eyes up, narrowing
them on Dingus, and bared his teeth in something that pretended to be a smile.
“I’m here for my Ishlings.”

Dingus drew. The swords
sang in the humid air. “They’re not yours.”

“Us is Dingus’s
Ishlings!” one of them yelled.

“How sweet,” Yatan said.

“They belong to
themselves. But if you want ’em, you’ll have to come through me.”

“Dingus Xavier, you’re
under arrest,” said one of the Hoppers, a fat woman with a scrubby black crest.
“For disturbing the—”

Dingus snorted. “All
right, if you wanna do it that way, but I’m gonna finish up here first.”

“You’re under arrest!”

“Take them,” Yatan said
to his goon, and the heavy moved toward the stream—toward the Ishlings.

“Don’t move!” Dingus
bellowed, and when the heavy got close enough he lashed out with his right,
opening a deep cut in the guy’s chest. He fell back, whimpering. “Nobody
fucking move!” Dingus’s brain clicked away, desperately, emptily, he couldn’t
think, he didn’t have a plan, and the Hoppers closed in on him.

“Didn’t you hear him?”
That was Kessa, and his knees almost buckled in shock at the sound of her sword
whispering out.

“No!” he tried to tell
her, but she stepped right up in front of him and the Ishlings, showing her
long blade with menace in her posture. It gave the Hops pause where he hadn’t,
and the scrubby one glanced at Yatan, who jerked his head toward the group of
them.

The Hopper shook her
head, resigned, and they moved again—until Kessa made to strike, and they fell
back.

“That’s right,” she said.
“You stay there, and we’re gonna go, and you won’t stop us.”

Movement flashed in the
corner of Dingus’s eye. He stopped himself from hacking down. He didn’t want to
hit an Ishling; but a shriek rose, Tai’s shriek, and there was old Yatan in the
water behind with Tai clamped tight and a knife at his belly.

Tai cheeped short, soft
panic sounds, driving Dingus’s pulse faster, and Yatan grinned vicious and
broad.

“Put him down,” Dingus
ground out. He gripped his hilts in sweat-slick hands. His name spilled from the
Ishling’s mouth, and fire bloomed at the base of his spine.

“I don’t think so.” Yatan
backed up slowly.

“Don’t hurt him!”

“Stay where you are and I
might let him go when I’m clear.”

Tai’s eyes rolled, huge
and wide, as he tried to see Yatan, and his little belly pulled in, showing the
bottom of his ribs through his wet tunic.

“
Don’t hurt him
,”
Dingus repeated, and his fear for Tai leaked into his voice. The smile spread
wider across Yatan’s face, yellow fangs, eyes that found his most vulnerable
spot and liked punching it. He backed out of the stream and Dingus’s muscles
twitched to follow.

“Ah-ah,” Yatan said.
“Don’t move…” And the knife poked at Tai’s stomach, drawing a little blood.
Dingus stilled. His pulse slammed against his eardrums. He could only watch
while Yatan dragged Tai away crying and disappeared into the trees. His heart
beat so hard he thought it’d explode.

The other Ishlings clung
to his legs, all those tiny hands wound trembling into his breeches, dragging
at him. A breeze blew stiff through the forest, chilling the sweat on Dingus’s
skin. Branches creaked, and a raven took to the sky on rustling black wings,
cawing a protest.

“Isn’t you save him?”
Zeeta whispered.

“I will.” He hadn’t come
this far just to lose one of them—not Tai, who hard as he tried he couldn’t
help loving best. He stared at the spot where he’d seen Yatan fade, a gray
wraith into the sundown trees, carrying a treasure beyond price. He’d have it
back. “Let me go now.”

“Dingus!”

That voice, the voice
he’d longed to hear, and it was too late. Dingus looked over his shoulder at
Vandis, Vandis at last, reading a riot of questions on the granite face. Too
late. Dingus had no choice.

He turned away and leapt
the stream, leaving a knot of sixteen weeping Ishlings behind—and Kessa—and
Vandis. His feet, bootless, made no sound on the loam and needles, and he
picked up Yatan’s sign just within the forest. Clumsy old man. Scuffs stood out
on the ground, clear to Dingus’s eyes even in the deep gloaming.

His legs carried him
along, swift, silent. Evergreen needles pricked lightly at his soles. Birds
called their nightfall songs, but Dingus focused on a breathless little voice
speaking Ishian. “<…do anything you say, Boss Man,>” Tai pleaded.
“lifting, I’ll—>”

“” Yatan
panted. They were still moving, and Dingus stopped for a moment, shut his eyes,
and listened.

There.

Yatan shuffled through
the leaves and needles carpeting the forest floor. Tired old man.

He dashed softly around
rough trunks, keeping that weary shuffle and Tai’s terror sounds to his right,
and stretched his legs to overtake. The old man struggled along with Tai still
clamped to his chest. Yatan’s tail drooped, and his breathing rasped. Dingus
melted out of fathomless tree-shadow in Yatan’s path, a tall phantom burning
within.

Yatan squawked and
fumbled Tai, but at the last moment, caught the Ishling tight around the
throat. Tai kicked desperately, gagging—strangling. Dingus’s nape stung hot
with rage, and he closed tighter with Yatan. “Let him go.” He was surprised how
low his voice came out, how hard.

“I don’t think so.” Yatan
smirked, in spite of the sweat and stream water that dampened his fur. The
knifepoint lay between two of Tai’s ribs, ready to bite baby fur, baby lung.
“You’re going to walk away now, and let me walk away, too, and when I’m far
enough,
then
I’ll let this little shit go.”

Dingus shifted,
straightening taller, trying to hide the shaking in his limbs. He’d be willing
to bet he was the faster, but with Tai’s life on the line?

“Yatan, son of Mohg, get
on the ground!” That was Dar—when had she gotten there?—and she had her little
sword out, glinting in the last of the light. Vandis was with her. Both dripped
with sweat, breathing hard; his Master held up his hands, shaking his head,
don’t, don’t. “You’re under arrest!”

Yatan gasped laughter.
“All right, Captain Dar, all right. You arrest me. I’ll be back out tomorrow,”
he said, and looked right at Dingus. Just for Dingus’s ears, he hissed, “And
I’m going to kill every last one of them.” His teeth were bare and his eyes
glittered with pleasure. His hand tightened around Tai’s throat.

“
No,
” Dingus said,
and shifted his weight forward, snapping the sword in his left hand out and across.
Yatan’s spine parted like butter under the blade. The wind of it ruffled Tai’s
fur. Warm blood spattered Dingus’s face, and Yatan’s head tumbled quietly to
the ground.

Blood dripped from the end
of Dingus’s sword. Yatan’s head bounced once, and the old Ish body tilted, then
sagged into a heap. The little Ishling he’d been holding thumped down, coughing
and sobbing. “It’s okay now, Tai,” Dingus said gently, his face coated with
sprayed blood. His eyes fixed, unwavering, on Vandis’s: rational, maybe even a
little cold. “I promise.”

“Sir Dingus…!” the
brightly-colored Treehopper captain peeped, from Vandis’s elbow. Dingus didn’t even
look at her, only at Vandis. It wasn’t Vandis’s boy gazing at him over a dead
body and a hurt child; it wasn’t a boy who’d taken the head off the undisputed
ruler of the shadows in Windish.

That was a man’s
doing.
He wondered if Dingus appreciated the real magnitude of what he’d
done.

“Sir Dingus,” said the
Hop captain, “you know I have to—”

“I know.” He let the
swords slip from his hands and went to one knee, raising his palms.

She snapped her little
sword into its sheath and took the larger set of manacles from her belt. “I’m
sorry,” she whispered, crossing to him.

“I know.” He drew a long
breath. “Hi, Vandis.”

Vandis went toward the
three of them, Hopper, Ishling, and Junior. “You need a shave,” he said
inanely, seeing the soft fuzz on Dingus’s chin and lip.

“I’m growing a beard,”
Dingus said. The captain snapped a manacle around one wrist, and he gave her
the other. Then: “Glad you’re okay.”

I wish I could say the
same for you,
thought Vandis.

“Why’d you leave Kessa?”
Snap
went the manacle.

“She’s not alone.”

“A couple of my Hops are
with her,” the captain said, brusque with unshed tears.

Vandis bent to scoop the
Ishling into his arms, but the little one choked a howl and thrashed away,
clamping onto Dingus’s thigh.

“It’s okay now, Tai,”
Dingus repeated. “That’s Vandis. Did you know that? I can’t carry you right
now. Would you let Vandis do it?”

Tai sobbed hoarsely into
Dingus’s leg, but when Vandis reached for him he came away with only minimal
clutching and balled himself at the crook of Vandis’s elbow, a trembling little
knot of damp fuzz and a tunic wet with Yatan’s blood. Vandis laid a hand on his
back, reflex, and Dingus smiled gratefully.

“Sir Dingus—
why?
”
the bright woman whispered. Her tiny, dark-skinned hands ghosted down his
forearms, and he flinched, took his feet again. “Why did you do it?”

“It needed doing.”

Her face worked. “Now I
have to drop you at dawn. How does that need doing?”

“‘Even to the cost of my
life,’ Captain Dar,” he said, and Vandis’s stomach cramped. Tai squirmed in his
hold.

“Take them off.” He
stepped between Dingus and the captain. “Take them off him. Wipe him up. You
put those cuffs on me.”

“No!
”
Dingus spun,
backing away, a white streak in the gathering dark, bare chest, blanched face.
“
No!
You can’t!”

Vandis grabbed his arm,
stopping him. “You don’t get to tell me—”

“The hell I don’t! I’m no
liar and I’m no coward! I let you die for something I did, that makes me both!”

“Captain,” Vandis said,
pleading now and not ashamed in the least. “Is there any way? I could get him
an advocate.” He juggled Tai, trying to keep a hold on the Ishling.

Dar ruffled her silky
crest with one hand. “I—I could stall it. At least a little while. Through
tomorrow, but I don’t think I can hold it any longer, given how quickly—whoa!”

Tai squirted out of
Vandis’s fingers and flung himself at the Hopper’s face. She caught him and
held him away at arm’s length, no easy feat with him thrashing and clawing like
he’d gone rabid. “Bitch Hop!” he screamed. “Run away, Dingus, run away, you
isn’t can let the Hops take you!
Run!
”

“Oh, Tai,” Dingus said.
“It disappoints me, seeing you act this way. You need to stop.” As if he’d been
enchanted, Tai fell slack in the captain’s grip, breathing hard. Tears cut
tracks in his fur. “You go by Vandis now, and act right for him. He’ll help you
better than I could.”

“That isn’t so.” But Tai
let Vandis take him back from Dar, and when Vandis brought him close, he sagged
over Vandis’s arm, defeated dead weight.

With a nod, Dingus set
off back to the camp, slowly enough that Captain Dar could catch him up and
lead him by the elbow. Vandis followed, wishing in all honesty that he could
pull a Tai. He felt like a discarded rag, wrung out and flung aside—and about
as useful to his boy. Except for Tai’s little sobs and the cries of evening
birds, they walked in silence, and heavy misery settled over them all, bowing
shoulders.

Not Dingus’s, though. He
walked straighter than Vandis had ever seen him do, even just after he’d gotten
his leaf. He was proud of himself, Vandis realized, and Vandis would’ve been
proud, too, if he weren’t so worried. As they came closer to the edge of the
wood, he heard muffled shouting, and Dingus bolted, actually dragging Dar for a
couple of steps before she released his elbow. Vandis charged after him, but
couldn’t keep up. His heels disappeared into the gloom.

Vandis cleared the trees
just in time to see Dingus leap the stream to the higher opposite bank,
stumble, fall onto one of the Treehoppers—Vandis couldn’t tell them apart
anymore—struggling to corral the Ishlings into a small cart. The Hoppers Dar
had brought with her fought under two others apiece, while the Rodanskan sailor
held a red-faced Kessa back, his arms crossed over her torso. Her sword lay on
the ground.

All of the original
Hoppers descended on Dingus, truncheons whaling, and Vandis struggled up to the
bank. “Stop!” he bellowed, advancing on the Hoppers, waving his free arm. “He’s
in manacles! That’s brutality! I could bring you before the Council—stop!” The
last word cracked.

“That’s enough!” Dar
shrieked, cutting through the noise. The Ishlings had all scattered, but for a
little red baby already chained to the bottom of the cart, who’d tried to
escape over the side and now clung to the chain, whimpering.

“All right,” said a thick
woman with a scrubby crest. She stepped back from where she’d been kicking
Dingus’s ribs. “Let’s have done with it, ladies, or squeaky-clean Dar is going
to scream. Somebody round up those damned kids already.”

“
No!
” Dingus
cried, facedown on the ground as the other Hoppers moved away. “No! Not the
kids, Captain,
please!
They didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Taking kids in will also
earn you a complaint to the Council,” Vandis said, hating his impotence. “Your
career will burn to ashes, and I will dance around the fire.”

“Who do you think you
are?” the woman demanded.

Vandis drew himself up,
hoping he didn’t sound as hollow as he felt. “I’m Vandis fucking Vail, lady,
and if my Junior’s harmed in custody I’ll know just where to look. And you—let
go of my Squire!” He jabbed his finger at the big Rodanskan, who promptly
dropped Kessa into a heap.

“I wasn’t going to hurt
her,” the man protested.

“I know that. But I’m
here now.”

“Just as well. I’m not.”
The sailor turned and stalked into the shadows without another word as Kessa
leapt up and rushed, not to Vandis, but to Dingus.

“Let’s go,” Dar said,
while Kessa helped Dingus off the ground. Vandis could swear he’d seen his
Junior beaten all to hell more often than not. The Treehoppers wrangled over
who’d take Dingus back to her station, but Vandis didn’t bend more than half an
ear. Instead he crossed the short distance to his Junior and Squire.

“What happened?” she
whispered.

“He’s dead,” Dingus said,
low, for her ears—though Vandis was close enough to hear. “I killed him, Kess.
Don’t forget my swords. They’re back in the woods.”

“They’ll be evidence,”
Vandis said, and let Tai scoot to the top of his arm, from which the little
Ishling leapt to Dingus’s shoulder—Dingus winced when he landed—and clutched
fistfuls of sweaty, dirty red hair, burying his face.

“Really?” Dingus frowned.
“If I—I mean, if they don’t—I’d sure like to have ’em. And even if they do—” He
swallowed hard. “If they do execute me, it’d be good if you sold ’em for the
kids’ expenses.” Kessa clutched at his arm, panicky, and he winced again when
Tai clutched tighter in his hair. Tiny shoulders quivered.

“I’ll get them back,”
Vandis said. He thought of the patent and crest in his desk drawer, next to his
whiskey bottle.
If I have to. It’s there if I have to use it.
“I won’t
let them execute you.”

“Sure.”

“You don’t believe me.”

The look Dingus gave him
cut to the bone.

“I guess I deserve that.”

“I thought you’d—” But
the argument between the Treehoppers had broken apart, and now Dar approached.
Dingus shut his mouth.

“Are you ready, Sir
Dingus?” she asked heavily.

Tai sobbed, muffled. “No,
no, no!”

“I’m ready. Tai, you act
right for Vandis, hear me?”

“No!” Vandis reached up
and eased the Ishling’s exhausted fingers out of Dingus’s hair. Tai went limp
again. “Don’t take Dingus,” he pleaded. “Don’t take Dingus, Captain!”

“I have to,” Dar said.
She looked away, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes.

“No, you isn’t!” Tai
lifted his head, his whole little body taut against Vandis’s chest. “Hops is
doing however they please!”

“Not me.” She took Dingus
by the forearm. “Get him that advocate, Sir Vandis. Hoop, go and guard the
scene. I’ll send someone. Kaylee, please escort Sir Vandis and all these kids to
my tree. They can stay underneath it for now.”

“Yes, Captain Dar,” said
a very young Hop with blood staining the cream-colored fur under her nose.

It might’ve been comical
if Vandis weren’t so sick to his stomach; Dar didn’t even reach Dingus’s waist,
and there he was letting her take him away in irons, with no shirt and no
boots, and covered in blooming bruises. He didn’t look back.

“We’d better go,” said
Kaylee. “Anything to fetch?”

Kessa called to all the
Ishlings, who assembled while everything got packed. Vandis wound up
shouldering Dingus’s pack. It was heavy enough to drag him down even before she
asked some of the kids to ride along with him. They crawled through the park at
a snail’s pace. “How many of these little guys are there?” he demanded. It
certainly seemed as if he were covered in them.

“Seventeen,” Kessa said.
“You know Tai. There’s Zeeta, Vylee, Voo, Reeb, Mim, Teeya, Koosh, Veep, Jooga,
Loolee, Noom, Fleer, Keela, Teep, and Shree.” She paused. “Oh yeah, and Peepa.
She’s in your hair.”

Vandis looked up through
his eyebrows at the littlest one, whose fingers were wound in tight. “How do
you remember all that?”

“Their names are on their
shirts.”

“Kessa is put them on for
us,” the black-and-white girl on her shoulder said, showing “ZEETA” embroidered
across the right breast.

“That’s pretty smart.”
Vandis sighed. “What happened?”

“I don’t know
everything,” she said. “We met Tai first. He tried to cut Dingus’s purse.” Tai
trembled and let out a fresh, Ishling-sized sob, twisting the knife in Vandis.
As Kessa explained the food and the fishing, the little one sobbed harder.
“Then Tai came back—”

“I is killed Dingus!” he
cried. “I is killed Dingus… if I isn’t let him talk to me, Hops isn’t hang
him!”

“But then he isn’t save
us,” whispered a silvery girl with a bright patch covering one eye. She rode
Kessa’s arm, and even though tears stood in her remaining eye, she added, “Tai,
he isn’t want you crying, I is know that. He’s always tell us don’t to cry…”
She started to anyway, and a lot of the other ones did, too.

Black-and-white Zeeta
wasn’t one of them. She said, “Vandis isn’t let Dingus die. The Lady is help
Dingus always. Remember she is sending Vandis for helping him.”

“That’s right,” Vandis
said, concealing his pride. Whatever else he’d done, Dingus had kept his Oath
to the letter, and damned well. “So then what happened?”

Kessa told the rest of
the story, with liberal help from the Ishlings, when they could get it around
their crying. Tai didn’t move or speak. He lay back against Vandis’s chest with
silent tears streaming down his face, shivering every so often with the effort
of holding back. Vandis thought he would gladly have wrung necks to make it
stop.

Kaylee dropped them off
at Dar’s house, in a medium-sized cedar near the park. There was plenty of room
under the branches for everyone to lie down. Before she went to sleep, Kessa
came to squeeze Vandis hard enough to crack ribs. He squeezed her back almost
as hard. “I missed you, honey,” he said.

“I missed you, too.” She
looked at him. “Are you sure you’re gonna be able to stop it?”

“Positive,” he said
firmly. “Go get some rest.”

“Yes, Vandis,” she said,
and went to roll herself up in her blanket. In less than ten minutes, everyone
was asleep: cried out and exhausted by the evening—everyone but Tai, who
slumped on one of the four chairs Dar had set out, sniffling convulsively every
so often.

With a grunt, Vandis sat
on the ground next to the chair. He couldn’t get comfortable in those damned
things. “He’ll be okay.”

“Fuck you,” Tai said.
“Dingus is a great
Kunu.
He’s
Tatcheegan Kunu
come back to us—and
Tatcheegan Kunu
is always have to die…”

“Dingus isn’t the Great
Red Shaman. He’s not even Ish. He’s a redheaded guy, that’s it.”

“You isn’t knowing one
thing!” Tai dashed away fresh tears. “Only a
Kunu
can break Laben! Only
the greatest
Kunu
can kill Yatan! He’s making food from nothing and hear
our hearts beat! He’s take away fleas and heal our hurts! And you! What you is,
Vandis? What you is to fling shit at a magic man?”