The Last Mortal Bond (23 page)

“Because,” the man replied grimly, “I'm blind.”

*   *   *

We're too late
.

That was Valyn's first thought when they burst into the narrow clearing.

The cabin was still standing. Nothing was on fire. No one was screaming, but mounted men and women packed the small open space where Valyn's family had cleared the trees to let in a little light. The riders looked like monsters. Their skin was too pale, their hair too yellow, their eyes too terribly blue.
Urghul
. The man in black had been right. Somehow, impossibly, the Urghul had come. They'd found Valyn's home, Valyn's family, and now it was all over, all finished.

A scream scraped up his throat and out, shivering the late-morning air. Normally Valyn would have been ashamed of the thin, weak sound, but he was past shame, almost past fear, even. His legs shook beneath him, and he felt like he couldn't breathe, like the air was all tangled up inside his chest. He felt like that chest might explode. It felt like fear, and not like fear. Like something far worse than fear.

He dropped the wooden handle of the ax and stumbled forward a step, searching for his belt knife, wondering if it would hurt when the Urghul killed him. A hand on his shoulder brought him up short. The stranger's grip again, strong as stone. Valyn tried to twist free, but the man pulled him back.

“Knock it off,” he growled. “Shut up. Get behind me.”

“My family—”

“—is still alive.” The man pointed to the shadow of the stacked woodpile, to where Valyn's mother and brother stood pinned against the logs by the lowered lances of the horsemen. His father lay sprawled on the ground a pace away, blood seeping from an awful gash across his forehead. “Your family's alive. Don't do anything stupid, and they might stay that way.”

Valyn felt his legs collapse beneath him, then he dropped like a deadfall stone.

His mother jerked at the motion, noticing him for the first time, gave a strangled cry, tried to move forward, found steel at her throat, then subsided, tears streaking her cheeks. His brother met his eyes; he was trembling, either with fear or rage. Valyn's own tears smeared his vision. Again he knew he should be ashamed, and again, the shame meant nothing. He would live with a lifetime of shame and worse than shame if only the Urghul would just ride on, would leave his family to their life here in this tiny clearing.

“Huutsuu,” said the strange man with the axes.

Valyn had no idea what the word meant, but most of the horsemen wheeled their mounts at the sound of this new voice. Spearheads glinted, bright in the unforgiving light. Bows creaked as the warriors took aim. There were enough to kill the man in black a dozen times over, but he didn't seem worried.

Of course he's not worried, stupid,
Valyn realized.
He can't
see
them
.

“They have bows,” he gasped. “They're going to shoot—”

Before he could finish the sentence, two of the horsemen loosed their shafts. They couldn't miss from that distance. At eight paces, Valyn could hit a chipmunk darting along a branch, and the stranger was a lot larger than a chipmunk.

And faster, too, as it turned out. So much faster.

Valyn stared as the man slashed his arm up and across, the motion too quick to follow, too quick to be
real
 … and yet there was an arrow shaft clattering uselessly into the needles just a few paces away. When Valyn turned back, he found the stranger holding the other arrow, the shaft snatched from the air just inches from his chest. He clenched his fist, and the arrow snapped.

“Huutsuu,” he said again. “Check your warriors, or I will kill them.”

The archers didn't lower their bows, but they hesitated this time, obviously taken aback by what they'd just seen. Some were glancing over at a tall woman with streaming blond hair who was nudging her horse forward through the press. Valyn was no stranger to tough women—his own mother could spend half a day splitting rock maple with their eight-pound maul, then run her own circuit of traps before dark—but Huutsuu, if that was her name, made Valyn's mother look old, weak. He felt as though he had been raised by a feral housecat, and was only now seeing a mountain lion for the first time. The Urghul woman wore hide leggings and a hide vest that did nothing to disguise the scars carved into her arms and across the flesh of her shoulders. When she shifted in her saddle, Valyn could see the muscle move beneath her skin. She carried a bow across the front of her saddle, but had made no effort to nock an arrow or to bring it to bear.

She considered the man in black for a time, then shook her head.

“So. Kwihna has seen fit to test you,” she said. “You are harder than when we last met.”

The words sounded like a compliment. Valyn's stomach squirmed inside him. The man in black knew the woman. What if they were friends? What if he decided not to stop her after all? What if he was one of the Urghul himself?

Valyn glanced up at the stranger. His skin was too dark, and his eyes—but what did Valyn know about the alliances taking place beyond his family's own quiet corner of the forest? Who was he to say that there weren't Annurians—traitors!—in league with the horsemen? The Urghul had shot at the man in black, that was true, but then they'd
stopped
shooting. And the stranger had
lied,
lied about being blind.…

Valyn started to inch through the needles, away from the stranger, toward the dubious safety of the forest. If he could slip away, maybe he could double back. There was a narrow gap between the stacks of wood. They could sneak out that way, get into the dense hemlocks where the horses wouldn't be able to follow.…

Pain exploded, bright and baffling, across the back of his head. He was facedown on the earth, mouth open, gagging on pine needles, nose filled with the reek of wet dirt and rotting things. Someone had hit him … the stranger … he'd attacked.…

“I told you not to move,” the man said.

Valyn began to raise himself up on his elbows, then caught his mother's gaze from across the clearing. She didn't speak, just shook her head slowly, carefully. She had a hand on his brother's arm, holding him back. Kadare was strong, angry, quick to act. If he was keeping still, letting himself be held back, then it was important. It was necessary. Valyn subsided against the cool ground. He wanted to vomit, whether from the pain or the fear, he wasn't sure.

“Why are you here?” the stranger asked.

Despite his claims about being blind, he had locked eyes with the woman. To Valyn's amazement, she was able to hold that awful, wrecked gaze without flinching. The silence lasted a long time, as though the man in black and the mounted woman were both leaning against it, seeing who would collapse first. Finally the woman—Huutsuu, her name was—nodded curtly, as though she had made a decision.

“We are looking. Hunting.”

“Hunting.” The stranger shook his head, then spat into the litter of leaves. “Hunting what? A family of trappers? Doesn't Long Fist have enough Annurians to murder down on the front?”

“Long Fist is gone,” the woman replied.

The man in black frowned. “Gone. Where?”

“I don't know. He told us to obey the leach, your friend. Then he left.”

“Balendin.” There was rage in the stranger's voice now. Valyn could see his fingers tighten around the haft of his ax. “Balendin is leading your people?”

“Most of them,” Huutsuu replied.

“Most?”

The woman glanced over her shoulder at the other riders, then nodded. “It is not right. Some of us have had enough.”

“I didn't think you ever had enough. Pain is pain, right?”

“You are harder, but still stupid.”

“So teach me.”

“We worship Kwihna. This foreign leach worships only himself. His killing is not a sacrifice; it is a hoarding up of his own power. There is nothing ennobling in it. Nothing ennobling in following such a creature.”

The stranger grunted. None of it meant anything to Valyn, but as long as they were talking, as long as they were focused on each other, no one was murdering his family. He glanced across the clearing. His father was still unconscious in the dirt, but his brother had slipped clear of his mother's grip, had used the distraction to pull a long log from the woodpile, wrapping his broad hands around it as though it were a weapon, as though he could fight his way free of two dozen Urghul with nothing more than a stick of firewood. Valyn's mother had noticed, was struggling silently with him, trying to stop him, but he yanked free, pivoted, searching for a target.

“Don't!” Valyn shouted, but the nearest Urghul was already turning, swinging his spear around. Valyn's mother lunged forward, trying to put herself between her son's body and the leaf-shaped blade. She was fast, but the stranger's ax was faster, flashing end over end through the center of the clearing, burying itself in the Urghul's back with the sound of steel striking rotten wood. The horseman went all loose in the limbs, then fell silently. Before he hit the ground, Huutsuu was barking something in her own language.

The remaining Urghul looked angry, confused, but they didn't continue the attack. Valyn's mother wrested the log away from his brother, then dragged him back against the woodpile, her strong, sun-dark arm wrapped around him as he trembled with rage and shame, holding him close, whispering something in his ear that Valyn couldn't hear.

Huutsuu was watching the man in black, shaking her head. “Each time I see you, you kill my men.”

“The last time I saw you, you told me they weren't men if they let themselves be killed.”

If the stranger was bothered to have only one ax left, it didn't show. Nothing seemed to bother him. There was an angle to the way he stood, something in his posture or his face that seemed familiar.
Rabid,
Valyn realized suddenly.
He's like something rabid.

Huutsuu's laugh broke through the thought. The sound was chilling, like the howl of coyotes late at night, when they were closing in on their kill.

“Why are you here?” she asked the man. “Where are your companions?”

The stranger shook his head, as though the word
companions
had no meaning for him.

“Keep going, Huutsuu,” he said quietly. “Leave these people alone.”

“There is a danger in leaving alive those who hate you.” She smiled. “I thought that I had taught you this lesson.”

“This family doesn't hate you, Huutsuu. I've been watching them for half a year. They hunt and trap. They cut wood for the winter. They're not part of the war. Leave them alone.”

The woman hesitated, then shook her head. “I will kill them quickly.”

“No,” he replied, voice flat. “You will not.”

Again she laughed. “You are only one man, Malkeenian.”

“And barely that,” the stranger muttered, so softly that Valyn almost missed the words. Then the man raised his chin and his voice both. “Ride or fight, Huutsuu. Ananshael can sort out the rest.”

“Ananshael.” The woman grimaced, then blew out a long breath. “You would die for these people? You would kill for them?”

“I've killed for less.”

The Urghul watched him a long time. Valyn's palms were sweating. His heart galloped inside his ribs. He felt as though he might pass out, but he did not pass out. Finally a new expression crept onto the woman's face.

“These fools are harmless,” she said, gesturing to Valyn's family. “I can leave them behind, leave them alive.”

The stranger started to nod, but she cut him off with a raised hand.

“But
you,
Malkeenian, are far from harmless. You left me alive once, and it nearly killed you. I will not make your mistake.”

“If you think you can kill me,” he said quietly, “you are welcome to try.”

He sounded ready, though to kill or to die, Valyn couldn't say.

“I don't want you dead. I want you to join us.”

The man in black narrowed his eyes. “Why would I join a band of Urghul savages?”

Huutsuu smiled. “Because these Urghul savages will kill the leach who corrupts our people. Who profanes our god.”

“Balendin.” The name—if it
was
a name—sounded like a curse.

“Like us,” Huutsuu replied, “you hate the leach. I remember this well.”

The stranger hesitated, then shook his head. “I hate a lot of people.”

She shrugged. “This is a start.”

“I don't need a start.”

“Yes,” Huutsuu said. “You do. For half a year, you say, you have been prowling these forests like a diseased wolf. I offer … another path.”

“I don't want your path. I'm delighted with my own.”

Huutsuu's eyes flashed. “And if you do not join us, I will kill you, then offer this family to the god. Slowly.”

The stranger studied her a long time, features expressionless as worn granite. “Why?” he asked, the word a growl.

She shrugged. “I need warriors. And whatever else you are, you are a warrior.”

“If you need warriors, then what in Hull's name are you doing up here? You're miles from any kind of fight.”

“We're looking for ghosts, Malkeenian. Three of them. People like you.”

The stranger jerked as though struck, half raised his remaining ax, bared his teeth, as though he were about to leap upon the woman and hack out her heart.

His words, when he finally spoke, were cold as winter stone. “What people?”

Huutsuu shook her head slowly. “We have no names, but they wear black,” she gestured toward the stranger's shredded clothes, “like you. Only three, but for many months they have plagued us. They attack our messengers and our warriors, sometimes come into full camp to do their killing. Those who give chase come back empty-handed, or they do not come back at all. They have no horses, these three, but they are fast, and they strike always at night.”