Raven's Shadow rd-1 Read online

  Tier couldn’t afford to offer much more than Wresen’s two silver. Not because he didn’t have it, the better part of nine years of pay and plunder were safely sewn in his belt, but because no one would believe that he, a baker’s son and soldier, would spend so much money on a strange woman-child no matter how exotic. He could hardly believe it himself. If they decided he was a confederate of hers, he might find himself sharing the pyre outside. On the other hand, a bored nobleman could spend as much as he wanted without comment.

  Tier shot Wresen a look of contempt.

  “You’d be dead before your pants were down around your knees, nobleman,” Tier said. “You aren’t from around these mountains, or you would understand about magic. My armsmate was like you, used to the tame wizards who take the Septs’ gold. He saved my life three times and survived five years of war, only to fall at the hands of a Traveler wizard in a back alley.”

  The mood in the room shifted as Tier reminded them why they had killed the man burning outside.

  “We”—he included himself with every man in the room—“we understand. You don’t play with fire, Lord Wresen, you drown it before it burns your house down.” He looked at the innkeeper. “After the Traveler killed my fighting brother, I spent years learning how to deal with such—I look forward to testing my knowledge. Two silver and four copper.”

  The innkeeper nodded quickly, as Tier had expected. An innkeeper would understand the moods of his patrons and see that many more words like Tier’s last speech, and he’d get nothing. The men in the room were very close to taking the girl out right now and throwing her on top of her brother. Much better to end the auction early with something to show for it.

  Tier handed the innkeeper the silver coin and began digging in his purse, eventually coming up with the twenty-eight coppers necessary to make two silver and four. He was careful that a number of people saw how few coppers he had left. They didn’t need to know about the money in his belt.

  Wresen settled back, as if the Traveler’s fate was nothing to him. His response made Tier all the more wary of him—in his experience bored noblemen seldom gave up so easily. But for the moment at least, Tier had only the girl to contend with.

  Tier walked to the stairs, ignoring the men who pushed back away from him. He jerked the girl’s wrist and pulled her past the innkeeper.

  “What she has we’ll take,” Tier said. “I’ll burn it all when we’re in the woods—you might think of doing the same to the bed and linen in that room. I’ve seen wizards curse such things.”

  He took the stairs up at a pace that the girl couldn’t possibly match with the awkward way he kept her arm twisted behind her. When she stumbled, he jerked her up with force that was more apparent than real. He wanted everyone to be completely convinced that he could handle whatever danger she represented.

  There were four doors at the top of the stairs, but only one hung ajar, and he hauled her into it and shut the door behind them.

  “Quick, girl,” he said, releasing her, “gather your things before they decide that they might keep the silver and kill the both of us.”

  When she didn’t move, he tried a different tack. “What you don’t have packed in a count of thirty, I’ll leave for the innkeeper to burn,” he said.

  Proud and courageous she was, but also young. With quick, jerky movements, she pulled a pair of shabby packs out from under the bed. She tied the first one shut for travel, and retrieved clothing out of the other. Using her night rail as cover, she put on a pair of loose pants and a long, dark-colored tunic. After stuffing her sleeping shift back in the second pack, she secured it, too. She stood up, glanced out the room, and froze.

  “Ushireh,” she said and added with more urgency, “he’s alive!”

  Tier looked out and realized that the room looked over the square, allowing a clear view of the fire. Clearly visible in the heat of the flames, the dead man’s body was slowly sitting upright—and from the sounds of it, frightening the daylights out of the men left to guard the pyre.

  He caught her before she could run out of the room. “Upon my honor, mistress, he is dead,” he said with low-voiced urgency. “I saw him as I rode in. His throat was cut and he was dead before they lit the fire.”

  She continued to struggle against his hold, her attention on the pyre outside.

  “Would they have left so few men to guard a living man?” he said. “Surely you’ve seen funeral pyres before. When the flame heats the bodies they move.”

  In the eastern parts of the Empire, they burned their dead. The priests held that when a corpse moved in the flame it was the spirit’s desire to look once more upon the world. Tier’s old employer, the Sept, who had a Traveler’s fondness for priests (that is to say, not much), said he reckoned the heat shrank tissue faster than bone as the corpse burned. Whichever was correct, the dead stayed dead.

  “He’s dead,” Tier said again. “I swear to it.”

  She pulled away from him, but only to run back to the window. She was breathing in shaking, heaving gasps, her whole body trembling with it. If she’d done something of the same downstairs, he thought sourly, they wouldn’t be looking to ride out in the rain without dinner.

  “They were so afraid of him and his magic,” she said in a low voice trembling with rage and sorrow. “But they killed the wrong one. Stupid solsenti, thinking that being a Traveler makes one a mage, and that being young and female makes me harmless.”

  “We can’t afford to linger here,” he said briskly, though his heart picked up its beat. He’d gotten familiar with mages, but that didn’t make them any more comfortable to be around when they were angry. “Are you ready?”

  She spun from the window, her eyes glowing just a little with the magic she’d amassed watching her brother’s body burn.

  Doubtless, he thought, if he knew exactly what she was capable of he’d have been even more frightened of her.

  “There are too many here,” he said. “Take what you need and come.”

  The glow faded from her eyes, leaving her looking empty and lost before she stiffened her spine, grabbed both bags resolutely, and nodded.

  He put a hand on her shoulder and followed her out the door and down the stairs. The room had cleared remarkably—doubtless the men had been called to witness the writhing corpse.

  “Best be gone before they get back,” said the innkeeper sourly, doubtlessly worried about what would happen to his inn if the men returned after their newest fright to find the Traveler lass still here.

  “Make sure and burn the curtains, too,” said Tier in reply. There was nothing wrong with any of the furnishing in the room, but he thought it would serve the innkeeper right to have to spend some of Tier’s money to buy new material for curtains.

  The girl, bless her, had the sense to keep her head down and her mouth shut.

  Out of the inn, he steered her into the stable, where the stable boy had already brought out his horse and saddled it. The Traveler handcart was set out, too. The girl was light, so Skew could certainly carry the two of them as far as the next village, where Tier might obtain another mount—but the handcart proposed more of a problem.

  “We’ll leave the cart,” he said to the boy, not the Traveler. “I’ve no wish to continue only as fast as this child could haul a cart like that.”

  The boy’s chin lifted. “M’father says you have to take it all. He doesn’t want Traveler curses to linger here.”

  “He’s worried that they’ll fire the barn,” said the girl to no one in particular.

  “Serve him right,” said Tier in an Eastern dialect a stable boy born and raised to this village would not know. The girl’s sudden intake of breath told him that she did.

  “Get me an axe,” Tier said frowning. They didn’t have time for this. “I’ll fire it before we go.”

  “It can be pulled by a horse,” said the girl. “There are shafts stored underneath.”

  Tier snorted, but he looked obediently under the cart and saw that she w
as right. A clevis pin and toggle allowed the handpull to slide under the cart. On each corner of the cart sturdy shafts pulled out and pinned in place.

  Tier hurriedly discussed matters with the boy. The inn had no extra mounts to sell, nor harness.

  Tier shook his head. As he’d done a time or two before, though not with Skew, Tier jury-rigged a harness from his war saddle. The breast strap functioned well enough as a collar with such a light weight. He adjusted the stirrups to hold the cart shafts and used an old pair of driving reins the boy scavenged as traces.

  “You’ve come down in the world once more, my friend,” said Tier as he led Skew out of the stable.

  The gelding snorted once at the contraption following him. A warhorse was not a cart horse, but, enured to battle, Skew settled into pulling the cart with calm good sense.

  While he’d been leading the horse, the girl had stopped at the stable entrance, her eyes fixed on the pyre.

  “You’ll have time to mourn later,” he promised her. “Right now we need to move before they return to the inn. You’ll do well enough on Skew—just keep your feet off his ribs.”

  She scrambled up somehow, avoiding his touch as much as she could. He didn’t blame her, but he didn’t stop to say anything reassuring where the stable boy might hear.

  He kept Skew’s reins and led him out of the stable in the opposite direction that he’d come earlier in the day. The girl twisted around to watch the pyre as long as she could.

  Tier led Skew at a walk through the town. As soon as they were off the cobbles and on a wide dirt-track, Tier broke into a dogtrot he could hold for a long time. It shortened his breath until talking was no pleasure—so he said nothing to the girl.

  Skew trotted at his side as well as any trained dog, nose at Tier’s shoulder as they had traveled many miles before. The rain, which had let up for a while, set in again and Tier slowed to a walk so he could keep a sharp eye out for shelter.

  At last he found a place where a dead tree leaned against two others, creating a small dry area, which he increased by tying up a piece of oilskin.

  “I’d do better if it weren’t full dark and raining,” he said to the girl without looking at her. “But this’ll be drier at any rate.”

  He unharnessed and unsaddled Skew, rubbing him down briskly before tethering him to a nearby tree. Skew presented his backside to the wind and hitched up a hip. Like any veteran, the horse knew to snatch rest where it came.

  The heavy war saddle in hand, Tier turned to the girl.

  “If you touch me,” she said coolly, “you won’t live out the day.”

  He eyed her small figure for a moment. She was even less impressive wet and cold than she had been held captive in the innkeeper’s hand.

  Tier had never actually met a Traveler before. But he was well used to dealing with frightened young things—the army had been filled with young men. Even tired and wet as he was, he knew better than to address those words head on—why would she believe anything he said? But if he didn’t get her under shelter, sharing his warmth, she was likely to develop lung fever. That would defeat his entire purpose in saving her.

  “Good even, lady,” he said, with a fair imitation of a nobleman’s bow despite the weight of the heavy saddle. “I am Tieragan of Redern—most people call me Tier.” Then he waited.

  She stared at him; he felt a butterfly-flutter of magic—then her eyes widened incredulously, as if she’d heard something more than he’d said. “I am Seraph, Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent. I give you greetings, Bard.”

  “Well met, Seraph,” he said. Doubtless her answer would have conveyed a lot to a fellow Traveler. Maybe they’d even know why she addressed him as bard, doubtless some Traveler etiquette. “I am returning to Redern. If my map is accurate—and it hasn’t been notably accurate so far—Redern is about two days’ travel west and north of here.”

  “My clan, only Ushireh and I, was traveling to the village we just left,” she returned, shivering now. “I don’t know where Ushireh intended to go afterward.”

  Tier had been counting on being able to deliver her back to her people. “It was just the two of you?”

  She nodded her head, watching him as warily as a hen before a fox.

  “Do you have relatives nearby? Someone you could go to?” he asked.

  “Traveling clans avoid this area,” she said. “It is known that the people here are afraid of us.”

  “So why did your brother come here?” He shifted the saddle to a more comfortable hold, resting it against his hip.

  “It is given to the head of a clan to know where shadows dwell,” she replied obscurely. “My brother was following one such.”

  Tier’s experience with mages had led him to avoid questioning them when they talked of magic—he found that he usually knew less after they were finished than he did when he started. Whatever had led the young man here, it had left Seraph on her own.

  “What happened to the rest of your clan?” he asked.

  “Plague,” she said. “We welcomed a Traveling stranger to our fires one night. The next night one of the babies had a cough—by morning there were three of ours dead. The clan leader tried to isolate them, but it was too late. Only my brother and I survived.”

  “How old are you?

  “Sixteen.”

  That was younger than he expected from her manner, though from her appearance, she could have easily been as young as thirteen. He shifted his saddle onto his shoulder to rest his arm. As he did so, he heard a thump and the saddle jerked in his hold. The arrow quivered in the thick leather of the saddle skirt, which presently covered his chest.

  He threw himself forward and knocked her to the muddy ground underneath him. Holding her still despite her frantic battle to free herself of him, a hand keeping her quiet, he spoke to her in a toneless whisper.

  “Quiet now, love. Someone out there is sending arrows our way; take a look at my saddle.”

  When she stilled, he slid his weight off of her. The grass was high enough to hide their movements in the dark. She rolled to her belly, but made no further move away from him. He rested a hand on her back to keep her in place until he could find their attacker in the dark. Her ribs vibrated with the pounding of her heart.

  “He’s two dozen paces beyond your horse,” she whispered, “a little to the right.”

  He didn’t question how she could see their attacker in the pitch-darkness of the forested night, but sneaked forward until he crouched in front of Skew where he held still, hoping that the mud that covered him head to toe would keep him from being a target for another arrow.

  He glanced back to make certain that Seraph was still hidden, and stifled a curse.

  She stood upright, her gaze locked beyond Skew. He assumed she was watching their attacker. Her clothes were dark enough to blend into the forested dark, but her pale hair caught the faint moonlight.

  “Seraph,” said a soft voice. It continued in a liquid tongue Tier had never heard before.

  “Speak Common,” answered Seraph in cold clear tones that could have come from an empress rather than a battered, muddy, half-grown girl. “Your tongue does not favor Traveler speech. You sound like a hen trying to quack.”

  Well, thought Tier, if our pursuer had intended to kill Seraph, he’d have done so already. He had a pretty good idea then who it was that had tried to put an arrow in his hide. He hadn’t seen that Lord Wresen carried a bow, but there might have been one in the man’s luggage.

  “I have killed the one who would hurt you,” continued the soft voice.

  Tier supposed that it might have appeared that he’d been killed. He’d thrown himself down half a breath after the arrow hit, and the saddle and blanket made a lump on the ground that with the cover of tall grass might look like a body from a distance.

  “Come with me, little one,” Tier’s would-be killer said. “I have shelter and food nearby. You can’t stay out here alone. You’ll be safe with me.”

  Tier could h
ear the lie in the man’s words, but he didn’t think Seraph could. He waited for the man to get close enough for Tier to find him, hoping that Seraph would not believe him. After spending two silver and four copper on her, as well as missing his dinner, Tier had something of an investment in her well-being.

  “A Raven is never alone,” Seraph said.

  “Seraph,” chided the man. “You know better than that. Come, child, I have a safe place for you to abide. In the morning I’ll take you to a clan I know of, not far from here.”

  Tier could see him now, a shadow darker than the trees he slipped between. Something about the way the shadow moved, combined with his voice, gave his identity to Tier: he’d been right; it was Wresen.

  “Which clan would that be?” asked Seraph.

  “I—” Some instinct turned Wresen before Tier struck, and Tier’s sword met metal.

  Tier threw his weight against the other man, pushing Wresen away to get some striking distance between them—where Tier’s superior reach would do him some good.

  They fought briskly for a few minutes, mostly feeling each other out, searching for weaknesses. The older man was faster than Tier had expected, but he wasn’t the only one who’d underestimated his opponent. From the grunt Wresen let out the first time he caught Tier’s sword, he’d underestimated Tier’s strength—something that was not uncommon. Tier was tall and, as he’d often been teased, slight as a stripling.

  By the time they drew back to regroup, Tier boasted a shallow cut on his cheekbone and another on the underside of his right forearm. The other man had taken a hard blow from Tier’s pommel on the wrist and Tier was pretty sure he’d drawn blood over his adversary’s eye.

  “What do you want with the girl?” asked Tier. This was too much effort for a mere bedmate, no matter how Wresen’s tastes ran.

  “Naught but her safety,” insisted Wresen. The lie echoed in Tier’s ears. “Which is more than you can say.”