Frank Tuttle - Hold The Dark

“None will seek to deter you,” said Evis. “But might we beg of you this boon?”

Ethel and his brothers came rushing inside, along with a gang of twenty or so winded New People. Many bore cuts and bruises. I gathered the only fighting hadn’t been within the bloody walls I faced.

I laughed. “Come. I shall watch then. It will amuse me.”

I caught hold of the trap door recently cut into the floor. Caught hold of it from where I stood, and blasted it from its hidden frame, all without moving.

Evis nodded, snapped instructions to his men and motioned for Ethel and his to follow.

They swarmed off, into the deeper dark. I followed, my pace leisurely, no longer troubled by the blood that ran down my face.

It was nearly over by the time I descended the makeshift stair. Two halfdead and a trio of humans. The halfdead fell first, shot by Evis’s faintly glowing crossbow bolts-I could see plain the spell caught in the bolts, a simple thing of light and heat-and a fusillade of blows from a furious New People mob.

Evis gathered the humans in a corner. Ethel stepped forward, blade raised, and asked them where his sister was.

I knew. I made my way easily through the dark, came to a heavy door, opened it.

A raving, bloodied halfdead flew shrieking to meet me. I caught it, too, and would have crushed it, save it began to cry, a woman’s high sobs.

I brought it out, into the sudden ring of light cast by Ethel’s torch.

Ethel bellowed, would have hacked the captive priests apart had I not silenced him with a shout.

“This is not your sister.”

“Ameel Cant,” said Evis, elbowing his way through the crowd. He eyed her critically, pointed toward a small room behind the one I’d just opened. “If you please?”

I cast her into it and slammed the door. She beat and flailed upon it, her cries long and high and anguished.

A bar leaned by the door. I picked it up, dropped it in the holds, crossed the room, flung open the next door and stepped inside.

And there she was.

Martha Hoobin, backed into the furthest corner of the tiny stinking room, glaring up at me with those sky-blue Hoobin eyes.

“You’ll nare lay a hand on me, ye cat-eyed devil.” She’d torn a post from the bed that was the room’s sole piece of furniture and scraped one end sharp. She held the point steady and level with my gut.

Even there, in the dark, through eyes no longer entirely my own, I could see a bit of Ethel in the set of Martha’s jaw, in the way she held her eyes boring straight into mine. There were other similarities-the long narrow shape of the nose, the coal-black hair, the cheekbones that caught the faint light of approaching torches behind-but while Martha was obviously a Hoobin, she’d inherited none of her brothers’ massive big-boned frames. She was tiny-perhaps half Ethel’s height, maybe half a hand taller than Mama-almost Elfishly so, in the seeming fragility of her limbs, in the long fingers, in the nearly luminous blue of her eyes.

I didn’t need the huldra to show me any semblance of fragility was mere illusion. She gripped her makeshift spear tight. Her breathing was steady. I could see her measuring the distance between me and the door and wondering if she could dart through it after making a stab at my ribs.

She even had the money. Darla’s fortune, eleven hundred crowns in paper, still stuffed down the front of her ripped, soiled blouse. I knew they tried to take the money, tried to take her clothes-tried, and failed.

“I tell ye I’ll gut ye, ye blood-drinkin’ get of a troll,” she said.

“Pleased to meet you too,” I said. And then Ethel Hoobin sidled past me.

“Martha!”

“Ethel?”

The rest of the Hoobins stormed in, and they all began to shout. A ragged cheer went up from the New People gathered outside.

Ethel turned toward me, tears in his eyes.

“You have done what you said,” he said. “You have saved our sister.”

He saw the huldra. I know he did. Mama said later my eyes were glowing, red as coals and flickering like wind-blown embers. But Ethel Hoobin put out his hand, in a fist, and touched me on the chest, right above my heart.

“Thank you.”

Martha looked up at me, nodded and looked away.

But even as Ethel led her out of the room, led her past me, Martha Hoobin kept her eyes on my hands, and her pitiful bed-post spear aimed square at my gut.

The New People swept out, reached the stair, swept up it. Evis and his crew remained, though I noted they had doubled or tripled in number since I had gone into Martha’s room.

A new voice rang out. “Boy!” it said, and I turned to see Mama clambering down the stair, the Hoogas bloodied and stiff haired on her heels. Mama carried an enormous meat-cleaver, hairs and bits of bone still clinging to the blade. The Hoogas bore traditional Ogre clubs-five-foot timbers, the striking ends festooned with nail-spikes and broken glass and the broken ends of bones. Both bore the signs of enthusiastic, recent use.

“Boy!” shouted Mama, dropping to the floor with a ragged puff of breath. “Boy, I told you not to touch that thing!”

I turned away. Evis saw, left the captive human priests and joined me outside the door at which dead Ameel Cant still beat.

“It is done,” said Evis, when he was near enough to speak. “Martha Hoobin is going home.”

The priests cried out, and were quickly and permanently silenced. Evis shook his head. “It is done,” he said, again.

“You’ll let them go?” I said, nodding at the retreating New People. “What makes you think they will not rise up against you tomorrow?”

Evis shrugged. “We fought at their side. We rescued their sister. They gave their word.”

“And you think that’s enough.”

“It shall have to be.”

Mama came stomping up, wild-eyed and wheezing. She wiped her cleaver on the side of her bag and dropped it inside.

“Boy,” she said, to me. “You ain’t dead.”

I looked down upon her, saw, for perhaps the first time, how old and small and weary she looked. “No,” I said. I was beginning to see things, in the dark, again. I heard the faint rustles of the huldra’s patient whisper.

Evis motioned toward his men, pointed toward the door that held Ameel Cant. Half a dozen halfdead trotted over, each bearing a crossbow and a twinkling silver bolt.

“Oh, no,” I said. “That will never do.”

Evis frowned. “She is mad. You have seen this before.”

“I said no.” I reached, and a trickle of power answered, and I smiled. “I saw her. She has hands. She has her eyes. She may have been dead, but she cries. That is my price. You are not a monster, you say? Then take her. Feed her. Care for her. Restore to her the life that was taken, by those who share your hunger.”

Evis lifted an eyebrow.

“And if I do not?”

I leaned down, so that my face was even with Evis’s. “Then I shall lead the day folk against your Houses. I shall speak the words that bring them out. I shall speak the words that will light the torches. I shall speak the words that will bring them down upon you, and I shall join them, and the fires shall burn and will still be burning when winter comes again.” I felt myself swelling, heard the huldra whisper. “Shall I begin?”

Evis looked sideways, made the slightest of nods at Mama.

She shouted something, threw a bundle of hair and twigs she’d had hidden in the palm of her hand, closed her eyes and spat.

I laughed. I saw the bundle coming, brushed it aside as easily as one waves away a gnat. “Oh, no,” I said. “That’s not the way. But let me show you a spell I know.”

I lifted my hand. The huldra showed me a hidden thing. I laughed at the thought of it, and I would have cast it forth, but for a subtle twisting in the dark, and a chill, and then the sound, faint, of a voice.