James West - Reaper Of Sorrows

“You see that?” Loro demanded, even as the pale figure faded into the gloom under the tree.

Aeden made a strangled noise and ran back toward the road. Rathe ordered him to stop, but the soldier never slowed. Drawn to the yelling, the other searchers converged, their advance marked by bobbing torches.

“With me,” Rathe commanded, and crept toward the skulking murk under the leaning fir’s snow-clad needles. A metallic glint dancing with torchlight caught his eye, and he halted the others with a word. The men formed a half-moon circle around him, torches raised.

Between them and the hoary evergreen, a sword rested on a skim of snow, its clean edge running with reflected flame. A fan of crimson splashes steamed around scattered boot prints. Alfan, bleeding and battling, had run to that spot, spun round and round, striving to keep an enemy at bay … an enemy that had not left any tracks of its own.

With the scent of fresh-spilled blood in his nose, Rathe looked to upper boughs. “Alfan?”

No answer came.

“I will climb up,” a gravelly voice said. Rathe turned to see Remon’s lean, whiskered face. “He’s a dullard, but he’s my friend. I would know if he’s dead or maimed.” Eyes tight with fear, he handed off his torch, ducked under the lowest branches, and set to climbing.

“Mayhap wolves chased him,” one of the soldiers said.

Rathe pointed out what the man had missed. “The snow is new-fallen, the blood fresh enough to steam, but there are no tracks, save Alfan’s.”

“He’s not here,” Remon called in a glum tone. “No blood … nothing.”

“He vanished,” Loro said, swallowing loudly.

Rathe tried not to consider what Breyon had said of the missing villagers, but he could no more ignore those dire words than he could dismiss the falling snow.

“He was taken ,” someone spoke up, garnering a few mutters of agreement. “Such is the way of the Shadenmok.”

Rathe looked around, hoping against hope to find some indication where Alfan had gone, but there was nothing. He bit back an oath. “With no tracks to follow, there is no way to search without ending up lost ourselves.”

Mutters of regret met the pronouncement, but no one disagreed, and Rathe ordered them back to camp.

At their approach, Treon strode past the ring of firelight and confronted Rathe. “I do not see Alfan in your ranks.”

“There was blood, his tracks and sword, but nothing else. Unless he gained the ability to fly … something took him.”

Breyon, huddled next to a silent Carul, looked up at this, his gaze unreadable.

“ ‘Took him?’ “ Treon said, lip curling. “I would judge, lieutenant, that you have failed your first crucial mission as a man of Hilan. Were it not against Lord Sanouk’s wishes, I would strike off your head at this moment.”

Rathe took a deep, steadying breath. The only thing that kept him from knocking Treon’s skinny backside into the cold mud was the disapproving rumbles from the soldiers at his back-discontent aimed squarely at Treon. This night, Rathe had gained supporters. In the end, that mattered more than satisfying a personal grudge.

“Forgive me, captain,” he said, turning.

The men stared back, their faces a grim tapestry. They were malcontents, lawbreakers, the broken warriors of Cerrikoth given a last chance to demonstrate their worth. Some might prove irredeemable, some might earn death by his own hand, but at that moment they were his men, and he was their leader.

“I ask the same forgiveness from all of you,” he said, raising his voice. “Would that the gods had rewarded our efforts, but our brother’s fate is now in their hands. However, trust that should any of you come up missing, or fall wounded in battle, or suffer any of a hundred trials that can trouble a soldier, I will aid you to the best of my strength.”

“We could ask no more,” Loro said from the back, earning nods of approval.

Treon glared at the men, opened his mouth, but a shout cut off his words before he spoke them.

“Glory to the Reavers!”

“And to the Scorpion!” another added.

“The Reavers and the Scorpion!” thundered eighteen men.

Only two of the company did not shout or bat an eye: Rathe and Treon. They stared at each other. The others beat a hasty retreat, talking overloud about Shadenmok, poor buggering Alfan, the women of Valdar, and anything else to distract from the motionless confrontation.

“You think I am a fool, dog,” Treon rasped when all had moved out of earshot, “but I know your game. Make your bid for my station in Hilan as you will, but before letting you take my place, I will strew your reeking guts, and drive my dagger into your miserable heart.”

A slow smile spread across Rathe’s lips, but his eyes were cold obsidian. He stayed that way, unmoving, unflinching, unspeaking, until Treon cursed him and turned away.

Hood pulled well forward to ward against falling snow and inquisitive eyes, Lord Sanouk hovered in the shadows beyond the village green, watching the boy wander among wagons and hawkers. Innocent eyes wide and bright, the boy halted, entranced by jugglers tossing flaming batons up into the snowy night. A moment more, his gaze fell on dancing wenches clad in naught but ribbons of multihued silk, despite the unseasonable cold.

When those charms lost their allure, the boy meandered to the far side of the green, where aged mystics sat rickety stools and scried futures from bowls heaped with glistening frog entrails, or deciphered good tidings or ill from smokes rising from acrid potions. Around the boy, bedraggled men and women wearing the soil of the field upon their faces and poor garb, clapped and squealed at each new trick.

Sanouk turned his attention from the boy to the lively trading. The rabble he ruled showed vitality only when a caravan called, trading homespun cloth for trinkets, graven idols of stone or wood for buttons and needles. Sanouk’s lips curled at the sour taste on his tongue. Pathetic scum, offering up wishes for dreams .

He demanded little of the smallfolk, yet they loathed him. Oh, they bobbed their heads and wrung their hands when in his presence, babbled platitudes, offered up thanks and blessings, but his spies told that when out of sight, they cursed him for a would-be usurper, and grumbled incessantly over their daily labors. When compelled by his soldiers to perform their duties, they did so with a lethargy that fired visions in his mind of putting them to torture. If nothing else, a knife or a glowing brand applied to their flesh would enliven them.

Lord Sanouk gusted a breath. This night the swine did not matter. From their midst, he would pluck the ripe fruit he needed, and leave the ignorant fools to blame wolves or spirits, or gods knew what else, never knowing the enemy had passed through their midst undetected.

He had sworn off taking sacrifices from the village after the last he had taken, but with Treon still not returned from Valdar, need pressed him-Gathul’s appetites were gluttonous, to say the least, and growing.

No more , Sanouk silently vowed. Not from Hilan, at any rate.

The boy moved away from the seers, a pitiful wretch with not even a copper to spend for a telling of his life. If not destined for a far different future, Sanouk could have predicted the boy’s fate. A life spent in squalor, made old before his time by lowborn toil, suffering a harridan of a wife and suckling babes who would grow into wastrels with not the wit to bathe the shite from their stinking backsides.

I will save you from that, boy. I will lend purpose to your otherwise meaningless existence. At the thought, the bitterness behind his teeth sweetened, a faint smile quirked his mouth. The child would endure suffering, to be sure, but in comparison to whatever else his life might have been, that anguish could be counted a blessing. It was a small kindness, but a kindness nonetheless.