Barb Hendee - Traitor to the Blood

Closing his eyes, Chane focused his will until the robin's image materialized in his thoughts. Its head cocked sideways in Chane's mind, with one black avian eye staring back at him. He sent it commands woven into images.

Half-dead and half-elf -black hair with red sparks and white hair that glimmered, the two side by side.

Find in stone and cut wood -the city below, through the trees and across the open field.

Silent, watch and listen -a glimpse of a pale woman's face next to the deep tan of a man with amber eyes.

The robin thrashed its wings and lifted into the air.

Rushing wind over feathers and the ground falling away filled Chane's awareness as his mind clung to the bird's senses. In his early days, these secondhand sensations had been disorienting, then exhilarating. Now he found no delight in them.

The robin crossed the stream and glided over the city walls. Torches were being lit by patrols upon the ramparts. Below were the rooftops of the city, the shapes of buildings barely defined by the light of oil lanterns hanging in the intersections of its roadways. Nearest the city wall was a tall building with a line of figures moving toward a glowing opening at one end.

The robin dove downward, and Chane watched fatigued Stravinan border guards trudging along the side road. Some assisted their wounded comrades as they walked. Peasants in tattered and soaked clothing were among them, as well as several figures in pale blue tabards over cowled robes. All headed for a tall timber barracks, its lower half a mortared foundation of basalt stone. Orange-yellow light spilled from an open door at the far right end, but there was no sign of Wynn or her companions.

A flash of white passed by a window just left of the main door. Chane made the robin double back to light upon the foundation stone meeting the window's ledge. Looking both ways through the pane, he glimpsed a wood archway to the left. Someone in a studded leather hauberk disappeared through it before Chane could discern who it was. The robin fluttered into the air, and returned to land on a sill at the barrack's end farthest from the door.

Chane peered with the familiar's eyes through the mud-speckled window.

Inside were bunks stacked by twos with a path running between them down the long room's center, end to end. Only two border guards were present, seated on top bunks across the way as they stripped off weapons and stowed their gear. To the left at the room's end was an open space with a rickety table surrounded by three stools. On the nearest sat Leesil, his hair and arms streaked in blood. His stained punching blades lay upon the table, piled with a horse mace.

Leesil's narrow features were blank and dull as he dipped his hands into a water pail between his feet and rubbed away blood. Magiere sat on the last lower bunk to the room's far side, studying him with wary eyes.

A cold stab ran through Chane's throat at the sight of her, and the robin shook itself in response. Once he'd found her black hair and porcelain skin enticing. He'd enjoyed fantasies of doing battle with her. Now the pain in Chane's throat was not born of anger or desire. His pure hatred and hunger were poisoned with fear. He no longer cared to make her suffer-only to rip her throat out before she could gasp.

A small figure huddled on one of the bunks. The robin's eyes were not as night-sharp as Chane's, and he pushed the bird forward until its beak touched the window's glass.

Wynn sat with her back against the wall-as far back in the bunk as she could hide. Her boots lay on the floor in puddles, and her pants and coat bottom were soaked through. She shivered with her knees pulled up against her chest.

Chane stared long at Wynn's round olive face and brown eyes beneath the hood of her sheepskin coat. She was watching her companions.

"Take off your hauberk," Magiere said to Leesil.

Chane grudgingly turned his attention from Wynn as Magiere rose to her feet.

Magiere had already heaped her cloak, hauberk, and falchion in the corner. She stepped around in front of Leesil, rolling up her shirtsleeves. It would've been bad enough if she'd seen pain or anger-or even a hint of madness-that had driven him out into the field this day. At least she might have some notion of what overcame him. But Leesil's expression didn't change as he glanced down at himself. His eyes were empty as he unbuckled the sides of his blemished hauberk and pulled it over his head. The sleeves of his russet shirt were stained, but before Magiere could say anything, he stripped it off as well.

He sat before her, bare and dark-toned to the waist. For an instant she remembered his closeness at night and the warmth of his skin and breath. A strange loneliness filled her at the sight of blood dried in his hair.

Magiere said nothing as she knelt, picked up his fallen shirt, and sank its sleeves in the bucket to wring the blood from them. She took the muslin rag beside the pail and dipped it in the water. When she reached for his face to clean it, he shoved her hand away. A long, narrow bruise ran down the outside of his bare forearm. Magiere grabbed his wrist to inspect it, and Leesil pulled away again.

"You going to tell me what happened out there?" she asked, though she expected little of an answer. "You dragged us into something that wasn't our concern. And you did it in the worst way."

Leesil took the rag from her and wiped his own face, but he didn't meet her eyes.

Thumping footfalls filled the room, and Magiere let out a sigh. Whatever Leesil withheld would be hard enough to drag from him if they were alone. Here in the military barrack, there was no privacy. As she came up to one knee and looked down the room's center path, Wynn crawled from hiding to the foot of her bunk.

The little sage looked haggard, but Magiere couldn't find much sympathy. The girl should've never come with them. There'd been plenty of whispered night arguments with Leesil about sending her back to the Guild of Sagecraft in Bela.

A tall, lanky man in padded armor with muddied vambraces and matted long blond hair came down the path between the stacked bunks. It was the young captain who'd pulled his own men out of Magiere's way at the city gate. He carried an iron vessel shaped like a large cook pot with three legs beneath it, and he gripped its arched handle with both hands. He had a blanket tucked under each of his arms. A dull glow emanated from the pot's top and lit up the captain's long features. Within the vessel, hot coals rested in a bed of gravel. Instead of hauling it to the open space by the table, the captain stopped and placed it between the bunks nearest Wynn.

Magiere scowled. Why did this foolish girl, who'd betrayed them, inspire so much sympathy from every posturing man they ran across?

"Wynn?" the captain said, and held out a blanket.

The young sage shook it out and quickly wrapped it around herself. "Thank you."

Wynn struggled beneath the blanket and then stopped to look about with an embarrassed frown at everyone present. The captain cleared his throat. He turned first to the soldier bunked above her and then the other across the way.

"Boska, Stevan," he said. "A little privacy, please."

The soldiers nodded and left.

"Thank you, Stasi," Wynn said, and scurried back into hiding, fumbling beneath the blanket to remove her wet clothing.

The captain tossed the extra blanket on Magiere's bunk, and she gave him a curt nod of thanks. He then folded his arms, turned his back to Wynn's bunk, and stood there like a sentry protecting her modesty. Magiere choked back a hiss of disgust.

Captain Stasi's gaze drifted toward Leesil. His long, horselike face wrinkled with suspicion.

"And what fresh misery puts one of you among us?" he growled.

Leesil rose so quickly that Magiere had to scoot out of his way. Trickles of water ran down his forearms to drip from fingers crooked in anger. His blunt ear tips peeked out through white-blond hair hanging in clotted tangles about his face, and his amber eyes locked on the captain with intensity. He was still eager for a fight, not caring who came at him or why.