Barb Hendee - Traitor to the Blood

Beside her lay the boy, looking back to the stream. His eyes suddenly widened in terror. He scrambled away, screaming as if something in the stream were more terrifying than watching his mother die.

Wynn rolled over to look. It climbed out of the water, feral eyes glimmering like crystals.

Chap shook himself and a cascade of droplets rained down upon Wynn. He had knocked her out of the mace's path. He padded quickly to her side, head swinging as he studied her. He was matted and wet, yet his face was still soaked in blood. His jowls wrinkled around half-open jaws, exposing teeth and fangs as he sniffed her.

Wynn stiffened.

Chap's face was that of a wolf fresh from a kill. He turned and splashed back through the stream under the sound of clattering steel and thrashing men and mounts.

A rider tried to flee upslope on foot until an arrow struck him in the thigh. He stumbled, grabbing the protruding shaft, and Chap fell upon him. The man went down with the dog at his throat. His scream broke and was lost in the waning clamor of the battle.

Wynn shrank back, turning away. The boy crawled up the wet bank on all fours. She climbed to her feet and hoisted him by the waist.

Chap's stained face and teeth mingled with the memory of a single leaf-wing in Wynn's numbed mind. She ran for the city gate without looking back.

Leesil stopped to look down upon the border stream. He heard Magi ere right behind him.

Bodies of men and horses lay from one shore to the other, but only three of the Stravinan pikemen were down. One lay crushed beneath a toppled horse that finally went limp, and a young male priest knelt to close the dead man's eyes. The other two wounded border guards were hoisted to their feet by their comrades and supported as they hobbled toward the city gate. The tall captain oversaw the return of his men, his white tabard soaked and grimed, but otherwise he appeared unwounded.

Downstream, a young woman's corpse drifted away on the sluggish current with her slack face toward the clouded sky.

Leesil felt all the years since he'd fled his first life-son and slave, spy and assassin. He smothered that pain until he felt coldly numb inside. It was an old habit of survival now revived once again.

The snort of a horse called his attention.

One rider with a lamed leg heaved himself across a kneeling horse and jerked the reins to make the mount get up. The horse slipped again and again before its hooves dug into the wet embankment. It clambered to the slope top with the rider hunched over in the saddle.

Leesil pulled both winged blades and took two quick steps. Magiere moved into his path and braced her palm against his chest.

"No more!" she whispered harshly. "Enough."

He stared at her sweat-marked pale face and black hair. He breathed twice before true recognition settled through the need to finish the last of his task.

Whatever must be done, no witnesses-the first rule taught by mother and father. For the lives of each other, they'd smothered themselves cold inside… kept themselves secret and safe at any price.

"How am I to watch over you…" Magiere began, and her smooth brow wrinkled with an anger that would've hidden her fear from anyone but him. "How… if you throw yourself into the path of anyone who'd want you dead? No more. You don't leave my side again!"

She hesitated as she lifted her hand from his chest. Leesil saw her white palm and fingers smeared with blood from his hauberk.

His stomach lurched. There was blood on her… from him.

"Leesil?" Magiere whispered, and her furrowed brow smoothed.

She looked at him with worry in her dark eyes, as if he were in danger and didn't see it for himself. He felt the spattered blood mixed with his own sweat beginning to dry into his skin and hair.

And he'd put it on her.

Magiere took a slow step toward him.

Leesil backed away. He jogged quickly down the slope, stepped into the stream, and waded toward the Stravinan side. He heard Magiere splash into the water close behind him.

How could he have brought her here, after all she had to bear from her own past?

He wanted to stop in the cold stream swirling around his legs, sink down, and let the icy water wash over him. Let it crush this sudden anguish out of him. But it would not help. For all the water he might pour over his flesh, or wine he swallowed to deaden his nightmares, there had always been blood on him. He could bear that.

But not on Magiere.

Leesil quickened his stride upslope toward the city. This was his homecoming, in the only way it could ever be.

Chane reined in his horse on a forested knoll and peered from the deep shadow of his cowl to the snow-patched field below. The sun dipped low behind the clouded horizon. The trees and his voluminous cloak shielded him from the light of dusk, but he still felt its prickle upon his skin. When he opened his senses wide, the scent of blood carried to him on the stiff breeze.

Across the distance to the Stravinan border, he saw the remains of a small battle. Leesil, Magiere, and Chap trudged through the aftermath toward the city. And there was Wynn, waiting within the open gates as her companions entered.

Chane's anxious worry faded upon seeing her; then the city gates swung closed in the dusk.

Welstiel pulled up his horse beside Chane's mount. "What happened here?"

Chane shook his head in silence.

When they'd first met, Welstiel had meticulous grooming habits. In his early forties by appearance, he was of medium height and build with dark brown hair marked by stark white patches at his temples. Now uncombed locks hung in lank strands down his brow from under his own cowl. His fine wool cloak was faded and snagged from the many days of sleeping outside in a makeshift tent concealed with scavenged foliage. Welstiel had changed much in the passing moons, but then so had Chane.

His own red-brown hair, nearly reaching his shoulders, hung limp around his face. He pulled at the wool scarf around his neck. Though he'd not seen his own reflection in a long while, he felt what was hidden there, and rubbed at the ridge of a scar encircling his throat. Less than a moon before, Magiere had severed his head. A ghost of that pain still haunted him. No matter how much he fed and focused his will, the mark remained branded on his pale undead flesh.

Welstiel had brought him back from this second death.

Chane's scheming companion had yet to say how. Was it an arcane secret of Welstiel's conjuration, the magics of the spirit side of existence? Or was it a little-known aspect of the Noble Dead that only Welstiel had uncovered… somewhere?

Welstiel's chestnut filly pawed the earth in the cold winter air. They had purchased new mounts a few nights past. Both struck Chane as too young, not nearly broken in, but at least they were swift.

"What now?" he asked, and immediately scowled at the sound of his own voice. He nearly had to shout just to make himself heard, and all that came out was a hoarse rasp of air. Where his neck was scarred, his voice was forever altered.

"Magiere will enter the Warlands," Welstiel responded. "We should know her general plans for the coming days. Have your new familiar find her whereabouts and see what you can learn."

Chane's conjuring skill had refined since he'd risen as a Noble Dead. Creation and control of familiars was becoming a particular expertise. He experienced the world through their senses and commanded their actions to a limited degree.

Upon the rump of his horse beneath a draped deerskin was a square lump the width and height of his forearm. He jerked the covering aside to expose a small wooden cage tied to the back of his saddle. A red-breasted robin squatted inside the bars. Chane opened the cage door to let the bird hop onto his wrist, then turned back around. Out of habit, he grasped the tiny brass urn hanging around his neck with his free hand.