Nancy Berberick - Prisoner of Haven

“I suppose that means with knights and goblins and foot soldiers.”

Dezra nodded. “Likely a knight aboard each ship, and a lot of the crew pulled from the ranks of the army. That’s as much to make the sure ships come home as to ward off any raid by Solamnic knights. Ten or twelve days and no word from Haven. You can be sure the Solamnics know what’s going on and are planning something.”

The speculation didn’t cheer Usha. She’d heard something like this often before, a version of what the Solamnics might be planning with each meal, in fact. She knew enough about Solamnia’s fabled knights to know there weren’t enough to spend on an assault on walled Haven. Even if there were, they’d never prevail against dragons.

They came to the last street but one before the river and caught a glimpse of one of the gates in the gaps between a sail-maker’s tidy stone hut and a tavern with a recently painted sign having something to do with a dog and a bird with improbably large eyes. The gate, like the others in the wall, had a pair of stout doors wide enough to let through wagons or carts. Normally manned by citizens in the two watchtowers on the wall, the gate was held now by Sir Radulf’s men.

“Anyhow, Solamnics or not, the fleet could be sailing down to the sea in another three or four days.”

“According to Rusty,” Usha said, wryly. In the sky, gulls cried, their voices like the creaking of a ship’s masts. “Who knows a good bit of what’s going on in Haven.”

“Well, he should.” Dez shrugged. “He’s an innkeeper, and his ale isn’t bad. Like my father says, news comes in and sits down for a drink from time to time.”

In this way, quietly talking and keeping to inhabited streets, they passed two river gates, each warded from the wall and on the ground. The streets were lined with small homes, each with a bit of garden in the front. One of the streets lost its cobbles and turned into a dirt path that led into a sunny, rectangular common garden nearly hidden behind the houses. The regular, neat rows of plantings marked out the plots of the common ground held by different families in the district. Some were filled with flowers, others with herbs. One was home to three apple trees, and this was larger than the others. So old and hoary did the trees seem that Usha could only imagine the plots had grown up around the trees; perhaps these were all that was left of an orchard. The far end of the common was hedged with tall bushes called moonglow, their tops and sides blooming with the carpet of tiny white flowers that gave them their name. These Usha had seen from below, and now she caught their sweet scent and started into the common.

Usha heard the child’s terrified shriek before she saw him.

A flash of white face and streaming black hair, and a small boy ran toward them from the shadows behind the little clump of apple trees. He hurtled between them, and Usha instinctively turned to go after him, chasing back along the path to the street. She caught sight of the child again and her initial fear that he was hurt vanished. No one could run that fast if he were seriously injured. Stopping to catch her breath, she saw him once more, something white and frightened vanishing into the alley between two houses. On her way back, she found Dez standing at the feet of the apple trees.

In that one stark moment, Usha realized that the harsh cries of ravens had drowned the creaking of gulls.

“Go back,” Dez warned, but it was too late.

“Oh,” Usha said, her hand to her mouth, her stomach roiling.

In the dimness beneath the trees, dark figures swayed on the branches. She could not look away from them, the hanged dead with their eyes protruding, their tongues gone black and swollen, and each with a look of horror on his face that death could not erase. The branches bobbed under their weight. Unripe fruit littered the ground beneath their feet. Two human men and what seemed to be an elf. What seemed to be an elf; it was hard to tell. The poor creature had been savagely beaten and-

“Damn,” Dezra whispered.

– and tortured.

Regretting her breakfast, Usha steeled herself as Dez went closer to the hanged. She stood before the elf. All color drained from her face. Usha saw the reason. Around the elf’s neck someone had hung a wooden board painted black. Upon it were painted two lines in white, like an evil poem: Swift Judgment. Swift Justice. A red sigil, a shape like a sword, was neatly printed beneath-the mark of Lady Mearah’s justice.

Dezra turned, and her green eyes blazed like fiery emeralds.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, her back firmly to the nauseating sight.

Usha didn’t argue, and neither said a word until they were again in the heart of the city.

“That’s Sir Radulf’s work,” Dez said. She said nothing more for a moment, then, “Usha, I remember the stories you and my brother used to tell about the Chaos War and-” She shook her head. “I know they were true, what you and Palin said about the things the dark knights did.”

Usha listened in silence, remembering. When Palin had been a young man and Dez only a child of ten years, he used to tease his little sister with tales of the dark knights, until he realized it was not childish delight in fright-tales he provoked in Dezra but anger at the injustices the stories portrayed. After that, he had not thought it good or wise to make a joke of such passion.

“I hear stories out of Qualinesti,” Dez said. “Like anyone does. And I’ve had my battles, seen some things. But…”

She turned and looked back, then quickly away.

Usha thought she saw something in Dezra’s eyes akin to that childhood anger, but deeper, much deeper. It vanished before Usha could be sure.

Dezra drew a long breath and started out again toward the city. “They hang murderers. I suppose they do that anywhere. Those weren’t murderers hanging there, Usha.” She paused. “Or most of them weren’t. I don’t know about the elf, but the two men were brothers. He-” She stopped and cleared her throat softly, then changed the pronoun. “ They had a bakery a few blocks away from the market. People came from all over to buy their bread. Whenever I came to Haven that used to be my first stop. Last time I was there they were talking about how they’d decided to leave the city.”

Her initial horror turning to disgust, Usha said, “Sir Radulf’s criers said his judgments would be swift.”

“No. They said Lady Mearah’s would be. He’s not getting his hands bloody. Not yet, anyway.”

They walked again in silence till the sounds of the city overrode the cries of ravens and gulls. The rumble of wagon wheels, the shout of a child from an open window, rough voices of a group of men arguing outside a tavern, cold ring of a knight’s chain mail shirt… these did nothing to erase the terrible thing Usha had seen.

“Dez,” she said, as the chimneys of the Ivy came into sight. She was careful not to sound very curious or even gently sympathetic. Neither would be a key to Dezra’s confidences. “Did you know one of those people well?”

Dezra’s strides grew longer, her pace quicker, and so her gruff words came back only muffled when she said, “Don’t talk to me about it, Usha. Don’t. ”

Usha had her answer.

A red dragon flew high over the city, its rider’s armor gleaming in the light of the full moon. Usha sat watching it, her seat the stone wall separating the garden of the Ivy from a narrow length of land belonging to the potter on the north side. A silvery brook ran down that strip, fresh and shining in the moonlight.

Dezra leaned against the post of an arbor, darkly silent as she picked leaves from the rose canes. Here in the garden behind the Ivy, the roses were of the variety known as First Love, early blooming flowers whose leaves were becoming weary as their petals fell away. Soon only the dark red hips would speak of the season’s bloom, and all the arbors would belong to honeysuckle and wisteria.