Laurell Hamilton - Never After

Sally tucked the necklace back inside her dress, and peered over the wagon wall. She saw a clearing surrounded by oaks and dotted with clumps of bluebells; and a man who was juggling stones.

Quite a lot of stones, all of them irregularly shaped, as if he had just gathered them up from the ground and started juggling on the spot. His hands were a blur, and he was sitting in front of a small crackling fire. Except for the juggling, he was utterly unassuming in appearance, neither tall nor short, big nor small, but of a medium build that was nonetheless lean, and healthy. His hair was brown, cut unfashionably short, and he wore simple clothing of a similar color, though edged in a remarkable shade of crimson. A silver chain disappeared beneath his collar.

Several horses grazed nearby. Sally saw no one else.

The man suddenly seemed to notice that she was watching him, and with extraordinary ease and grace allowed each of the rocks flying through the air to fall into his hands. He hardly seemed to notice. His gaze never left hers, and Sally found herself thinking that his face was rather remarkable, after all—or maybe that was his eyes. He looked as though he had never stared at anything dull in his entire life.

His mouth quirked. “I wondered whether you would ever wake.”

Sally was not entirely convinced that she had stopped dreaming. “How long was I asleep?”

He hesitated, still watching her as though she were a puzzle. “Since we found you yesterday. Just on the border of the Tangleroot. Another few steps and you would have been inside the forest.”

Sally stared. “Impossible.”

He tossed a rock in the air, and in an amazing show of agility, caught it on the bridge of his nose—swaying to hold it steady. “Which one?”

“Both,” she said sharply, and tried to sit up. Dizziness made her waver, and she clung to the wagon wall, gritting her teeth. “When I stopped… when I stopped yesterday to rest, I was nowhere near that place.”

“Well,” said the man, letting the rock slide off his face as he stared at her again, thoughtfully. “Things happen.”

And then he looked past her, beyond the wagon, and smiled. “What a surprise.”

Sally frowned, and struggled to look over her shoulder. What she saw was indeed a surprise—but not, she thought, any cause for smiles.

Men stood on the edge of the clearing, which she realized now was beside a narrow track, hardly used by the length of the grass growing between the shallow wagon tracks. The men were dressed in rags and leather, with swords belted at their waists and battered packs slung over lean shoulders. Some wore bent metal helms on their heads, and their boots seemed ill-fitting, several with the toes cut out.

Mercenaries, thought Sally, reaching for the knife belted at her hip. A small scouting party, from the looks of them. Only four in total, no horses, little to carry except for what they could scavenge. Sally had no idea how far she had come from home, but she knew without a doubt that she was still well within the borders of the kingdom. Her father had been right: one day soon there would be the sound of hard footfall outside the castle; and then it would be over.

The mercenaries walked closer, touching weapons as their hard, suspicious eyes surveyed the clearing. The man by the fire started juggling again, but with only two rocks—a slow, easy motion that was utterly relaxed, even cheerful. But something about his smile, no matter how genuine, felt too much like the grin of a wolf.

And wolves, Sally thought, usually traveled in packs.

“You’ve come for entertainment,” he said to the mercenaries, and suddenly there was a red ball in the air, amongst the rocks. Sally could not guess how it had gotten there. The mercenaries paused, staring, and then began smiling. Not pleasantly.

“You could say that,” said one of them, a straw-haired, sinewy man who stood slightly bent, as though his stomach hurt. He gave Sally an appraising look. She refused to look away, and he laughed, taking a step toward her.

By the fire, the juggler stood and kicked at the burning wood, scattering sparks and ashes at the mercenaries. They shouted, jumping back, but the juggler kept his rocks and red ball in the air, and added something small and glittering that moved too quickly to be clearly seen. He began to sing and stood on one leg, and then the other, hopping in one place; and finally, just as the mercenaries were beginning to chuckle coarsely and stare at him as if he were insane, the juggler threw everything high into the air, twirled, and flicked his wrist.

Sally almost didn’t see him do it. She was crawling from the wagon, taking advantage of the obvious distraction. But she happened to look at the juggler just at that moment as the rocks and red ball went up—taking with them the mercenaries’ attention—and caught the glint of silver that remained in his hand.

The straw-haired man staggered backward into his companions and fell down, twitching, eyes open and staring. A disk smaller than the mouth of a teacup jutted from his forehead, deeply embedded with edges that were jagged and sharp, as irregularly shaped as the points on a snowflake. His companions stared at him for one stunned moment, and then turned to face the juggler. He was tossing rocks in the air again, but was no longer smiling.

“Accidents,” he said. “Such a pity.”

The mercenaries pulled their swords free. Sally scrambled from the wagon, but did not run. Her dagger was in her hand, and there was a man in front of her with his back exposed. She could do this. She had to do this. It was she or they, them or the juggler—even though everything inside her felt small and ugly, and terrified of taking a life.

But just before she forced her leaden feet into a wild headlong lunge, a strong hand grabbed her shoulder. She yelped, turning, and found herself staring into brown hooded eyes, almost entirely obscured by coarse, bushy hair and a long braided beard shot through with silver.

A human bear, she thought, with a grip like one. He held a crossbow. Beside him stood another man, the tallest that Sally had ever seen, whose long blond hair and strong chiseled features belonged more to the ice lands than the green spring hills of the mid-South. His hands also held a bow, one that was almost as tall as him.

Startled, sickening fear hammered Sally’s heart, but the bearded man gave her a brief beaming smile, and fixed his gaze on the mercenaries—who had stopped advancing on the juggler, and were staring back with sudden uncertainty.

“Eh,” said the bearded man. “Only three little ones.”

“I’m going back for the deer,” replied the giant, sounding bored. He glanced down at Sally. “Congratulations on not being dead. We took bets.”

He turned and walked away toward the woods. Sally stared after him, and then turned back in time to see a rock slam into a mercenary’s brow with bone-crushing force. She flinched, covering her mouth as the man reeled to the ground with a bloodless dent in his head that was the size of her fist.

Pure silence filled the air. Sally was afraid to breathe. The juggler was now tossing the red ball into the air with his left hand, holding his last rock in the other. He stood very still, staring with cold hard eyes at the two remaining mercenaries—both men obviously rattled, trying to split their attention between him and the bearded man, who patted Sally’s shoulder and pointed his crossbow at their chests.

“I think,” said the juggler, “that you should consider your options very carefully. My hands are prone to wild fits, as you’ve seen—which I have most humbly come to suspect are possessed occasionally by various deities in lieu of hurling thunderbolts.”

“In other words,” said the bearded man, “you should drop your weapons and strip. Before he kills you.”