“The woman and the child you took from my home. What did they do? Did the pale folk keep them?” He smiled at me. I set the edge of my blade to his throat. “Tell me what you know.”
“What I know … what I know very well …” He fixed his eyes on mine. His voice had fallen to a whisper. I leaned closer to hear him. “I know how to die like a warrior.” And he surged suddenly up against my blade, as if to cut his own throat. I pulled my knife clear of him and sheathed it.
“No,” I told him pleasantly. “You don’t die yet. And you don’t die like a warrior.” I stood and turned my back on him, leaving him trussed like a hog awaiting slaughter.
I heard him take in a great breath. “Hogen!” he roared. I stood up and backed away from him with Verity’s sword in my possession. Let him shout as much as he wanted. I wagged a remonstrating finger at him as he yelled again and then turned back to my second target. Sword or axe? Suddenly it seemed as if Verity’s sword was the only choice for this.
Hogen had lifted his head and was looking through the forest toward the distant road. So he expected the others to return. No sense in waiting until I was dealing with more than one person.
My years of doing quiet work had convinced me that surprising my target was most often my best technique. Sword drawn, I approached him stealthily. What made him turn? Perhaps that sense that many warriors seem to develop, an awareness that might be a touch of the Skill or the Wit or both. It mattered little; my surprise was lost.
Perhaps my second best technique was to challenge a man who could not stand without leaning on the sword he had looted from my wall. Hogen saw me, dropped his hatchet, seized the sword that he had planted in the snow, and challenged me with it. I stood still, watching him balance on one good leg, holding the sword at the ready. I smiled at him. He could not fight me unless I brought the battle to him; he could neither advance nor retreat on his injured leg unless he used the sword as a cane. I stood and watched him until he lowered the sword to touch the snow. He tried not to lean on it too obviously.
“What?” he demanded of me.
“You took something of mine. I want it back.”
He stared at me. I studied him. A handsome man. White teeth. Bright-blue eyes. His long wheat-colored hair hung in two smooth plaits with a few charms braided in. Every hair stood up on my body as I recognized who he must be. The “handsome man” who had raped the women of my household. The one who had attacked Shine and in turn had been attacked by the pale folk. And now he was mine.
“I have nothing of yours.”
I shook my head at him. “You burned my stables. You hacked your way through my home. You took that sword from my cousin Lant. You raped women of my household. And when you left, you took a woman and a child. I want them back.”
For a moment he stared. I advanced a step. He lifted his blade but the pain it cost him showed in his face. That pleased me so much. “How long can you stand on one leg, holding a sword? I think we will find out.” I began to walk slowly around him, like a wolf circling a hamstrung elk. He had to hop and hitch to keep his eyes on me. The tip of the sword he held began to waver. I spoke as I walked. “I had a nice discussion with Commander Ellik. You don’t remember him, do you? You don’t remember the man who led you here. The man who convinced you to serve the Servants, to come to my home to kidnap a child and a woman. Ellik. That name means nothing to you, does it? The man who once thought he’d be Duke of Chalced.”
Every time I said the name Ellik, he flinched as if poked. I herded him now, as if I were Shepherd Lin’s dog. Step by limping step, he retreated from the fire, from the trampled snow of the campsite toward the unbroken snow of the forest.
I kept talking. “Do you remember the raid on my home? The woman you tried to rape, the pretty girl in the red dress with the green eyes? You remember her, don’t you?”
A flicker of wariness in his eyes and a droop of dismay on his lips.
“I’ve come to take blood for blood, Hogen. Oh, yes, I know your name. Commander Ellik told me. I’ve come to take blood for blood, and to give pain for pain. And to help you remember. You took that wound to your leg from your fellow mercenaries. They had sworn to you, sworn to one another, and of course sworn to Ellik. Commander Ellik. Who thought he would be Duke Ellik.”