“Let us not waste time talking!” pleaded Saomeji. He was carrying the bundle that contained the bones as he ran, cradling them as a mother would cradle an infant.
“The Singer is right,” said Makho. “We will speak of your failure later, Talon Nezeru. Now we must be silent. The mortals may not wait until we reach the village to attack us.”
? ? ?
He was right: the mortals did not wait. Before the afternoon sun had fallen all the way behind the mountain the Talons were attacked by a group of men from the village. Unlike the priests, these had armed themselves with bows and arrows, with knives of bone and stone clubs. Sadly for them, they were not fighting other mortals but the trained soldiers of the Queen of the North; Ibi-Khai took an arrow wound in his arm and Nezeru herself only avoided having her skull smashed by throwing herself between an attacker’s legs and hamstringing him from behind, but in the end the armed islanders fared no better against the Queen’s Talons than had the unarmed priests; nearly two dozen bodies lay on the ground when the village men finally retreated, and none of the corpses belonged to the Hikeda’ya.
The day was all but over by the time they reached the base of the mountain, the sky purple as a bruise, but the village was bright with fires as Nezeru and the rest of the Hikeda’ya came down out of the heights. A mass of villagers waited on the beach of the bay where the Black Rimmersmen’s ship Hringleit lay at anchor. The sailors had seen what was happening and had rowed their shore boat beyond the range of the villagers’ arrows and stones to wait. Nezeru wondered how long it would take to swim out that far.
Then she had no time to think of anything, because the villagers fell upon them in a great crowd, most of them screaming with rage. It was nothing like the armed attack on the mountainside: there were women and even children among these desperate attackers, some barehanded, but others swinging heavy stones or digging tools. In the dim light Nezeru even saw some of the women stabbing at her companions with bone sewing needles, the only weapons they had been able to find.
In the chaos of fighting her way down to the beach Nezeru had to take what came, but she did her best not to kill children or women unnecessarily; instead she pushed them away or knocked them witless with the pommels of her sword and dagger. Saomeji beside her, clutching the sacred bones against his chest, seemed to have no such compunctions. Each time an islander approached him, his bare hand darted out like a striking snake; everywhere it touched there was a flash and a thump of air, then the smell of burning flesh as another assailant collapsed to the ground. And veteran Sacrifices Makho and Kemme were like deadly whirlwinds, destroying everything that drew near them, turning living flesh into lifeless lumps so swiftly Nezeru could not always make out what they had done. At last Makho fought his way down to the edge of the beach, his face covered with bloody scratches, his long white hair pulled free of its elaborate coiffure and whipping in the breeze like a ragged banner.
The longboat began to row toward them. Makho turned and grabbed Saomeji, then shoved him out into deeper water. The Singer lifted the bones high above his head as he waded out, paying little attention to the villagers’ crude arrows splashing around him. Makho followed, backing into the bay until the waters reached his waist, protecting Saomeji’s escape.
Nezeru had fallen behind the others, and now had to fight her way clear of a group of older men and women to get down to the strand. She batted their withered arms aside as if they were tree branches swiping at her face. Kemme was in the shallows ahead of her, still dropping bodies in a wide semicircle described by the length of his blade. The beach was strewn with corpses, many with black arrows jutting from throat or belly or back. The Whisperer Ibi-Khai stumbled along just behind Kemme, holding his wounded arm close to his side, head down to make a smaller target as he splashed toward the shore boat. For a moment Nezeru thought they had escaped, but then she saw the ship’s mortal captain stumble out of the forest and collapse, clearly all but exhausted. The villagers saw him and several of them moved to surround him.
Can the ship sail without its captain? Nezeru wondered. She hastened back through the shallows and leaped into the midst of the villagers, her sword slashing and biting. As the islanders fell away from their victim in surprise, several holding bloody wounds, Nezeru dragged the captain back onto his feet and pushed him ahead of her into the surf. She waited until he was up and moving again before following him. The rest of the queen’s hand had almost reached the longboat, with Saomeji and his precious burden in the lead.
My fellow Talons will leave me here, she suddenly realized. As they should. The queen would want it so. If I cannot get to the boat, they will leave me here. She knew what being captured by the furious villagers would mean. However these people might have come to have Hakatri’s relics, it was clear that they worshipped them.
We have stolen their god . . .
Something struck her full in the back, an impact so sudden that for a moment she thought she had been arrow-shot. Then she felt hands pulling at her hair, nails scraping her face, and heard the wordless howls. Her sword had tumbled to the sand just beyond her reach, but she managed to curl her fingers around one of her throwing knives and pull it from her harness. She stabbed backward, catching something with meat on it. Somebody screeched just behind her ear and the grappling arms loosened for a moment. Nezeru smashed backward again, this time with the pommel of the knife, guessing where her enemy’s head must be, and felt the satisfaction of impact. The burden fell away from her. Nezeru crawled forward until she could reach her sword, but even as her fingers closed on the hilt she was attacked again, and had to turn and try to push her assailant away. The figure was small but fat around the middle, something she had only an instant to note before she managed to roll out from under the grasping, mad thing. She could hear Makho out across the water, calling to the sailors to hurry, but she could hear other, angrier cries from much nearer and knew that whoever had attacked her would soon have help.
Finally free, she staggered upright and saw that her attacker was a young woman with dark hair in a wild tangle and eyes red with tears. The woman’s hands curved into claws as she caught up to Nezeru again, trying to swipe at her face. Nezeru thrust with her blade through her attacker’s robe and into the rounded body, then pushed the blade deeper. The woman’s eyes bulged and she opened her mouth as if to speak; blood was on her tongue and her teeth. Then she fell heavily onto the red sand and a blood-spotted bundle rolled out of her robe. A baby had been strapped to her chest. Nezeru’s sword had pierced them both.
My father, Lord Viyeki, I am sorry, was her first thought. How shamed you will be to have such a daughter.
A bone-tipped arrow snapped into the sand near her foot, scarcely a hand’s breadth from the dead woman’s slack face. Nezeru turned and ran into the water.
13
Lady Alva’s Tale
“Enough of weeping, friends,” Simon declared loudly. “Since the good old duke died, it seems like that’s all we’ve done for days. Tonight will be different—by royal command, we will drink and laugh!”
“We hardly need a royal command for that, husband,” Miriamele pointed out. “And in any case, it’s not truly a royal command unless I add my voice.”
“Well?” He took a long drink from the cup that had already been twice refilled by helpful servitors. “Do you?”
“Do you need to ask?” she said. “With all our friends here? Yes, husband, I agree that we have wept more than enough. Let us put away our grief for one night and celebrate Isgrimnur’s life.”
“And our own lives, too,” said Eolair, smiling. “For we have all endured much to be here today.”
“And some would even say the world is a better place for it,” said Tiamak, wiping beer froth from his mouth. “Isgrimnur contributed much to that.”