They each carried a torch, though without a coating of pitch these did not last that long. The woman clung to her pine branch as if it was a talisman. It continued to burn after Kagen’s thinner hawthorn branch sputtered and died. Above them, the clouds began to shred and tear apart and cool blue moonlight gave them more than enough light by which to follow the trail. Kagen eventually dropped his burned-out stick and kept one hand on a knife handle as they walked. His other hand hung at his side—the side closest to her—and he wondered if she would take it in hers.
The forest noises began to change. Although they could no longer hear Jinx, the wolf cries were completely gone and the nocturnal animals began buzzing and clicking, hooting and pulsing. The sounds of the woods at night used to unnerve Kagen, but now he took comfort from them, reckoning that if they were all chattering then the wolves must be far away. He had nothing to really base this on, not being a woodsman of any skill, but it was a comforting thought.
Kagen heard the familiar sound of the nightbirds, overhead but unseen, as they flew in silent company. Ever watchful. Their persistence fascinated and frightened him in turn. Yet some deep part of him accepted that they were, if not allies, at least definitely not threats. The fact that all of the birds were black but there were no ravens among them argued for the accuracy of this insight.
After an hour of walking, the path suddenly widened and huge shadows—denser than the stands of trees—rose up before them. As they approached, it became obvious that these were stones and remnants of walls, now wreathed in creeper vines.
“What … what is it?” cried the woman.
But it was obvious that they were in a coach turnaround for what had once been a house of some considerable size. There were amputated stumps of towers on two corners, gateposts that were little more than piles of stone, and mullioned windows whose leaded glass had fallen away to reveal sightless black holes. Trees of some age rose from within the shattered walls—proof that this house had died more than a century ago.
There was no sign of Jinx, however, which disappointed Kagen greatly—partly because he had become fond of the animal, though mostly because the food, water, and supplies were still beyond his reach.
Then he heard a sound that lifted his heavy heart. Beyond the far tower came a soft gurgling sound. With the woman in tow, he hurried past the ruin and nearly slid down the mossy bank of a little brook.
“Wait there,” he said, directing the woman to a sturdy piece of ground near a poplar as he crouched over the running water. He scooped up a palmful of water, sniffed it, took a careful taste with the tip of his tongue, and then drank. It was sweeter than any wine, more heady than the heartiest mead. It ran over his dry tongue and down his parched throat and Kagen felt an almost erotic pleasure as its cool purity swept through him.
“It’s safe,” he said, smiling.
She crept down and knelt beside him, leaning on her palms and bending to drink right from the running water. This caused the cloak to part and the tatters of her bodice to fall away from her breasts. Kagen tried not to look, but in this he failed, for the woman raised her head sharply and caught him staring. He expected a sharp rebuke and a hasty fumbling to cover herself again.
Instead, he saw the faintest of smiles lift the corners of her mouth.
Then she bent once more to drink.
They drank their fill in silence and then returned to the ruin. The tower closest to them was nothing more than jagged teeth twenty feet above them, but the main barrel of it, below, was still mostly intact. He built a small fire, and in that glow he was able to check the interior of the tower, which had two entrances—one leading to the outside, with rusted hinges showing that there had once been a heavy door there, and the other leading into the house. This second door still remained and was a solid and comprehensively rusted piece of old iron. It did not budge even a little when he threw his weight against it. That was good. He told the woman to wait while he hurried outside to gather armloads of some dry brush and twigs. Wild rose, hawthorn, and blackthorn were everywhere, and he found enough dead wood to build a robust fire. The pines near the ruins were too green and fresh to be of any use, and he did not relish filling the tower with smoke.
Soon he had a goodly blaze going near the open doorway. It would block anyone from getting in, but he had taken time to use some of the heavier branches and a lattice of smaller ones to create a kind of movable base for the fire he built. This allowed him to use the ends of the big branches to pull the fire inside the tower when he needed to go out, and then to shove it forward to bar unwanted entry. This was not a bit of woodcraft taught to him by Hugh, or anyone, and he felt smug with how efficient his own idea was. He just hoped Jinx would see the glow or smell the smoke and come back to investigate, now that the wolves were gone.
The woman, silent as the moon, stared at the fire for a while, sniffing it, and then chose a spot near where Kagen had dropped an armload of pine. She glanced worriedly at the fire each times the burning logs shifted.
Kagen smiled. “Don’t worry about that, lass. There is plenty of wood to see us through the night. And look at this.” He held up some lengths of thick bamboo he’d cut from a copse of it by the brook. “I filled these with water.”
He stuck the ends of each section into cracks in the tower’s floor.
“Now,” said Kagen, “let’s look at those cuts, shall we?”
She flinched away, but he held his hands up, palms out.
“It’s okay,” he said calmly. “You know I won’t hurt you. You’re safe here with me.”
It took a while but the tension in her face and shoulders gradually relaxed.
“Let me have the cloak,” said Kagen. “You can … um … cover yourself for the moment. I need some bandages.”
With evident reluctance, the woman surrendered the cloak, and Kagen used one of his smaller knives to cut it into pieces of various size and length. He gave one large piece to her, and while she sorted out how to make a covering out of it, he sliced the rest into thin strips. He dipped some of these in water and, moving very carefully, knelt next to her and began sponging the dried blood away. It surprised and pleased him to discover that although she had bled freely, the actual wounds were much less severe than he had thought. Some cuts were even showing signs of healing.
“Will you tell me your name?” he asked gently.
Her only answer was a silent shake of the head.
“Okay, then … how about you tell me what happened? Why are you out in these woods? What town are you from? Where are your people?”
Another shake.
Her large eyes were filled with shadows. Kagen did not press her, though. The Silver Empire was in ruins and there was no sense of peace or safety anywhere. The Hakkian Ravens were abroad, and they were merciless. And while most of their viciousness was directed toward the Gardeners and nuns belonging to the Green Religion—Kagen’s own faith until that terrible night—the Ravens were not gentle with the ordinary people either. Rape had always been one of the few crimes punishable by death during the thousand years the Silver Empresses ruled, but now it had become common. Moreover, the return of magic to the world after all those centuries had ignited a bizarre hatred and fear of certain women. Kagen had stopped a group of ordinary villagers from raping and murdering a woman they claimed was a witch. Kagen had butchered the men and saved the woman, but he knew that this kind of sadism was running rampant. The laws, rules, and common gods-damned sense seemed to have fled, once the Witch-king had come.
He wondered if his companion was a victim of that kind of savagery. He hoped not. Kagen accepted his own raft of personal faults and flaws, but he could not abide any kind of abuse. Those feelings were echoed throughout the Vale siblings, with Jheklan and Faulker being the most passionate about it. They had once beaten and castrated five men who had assaulted a milkmaid in a small town a few leagues from the palace. The brothers were arrested and charged by the local magistrate. On the morning of their trial, a group of riders came galloping into the town square. The Poison Rose led the band, and with her was the towering Hugh and six seasoned officers from the empress’s personal guard. All of them fathers of daughters.
The families and friends of the mutilated rapists tried to block them from freeing the younger Vale brothers. It was a very bad idea, and the town square was awash in blood. The magistrate was beaten to a pulp by Hugh, who then threw him down the town well. Although the man was rescued from that hole, he was never the same again. Kagen’s mother had the castrated men dragged into the town square and she watched, cold eyes empty of pity, as the officers strung them up. That was more than just the justice of the Silver Empire; it was Vale justice.
A month later the empress sent a contingent of soldiers to build a fort inside the town limits. Kagen had been a lad at the time, but he never forgot the incident. Hugh told him the whole story. Jheklan and Faulker—known as the Twins even though they were a year apart in age—spoke rarely of it, however. They would joke about nearly everything, but not about that. It taught Kagen much about what real men think about such matters, and he loved them all the more for it.
Kagen worked with extraordinary care. When it came to dealing with the cuts on her breasts, he handed her a moistened cloth and busied himself tending to the fire, which did not require it. Then he moved away a bit, settling out of easy reach so she might take some comfort and risk trust. He wished he knew what to say to her. Had she actually been raped? If so, by whom? When and where? Her terror seemed to be focused on those wolves, but were they merely the last of a series of attacks she had endured? Her scratches and cuts seemed to be more from claw or tooth than by any human weapon, but that meant nothing. She might had fled a man—or men—and run into the woods only to fall prey to the pack. Even so, she seemed frightened of Kagen, which was suggestive of a fear of men.
In their shared and uncomfortable silence, Kagen wrestled with the matter, shaping and reshaping it to fit the scant facts. One thing niggled at him, though. Down at the brook, when the cloak and torn bodice fell away to reveal her breasts and she caught him looking, she’d smiled.
It was not the frightened, defensive smile of a woman who was, however benignly, at the mercy of a man. It was not the warped smile of a victim who had lost touch with her own mind because of trauma. In truth, it looked almost seductive, and that both confused and troubled Kagen, largely because he was afraid that he was guilty of misinterpretation, because she was very beautiful.
Very beautiful indeed.
You are a fool and a lecherous bastard, he told himself.
He pushed the fire more securely into place in the doorway, making sure not to catch her eye as he worked or to let her see him and thereby read his confused thoughts.
“You should get some sleep,” he said, when he had done all of the adjustments he could reasonably make before looking merely busy.
She stared at him for a moment, then looked away. Once more he thought he caught the tiniest curl of her lips. But then the woman lay down, made a pillow of her arm, and closed her eyes. Kagen looked at the fire and listened to her breathing, hearing it slow and then settle into the deep, soft rhythm of sleep. He pulled off his leather jerkin and let the flames dry out his sweat-sodden shirt.
He sat upright, determined to be vigilant all night long.
Determined, but not able.