Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

Giliahna felt a quick stab of fear, and tried not to think of her dead half brother Myron and the knife he had wielded so ruthlessly. The physical scars of that night had faded to invisibility, but she would never forget the terror. If it came to a choice between a pawn in the hands of this Reverend Father or a clean death, she would die. But until the moment came when hope was gone, she would do her best to stay alive and get word of the danger to Milo and Bili.

Chuhk Barnes had barely made it away from the ambush with his life. He had been forced to literally hack his way down the road, and then he had spurred his horse to a gallop. At the first holding he came to he had flashed Prince Gy’s insignia and explained that he bore an urgent message to Bili of Morguhn. Those two names were enough to convince the man to exchange his mount for a fresh one. It was no warhorse, and it lacked mindspeak, but all he cared about was that it was not exhausted. He rode halfway through the night until he reached another outpost, and repeated the process. At his third stop, he was forced to sleep for a few hours and gratefully ate the home-cooked meal his host’s pretty daughter provided for him.

It was midday of the third day—the mud had slowed him down, he felt—when he ran into a patrol wearing Bili’s device. They approached him suspiciously, until he identified himself.

“Are you riding ahead of the High Lady Giliahna?” asked the head of the patrol. “We expected her days ago.”

“The rains held us up. But I do come with news of her and her party.” The thought of his comrades lying slaughtered by the bandits, and of his lady in their hands, made his young face grim.

“Not good news, eh? Best to bring it to the arkeethoheeks soonest.'Come with us, lad. We’ll take you by the shortest route.”

An hour later, he sat in Bili’s private study, drinking strong ale and telling that legendary warrior what had befallen Bili’s Undying half sister and her escort.

“Gy’s men must be getting soft when ten Freefighters can’t hold off thirty bandits,” Bili said softly.

Chuhk leapt to his fellow fighters’ defense. “They were better armed than most bandits—”

Bili waved him to silence. “No need to make excuses. I know the lot you ran into. They’re renegade Freefighters themselves—no honorable burklord will hire them; they’re too disreputable even to find favor in the Middle Kingdoms. My men have been harrying them for days. So they have Giliahna, do they?” For one moment he smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile. “They will pay us to take her back, if I know my little sister. She’s a fighter, that one.”

“She may be of your blood, and I know she is a courageous lady, but she is only a woman, after all.”

“Don’t let her fine gowns fool you, boy. She may wear Ehleenee clothes, but she’s Kindred through and through. She’ll be alive when we find her, and she’ll slay any who abused her with her own hand, 1 promise you. Do you not know the story of how Tim Sanderz regained his hall?” Chuhk shook his head. He had heard bits of the tale, gossip mostly, but the chance to hear the story from one who had been there would have prompted him to deny knowledge even had he heard the truth. He listened as Bili told him how Giliahna had come riding from Kuhmbuhluhn with a dozen horseguards to hold her brother’s hall for him, how they had been reunited there after so many years—and how her stepmother had plotted to enstate her own mewling son as the chief. He spoke of the final siege of the hall, when Myron had caught Giliahna off guard. Myron had carved her beautiful face into a terrible travesty, and she had thrown herself on his dagger rather than allow him to use her as a hostage against Tim. Broken-hearted, Tim had fallen on his sword because he could not face the empty years without her—and both had learned they were Undying.

“It sounds like one of the old stories the bards tell,” Chuhk said, when Bili had stopped.

Bili finished sipping his ale and nodded. “But it happened, and just as 1 told you. So don’t fear for your lady; she’s lived through far worse than a few days with some renegades.” Chuhk then told him about the reavers who left behind the sign of the lightning bolt amid complete destruction. Bili’s grim face grew even grimmer, and his large fist hit the table with a resounding thud.

“More Ehleenee fanatics! Will they never give up?” He began to pace the length of the room. “I promise you 1 will find them and clean them out wherever they may be hiding—as soon as 1 find my sister.” Bili ordered two patrols to ride in the general direction Chuhk had come from, and then dispatched teams of scouts to question the outlying farmers about the reavers. The cold fury that burned in the aging arkeethoheeks’ did not bode well for those who bore the lightning-bolt insignia when they fell into his hands.

For three days they had ridden into the mountains, westward. Where was he taking her? Giliahna wondered. The mountain people did not like strangers in their country, and they were known to be fierce fighters. But Stefanohs seemed certain of his destination. The Stronghold, he called it, founded by renegade Ehleenee who had been willing to wait for two generations until they had sufficient warriors to take on the Confederation. So much she had managed to piece together from what he had said, and he was remarkably close-mouthed. She still had not found a chance to try an escape. He was extremely careful to watch her-—and to keep her close-tied when he could not.

The third night, the rain had begun to fall again, heavier than before, and cold on the skin because of the higher altitude. Stefanohs had found them a cave to sleep in and had made a fire of some dry wood left there by other travelers. Or perhaps by Stefanohs himself; the cave seemed to be provisioned as a way station with firewood and dried meat. He placed some water on the fire to boil and threw the dried meat into it. Then they sat in silence around the smoky fire, watching the wind blow the wisps out the cave entrance.

“How far are we from your Stronghold?” she asked finally. “We should reach it by tomorrow night.”

“And you’ll give me over to your Reverend Father?”

He shrugged. “He is the head of the Stronghold. It will be up to him to decide how best to use you.”

“Stefanohs,” she said softly, “what do you think they’ll do with me? Use me as a hostage to negotiate some sort of truce with Milo and the Confederation?”

“Our freedom should be a small price for the Confederation to pay for the life of one of its High Ladies.”

“Do you really think they’d send me back alive? They couldn’t afford to. 1 know the way to the Stronghold. Once Milo had me safe, he’d use that information to lead troops against you. He’d have to. There can be no peace between the Confederation and the Old Church. Too much blood has been shed.” “The Reverend Father would keep a treaty made in the Lord’s name,” Stefanohs argued.

“Would he?” She fell silent again, gazing at him across the fire.

It was hard for Stefanohs to feel her eyes on him that way. He was far too aware of her as a woman, and women were only for the begetting of children. A true man would not feel his loins tighten when he smelled a woman’s scent, nor long to touch her soft skin. No wonder Father Zakareeohs had found him unworthy. Even this Horseclans bitch could arouse his lust.

But she was beautiful.

He tried not to watch her in the flickering firelight, at the way it gilded her long red-blond hair, at the soft shadows it cast along her throat, leading down to the cleft between her full breasts. She was everything he had been taught to hate and despise, not only a woman of the enemy but a sorceress as well. Then what did that make him? He was cursed with mindspeak, inherited from the rapist who had given him his pale skin and green eyes.

“Have you ever seen a farmstead after your sacred warriors have finished with it?” she asked him.

“I told you, I am unworthy to cleanse the land for the Lord.”

“Cleanse? Is that what you call it?” She told him then what his comrades did. Told him stoically, unemotionally, in words as stark and grim as the details she revealed. She spared him nothing, and when she had finished her recital of facts, he was shaking.

“Don’t tell me these things happen in war, Stefanohs. I know about war, and I know what men do in wars. But this—this was the work of monsters. A child cut living from its mother’s belly?” She shook her head. “That’s not warfare. It’s madness. And I know about madness.”

She leaned close to the fire. “Look at my face, Stefanohs. Oh, the scars are very faint, you have to look close to see them, but they are still there. My brother put them there, because 1 was Kindred, not Ehleenee, and his bitch mother had raised him to hate all that was not Ehleenee. I know about madness very well.”

His hand came up and slammed down hard against her mouth, drawing blood. “Shut up, woman. You will not make me doubt my faith. Shut up.”

She turned away from him then, and they were both locked in their own private hells, she thinking of Tim, whom she might never see again, he hoping that she had lied to him but fearing that she had only told the truth. It was in the sudden quiet that they first heard the unvoiced cry for help.

It was faint at first, then grew in power and desperation.

Who is it ? Giliahna asked.

A picture formed in her head, a triangular face, bright dark eyes, red fur, and a name, Silkfur. A vixen, and with mindspeak. Well, Milo had said it was spreading. Fear and concern, and then a wordless picture of two small fox kits. And then a question: Who asks?

Giliahna tried to make her thoughts soothing, but she knew this was a wild creature whose contacts with humans had probably not been friendly. I am a friend, little sister, though I walk on two legs, not on four.

Two-legs! Fear and anger, and memories of traps that had killed her mate.

Not all two-legs are hunters, Silkfur. Your kits, where are they?

“What’s going on? I can feel that animal’s thoughts, hear them as clearly as when I speak out loud,” Stefahnohs protested.

“It’s only mindspeech. She has it, just as you and I do. A lot of animals have it, especially horses and prairiecats, but you know about them.”

“I was taught that your horses and cats were demons, familiars.’ 1’

“As we are sorcerers? Shhh, and let me talk to Silkfur.”

Your kits, little sister? Why are you afraid for them?

The two kits, trapped on a ledge where they had fallen. The vixen could not reach them, nor could she climb down and carry them up. Could the two-legs help?

Giliahna felt the vixen’s terror and despair at her kits’ fate. The ledge they were cowering on looked none too secure, and if this rain kept up, they might be swept down into the river below, a river that threatened to flood its banks.