Blue wouldn’t let Talen near the wound. The dog had licked until the bleeding stopped, but if corruption set in and spread, they would have to put him down. Talen could not believe what had just happened. And Da was wrong: those men would be back.
He and Nettle went back to the house and found Da standing at the hearth. Three large red onions sat roasting on a pile of embers there. A pot of porridge hung from a crane over a cooking fire. The fish they’d filleted earlier were sizzling in a yet another pan. Da poked at them with a knife. The ends of his beard braids were tucked into the collar of his tunic to keep them from getting into the fire or falling into the food.
Ke sat at the table, propping himself up with his elbows. There was no bowl or plate before him.
“Shouldn’t River be back by now?” asked Talen.
Da swung the crane, and the pot of barley that hung from it, out of the hearth. “Don’t you worry about River. She’ll be fine.”
Da was probably right. River could take care of herself. She might not be as strong as Ke, but she knew woodcraft. She had her bow. And, if it came to it, he doubted any but a dreadman could run her down.
Da lifted the pot off the crane with a hook and brought it to the table. He took off the lid and dropped a large spoonful into each of their bowls, then he put a small chunk of butter onto the top. They rarely ate their porridge in the sweet Mungo style. “By the time you’ve eaten that, the fish and onions will be ready.”
Talen turned to Ke. “What did you find?”
“I followed the armsmen to their mounts,” said Ke. “Then I followed them to the edge of the forest. They’re headed out to Fir-Noy lands.”
That could mean the armsmen had given up or were going to make an official complaint. But Talen doubted that was the case. Da had just humiliated a Hammer; that surely wouldn’t go unpunished. “They’re probably circling round or going to gather a mob,” said Talen. He turned to Da. “We’re sitting here like a bunch of cattle.”
“We’ll watch,” said Da. “And it’s true somebody needs to go talk to the bailiff, but it’s too late now. I don’t want anyone out past dark with the country full of imbeciles like those who showed up today. There’s nothing else we can do at the moment.”
But that wasn’t true. The armsmen weren’t the real threat. Sleth were. Talen looked at Nettle, who was chewing a huge mouthful of the porridge. They’d discussed their plans, but he didn’t want to blurt them out now. Da needed to first see the prints. Only then would he listen.
Da walked back to the hearth. He grabbed the small frying pan from the wall. He put a knife full of lard in it and stuck the pan next to the andiron above the coals. When the lard melted and began to sizzle, he produced a large brown egg from his pocket, cracked it, and dropped the contents into the pan.
“Where did you get that?” asked Ke.
“Mol,” said Da. “I got half a dozen.” He grinned. “And if you’re polite and grovel like a proper son I might save you one for when you end your fast. But you must promise to help me. We’re going to be treating our four new ladies like fat Mokaddian city wives for the next few weeks. We need to hand-feed them grasshoppers and a slice of squash every day.”
“Da,” said Talen. “There is something we can do right now. We can solve the root of the problem.”
“You’re not going to reconcile Koramites with Fir-Noy,” said Da and turned back to his pan. “We’re oil and water.” He added a strip of fatback to his egg and let it all sizzle.
“I wasn’t talking about that. I’m talking about the hatchlings.”
Ke groaned. “Och, here he goes again about a monster running about the woods wanting his pants to cover up its naked bum-”
“They’ve got Sleth caged in Whitecliff,” said Talen, “and you seem to think the world is as safe as a pie bake.”
“Perhaps the woman in Whitecliff isn’t as dangerous as you think,” said Da. “What’s needed now is calm heads.”
“I agree,” said Talen. “And I am calm. But what you need to know is that not only did I see one of them, in broad daylight, but we’ve got its footprints in the yard.”
Da and Ke followed Talen out to the footprints. The sun had sunk low, but there was still enough light to see by. In fact, the angle of the light made the track clearer. He led them to the one by the old sod-roofed house and then finally brought them to the one by the pigpen.
“That’s too small for Sammesh,” said Talen. He put his foot next to it to make the point.
Ke stretched one of his massive arms to scratch a spot on his back. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a killer.”
“Oh, come on,” said Talen. “Look at it.”
A horsefly landed on Da’s arm. He looked down at it and let it prepare to bite. “That print could be anybody’s,” said Da. “Could be one of the children that came with that tinker family. They were here just last week.”
It could have been them. “But that doesn’t explain the sighting and my missing pants.”
Da smacked the horsefly with the flat of his hand. It fell to the dirt where Da ground it in with his foot. “Yes,” said Da, “the missing pants that were under your bed.”
“I saw something today,” said Talen.
“I’m sure you did. But I’m also sure that your beating this morning has you rattled. Do you remember when you were a boy and saw the shadows of a number of Og in the yard?”
Talen remembered. Their wagon had cast a shadow in the light of a full moon. And he’d been sure the creatures were in the yard ready to tear them all to pieces. Of course, Da had taken him by the hand, kicking and screaming, and forced him to face the fact that it was only moon shadows.
“I saw a leg,” said Talen. “Why won’t you believe me? I don’t understand why you’re not concerned.”
“Concerned?” said Da. “I’m mortally concerned. But not about hatchlings. Nobody knows that the woman they’ve caged is Sleth. There was no Seeker, no proving.”
“What I heard,” said Nettle, “was that she moved with unnatural speed.”
“Things are perceived differently in battle. When your mind is tinged with fear, the foe’s strength and speed and ferocity are always exaggerated. But let’s assume the worst. Let’s assume she did move with power. She might have been wearing a weave. Did you think of that?”
“That’s treason right there,” said Talen.
“Is it?” asked Da. “A weave bestowed by some Koramite Divine to her family a century ago?”
“It is if she didn’t bring it forth.”
“But that’s different from Slethwork, isn’t it? It’s a legitimate weave, outlawed not because it’s evil, but because it might pose a threat to the current oppressors.”
Talen sighed. Da never had anything good to say about Divines. Talen remembered when he was a child and had learned “The Six Paths” from a friend’s mother. The poem described the different orders of Divines. He came home excited to perform and began to recite the poem with the appropriate actions.
The Fire Wizards harvest.
The Kains forge and store.
The Skir Masters ride the powers with traps and ancient lore.
At this point in the poem, Da’s face began to sour, but Talen had thought it was because he’d done something wrong. He continued trying his best to remember the hand movements.
The Guardians live like dragons.
The Green Ones heal the dead.
And the Glories rule o’r them all with centuries in their heads.
Da had clapped in a perfunctory way. “You’re a sharp one, for sure,” he’d said. “And such a sharp mind needs to be kept that way.” Then he’d made Talen learn a poem he’d never heard before. It was long and started with a traveler visiting a tavern.
The Host spreads his table then calls with honeyed charm:
A steaming loaf of Ignorance to keep your belly warm,
An unending keg of Fear to turn your wit to froth,
And tender cuts of poisoned Pride to turn your gentle heart.
The poem continued, describing two companions, one who takes the host’s offer and another who refuses. The first one is treated with firmness but kindness and put out, like a steer to pasture, to enjoy the gardens, orchards, and plenitudes of the vale. The second faces privation and a multitude of dangers trying to get his friend to leave. In the end, he fails, and the first one, the one who trusted the smiling host, is brought forth for butchering. The second makes a brave attempt to rescue him from his captors, but fails, barely escaping with his life. Powerless, he watches from afar as the mighty inhabitants of that awful vale kill, roast, and then serve his friend up on platters for a community feast.
It was a long poem, but the story was so fascinating Talen memorized it in less than a day. At first, Talen thought Da made him memorize it because he’d wanted to challenge, and thereby increase, Talen’s mental skills. But after he’d learned it, he began to consider the story and see it was a moral tale, teaching how a man could be self-reliant and wise. For a long time he thought that was Da’s purpose in making him memorize it.
But as he grew older, Talen began to suspect Da had planted that poem in him for another reason altogether. There were six families in that vale that seemed to correspond to the six paths of the Divine. The butchering was performed during the annual Festival of Gifts, which is when the Divines asked for the annual sacrifices. The name of the host meant the same thing as the name of the first Glory of ancient times. As he grew, Talen found many more connections between the inhabitants of that vale and the six paths.
It was as if Da had planted that poem in him so that it might bring forth, in its due time, a suspicion of all things Divine. But why?
He’d once asked Da what it all meant and if it was indeed his purpose to bring forth such a fruit, but Da only shrugged and said it was only an old poem he’d learned as a child. Talen tried to detect prevarication in Da’s answer, but found none. Nevertheless, he knew Da was hiding something.
Talen had known two Divines in his life. Lumen and the Green Beggar. Lumen looked down upon the Koramites. But the Green Beggar went around healing people and teaching them the paths to joy. He refused all authority. Refused pomp, choosing instead to live in a log hut he made himself. He leased land to farm, established a following, and had done nothing but bless goats and vegetable gardens. Three years ago he’d sailed away, waving good-bye to the throngs of his “fellows” standing on the docks. Many still wore the green shoulder patch that marked his followers.
“What about the Green Beggar?” asked Talen. “He would have spoken out against the Sleth woman’s use of the weave.”
“What about him?” asked Ke. “The Goat King, the Witch of Cathay, the Scarlet Tiger, they were all once Glories of great nations. Benefactors. Who can say what the Green Beggar’s real purpose was?”
Talen knew all the stories about Glories who had gone mad and eaten the souls of those they ruled. Divines had all once been men. Men who were raised to wield the powers of life and become almost immortal. But those tales were of Divines who had succumbed to the whisperings of Regret, the Creator who when he had seen what he and the other six Creators had wrought, wanted to destroy it and begin anew. They were stories of Divines who lost the favor of the Six.
“What if Lumen himself ate souls?” asked Da. “Who would have known it? Nobody. Isn’t that a greater horror than some farmer’s wife who uses a little weave to bless her and her family?”
“But the power doesn’t come from the same source,” said Talen. “It’s like comparing an ale brewed using pure water with another made using swamp scum. They may look the same from a distance, but in the mouth they’re night and day.”
Nettle eyed the woods. “Are we sure we want to talk about this out here?”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Da. “I don’t think this has anything to do with magic. I think this is nothing more than a bunch of cowards worried about their cattle and land.”
“You don’t believe the reports?”
“I believe that men see what they want to see. And what they saw was a Koramite smith who was richer than any seven of them combined.”
Talen had seen his father’s judgment blinded before by his pride and anger. And even though it grated, the Mokaddians weren’t always in the wrong. “Maybe all you choose to see is the wrongs done to our people. To admit that one of us was evil would spoil your arguments. Wouldn’t it be better to cut out the corrupted part than let it ruin the rest of us?”
“This is why we need a Divine protecting our shores,” said Nettle.
They all looked at him.
Nettle had brought his bowl outside. He stuffed a large spoonful of porridge in his mouth. “A mere human cannot hope to unravel such mysteries.”
“That’s true,” said Ke. “But you don’t need one to know there’s no greater risk now than there was before. Let’s say Talen is right. It is no more dangerous to walk about now than it was yesterday or the day before. If there are Sleth lurking about, they were there before.”
“What kind of logic is that?” asked Talen. “If you find out there are wildcats in the woods, then you take precautions. You don’t assume they pose no danger.”
“Ah,” said Ke, “but if the wildcats always kept to themselves, are they really a danger now? Perhaps a hunt will only corner them and make them fight.”
“Yes,” said Talen. “But wildcats don’t murder whole families and devour their souls.”
“Maybe Talen’s right,” said Da. “We should take precautions. But this all leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The Fir-Noy had no authority to organize a hunt in the village of Plum. That band of armsmen today had no authority to hunt here. So even if there are Sleth, there are far more Fir-Noy eager to run a Koramite through.”
“We need to post a watch,” said Talen.
“Aye,” said Da. “There’s bound to be more than one group of idiots in the woods.”
There were more than idiots in the woods, and Talen knew it. He was going to catch whoever had been lurking about. Normally, you only masked your scent when trapping animals, but it was possible that the hatchlings had eaten the souls of some beast in an attempt to obtain its finer sense of smell. He did not have days to let the snare weather, nor did he have any urine or gall from the last deer he’d killed to mask his and Nettle’s scent, so Talen led Nettle into the fading light, down to a swampy bend in the river. He found a spot where there was plenty of rotting vegetation and dug out a pail full of mud.
By the time they hiked back up the bank and to the run between the barn and the garden, it was dark. Da had shuttered up the windows against the evening insects, and so they only had starlight and a half-moon to guide them. Talen had wanted to wait until dark so the hatchlings wouldn’t be able to see much of what they were doing. Now he wondered if he had enough light to set the snare properly.
First, they pushed the wheelbarrow and eight empty barley sacks out to the cross-post fence of the mule pasture. A long mound of stones, taken from the field, stretched along the base of the fence. They doubled the sacks and then filled them with enough stones to equal the weight of a large man. Then they pushed the sacks back and into the barn underneath the pulley that allowed them to lift loads up to the barn loft and bound all four sacks together.
Next, they pushed the empty wheelbarrow out to the run between the garden and the barn. They set it next to the side of the barn and angled it out into the path in such a way that it would direct someone walking here to step right into the trap.
They dug some beets and carrots, complaining loudly about having to work in the dark as punishment for fighting earlier with Ke and River. Then Talen announced that he would leave the vegetables just inside the garden gate and finish in the morning. Anyone listening in the woods would have heard and known a meal was waiting in the garden.
Then he and Nettle coated their hands, the noose, and trigger pegs with the mud.
Nettle disappeared into the barn. A few moments later, he opened the loft doors. Talen threw him the end of his rope and waited until Nettle had fed it through the outside pulley to the one that hung above the stones.
When Talen heard Nettle’s soft whistle, he knew Nettle had fastened the end to the sack of stones, and he began to pull. Both he and Nettle had to work to lift the stones aloft. When they’d finally lifted them to the pulley crane inside the barn, Talen began his work. He set the noose and trigger line and pegs.
Talen had caught deer with counterweight snares before. It was possible that the noose would grab a leg, but it also might tighten up around the neck. If all worked well, they’d have a hatchling before dawn. Of course, a real deer might trip it as well. But Talen didn’t think so. The dogs were usually very good at chasing most things off.
And that reminded him: the dogs would have to come in. This trap could very easily choke and kill one of them. He went to where Blue lay then picked him up and carried him back to the house.
A double-spout lamp burned on the table. Da held the wastebasket to the edge of the table and brushed wood shavings into it. He’d been working on a rose carved in cherrywood. A soft light from one lamp spilled from River’s room. Ke sat at the edge of the light rubbing sheep’s tallow into his boots.
Queen went to Da silently, wagging her tail and asking for attention.
Da looked up. “I don’t want the dogs in here.”
“I’ll keep them in the loft with me,” said Talen. “Blue won’t rest if we keep them outside.”
“Huh,” Da grunted. He motioned at a harness of parade bells. “Ke’s going to take first watch. He’s going to string a line around the property. That line will be rigged to these bells. Anyone trips that line and we’ll hear it.”
“And where’s Ke going to be?”
“Outside the door in the shadows of the house,” said Ke.
“What were you doing out there?” asked Da.
“Nothing,” said Talen.
“You were doing something.”
Talen glanced at Nettle and back at Da. Talen knew he’d make them take down the snare. “We were just talking.”
“Huh,” Da grunted again. But he turned back to his carving.
Talen took Blue, and all four of them went upstairs.
Nettle suggested they string their bows. They wouldn’t have much time to get downstairs and out into the yard. It wasn’t good to leave a bow strung, but in this case Talen thought it was best. They leaned the bows and the quivers against the wall and lay down in their narrow beds. The dogs came over and licked Talen’s face until he told them to settle down.
The light coming up the stairs diminished. Someone scraped open River’s tin candlesave and closed it. She loved the smell of beeswax and herbs, even if it did cost more than oil or tallow. But the mice loved beeswax so the candles had to be put beyond their nibbling. Soon the light from downstairs disappeared altogether.
Talen heard Da go outside and draw up water from the well then come back in and retire to his room. The house quieted and Talen heard an owl hoot outside.
He lay on his bed unable to sleep. He waited for what seemed a long time, staring at the ceiling.
A jingle sounded from below.
“Nettle,” Talen said.
“I heard it,” said Nettle.
Another small jingle, then one big one.
Talen and Nettle fairly flew down the stairs in the dark. Nettle slipped on the narrow steps at the bottom and crashed into Talen. They would have both sprawled out onto the floor, but Talen held onto the railing and swung into the wall instead.
“Ho!” said Talen. “The alarm!”
There was laughter in the darkness. One small candle ignited at the table. There was Da, holding a glowing piece of tinder, shaking so hard he almost knocked the candle over. River sat next to him holding her sides.
Da grabbed the alarm, gave it a good shake, and laughed even harder.
“Just testing your speed, son. Just testing your speed.”
Ke stood in the doorway of his room, grinning like an idiot.
Da! He was worse than River. “What are you looking at?” said Talen.
That only set all three of them to laughing again.
Nettle wore a half grin on his face.
“Come on,” Talen said to him and marched back upstairs.
When he’d lain down again, there was another jingle.
“Hoy,” he heard Da say from below. “Sleep well, son.”
Da would find crickets in his boots this week. And next week, he’d sink to the ground while sleeping with loose bed ropes. And then it would be Talen’s turn to laugh.
He heard three more jingles and laughter, then Da called up a good night.
Talen knew what Da was doing-he was trying to relax them, just as he did his bowmen when they went into battle. All of which meant that Da was taking this very seriously indeed. Maybe Da was concerned about Sleth after all. Maybe all of his arguing against the Fir-Noy was just a way to help them keep cool heads. This comforted Talen, and he suddenly found he could close his eyes for sleep.