7. A Twisting Song
A TWISTING SONG
Iwoke before him and slipped out of the blanket to pull on my clothes in that dim and fuzzy light before dawn.
I tested my body, the places that felt more sensitive than before, the strange lessening of tension in my shoulders.
I wouldn’t let myself interrogate what I was doing with him.
There should be no shame in survival, and likewise no virtue in added suffering.
If Bogdana was here, she would not chide me.
I clutched the sachet at my breast, weighed it in my hand. Insurance, my mind whispered. That’s all it was. Reasonable insurance. How many men could be sweet until they decided not to be? How many blushing maids had been charmed and found themselves in hell?
Maybe I didn’t want to kill him. Maybe even my role as orc-comforter was not the nightmare I’d imagined it might be. I had done nothing wrong. I clenched the pouch in my hand. I had nothing to be ashamed of. I clenched it till my fist hurt, till the pain in my hand matched that in my chest.
A robin sang.
I turned towards the sound before I could think. Robins were the early risers, the first singers. It had been so long since I’d walked in a wood, since I’d had the chance to hear a song. I chirped, instinctively, trilled out a song in answer.
The wood was quiet a moment, and then the robin sang again, and I moved nearer.
The trees were dark ghosts in this pale light, and I moved through them like a dream.
The robin’s song was closer, and then I saw it, that little burst of red.
It hopped nearer to me, a branch down, and I held out a hand.
A bush rustled, and it flew.
It was like I’d been caught in the song, like those feelings had come up, too raw and near, and the grief crushed down, like I wasn’t a grown woman strolling through woods but a child watching a doll tear apart.
I sang after it, higher, sharper, faster, calling it back.
I needed it to come back. The bushes rustled again, and I didn’t listen.
I was moving through the brush, till I saw that little flash of red again.
Its eyes were on me. I held out my hand, and I sang the last notes. A plea.
And as the bird lit on my finger, I realized we weren’t alone.
Creatures watched from the brambles and the bracken, from shadows and trees’ limbs, foxes and little shrews and squirrels, thrushes and larks with their beady eyes.
Pink touched the sky overhead, and from the other side of the clearing, Vrathgar regarded me, his expression shuttered, his movements only caution.
And from the woods behind me, another voice, high and piping, echoed my song, a warbling yelp like a child’s voice, but wrong.
“Annora get back!”
I didn’t comprehend the shape until it slammed into me. I sprawled onto the forest floor, a bird the size of a horse leaning over me, its body like an ink blot under its lizard-like neck.
It shrieked as Vrathgar lunged in, and one of those blades was crimson in the light. It was still on its feet, still watching from where it had pulled back.
And it was not alone.
Inky shapes loomed in the dawn. Five, six— “Can you speak to them?” he demanded.
“What? No!”
“Worth a shot.” He shoved the pack at me, so heavy I almost tumbled back. “Keep it in front of your organs.”
“What are they?”
“Wizards’ work.”
And then two of them attacked.
It took me too long to realize the screaming was me.
They came from the sides. Vrathgar sliced one of them and roared, his other sword wheeling to keep the talons at a distance. But neither seemed perturbed. The lot of them, vast shadows in the murk, circled, testing.
Each of them loomed at least eight feet tall.
Beaks stabbed down again.
Vrathgar slashed out, two swords, and they barely withdrew, regarded him with cold, alien eyes, one’s face bleeding.
All my focus was on the beaks, on the heaviness of the pack in my arms and those serpentine necks rising over us, the deep, clicking sounds from their throats. Maybe Vrathgar forgot the talons, too.
The first one rushed, and he drove it back with a scream. Now his thigh was bleeding.
“You magicked them in,” he shouted. “Can you magick them away?”
“I don’t know!” A beak slammed against the pack. Another grazed my arm.
He swung out both swords, again. Again. Roared, “Try!”
I tried. I grasped at a few notes, a lilting melody. It sounded ridiculous, alongside the guttural clucks of the monsters, Vrathgar’s growls, the ring of the blades. His grunt as a talon scored his arm.
One of the birds hopped back, dark blood copper in the light.
“Sing harder!” he screamed.
I forced the sound louder, my voice cracking. I tried to sing at the birds, but Gods, why would they listen? Why beg evil to leave? Why yell “please” at something that could take your life away with a snap? My voice pitched and crackled, off, wrong.
His swords struck flesh again. I heard him grunt in pain, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I heard in my hoarse, broken melody a fragment of the foolish plea that got us into this mess, the plea to the robin. Don’t leave me alone, please…
The clearing went quiet. I opened my eyes. The birds’ heads turned away from us, lifted high. Listening.
Not to me.
A shadow fell across the glen. A sound, a caterwaul, like a man screaming, raised the hairs on my arms, and a shape with smoke-like fur, dark as soot, moved silent from the trees, its long, blunt snout scenting the air, lips pulled back to snarl. The biggest creature I’d ever seen.
I sent up a last prayer, in case anyone was listening, and it dove.
It dove past me, fur whispering past my face, speed sending Vrathgar into the leaves, as it cracked a bird-creature’s neck in one snap.
They were fleeing, and the beast it had killed still flipped, flailing, limbs jerking as the creature feasted. Blood stained its snout, its shoulders, its face.
Someone was speaking, too far away, indistinct, as if through water.
“Annora.” They were saying my name. “Annora!”
A hand grabbed my shoulder, like a vise, and I threw my arms over my face—
Vrathgar stared down at me, scarlet spattered over his face. “—run,” he shouted. “We have to run!”
He took my arm. We lurched into the trees, back towards the hollow where we’d camped. Behind us, in a snuffle and wet smack, the bird creature stopped screaming.
Pure luck. A monster for a monster, and we were alive by luck.
He was bleeding.
We ran. Vrathgar was moving unevenly, wrong, a lunging, rocking gait. The hollow spread in front of us, and he slid onto one knee, started grabbing up supplies.
I was being useless. I had to move.
I dropped onto the ground beside him, grabbing, rolling up the bedroll and his blanket. We were running? No. He was sitting still.
He was bleeding.
I ripped open the pack, fumbled through it for bandaging.
“The leg is deeper,” he gritted out, and I found his knife, slit up his trouser leg to reveal a deep slice into the muscle. “I have a needle. And thread,” he said. “Can you do it?” His eyes closed.
“I can do it. But this has to be cleaned.”
“Splash water on it. I can’t lose…more blood than this.” He already looked nauseous. “We need to run. The blood…will bring more.” His hand held his other shoulder, staunching another flow.
One at a time.
I poured some of our precious water over the wound and squeezed the edges together with one hand while he directed me to the sewing kit. His needle was straight, not curved like the ones chosen for sewing flesh, but it wasn’t like this was going to hurt much less.
“You’re lucky I’ve threaded so many needles,” I said, reaching for something to say, anything. “Can you talk to me? You need to stay awake.”
“I know the routine.” His jaw clenched, his eyes still studiously away from me. “This is not my first bloodletting.”
“Can you tell me what those were? The creatures?”
“Wizards.” He said it like a curse, closed his eyes as I drew the needle through. “They play at power and lord it over the hordes, while their experiments three hundred years past still terrorize these lands.”
“I've never seen them before.”
“Our people bear the brunt of their containment. They're drawn to the old places and any wells of power, like the fae beasts are”
“What's the difference?”
“Damned if I know.”
These were not my best stitches. I was moving too fast to make them neat or pretty, and the blood made it hard to see. There was so much. “That sounds difficult.”
“Yeah. But it's job security, when our young cut their teeth fighting monstrosities, and every human army is spooked.” His teeth gritted, as I pulled the wound edges together.
I knotted the thread, and bit it through. I tasted copper. “Let me see your shoulder.”
The score was shallow across his pec, biting deeper into his upper arm. I brought the water to it, and after a dribble, he stopped me. “Don’t waste it.”
“You’re thirsty,” I whispered.
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t deny it. A bad sign. It had nearly spelled death for Mercy Owens, after the birth of her little one. She asked for water and started slipping away.
“Stay awake, please,” I said around the lump in my throat, brought clammy fingers to sew up what would be, if he survived this, another terrible scar.
He took the water flagon and drank, long, deep gulps. “Maybe you can keep me entertained,” he said, only steel in his tone, no levity. “Answer a question for me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who was he?” he said.
“I don’t know who you mean.”
“The man who taught you to flinch like that.” He looked at me.
My hand slipped.
I fished back the needle, heart pounding, refocused on the torn flesh. “He’s dead,” I got out.
“Good. One less thing to do. Who was he?”
I tried for levity, but my voice came out in a croak. “Isn't it most of them?”
He didn’t smile. “I don't treat with humans that often. And I'm not someone men think they can push around anymore.” He kept his eyes on me, those twin flames. “You tell me.”
I breathed deep, forced my hand steady. “He didn't like singing. My father.”