The Lioness

“I had it from one of your Knights, my lord. When I told him what I knew, he sped me on to you.”

“Very wise of you both,” Lord Thagol drawled. “You won’t mind if I question you a bit more closely, will you?”

Felan opened his mouth to speak. The icy fear that had chilled him upon entering the Skull Knight’s presence now clamped around his mind with terrible grinding claws. They spread each thought wide, as though each were a book. They plunged deep, the icy claws, tearing at his mind. Felan could not do anything but scream.

The draconian turned, barely interested. At the bar, the taverner shuddered and poured himself a drink. The bottle rattled against the glass. No one noticed, and Felan’s scream went on and on, far past the point where his voice turned to rags and blood choked him.

An instant later, he fell to his knees, onto his face at the feet of the Skull Knight, voiceless and begging for mercy.

Like a glacier, the ice in his mind withdrew, and the elf Felan lay in the rushes on the tavern floor, blood trickling from the sides of his mouth, from his eyes, from his ears. His message had been delivered and accepted. Lord Thagol looked at the taverner and suppressed a yawn.

“I didn’t really question him all that closely, you know. All was as it seems, and he is a turncoat. But…” He shrugged. “Well, it seems he was a bit weak-minded.”

He jerked his chin and the elf came out from behind the bar. He dragged the corpse across the floor, silently cursing the blood trailing behind and grumbling about how he’d have to go off to the well now and fill a bucket to clean the floor.

The draconian stepped away from the door with laughter that sounded like snarling. The door slammed shut, and the elf dragged Felan’s body all the way across the dusty dooryard and behind the springhouse where cheeses hung and jugs of milk cooled. He left it there and went to find a shovel. He was all the rest of the day digging in the earth behind the springhouse, far enough away from the spring itself so that the water wouldn’t undermine the mean grave. No one bothered him or called him back to his tavern. Lord Thagol had matters of his own to consider, and he didn’t care about the concerns of taverners or turncoats. The taverner buried the dead in peace, and when he was finished he covered the raw earth with piled stones. Wolves didn’t run often in this part of the forest, but the elf wouldn’t take the risk of the grave being disturbed.

He murmured something at the end of his work, standing over the mound of earth and stone. It might have been a groan for the hard work. It might have been a prayer. So weary was he that even he didn’t know.

At night, when the taverner lay down in his narrow bed in the smallest room above the kitchen, he listened to the sound of iron-shod hoofs thundering into the door-yard, and he lay a long time awake hearing the raucous voices of a half dozen or more Knights feasting from his larder and drinking his bar dry. He heard them leave again, then there was only silence as the Lord Knight retired, leaving one draconian on guard at the door.

Those vile creatures, the taverner thought, never seemed to need sleep.

Neither did the Skull Knight. Even sleeping, Lord Thagol did not sleep. Lying in the bed of the finest room in the Waycross, he dreamed and dreamed again the encounter he’d had with the elf Felan. There had been nothing in the turncoat’s mind to suggest that everything he reported to Thagol was less than true. Nothing. Not the least shading of exaggeration, not the least shaving of the truth marred the tale. That was the problem. The elf’s presentation of a truthful telling had been, well, too true.

Kerian watched the wink and flash of fireflies dancing between the straight tall pines. She sat barely breathing, not eating. Jeratt poked her with his elbow, and when she looked at him he nodded toward the cheese and bread and apples. Provisions from Felan’s wife, the last he’d brought in the fat leather wallet they’d all come to look forward to seeing slung across the farmer’s shoulder. That had been three days ago, a day before he had volunteered to be the one to take her carefully crafted message to the Lord Knight in Acris. He’d been a day gone, and no one expected to see him back here. They had expected to hear from Bayel, or one of the Night People drifting into camp, that he’d returned home to his farm.

What they’d heard was that Felan’s wife had had no word of him.

“Eat,” Jeratt said. “It’s a bad habit, not eating before a fight.”

Kerian nodded as though to agree, but she didn’t eat. She liked her belly feeling light and empty before battle. She liked the edge that hunger gave her.