The Lioness

“He doesn’t know where I am,” Kerian reminded Jeratt. They had hunted well, and thanks to Stanach’s deft hand with a snare, they had five fat rabbits to spit A clear cool stream ran nearby. “Right now, this moment, he can’t even guess.”

Stanach said he wondered how she knew that Kerian and Jeratt exchanged wry grins as she tapped her forehead.

“I know.” She pulled the bloodstone out of her shirt. “This hides me from him, but if I kill, it doesn’t keep him from knowing I’m around. I haven’t killed. I don’t feel him in my head. He doesn’t know where I am.”

The dwarf grunted skeptically, then sat in silence for a while. Then, “When are you taking me to Qualinost?”

Kerian leaned close to the fire, to the warmth, for the night was chill.

“You’ve seen this place,” she said. “You’ve seen what Thagol and Chance Headsman are doing. Do you think I could get you as far as Qualinost?”

Stanach snorted. He was a long time quiet, his face, his eyes above his black beard gone still as he cradled his ruined right hand in the palm of his left.

“In good time,” said Kerian.

Jeratt grinned. “And we’ll get you there with your head still sitting on your shoulders.”

Stanach turned his head this way and that, as though trying to loosen a kink in his neck. “I’d appreciate that.”

The fingers of his left hand curled round the haft of his keen-edged throwing axe as he stood to take the first watch. Beyond the fire, he looked at Kerian, a long, considering moment. He thought about the serving girl he’d met in the forest, perhaps not far from here, two years ago. She had been a tender creature then, soft hands, perfumed hair. Now here she sat, a leader of a shadowy force of warriors known as Night People. She crouched before her forest hearth, in leather boots and woolen trews, a shirt a man might wear. Her tattoos shone in the light, and it seemed to Stanach she had as much of the forest about her as the owl now sailing the night between the trees.

The elf woman screamed. Her voice soared high above all the rest; her face shone white in the night as she clutched her child to her breast. Howling, five Dark Knights ringed her round, circling, swords high, laughing. One howled higher than all, and one kept starkly silent. She fell to her knees, bent over the child, the little creature wailing in her arms against her breast. A voice shouted “Erathia!” A sword screamed through the air, and the voice did not shout more. Erathia wailed, knowing her husband dead, knowing his head would join the heads of other murdered elves.

Horses thundered round her, Knights yelling madly.

Erathia prayed to a goddess long fled the world, she prayed to Mishakal, the giver of mercy elves named Quenesti-Pah.

“Merciful goddess, lady of light, spare my child, oh spare—”

Beside her face, so close the iron shoe ran red with firelight, a tall war-horse stamped and grew still. Around her, the others did the same. Erathia had heard no command, but these Knights had a Skull Knight for a lord. There had been a command.

Trembling, she hunched lower over her child and realized she heard nothing of elf voices. No villager wept, howled, or pleaded.

Gods, she was the last.

“Merciful Lady…”

She looked up, and two Knights departed from the circle around her; two came close, one on either side. They wore their helms closed, and that didn’t matter. Erathia knew which was the Skull Knight. From him, his very being, flowed the coldness of death, like a wind out of winter, belling in the forest, howling in her heart. He flung back the visor of his helm. The other mirrored the gesture.

“Headsman,” he simply said.

She looked to them, to one and the other, the agents of her death. In the eyes of the Skull Knight she saw nothing, not a killing lust, not hatred, not even determination to get the job done. Nothing, as though she looked into the windows of an empty building, into blackness. In the eyes of the other, Chance Headsman, she saw fire. Flames leaping, consuming, bloodlust and killing-need.

In his eyes she saw her death, the raising of his blade before he lifted it, the fell swing before he caused it. She screamed, flung herself aside, and there was nowhere to go. A horse jostled her, and the child fell from her arms, wailing.

Whistling, the sword of Chance Headsman swooped low. She looked into the eyes of the Skull Knight, perhaps to plead. In the moment of her death, the moment the blade kissed her neck, she saw a thing happen in those eyes. They kindled with sudden savage joy.

Chapter Twenty-One

The season of Autumn Harvest began in woe, and grief ran through it like a river of blood. Sorrow rained upon the forest in that season once known for joy, and the fires lighting the night were not the traditional harvest bonfires. No one danced round these, laughing girls and lusty lads. No one shouted for the joy of the harvest; no one cried out thanks.

They wept before these fires, elves pared to bone by their grief, their voices fit only to keen and moan.