Tarah Woodblade (30 page)

“I find it interesting that you know the nature of our quarry,” he said.

“I’m Tarah Woodblade. I figured it out,” she said. "So, what's it going to be Shade? You gonna string me up, or are you gonna renegotiate?"

Shade appraised her for a moment, then whistled. The two dwarves entered the tent and there was a sharp pop. Tarah’s body seized up again. As the dwarves pulled her out of the chair, Shade gave a snort.

“Tarah, I am disappointed. Truly I am. I had hoped that you would be less foolish. The rumors I heard told me that you were formidable. Full of confidence. The only thing I’ve seen from you so far is a scared girl trying to impress." He directed his next comment to the dwarves behind her. "String her up by the elbows next to her dwarf friend. If she's too loud, gag her."

He stood and grasped her chin. Lifting her eyes to meet his, he said. "We move out in the morning. I'll check on you then to see if you've changed your mind."

Chapter Fifteen

The dwarves did as Shade instructed. As they dragged Tarah to the tree, she saw a look of concern in Djeri’s eyes. She felt like such a fool. She had ignored her grampa’s warning and had antagonized the man. She should have played along for a while instead and focused on getting Djeri released.

At any rate it was too late now. The dwarves had difficulty getting her arms back into the position they wanted, so they unlaced the front of her leather armor to gain some slack, then tied her wrists behind her back. They tied ropes around her arms at the elbows and threw the ropes over the stout tree branch next to Djeri. The position they had her in hurt and they hadn’t even lifted her yet.

As they went to hoist her into the air, Leroy grinned at her nastily. “We’re takin’ this spell off you now. Boss Donjon wants to see how sturdy you are. If you don’t scream too loud, we’ll let you go without a gag. Hell, who knows. Maybe if you impress him enough, he’ll convince Shade to play nicer in the mornin’.”

“Bah,” said Mel, walking up to them. He’d cleaned the soot off of his face, but patches of his skin were inflamed and flushed red. Tarah would have found the state of his facial hair comical if she hadn’t been so afraid. “Look at her dwarf friend. Even he’d be squealin’ if we didn’t have him gagged. She’ll be ballin’ her eyes out right away, even if we don’t wrench her arms out their sockets just haulin’ her up!”

“I think yer wrong about that dwarf, Mel,” said the dwarf with the gray mustache. He was giving Djeri a measured look. “I think I know who this one is. If I’m right, he’s a Cragstalker.”

“He’s yer kin?” said Mel. “What the hell’s a Cragstalker doin’ with a pitiful beard like that?”

“Distant kin,” he replied. “Though I don’t know who’d claim him. I’d better talk to Donjon.”

Mel enthusiastically took his place holding Tarah’s ropes. As they hoisted her up, they did so with a jerk. Pain shot from her shoulders down both arms. Tarah’s eyes bulged. She gritted her teeth but a cry escaped her lips. As they hoisted her up higher, the pain increased. It felt as if her shoulders were going to tear free from their sockets. She held on, trying not to scream. She was Tarah Woodblade. She was tough. Everyone knew it. She refused to give Shade the satisfaction of breaking her.

Thirty seconds passed. It seemed like hours. She imagined her shoulders slowly tearing free. She no longer cared about toughness. Tarah screamed.

“Let me down! Tell Shade I’ll do whatever he asks. Just let me down!”

The dwarves laughed. One of them handed some coins to another one.

“Please! My arms are breaking!” She strained, trying to pull her body’s weight off her shoulder joints but there was no way to get leverage. She kicked but each movement just made it worse. She sobbed and moaned. She pleaded. The dwarves in the camp below finally stopped laughing after a sharp order from Shade’s tent.

They lowered Tarah to the ground slowly. “Thank you,” she said as her feet touched ground. “I’ll do whatever he wants, I promise.”

Leroy rolled his eyes. “Don’t get too excited, girlie. This ain’t a rescue. Shade just wants us to shut you up is all.”

The dwarf yanked a handkerchief out of his back pocket and shoved it in her mouth. It wasn’t clean. Tarah could taste dirt and salt and something a little sour. She tried to spit it out, but his fingers were like iron. He then held it in place with a strip of cloth that he tied behind the back of her head. Tarah choked and retched, but nothing came up.

The dwarf just rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yer tough alright.”

They prepared to haul her up again. Tarah panicked, jumping up and down, kicking, trying to stomp their feet. Then she glanced up at Djeri dangling above her. The Dwarf wasn’t struggling. Though his face was red with rage, he stayed completely still. His eyes locked on hers with firmness.
Don’t let them beat you
, the dwarf’s eyes said.

“Don’t pretend to be so tough, short beard!” one of the other dwarves said. This one was a female with a downy mustache of her own. She picked something up off the ground and threw it at him. To Tarah’s eyes it looked like a dead rat. Perhaps they had killed it skulking around their camp.

The rat would have hit him square in the face, but Djeri jerked his head forward at the last moment, knocking the rat back at them with his forehead. To the dwarf’s dismay, it landed in their stew pot with a plop.

The dwarves around the cookfire shouted at the female that threw the rat. Tarah saw Djeri’s body quiver with laughter. He fixed his eyes on hers and gave her a brief nod again. She nodded back, forcing down the fear.

The dwarves started hauling her back up. As the rope yanked, she felt a pop in her right shoulder. A muffled cry escaped her lips, but she cut it short, refusing to let them hear her suffering. Once they stopped pulling, she dangled there, squirming until she met Djeri’s eyes again.

The dwarf was completely still, his legs spread. Tarah understood. She forced her body to keep still, avoiding any jarring movements. Still the pain was excruciating and though she kept quiet, tears streamed down her cheeks.

Tarah couldn’t believe she was reacting to it so badly. She had honed herself to be tough and her grampa had helped her create a persona that would give people confidence in her abilities. She had always imagined that she would be able to handle torture if it ever happened to her. But she’d been wrong. This was a pain she had not prepared for.

It wore on her until the only thing keeping her from kicking and moaning was embarrassment over her behavior. Djeri had seen her screaming like a child. She had shown them the truth she had tried to hide for so long. She was a coward.

Tarah searched for anything to give her strength, pleading for her papa’s and grampa’s advice, but they were silent. Neither one of them had prepared her for a moment such as this. Why hadn’t they prepared her?

It was hard, but she held firm. The night crept by with an agonizing slowness. Every time she thought she would break, she turned her head to find the dwarf staring back at her, giving her an encouraging stare. Eventually her shoulder sockets went numb. Her arms went numb. She couldn’t feel her fingers.

At that point she began to worry about permanent damage to her nerves. Well, that and the dirty handkerchief. It had absorbed all the moisture in her mouth and she struggled not to gag. She focused on Djeri’s encouragement for as long as she could. Then she focused on her hate.

She hated the dwarves and their nasty laughter. But even more, she hated Shade. Why had he done this? Why was he hunting this rogue horse and why had he hired dwarves? They were too loud to be good trackers.

She looked at the carcass of the animal that hung across from Djeri, rotating slowly in the wind, most of its meat cut off. Why had they killed the horse? Why kill one of their own work animals like that? She shuddered as a creeping suspicion flowed over her. She hoped she was wrong.

As the night wore on, the ache returned. Tarah drifted into sleep only to wake up with the feeling that hot irons had been stuck in the core of her bones. It was a dull, angry ache that stretched from her back down to her fingertips.

She looked to Djeri, to find that he was still watching her, his gaze warm and understanding.
I’m strong
, his eyes seemed to say.
Take some of my strength
.

How was he doing it? Sure, he was a dwarf, but he’d been strung up much longer than she had and his plate armor was adding a lot of extra weight. Nevertheless, he stayed stoic. Throughout the night, no matter how bad the pain became, Djeri was there hanging beside her, strong and dependable, giving her courage; doing what Tarah Woodblade should have done.

When daylight broke, Shade came out of his tent and stood below her looking up with a calculating expression on his face. His red sash gleamed in the sun and Tarah looked back at him, her face expressionless. He called out to the dwarves and they came over to grasp her ropes.

Gently, they lowered her down and Tarah allowed herself to think on her arms once again. She couldn’t feel them, not really. But her shoulder socket was afire with a dull ache. She glanced up at Djeri and he gave her a stoic nod. 

When the weight was eased from her shoulders, she was struck again with a sharp pain. Tarah moaned despite her resolve. The dwarves cut her free. She swayed on her feet while her arms hung at her sides throbbing and tingling so fiercely she nearly collapsed.

“Remove her gag,” Shade instructed.

Once they had done so, she pushed the nasty handkerchief out with her tongue and grimaced at the taste that remained in her dry mouth. She couldn’t even work up enough saliva to spit, much less form words.

“Get her some water!” Shade demanded and as one of the dwarves brought a leather water skin, he said, “Well, Tarah, have you rethought your proposal?”

Tarah worked her mouth but no sound came out. She was really going to fall over soon. When he saw that she couldn’t respond, Shade continued.

“I know you think me cruel for the night you just endured. And you would be right. But it isn’t something done for pleasure. I find torture quite distasteful myself.” He folded his arms. “What you have just learned is that I am a man who does what’s necessary to get my point across. You were proud and insolent and I needed you to understand that such behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. Now I think you understand me better.”

The dwarf with the gray mustache tried to hand her the waterskin but she couldn’t lift her arms enough to grasp it. At Shade’s nod, the dwarf lifted it to her lips himself. Tarah swirled the water in her mouth and didn’t dare spit it out fearing that it would be seen as a gesture of defiance, so she swallowed it down and continued to drink thirstily.

“Here is my proposal, Tarah,” said Shade. “I will honor our previous contract as if this uncomfortable evening never happened. You are, from everything I have heard, a gifted tracker. Find this rogue horse for me and the money is yours. Then you will be free to go on your way. Otherwise, I will leave you to our dwarven friends to dispose of as they see fit.” He paused to let his message sink in. “What say you?”

Shade’s offer was as Tarah had hoped. She had thought long and hard during the night on what her response would be. She had gone through a wide range of decisions, waffling from defiance and anger, to begging for mercy.

“I have a question before I answer,” she said.

“Very well,” Shade said. He lifted a warning finger. “Just know that further insolence on your part will nullify my offer.”

“That animal your dwarfs butchered last night,” Tarah said, her voice sounding rough despite the water. “Was it my mule?”

Shade frowned, looking at the stripped carcass that hung from the tree. “Donjon!”

The black-mustached dwarf walked over from one of the cookfires, wiping stew from his chin. “Yeah?”

“Did your men butcher this woman’s mule?” he asked.

The dwarf wrinkled his nose. “Like we’d do that. It’s a biter, but that’d be a waste of a sturdy pack animal.” He gestured at the carcass with his chin. “That there was Merba’s horse. Broke its leg goin’ up the ravine yesterday. Had to put it down.”

Tarah sighed in relief.

Shade turned back to her with a condescending smile. “There you are, question answered. Now give me the answer to mine.”

If Tarah had been able to move her arms, she didn’t know if she would have been able to keep from punching that smirk off his face. It took all she had just to keep the hatred out of her eyes. She gave him a stiff nod instead. “It’s a deal, Shade. We’ll do it.”

“Very good,” he said. Biff!”

“Yeah, Shade,” said the gray mustached dwarf.

“Give her one of those healing tonics. We’ll need her to be able to move her arms.” He turned his calculating eyes back to her. “I am glad you chose to honor our contract. Please know that if you try to run or disrupt my business in any way, last night will seem comfortable by comparison. Do you understand?”

Tarah nodded again, her teeth grit tightly as she forced herself not to run over and kick the man like she had Mel the night before. Soon Biff came back with a small clay bottle. He pulled out the cork and a pungent smell wafted to her nose.

Tarah’s papa had taught her how to make several kinds of healing droughts using plants from the forest. She could smell a few familiar herbs but as he poured the liquid into her mouth, she realized that there were far more ingredients she wasn’t familiar with. A regular healing drought takes some time to work, but the effects of this one were fast.

She felt her body flush and her arms went from tingling to throbbing. Soon she was able to move her fingers. She winced as she raised her arms, but the pain faded away and she stretched with a groan of pleasure. It felt so good to be able to move again.

As she rotated her shoulders, feeling them ease back into their sockets Tarah realized just how severe her injuries had been. If they had not given her a magical potion like this, she may have had permanent nerve damage. She shuddered. What if she had gone the rest of her life without being able to move her fingers?