The Blood Curse (12 page)

“We need Rand,” Petrus said.

Harkeld’s head snapped around. “She’s alive?”

“Barely.” He’d seen Petrus look grim before, but nothing like this. The mage’s eyes seemed to blaze in his ashen face.

Serril bent to pick Innis up again.

“I’ll carry her.” Harkeld pushed forward, crouched, and carefully took Innis in his arms. She was as limp as a corpse. No pulse seemed to beat in her throat, no breath to pass her lips. “How far to the tavern?”

“It’s two streets away.”

A swallow darted down and landed. Justen. Blood trickled from a cut on his ribs. “We’re not to go to the tavern.” His face was grim, too. “There were assassins. Thayer’s dead, and Oren. And Davin and Gretel are hurt bad.”

Thayer’s dead because he was pretending to be me
. But Harkeld couldn’t think of that, not while he held Innis in his arms and there was a chance she might live. “We need a strong healer!”

“Rand’s coming,” Justen said. “Wait here.” And he shifted and leapt up into the sky again.

Harkeld carefully laid Innis on the ground. “Petrus? Can you do anything?” Damp strands of hair were plastered to Innis’s face, but he was afraid of touching her, afraid of hurting her more badly than she already was. The sound the stave had made echoed in his ears. How could she still be alive?

Petrus knelt alongside him. “She’s bleeding inside her skull. And her brain’s swelling.” He laid his hands very gently on either side of Innis’s face.

Harkeld remembered how Petrus’s healing magic felt in comparison to Innis’s: rough, blunt. “Could you harm her, trying to heal her?”

“No,” Petrus said. “But I don’t have the precision to fix most of this. Innis is the one with that kind of skill.”

Harkeld watched, feeling helpless. The things he was good at—fighting, throwing fire—were no help to Innis. He jerked around at the slap of running footsteps, his hand going to his sword.

It was Rand. Blood stained the healer’s cloak. Not Rand’s, as far as Harkeld could see.

Petrus yielded his place to Rand. Harkeld watched the man’s face intently as he bent over Innis.
Will she live? Will she be all right?
He bit his tongue to hold back the questions.

The clop of horses’ hooves and rattle of wagon wheels echoed in the mouth of the alley. Harkeld swung to face this new threat. A covered wagon, riders. He reached for his sword again.

A swallow landed, changed into Justen. “They’re ours.”

H
ARKELD HELPED LIFT
Innis into the wagon. Inside were half a dozen empty barrels. Gretel and Davin lay on the wooden floorboards. He couldn’t tell what Gretel’s injury was, but Davin’s was obvious: a throwing star buried in his abdomen. A killing wound. But the blonde healer, Nellis, was bent over Davin, and perhaps magic could save him. At the back of the wagon was a man’s body. Thayer. And alongside it, the huddled shape of a dead bird. Oren.

Harkeld gazed for a long moment at Thayer and Oren. A heavy weight of guilt settled on him. Two weeks they’d travelled together, and he’d scarcely spoken to them, and now they were dead because of him.

Outside, Rand was issuing orders: “Serril, Justen, in the sky. Not you, Petrus. We need your help here.”

Petrus climbed into the wagon. Rand followed him.

“Petrus says I’m a healer. Can I help?”

Rand shook his head. “No.”

Harkeld leapt down from the wagon and ran for his mount. He scrambled into his saddle, clumsy with haste, clumsy with fear.

T
HEY PUSHED SOUTH
and west along roads clogged with refugees. Their progress was slow, little more than walking pace. Sometimes they had to halt altogether, while people streamed past on either side of the wagon.

Towards dusk, a large black hawk swooped low, a dead pigeon gripped in its talons.

The hawk hovered above Malle, dropped the pigeon, and climbed back into the sky.

Harkeld nudged his mount closer to the water mage. “Fithian messenger bird?”

“Yes.” Malle was the oldest of the Sentinels, her hair iron-gray. She squinted at the tiny leather pouch tied to the pigeon’s leg, then held the bird out to him. “See if you can get that knot. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

Harkeld hastily untied the knot, slipped the tiny pouch off the pigeon’s leg, and opened it. A small scrap of paper was tucked inside. He unrolled it. Two lines of marks and symbols. Some of them he recognized. The symbol for a target. The symbol for a mage. “Here.” He held the message out to Malle.

The water mage took it, held it at arm’s length, squinted at it, then tucked it into her pocket.

It wasn’t so much what it said, as what it told them.
Someone in Hansgrohe is informing other Fithians where we are
.

A
T NIGHTFALL, THEY
turned off the road into a muddy patch of ground surrounded on three sides by twisted trees and on the fourth by a creek. Harkeld swung down from his horse and hurried across to the wagon. Stubble crunched beneath his boots as he strode; this had been some poor farmer’s field.

He pulled back the covering. “How are they?”

The healers were dark shapes. He couldn’t see who was who, couldn’t see the patients.

“I’ll get some light.” He jogged across to the packhorses, fumbled hastily through the bundles, found the brass soldiers’ lanterns, found candles, ran back, lit the candles with a flick of his fingers.

The shadows drew back into the corners of the wagon. He saw the healers, saw the patients, saw Thayer and Oren dead at the back. Gretel was sitting up, half-propped against a barrel, Petrus crouched alongside her. The shapeshifter was still naked. He glanced at Harkeld, glanced away. Davin lay as motionless as a corpse. Nellis, bending over him, didn’t look up. Deep furrows of concentration were carved on her face.

Harkeld’s gaze fastened on Innis. She was as still as Davin, her skin bloodlessly pale. His eyes told him she was dead—her heart didn’t pump, no breath filled her lungs—but if she was dead, Rand wouldn’t be cradling her head in his hands, wouldn’t be trying to heal her.

Harkeld swallowed. “How are they?”

“Still alive.” Rand’s eyes were dark hollows in the candlelight. He released Innis’s head, smoothed her hair gently from her brow, and sat back with a sigh, rubbing his face. Harkeld heard the rasp of stubble.

“I need to learn how to heal.”

“Not now.” Rand crawled to the tailboard and climbed stiffly down. “Petrus, get dressed. Gretel will be all right.”

Rand walked a few paces, and stretched wearily. Harkeld followed him. “I need to learn how to heal,” he said, more urgently.

“Not now,” the healer repeated. Around them, was the bustle of riding mounts being unsaddled, packhorses being unloaded.

“Yes! Now!” Agitation filled him. He couldn’t stand still. His feet were pacing, carrying him back and forth in front of Rand. He gestured fiercely at the wagon. “Davin and Innis are dying and I can’t just do nothing! I’m a healer. Let me help! Please!”

“Not without training. I’m sorry.” Rand looked upward. “Serril!”

An owl swooped out of the darkness and landed at their feet, changed shape.

“That pigeon, where was it headed?”

“Same direction as us.”

“Ah, rut it.”

Harkeld knew what that meant.
There are Fithians ahead of us somewhere
.

The knowledge didn’t scare him. In the morning it might, but right now he wasn’t afraid of assassins; he was afraid of what was happening in that wagon. Innis and Davin were dying, while he stood back and did nothing. He wanted to grab Rand by the shoulders, shake him, bellow
Let me help them!

Instead, he crossed to the horses, found his mount, and unbuckled the saddle, wrestling with his agitation. His heart beat loud and fast in his chest, as if he’d been running.

“Help me dig the graves.” Bode thrust a shovel at him.

“The horses—”

“The others’ll deal with them.”

Harkeld followed the fire mage to the edge of the trees. They worked without speaking. He didn’t know Bode, had spoken only a few words to him on the voyage to Roubos. The fire mage was in his late thirties. A blunt-mannered man who’d made no effort to be friendly.
But I made no effort either
.

By the time Thayer’s grave was dug, the horses had been picketed, the tents pitched, and a stewpot hung over the fire. Harkeld leaned on his shovel, panting, sweating. His agitation, his urgency, had faded.
They’ll be all right, Innis and Davin
.

Bode clambered out of the hole and reached a hand down.

Harkeld pulled himself up. “Thanks.”

Bode nodded.

It took only a few minutes to excavate a grave for Oren. A few shovels of dirt, a rock levered out, and it was done.

Bode stared down at the small hole. He sighed.

Harkeld understood the sigh. Dying in animal form was what shapeshifters feared most. “Did you know him well?”

“Yes.”

There was nothing in Bode’s manner to suggest blame, but Harkeld still felt responsible.
Oren wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t been protecting Thayer, and Thayer wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t been pretending to be me.

Footsteps crunched across the stubble field towards them. Petrus, his hair moonlight-pale. The shapeshifter carried a shovel.

“It’s done,” Bode told him.

“No, it’s not. Davin died.”

It took a few beats of Harkeld’s heart before the words sank in.
Not Davin, too
. He felt as if Petrus had kicked him in the chest again.

Abruptly, it was too much. Harkeld made an inarticulate sound. He hurled his shovel aside and swung away from Petrus, swung away from the graves, and pushed his way into the dark trees. Branches slapped at him, tore at him. He bulled his way forward, stumbling over roots and fallen branches, almost running.

A dozen yards in, he tripped over a log and sprawled headlong. He lay where he’d fallen for several seconds, then pushed up to hands and knees. His heart hammered in his chest. Each breath had a faint hitch in it, as if he was about to cry.

What am I doing? Running away?
There was no running away from this.

He heard the
pad pad
of paws, the snap of a twig breaking, and then an animal came to stand alongside him. A dog. A shapeshifter. Probably Serril.

Harkeld felt stupid. He lurched upright, groped for the log he’d tripped over, sat. “I’m not going anywhere. Please leave me alone.”

After a moment, the dog did. The soft
pad pad
of its paws died away.

His breathing settled. The wood wasn’t completely dark. He saw the glow of firelight through the tree trunks.

A figure moved, silhouetted against the light, one of the mages, coming through the trees towards him, walking slowly, pushing through the undergrowth. Twigs snapped and cracked. Branches crunched underfoot.

The man reached the log and halted. He was too tall for Bode, too broad-shouldered for Adel. Petrus. After a moment Petrus sat on the log alongside him. Not close enough that Harkeld could feel his body heat, but still close.

Harkeld rubbed his face, looked away from Petrus. “Sometimes it gets too much, you know?”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a long time. “How’s Innis?” Harkeld asked finally.

“Not good. But Nellis is working on her too, now that Davin’s dead. I can’t. I used up all my strength on Gretel.”

Harkeld leaned his elbows on his knees and stared down at the ground. He could dimly make out the shapes of his boots. He grew cold. His stomach told him he was hungry. Petrus had to be cold, too, and hungry and tired, but he made no move to leave.

Does he feel the same way I do? Sick with it all? Wishing it was over. Wishing it had never started.

Petrus could be in the Allied Kingdoms now, where Sentinel mages were respected, but instead he was here, halfway across the world, in a land that reviled magic, watching his friends die, burying them, wondering if he was going to die too, wondering if he’d ever see his home again.

Harkeld clasped his hands together, felt the shapes of his fingers, his thumbs.
My hands and my blood. That’s what this is all about
. “You were right. You should have cut my hands off, back in Osgaard.” Dimly, he saw Petrus turn his head. “It’s not too late, you know. We could do it now.”

Petrus was silent for a few seconds. “You mean that?”

“Yes.” Right now, he did. Whether he’d have the courage in the morning was another matter.

Petrus turned his head away and looked towards the distant firelight. “Be a waste, don’t you think? After we’ve tried so hard to get you through this in one piece.”

“It’s already a waste. I’m not worth anyone’s life, let alone so many.”

Petrus said nothing. Harkeld took his silence as agreement.

“You’d only need one of my hands now, and a bit of blood. It’s not like you have to kill me.” He tried for some flippancy: “I’ll even let you cut it off.”

Petrus snorted, shook his head. “No.”

“I thought you’d want to.”

“Not really.” Petrus sighed. “You know, it’s not actually about you. It’s the Seven Kingdoms we’re trying to save. You’re just the tool we need to do it.”

A tool bred by mages. But he couldn’t muster any anger. Not this time. Not after the events of today.

They sat side by side in silence for a few more minutes, then Petrus sighed again and pushed to his feet. “Come on. Davin’s grave’s not going to dig itself.”

Harkeld followed the shapeshifter back through the trees. Bode was standing in a foot-deep grave, driving his shovel into the ground, tossing soil to one side. Petrus bent and picked up a shovel.

“No,” Harkeld said, taking it from him. “Go eat.”

Petrus opened his mouth to argue.

“You’re a trained healer, I’m not. Go and eat. Sleep. And then you’ll be able to help with Innis.”

Petrus closed his mouth. After a moment, he nodded and turned towards the fire.

Harkeld stepped down into the hole. Bode made room for him. In silence, they dug Davin’s grave.

T
HERE WAS LITTLE
talk around the campfire. The three deaths, the possibility of there being a fourth, hung over them. It was as if the night sky had substance and weight and was pressing down. Harkeld ate slowly, without appetite.