The Outskirter's Secret (16 page)

A moment came when she again added awareness
of her hands and eyes to the sum of her task, and again a measure
of her self faded briefly, then returned, as she turned another
page.

Her eyes rested on the new words as she
waited for comprehension to occur. She became aware that it was
taking long to do so. Something had changed.

She struggled dully to stretch her attention
to include more of the page, to piece together the lines of ink
into comprehensibility. For an instant she succeeded, and the marks
resolved—

Into broken lines, skewed letters. Huge,
clumsy words trailing wildly down the page. Fragments of sentences,
in a hand as blunt and awkward as a child's.

She was incapable of dismay. She turned
herself back to her task. The ship hesitated, shied, settled. Her
journey continued.

And beneath her endless work, behind her
unwavering concentration, deep within her slow, cool thoughts,
Rowan recalled from that book only three facts:

That the broken words had held no meaning to
her; that they filled the rest of the book, to the very end; and
that the handwriting was Bel's.

Very quietly, someone spoke her name.

"
W
hat?" She
was on her feet, her question was spoken, and her sword was in her
hand, before she realized that she was awake. Bel was a silent
shadow beside her, watching the darkness. She pointed with her
chin, a motion only dimly sensed.

There was a flickering smear of light in the
distance, yellow in the blackness and the blue-tinged starlight.
"Brushfire?"

Bel did not reply, concentrating on the glow.
She seemed to be listening, but not to the steerswoman.

Rowan studied the light. It was broadening.
With no referents, there was no way to guess its size or distance.
No breeze brought its scent; the air was still, humid, dead.

Something flared at its edge—a patch of
tanglebrush, catching all at once, with a sudden, distant roar.
Something moved across the light, then something else, then many
things . . .

"Come on!" Bel was gone, running to the fire.
Rowan followed, redgrass snagging at her trouser legs. She saw Bel
pause, sweep once with her sword, and then continue. When Rowan
reached the place she tripped over something in the grass,
something in two pieces, that thrashed.

Over the rising roar of the flames, Rowan
heard sounds: rusted hinges, a rhythmical clatter. There was a
wordless cry from Bel, the sound she made in battle, but no clash
of metal.

Rowan hurried on. Figures were visible in the
firelight, flailing, converging on two points.

Something snagged at her left arm from
behind, and Rowan spun to the right, momentum freeing her and
adding force to the stroke of her sword as she came around
again.

She had aimed at the height of a man's neck;
the stroke swept harmlessly over the goblin's head. She let her
sword spin her again, aiming for the creature's waist as she came
around again.

It was gone. Then something raked at her
scalp and tore her tunic down the back. She stumbled forward,
turned left, struck out blindly in an upswing.

The blow caught the goblin under one arm,
which separated from its body with appalling ease to fall twitching
to the ground. The creature did not seem to notice. It clutched out
with its remaining hand, and Rowan made a quick stab into its
chest. It did not stop or fall or pull away, but pushed toward her,
driving her point deeper. Its hand jerked forward at her; she
ducked her head out of reach, and the hand clutched at the sword
itself, trying stupidly to shove it aside. The edge bit deep into
the finger joints.

Rowan thrust harder, tried to bring her blade
down to slash the torso open. Too much resistance; she twisted
instead and felt the point make a small slicing arc within the
goblin's body. She gasped at the effort. "Gods below, don't you
know when you're dead?"

It squealed and rattled, seemingly in
frustration only, then freed its hand and reached again for her
face. She kicked at its stomach, then pulled out her sword as it
fell back.

A sound behind her. She turned and swung down
at the next creature's shoulder. Her blade hit shallowly, then
skittered off. The thing had hide like horn.

She dodged, struck at the arm joint from
beneath, dodged, struck again. The creature closed on her as if it
still had limbs to clutch her with.

For a frozen instant its face was inches from
hers. By firelight she saw its features: hard brown flattened
skull, six black knobs trailing down in a double row—eyes. Its
mouth thrust forward at the end of a pointed chin, opening and
closing, horizontally and vertically, four curved rasps as long as
fingers at each corner.

She brought her sword up close to her body,
caught the goblin under the chin, thrust back into its neck. The
head fell back, the body forward.

An arm came across her from behind, serrated
down its length, points angled inward. She pushed herself into the
elbow, levering the wrist out with her hilt. Something snapped, and
she was free. She turned back to face the fire.

The one-armed creature was flailing its
remaining arm from the shoulder, its elbow and hand flapping
uselessly. Rowan kicked it again, sending it into one of its
fellows, and another came at her from the right. She knocked its
arms aside, sliced off its head with an angled upstroke, did the
same with the crippled one as it rose, did the same with the third,
turned when a rattle told her there were more behind her again—

And she stopped counting.

She was moving constantly, too fast to think
or plan, trusting the only strategy she knew would work. She
dodged, took off their hands at the elbows, their arms at the
shoulders when they reached for her, used the moment that followed
to strike off their heads. The difficulty was in the numbers; in
the time that she dealt with one, another was coming from behind, a
third stepping over the first . . .

None of the creatures learned from the deaths
of its fellows. They were stupid, like insects. They tried to grab
at her slashing sword as if it were a club, lost their hands, their
taloned fingers, and their lives by their own stupidity.

And the legs of the headless fallen continued
to move. She tripped twice, once to end tangled among the thrashing
dead limbs, and one of the living creatures fell on her, its mouth
rasps closing on her sword arm . . .

Then its head tilted freakishly forward and
rolled off over her shoulder. For an instant she saw a man above
her, his wide dark eyes full of battle fury. He spun away.

Before she could rise, another goblin tried
to fall on her and impaled itself on her sword. Rowan cursed. Using
both hands, she swung sword and goblin over her, to smash the
creature against the ground to her right.

For an instant, nothing attacked. She freed
her weapon and set on another goblin, striking at its neck from
behind.

It did not work; tough plates shielded the
back of its neck. The goblin turned, and she struck again, up under
the chin, and this time it did work. She seemed to have time, so
she relieved it of its arms as well, as it staggered and fell.

She went for another, slipping her blade
around it to reach the front of its neck . . .

After the third time doing this, she realized
that she was now attacking them from behind, that their attention
was on someone else.

There came a moment when the one she reached
for fell before she struck it, and through the open space she saw
the man again. In the three-second lull he looked at her in
amazement, then shouted "Ha!" as if in greeting. He turned right,
kicked a goblin that was almost on him, dispatched it with an
efficient version of Rowan's technique, and turned again to deal
with another on his left.

Rowan eliminated three more, from behind. The
fourth was facing her but seemed undecided, as if it had forgotten
something. It lost its head while it was waiting, and she met the
man's eyes again across the creature's fallen body.

The onslaught was diminishing. Rowan had time
to see that the fire was to her left; it had become a long
undulating line trailing ahead of her. Behind, it had spread out
into a fan. The flames seemed reluctant to move into the redgrass
in her direction, and she realized that they were following an
easier path along a growth of resinous blackgrass.

A goblin between herself and the fire line
turned, surprised to see her. She felled it, and saw that others
were moving between her and the flames, all their attention on the
blaze. They seemed to be trying to touch it, but were driven back
again and again by the heat. Their weirdly jointed arms snapped
forward toward the flames; their heads rocked dizzily. They
jittered on trembling legs.

She thought to go after them, had an instant
to wonder if she ought, then turned to try and assist the stranger
in his work.

"Get back!" It was Bel's voice. Rowan could
see a knot of action beyond the man, realized that Bel was working
her way toward him, saw that the man was working his way toward
Rowan, and understood that her own job was to secure their escape
route.

She turned and found that a handful of the
creatures were coming in from the darkness, squealing and
clattering as they scrambled toward her. She sidestepped one, heard
a grunt from the stranger as he dealt with it, eliminated the next
herself, and stepped back when a third stumbled over a tangle of
quivering corpses. She trod on its neck, which snapped with a sound
she found deeply satisfying.

She brought another down, and saw that
nothing more stood between her and the darkness of the veldt. She
looked back.

Only Bel was still in action, backing
constantly toward the man, who walked slowly, matching her pace,
watching all sides as he approached. His left arm was pressed close
against his body; there was blood. Then Bel shouted once, and they
both broke into a run.

Rowan led. Once she came upon one of the
creatures, and paused to kill it. Later, in deeper darkness,
another rose suddenly from the grass to clutch her around her arms,
pinioning her. She cursed when its rasps grazed her cheek, then
felt its left arm give way to the stranger's blade, sensed its head
fall back from a two-handed twist by Bel.

She stumbled over its body, took a few steps,
then stumbled again when something tried to pull her down. She
almost struck out, then realized that it was Bel.

"Sit." Bel guided her into position and sat
at an angle beside her, one shoulder against Rowan's. The stranger
dropped to the ground and completed the triangle, and the three of
them sat facing out, gasping for breath, watching the darkness.
Rowan could feel Bel's heartbeat, and the man's, against her
back.

They were on a slight incline, Rowan facing
up, away from the distant fire. She tried to speak and found she
had not enough breath. She listened instead, for a sound like a man
walking alone, for a rasp and a rattle.

When their breaths began to quieten, Bel
spoke. "How badly are you hurt?"

Rowan almost replied, then realized that the
question was addressed to the stranger.

"Averryl, Leahson, Chanly." He paused for
more air. "My left arm is bad. I may cross the line on that one."
Cross the line, Rowan remembered: become a mertutial.

"Ha. Not with a right arm like yours. Bel,
Margasdotter, Chanly."

There was a long pause before Rowan
understood that it was her turn. "Rowan. That's my only name. Will
those creatures come after us?"

"No. We're too far away now. With the fire
going, they'll be more interested in it than in us."

"So it's helping us now?"

"That's right."

Rowan paused for more air. She could hear the
distant roar and snap of the flames. The cries of the creatures
were all squeals now, freakishly ecstatic. Other than that, the
night was quiet.

She found her pulse slowing. "That's good."
Behind her, Averryl was shaking. He swayed once. "We should see to
your wounds, if we can in this dark," she said. "Does 'Chanly' mean
you're related to Bel?"

She felt Averryl half turn in surprise at the
question, felt him stiffen in pain at the movement. Bel supplied,
"Yes, but likely far back, at the beginning of the line. There are
a lot of Chanlys."

Averryl's breathing had slowed, but Rowan was
disturbed by the way his heart was stumbling. He said to Bel, "Why
doesn't she know that? She's not a child. Though she fights like
one."

Rowan wondered how to react to the insult.
"I'm from the Inner Lands," she told him, "and I know next to
nothing about the Outskirts. I've never fought a goblin before in
my life."

There was a moment's silence. "Rowan, I beg
your pardon." He spoke with sincerity. "Knowing that, I change my
opinion." His breaths came more quickly, shallower. "You are very
brave, and very clever."

Rowan turned in time to catch him as he
crumpled forward.

T
he
steerswoman said, "His name is Averryl, Leahson, Chanly. He's one
of yours, and he needs your help."

She stood in the lee of a small hill among
many small hills, on shreds of redgrass, which were cropped to the
roots and dying. A heavy wind drove across the sky, not touching
her, but sweeping and snapping the patchwork cloak of the warrior
who stood on the crest above. Rowan's sword lay on the ground at
her own feet, hilt to the right, as she waited for a reply.

It was long in coming. The warrior shifted
stance, paused as if in great thought, shifted again, then studied
Rowan with eyes narrowed. "Averryl was lost four days ago," she
said. Rowan noticed her gaze flick to Rowan's right, and guessed
the next words before they were spoken. "Warrior, at three by
you."