The Middle of Nowhere Page 2

  “That’s enough. Cripples and corpses can do little work.”

  The ogres desisted. To the villagers the self-proclaimed lord of Nowhere added, “Perhaps your dialect is as backward as your wits. When I speak, it is a command, not a request!”

  When the villagers persisted in clinging together in defiance of Rakell’s orders, the lancers moved in, using their spears to lever men and women from the weeping throng. They cut out the first twenty they came to, ranging from Nil’s teenage son to Bakar’s stout aunt Yena. Torn from friends and family, the chosen villagers were shoved into line by the ogres and shackled together.

  Malek managed to roll onto one knee. Catching Rakell’s eye, the bandit-lord called for Malek’s lost sword. An ogre complied, presenting the weapon to his commander pommel-first.

  Rakell took the sword. Upon examining it, his thick brows arched up in surprise.

  “How did a knightly blade get to this dustheap, I wonder?” To Malek he said, “You, farmer. Where did you get this blade?”

  “My plow turned it up in the barley field,” he lied.

  Rakell swung the blade experimentally, testing its balance and heft. “Interesting. Pre-Cataclysm work, watered steel made by the school of Thelgaard … I shall keep this.” He slid the old sword through his buff leather baldric.

  Marren’s sword! How dare he make off with it! Malek attempted to stand, but pain shot through his ribs and brought him up short. Gasping, he dropped back on his hands. Rakell’s companions laughed.

  “Heal up, firebrand!” Rakell said, chuckling. “Next time will be your turn. I’d take you now, but the work is hard enough with healthy ribs!”

  Rakell’s lieutenants ordered the huts searched. Lancers and ogres scattered, kicking down doors and dragging out women and children who’d hidden inside. Behind Caeta’s hut they found her cow. A lancer looped a halter around the beast’s horns and led her away. When her shaggy calf tried to follow, bawling, another lancer speared it. The sight and smell of blood inflamed the ogres beyond reason. Whooping, they fell on the still-living calf and tore it apart with their hands. Aghast, villagers watched in horror as the ogres happily ate the raw, bloody flesh with all-too-evident joy.

  The human raiders filled waterskins and bottles from the well. One young warrior fetched his commander a cool drink. Rakell raised the skin to his lips, squinting against the late-day sun. The water had just begun to flow when Rakell stopped swallowing. Water coursed over his black-bearded chin.

  “Mother of scorpions! Can it be?” he breathed. “Are there ghosts in this wasteland too?”

  “My lord?” said the young man who’d given his water to Rakell.

  The commander tossed the bottle to his aide and spurred his horse forward. At a slow walk, he approached the two figures standing before a rude and humble hut.

  “It is you!” Rakell said. “Marren uth Aegar!”

  The blind man lifted his chin. “No one has called me that for nine and twenty years,” he said. “Who speaks that forgotten name?”

  “I served under you as a lad, forty years ago,” said Rakell. “I fought my first battle in the vale of Garnet at your side.”

  “Who are you?” said Laila sharply.

  “Another ghost.” Rakell unbuckled the gorget around his neck, revealing the base of his throat. A great livid scar stretched from under one ear all the way around to the other. Laila cried out, unable to believe anyone could survive such a wound.

  “What is it, girl?” said her father.

  “His throat was cut, and yet he lives!” she said, choking.

  Marren breathed a single word. It might have been a name, but no one near, not even Laila, could make it out.

  Rakell replaced the gorget. “It’s a day for resurrections, girl, if Marren uth Aegar lives too.”

  To his aides he said, “These two shall come with me. Take them!”

  “No!” Laila bloodied her knuckles punching a visored warrior, but it was all for naught. Her hands were pinioned, but she continued to struggle and kick. Not until a noose was hung over her father’s unbowed neck did she relent.

  “Leave him be!” she cried.

  “He can be led or be dragged,” Rakell retorted. “I can set one of my ogres to the task, or you may do it—if you behave yourself!”

  Pale but furious, Laila agreed. The noose was taken off.

  The lancers and ogres, with twenty enslaved villagers between them, started off at a slow shuffle, their backs to the setting sun. When Malek saw Laila and her father walking in the midst of Rakell and his lieutenants, he found the strength to stand and shout her name.

  Heads turned all around. Rakell reined up, waiting to see what Malek might do. Unarmed, unskilled, the young farmer stood, trembling with rage.

  “Ride on,” Rakell said calmly. With his first step, his horse put a hoof through the village’s well bucket, crushing it.

  Lancers and ogres rampaged through the village huts, taking what trifles caught their eye. They despoiled far more than they stole. The worst loss occurred when two ogres found Wilf’s pigs. With deep grunts of satisfaction, the towering monsters waded into the pen, grabbing the young farmer’s fat porkers by the hindquarters. Tucking a shrilly squealing animal under each noisome arm, the ogres followed their leader out of the village.

  No one moved until the raiders were just a column of dust rising from the hills again. Malek shook his fist at the drifting ochre pall.

  Someone touched his shoulder. Malek spun, fists ready. It was his brother Nils.

  “They took Larem!” he said. Malek saw something in his placid brother’s eyes he’d never seen there before: total outrage. “He’s only sixteen!”

  “I know.” Malek put a hand on Nils’s shoulder and coughed when the dust cloud swept over them. Every gasp felt like a knife in his ribs. Muddy streaks appeared on his face. “We must go after them!”

  “Wait!” Caeta held Malek back. “You can’t go. They’ll kill you!”

  He tore free from her grasp and stamped his feet in helpless fury. “Laila! They took Laila!”

  “The Elder,” said Nils, casting eyes at the windmill, sited on a low rise outside the village. There amidst the cogs and grindstones lived Nowhere’s eldest resident. “Let’s ask Calec. He’ll know what to do!”

  Old folks and children were sent back to their huts as the villagers swarmed up the hill to the mill. The airs were light, so the four vanes of the windmill quivered in place but did not turn. Without bothering to knock, Malek burst in. The others crowded in behind him.

  “Aged One! Terrible news!” Malek said.

  Calec raised his head from the knob of his walking stick. “I know. I saw.”

  No one questioned his claim. The old man couldn’t see ten steps ahead, and he was nearly deaf, too. Only a deaf man could stand to live in the mill when the works were clattering. Nonetheless, for many years they’d all known the Elder could see and hear things an ordinary man could not.

  “What shall we do, Papa?” asked Caeta.

  “Do about what?”

  “The bandits!” Malek ground his teeth. “They took our people to slave in some mine!”

  The Elder’s toothless jaw worked. “Take ’em back!”

  Malek and the others who’d lost people today roundly cheered the old man’s pronouncement, but Caeta said, “How can we? Those men are warriors. What about the ogres? How can we fight them?

  “Then do nothing!” said the Elder testily. He lowered his chin to his stick and let his sunken eyes close.

  “I’m going to try!” Malek declared. “Who’s with me?”

  Some were, and some weren’t. It disgusted Malek that not all his fellow villagers would rally around him.

  “Calves to the slaughter,” Calec muttered. “Go now, and die.”

  Mentioning calves reminded everyone of the fate of Caeta’s unfortunate beast. The memory of the ogre tusks biting out mouthfuls of still-living flesh was all too vivid.

  Seeing the increasing nu
mber of downcast faces, Malek exclaimed, “Are we beaten, then? Do we give up our loved ones without a fight?”

  “We’re not warriors,” Bakar said dolefully.

  Malek felt as though the dirt floor of the mill was crumbling beneath his feet. “I’ll go alone, if I have to!” he declared. He was almost out the door when Calec said, “Wait!”

  Malek paused. “Speak your piece, old man, and be done with it.”

  A thousand fine wrinkles appeared when the Elder screwed his ancient face into a grimace. “Would you plow a barley field with a dibble?”

  “Of course not!” A dibble was a simple hand tool, useful only in small gardens.

  “But you’ll fight an outlaw band alone—with your bare hands?”

  “If I must,” Malek replied stiffly.

  “You need a plow to cultivate a field,” said the Elder, wheezing a little as he shifted on his haunches. “For this great task, you need warriors to fight warriors.”

  “What are you saying, Papa?” asked Caeta.

  “Set a wolf to eat a wolf! The world is full of spillers of blood and wielders of iron. They afflict the land as fleas torment a dog! Go and find some to fight your battle for you. Let their blood be shed, not ours!”

  Everyone began babbling at once, debating the old man’s notion. Nils spoke for the nay-sayers when he asked, “How will we pay warriors? They’ll want steel or gold. We have nothing!”

  “The granaries are full,” replied Malek. “Despite the drought, the harvest will be fair. We can pay in grain.”

  “No mercenary will fight for barley!” scoffed Bakar.

  “Some may for a full belly,” countered the Elder. “Find the hungriest, and make them your champions.”

  After long wrangling, the farmers finally agreed. Four villagers would go forth from Nowhere to seek out warriors for hire. Malek wanted to go, and his brother Nils also volunteered. Daunted by the prospect of leaving their familiar land, no one else was quite so eager to join the expedition. Impulsively, Wilf offered to go. His twin brother Lak had been one of those taken by Rakell. Lastly Caeta announced she would go too. Someone older and more level-headed needed to go along to keep the hotheaded Malek out of trouble.

  “Where should we go?” asked Wilf, scratching his rough thatch of straw-colored hair.

  No one knew. None of them had ever been more than a day’s walk from Nowhere in their lives.

  “Go west,” growled the Elder at last. “Follow the setting sun. That way lies the path of blood.”

  Malek clasped hands with his fellow travelers. “We’ll be back in less than thirty days,” he vowed.

  They hastily packed a few supplies for the journey and departed before sundown. As they passed the well, Wilf noticed something strange. The Ancestor bore a large horizontal crack.

  Caeta and the rest paused to examine the old stone. The sandstone pillar was broken right across.

  “Must’ve happened when the ogre fell against it,” said Nils.

  “A bad sign,” Caeta murmured, running worn and callused fingers over the break.

  “Will the well dry up?” Wilf wondered.

  Malek resumed walking. He was forty steps away before he turned back to call, “Leave that broken stone before your courage dries up!”

  One by one his companions rose from the wall and joined him. Last to leave was Caeta. By the dying light of day she could see a dark stain spreading from the crack in the red stone. It spread very slowly, but when she touched the stain, her fingers were not colored or damp. The stain spreading from the broken stone did not leave a trace.

  Seven days’ journey west from Nowhere lay a border where the corners of three lands came together in one place. No country had the power to hold this shadowed spot, and none would claim it. In a way, it was another kind of nowhere, but this nowhere was well known. Many are the rogues who need a place out of the sun to heal their wounds, nurse their hates, and hatch their schemes.

  The town was called Robann, a girl’s name, but no one living remembered who Robann was. Bordered on two sides by forest and on the third by plain, it was a ramshackle affair of half-timbered houses, plank shanties, and squat, ominous stone towers. These last were strongholds of the town’s rulers, the seven gangs of Robann.

  It was a windy day, and the wind poured in the shutterless windows. Raika kept one hand over her cup, to keep the dust out. It wasn’t very good beer to start with, and a leavening of sand and dry horse dung would not improve it.

  She sat with her back against the wall of the tavern. This was a firm habit of hers. She’d seen a man stabbed to death from behind in a wineshop in Kalaman once. He was a famous general, and he trusted his loyal retainers to guard his back. One of them drove an iron blade into his master’s kidney. Raika had no retainers and trusted no one but herself to protect her life.

  The tavern was called the Thirsty Beggar. Raika thought the name was apt after she met the owner and barkeep. Taverners were usually bluff, ruddy-faced fellows with expansive waists and red noses. The proprietor of the Thirsty Beggar looked as if he had just survived the siege of Valkinord. What a dried up, hollow reed of a man.…

  As she thought of him, he appeared before her with a dented copper pitcher full of brown beer.

  “You want more?” he rasped, hefting the pitcher in his bony hands.

  “I’ve enough for now.” She kept her hand in place on the cup.

  His eyes narrowed. “This ain’t a lodging house. Taverns are for drinking. You don’t drink, you don’t sit here.”

  Raika waved a hand at the nearly empty room. “Yes, a mob is clamoring for my table, isn’t it?”

  The barkeep curled a lip and stalked away, head hunched between his narrow shoulders. Too mean to afford a bouncer, he had no way of forcing the rawboned woman from the premises if she didn’t want to go. Raika didn’t. She had no place to go.

  She hailed from Saifhum. Her home had been the galley Manarca, now at the bottom of the sea with most of her crew. All that treasure had broken the good ship’s back and put her under the waves. Bags of gold and ingots of steel, row upon row, nestled between Manarca’s ribs. Each pair of timbers framed a prince’s ransom, and Raika’s share would have been a handsome sum. Then a storm came out of the great wide ocean and broke the galley in two, and down went Raika’s fortune.

  She’d had enough of the Beggar’s cheap beer not to notice the four men when they first entered. They tiptoed in, wide-brimmed straw hats in their hands, looking distinctly out of place.

  The barkeep made a beeline to the newcomers. Evidently they didn’t want a drink, because the old scarecrow fell to berating them in a loud, screeching voice.

  “What do you think this is, a temple? You want to warm my benches without drinking my brew? Get out, miserable fools! Get out before I take a broom to your backsides!”

  “Shut up, man,” Raika found herself saying.

  “You can’t talk to me like that! This is my place!” he shouted back at her.

  “Horsedung! The Silver Circle gang owns this place. You just run it.”

  His gaunt face flashed more color than Raika had ever seen there. “That’s a lie! I pay the Silver Circle good coin every week to stay open, but I own it.”

  The cause of this dispute huddled by the tavern door, listening. While the farmers cowered, a slight figure brushed past them, making for the bar.

  The barkeep spied the newcomer. “You! Kender! I told you not to come back here!”

  “Not me, boss. You must’ve told someone else. I’ve never been here before in my life, I swear on my granny’s knickers—”

  Raika laughed. This reminded the owner of her, and he turned back to say, “Mercenary trash! Get out of my tavern!”

  She stood up, a study in contained power and careful lethargy. A full six feet tall with ebony skin, sun-washed sailor’s togs, and a thick Saifumi turban, Raika seemed to fill the low-ceilinged room. Even the kender, seated nonchalantly on a barstool, turned to gaze at her.

&nbs
p; Raika strode toward the barkeep. A head taller and far more robust, she backed the stooped shell of a man up against his own bar. She pushed her face to within a hair’s breadth of his.

  Glaring at him, she said, “What do I owe you?”

  Trembling, he replied, “Nine cups of Number One brown beer, two sticks of boar jerky, let’s see …” He counted on his fingers. “Three silvers, if you please.”

  Raika put two fingers in the purse tied to her wide sash belt and brought out a single large coin. It gleamed yellow in the dim light: a gold Saifhum florin. In a blur of motion, she slapped the big coin on the bar. Everyone in the Thirsty Beggar looked up, even the gray-bearded dwarf who’d been snoring in a back booth for the past hour. Before the owner could claim the gold, Raika’s hand flashed back to her belt and drew a short dagger.

  The men at the door, long forgotten, let out a collective gasp. Sweat trickled down the barman’s face.

  She raised the dagger alongside her head slowly. Three of the men at the door covered their eyes. One did not. Neither did the kender, already munching something he’d taken from behind the bar.

  Without a word, Raika drove the dagger home. The emaciated barkeep let out a whimper and sagged to the floor.

  She sauntered toward the door. The farmers made way for her. With one hand on the door, Raika looked back and said, “Keep the change.”

  She’d driven the dagger through the coin and into the bar. The blade was buried up to the hilt.

  The kender hopped down and squatted over the unconscious man. Clucking his lips, he went around the end of the bar and filled his pockets with hard rolls, jerky, and chunks of yellow cheese. He picked up a pitcher of foamy beer. He walked back by the passed-out proprietor, stopping only to give the dagger an experimental tug. It didn’t budge. Chuckling, the kender strolled out.

  “Did you see that? He called her ‘mercenary.’ We should talk to her!” said the youngest of the men, the one with unruly yellow hair.

  “She’s certainly strong,” agreed the lean, black-haired man, “but she won’t be interested in our offer. She’s has too much money.”