And Night Descends (The Third Book of the Small Gods Series) (18 page)

They continued to ride and the day’s fragrance changed and changed again. She detected not just the aroma of the forest warmed by the sun’s rays, but also the sweetness of drying grass, and a salty bouquet she guessed must be the sea. Excited relief brewed inside her, but she resisted the urge to ask Juddah again if they were near. She’d found him a man of few words and could already guess his vague response.

A short time later, he reined their steed to a stop with an accompanying ‘whoa.’ A few heartbeats passed before he directed words to his riding companion.

“We’re here,” he said, shifting his weight.

Ailyssa took the action to mean he intended to dismount, so moved her grip from his coveralls stiff with grease to the edge of the hard leather saddle. He slid off the horse, the heel of his boot bumping her arm. She jerked away from the impact, clutching her forearm, the movement unbalancing her. A fearful hoot escaped her throat as she slid sideways, flailing to regain her hold on the saddle, but she missed. The horse’s firm haunches slipped from under her and she braced to hit the ground.

Instead, she fell into Juddah’s arms and he caught her for a second time. He held her awkwardly for a moment, the smell of his stale sweat permeating her nostrils and obliterating all others, then he set her down and took a step away.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I think so,” Ailyssa said rubbing the sore spot on her forearm. Her heart continued fluttering against her ribs, its pace slowing to normal.

“Wait here while I take care of the horse.”

Ailyssa nodded and a breeze caressed her as Juddah swept past, then the horse’s hooves tapped soft ground. She waited with her arms crossed for her rescuer’s return, finally inhaling air not tainted by his unwashed flesh.

The salty tang was strong, but smells mingled with it: the grass she’d detected before, the warmth of fresh-turned earth, old manure, and another odor she didn’t recognize, a sour fragrance she wasn’t sure she wanted to name.

After a short while in which Ailyssa listened to Juddah removing the saddle from their steed, the man returned and the cloud of sweet, stale sweat came with him. He stood close for a few heartbeats, breathing heavily before he spoke.

“Take my arm.”

Ailyssa hesitated but then reached out tentatively in her blindness. Her fingers found thick hair on his forearm as he’d rolled up his sleeves while unsaddling the horse. With her hand upon him, he led her away from the spot where she’d dismounted.

Long grass tickled the soles of her feet as they walked. A gentle wind rustled through the blades and made the boards of an unseen structure creak. High above, the cries of gulls reached her ears; she longed to see them wheeling through the sky.

The tall grass grew sparse, then disappeared, and they crossed dirt scattered with rocks. Pebbles pressed into her feet, occasionally causing her pain, but she ignored their bites, concentrating on keeping her worry and fears at bay and counting her steps to distract herself. Juddah didn’t speak as he guided her across what she assumed to be his yard, but his lack of verbosity caused no surprise in her; had she counted the words he’d spoken over the course of their journey on her fingers and toes, she’d have a few left over.

The temperature on her cheeks changed, suggesting they’d passed into shadow. Beneath the trees of a forest? The shade cast by a building? The creak of boards coaxed by a breath of wind led her to suspect the latter. Soon after, they stopped and a door handle rattled, dispelling any question.

“This is where you’ll stay,” Juddah said. “For now.”

The handle rattled again and he stepped back, swinging the door open with a moan that sounded to her more akin to rope rubbing on wood than hinges. Dank air wafted out of the building, redolent of stale hay, fresh manure, and that other, sour odor she’d detected before, but stronger. She forced a smile of thanks on her lips and nodded her head in case Juddah was gazing upon her.

The big man stepped into the doorway, dragging her along with him, but came to a jarring halt and Ailyssa walked into the back of him.

“Kooj?” he said, the word tinted with notes of surprise and distress. “Kooj!”

Juddah shook Ailyssa’s grip off his arm and rushed away, leaving her without support, and a wave of vertigo swirled around her. She reached out with the hand she’d used to hold on to her rescuer and found the door frame, a splinter from the aged wood pricking her finger. She stuck the injured digit in her mouth and leaned her shoulder against the lintel, thankful to be steady again as she wondered who or what Kooj was. A heartbeat later, a dog whined in its throat, and she suspected she knew the answer.

“Kooj, what happened?”

Juddah’s voice floated from in front and to the right of her, where the dog’s cry had come from. The animal whined again.

“Oh, Kooj.”

Juddah’s feet shuffled and scraped against the dirt floor and, for an instant, no other sounds came. Then the dog cried once more and Juddah spoke.

“You did this,” he accused, the words sounding as though he’d spoken them from between clenched teeth.

Ailyssa’s unseeing eyes opened in surprise and she shook her head. How could he think she’d hurt his pet when she hadn’t been here?

“You did this and you’re gonna pay.”

The Goddess Mother cowered against the door frame, an arm raised in front of her face as the man’s footsteps tromped across the dirt floor. She didn’t realize they headed away from her until she heard the meaty thunk of a fist or foot striking flesh.

Another impact, followed by the dog’s cry. Was he beating the animal he’d sounded concerned about? Ailyssa lowered her arm, leaned in, listening, appalled. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Amongst the sound of the drubbing, Ailyssa heard the whoosh of breath leaving lungs. The dog whined, its pained expression emanating from a different place than the thud of punches and kicks. She gripped the door frame tight with her fingers, nails digging into wood only a season or two from rotten.

A man moaned.

Ailyssa held her breath. Was it Juddah? Or was someone else in the building?

Another thump. Another thud. A whispered word with a pleading tone; a groan. She realized these last didn’t belong to the man who’d rescued her. One more blow fell, then all other sounds became lost to the heavy pant of Juddah’s breath.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked between heaving breaths.

No response. After a few heartbeats, the man’s footsteps crossed the floor again. They stopped to Ailyssa’s right, then shuffled in the dirt. The dog whined, Juddah grunted with effort, and his footsteps resumed, coming closer to her.

Ailyssa shrank away, back pressed against the jamb. Juddah squeezed through the space between her and the other side of the door, fur too thick to be his brushing against her arms and chest. She realized he must be carrying the dog he’d called Kooj. He stopped when he’d pushed past her.

“Get in there,” he said, breathless.

A shiver shook its way up Ailyssa’s spine and she swallowed hard, but didn’t move. She clutched the door frame at her back with both hands like a chunk of driftwood keeping her from drowning.

“Get in the barn!” Juddah bellowed.

Shocked by his sudden ferocity, Ailyssa released her grip on the lintel and stumbled into the building, her bare feet scuffing in the dirt. She parted her lips to ask her rescuer what happened, what she might do to help, but the belabored slam of the door closing cut off her words. The bang made her jump; the thunk of a bar sliding into place, locking her in, followed.

Ailyssa stood facing the door, frightened to turn around and discover what or who he’d left her in the barn with despite—perhaps because of—her inability to see. Outside, Juddah’s heavy steps crunched away across the yard, his gait changing as he climbed a short set of wooden steps. His footsteps disappeared, leaving Ailyssa to the silence of the barn.

She closed her eyes and listened. The wind lifted something hanging on the outside wall of the barn and let it drop with a gentle bang. A bird twittered in the eaves overhead. A cow lowed. Ailyssa turned, careful not to make too much noise with her feet, then settled again, waiting. Blood hammered through her veins, making it difficult to detect anything but the pounding of her heart. After a short time, she realized she’d have to take matters into her own hands.

“Hello?”

The word echoed up to the roof and she heard a sound that might have been a cow’s tail swatting away a fly, but no other response. The muscles in her jaw twitched, pulling her mouth into a frightened grimace. She took a half-step forward, the sole of her foot dragging along the dirt to prevent her from tripping over anything laid in her path.

“Hello?”

Whether the answering groan was meant as a response or not, it let her know she was not alone. It came from the far side of the room.

“Who’s there?”

A long pause, then another moan.

“Are you all right?”

Labored breathing. The bird twittered, the wind sighed.

Ailyssa crouched, then got down on hands and knees. She had no way of knowing what might lay between her and the beaten man, and she didn’t want to trip and hurt herself like she did alone in the forest, so she shuffled forward, lifting one hand after the other then placing them carefully, dragging her knees and toes in the dirt. Pebbles and clumps of earth or dried manure skittered across the floor.

“Hello?”

The word squeezed out of her throat choked tight with fear. She understood the chance she was taking reaching out to this stranger locked in a barn, but could it be any worse than relying upon the man who’d put both of them here and beaten the fellow? Her entire life, she’d learned the way of the Goddess, and part of the gospel taught her to offer help and comfort whenever it could be given. Judging by the man’s moans, he was in need.

Ailyssa continued across the floor, pausing when she touched cool metal. She ran her fingers along the crude links of the chain, following the end away from the man’s groans to find it locked onto a stout spike.

She followed the chain the other way, listening to the quiet clink of metal as her fingers passed along its surface. Her palm touched a muddy spot on the floor—spilt water? Blood? She jerked away, wiping it on the skirt of her smock.

A few more paces and she’d come close enough to make out the breath wheezing in and out of the man’s lungs. She hesitated, unsure how to proceed.

“Are you all right?” No response. “I am N’th Ail…I am Ailyssa. I won’t hurt you.”

A sighing moan answered her, but no words, leaving her to wonder if the mystery stranger could speak. He might have lost his voice as she’d been deprived of her sight. After a sigh of her own, she continued following the chain.

A distance equal to the length of her own arm later, her fingers touched a metal cuff. Her hand slid off it and brushed the man’s leg. The white blindness of her vision disappeared, replaced by darkness and vague lines.

Ailyssa gasped and leaned away, hands covering her mouth as the bright haze returned to her eyes. She blinked hard, as though she might clear it. As it had since she woke after her expulsion, it remained.

What happened?

The flash had occurred at the precise moment her fingers touched the stranger. But how could that be possible? The man moaned again, and Ailyssa wondered if he did so in pain or an attempt to communicate.

“I…” She licked her lips, swallowed hard, then whispered: “I won’t hurt you.”

She reached out with one shaking hand, the other still covering her mouth. Her gut roiled with a nauseating concoction of fear, confusion, and excitement. Warm breath spilled between her fingers. The bird twittered overhead; her hand crossed the space between her and the stranger, came to rest on his ankle beside the metal cuff.

Darkness flashed in her vision again, spinning her head with vertigo, but she kept her touch on him, wrapping her grip around his ankle to keep from tumbling backward. In the dark, lines formed again, then shapes. Her breath shortened, her heart beat fast.

And she gazed upon the man’s face.

XIX Horace—Dead End

Horace hauled himself up the modest boulder, foot slippin’ once before he reached the top to sit for a rest.

Thrice the sun’d set, and each time it rose the next mornin’, same as always, though the ol’ sailor hardly expected it to. Not a single wink o’ sleep did he get any o’ those nights, so far as he knew. Between the waves rollin’ onto the shore and rattlin’ the bones what he suspected might belong to men he’d known on the Devil, the wind makin’ whispery sounds like voices in the trees, and the painful ache in his belly, sleep were an acquaintance Horace weren’t sure he’d ever make again. His body ached for a night o’ rest and his gut were tight with hunger, but weren’t nothin’ to give them but sittin’ a spell for the one and suckin’ on rocks for the other.

He stretched his neck to peek past the last rock he’d climbed and thought he caught the same glimpse o’ movement he’d noticed when he looked before. It were gone again quick as it came; quick enough the ol’ sailor weren’t sure he’d seen it at all. Might be someone else on the beach, or hunger and lack o’ sleep playin’ him for a fool. He hoped for the latter but didn’t have the sack to find out for sure.

With a sigh a hair’s breadth this side o’ defeat, Horace glanced ‘round. The land had grown up alongside the shore into a reddish-brown wall o’ clay. Trees began part way up, their thick trunks sometimes tiltin’ as though the ground wanted to give out underneath them and twisted roots stickin’ out here and there.

On the other side o’ him were the sea, just like the sea always were. The waves’d grown along with the land, no longer rollin’ onto the rocky shore but doin’ somethin’ much closer to crashin’.

Ahead lay the cliff what Horace were makin’ for without knowin’ why he should.

“Should’ve gone back the first day when you had the chance.” He raised his eyes and looked along the beach but saw nothin’ amongst the expanse o’ rock. “Now somethin’ might be after you. Dummy.”

His shoulders rose and fell with a sigh what did nothin’ to improve his spirit nor his energy, but he made himself climb to his feet, at any rate. The sea breeze whipped at his sweat-dampened and stinkin’ clothes, makin’ him teeter atop the boulder and come near topplin’ off. He got his balance back, heart poundin’ against his ribs, and inched his way down the other side.