Legends of the Riftwar (85 page)

Lorrie had the sling ready, a rounded pebble in the cup, the inner thong gripped securely between thumb and forefinger, the outer pinned against her palm by the middle fingers. She came out of her crouch with a smooth steady motion, the sling beginning to move as she came erect. Then it blurred as she whipped arms and shoulders and torso into the movement, one full circle around her head. The coney rose on its hind legs, eyes and ears swivelling to find the sound, herbs dropping from its still-working jaws.

Whupp!

The stone went out in a long sweet curve, travelling almost too fast to see as more than a grey streak. It caught the rabbit on the side of the head just as it began its leap, striking with a flat smack sound that always made her wince. Still, food was food, and the rabbit died before it had more than a moment of fear–she hated pig-slaughter time far more, because the pigs were smart enough to know what the preparations meant.

The long furred shape was kicking its last as she loped over.

‘Two or three pounds at least,' she said happily, picking it up by its hind legs. Good eating. Rabbit stew with potatoes and herbs, grilled rabbit leg, minced meat pie with onions and carrots…The guts wouldn't go to waste either: the dogs and pigs loved them, and the bones would be broken and thrown onto the compost heap.

A good day
, she thought happily. Four pheasants and four fat little coneys. And since they wouldn't keep, dinner would be like a harvest festival all week.

The sun was low on the horizon as she lay at her ease beneath a great oak, daydreaming. Bram would be home from Land's End soon and she was imagining what it would be like when he came to see her. He might bring her a small gift, a hairpin, or
some fine cloth for a shawl to wear at a dance. If he lacked the means for those tokens, he'd almost certainly bring her meadow flowers. He'd hand them to her with that charming smile of his and perhaps he'd kiss her. She felt her cheeks grow warm at the thought.

At fifteen Lorrie was more than ready to start thinking about who her husband would be and Bram was the best candidate in the neighbourhood. Handsome, skilled at everything a countryman needed to know, and heir to a good farm. He was hard-working, honest and sincere, but not without intelligence and humour, qualities the hard life of a farmer often beat out of a man even as young as Bram's seventeen years. And she was sure he felt the same way about her. With a contented sigh, Lorrie remembered his handsome face, his golden hair and the special smile he'd given her when he'd come to say goodbye.

Bram's mother, Allet, wanted him to concentrate his attentions on plump, spoiled Merrybet Glidden, whose father owned the grandest farm in the area, and who put on airs that she never had to turn her hand to honest work, what with three maids and a dozen farmhands. Lorrie smiled grimly; no doubt that stuck-up Merrybet would prefer it that way, too. Then she wrinkled her nose, and grinned, settling her shoulders deeper into the soft grass beneath her. Both Bram's mother and Merrybet were going to be disappointed–Bram was going to be hers. She just knew it.

Lorrie sighed. It was time she headed back, even though it was earlier than she'd intended. The plan had been to stay out until just after dark. If this was to be her last time hunting alone, or ever, and she was going to catch some punishment anyway, Lorrie hadn't felt obliged to be considerate. Let them worry, she'd told herself. She'd wanted to have as much time as possible in the cool, green solitude of the forest amongst the musty autumnal smell of mushrooms and fallen leaves–she was going to miss it so.

But guilt was calling her home. Lorrie hated the thought of worrying her mother, and her father. Daddy would patiently take the brunt of her mother's worried temper until she turned up, listening to threats that became more dire with each passing minute. But then they'd argue about her punishment, each claiming the other was being too harsh, until they settled on something that was hardly a punishment at all. Lorrie smiled: they were so predictable.

As she stood up to go a strange feeling began to grow in her, flowing down her neck to curdle in her stomach. At first she thought it was her imagination, but then she felt a flash of something that shrilled like fear. Or even more than fear, but it was gone almost instantly. Lorrie was so far away from home that the feeling had to have come from Rip. It shook her so that she started back at a jog, trying to think of every possible thing that could cause such a spurt of terror in a six-year-old boy.

Now, as she grew closer to home, her worry increased, until she was running flat-out, her long slim legs flashing like a deer's as she hurdled bushes and ran right through a sounder of half-wild swine grubbing for acorns.

She could sense Rip, but it was as though he was asleep, and with a stab of fear she suddenly realized that she couldn't sense her mother at all. All her life there had been that contact, the warmth of her mother's presence somewhere in a corner of her mind. Never had she felt an absence there, like the aching void left by a pulled tooth. The bag holding the string of coneys and pheasants banged against her leg, and then her lungs began to burn and her heart to hammer. She ignored it all.

Gradually she became aware that she was smelling smoke.
What's burning?
she wondered. Lorrie stopped and tried to tell where the smoke was coming from. If this had been midwinter she'd have thought her father was burning off a field. But it was far too late in the year for that: the new seed was already in and
any pile of weeds being burned wouldn't put this much smoke in the air. Besides, it was too late in the day. Her mind jumped to the ashes she'd thrown out this morning. No, she thought. The barrel wasn't big enough to throw up this much smoke and it was right next to the watertub by the eaves which captured soft rainwater from the roof for the leaching process, and you could dump it right in with the pull of a rope.

A new thrill of horror ran through her stomach as she thought:
The house is on fire!

People died in fires–there was a bad one in the district every couple of years…‘Mother! Father! Rip!'

Panic left her gasping. She threw down the game-bag and left the trail, vaulting over the snake-rail fence that separated the seven-acre field from the woods. The hay had been cut, stubble only calf-high, and she raced across it like the wind.

As she dodged around a huge and ancient oak, that her father had judged too much trouble to uproot–leaving it as a marker between fields, her foot caught on a gnarled root. Her arms windmilled for balance, but it was too late. The ground rose up and struck her as she landed full length with enough force to stun; she could taste blood in her mouth–iron and salt–where her teeth had grazed the inside of a cheek.

She lay panting for a moment and was about to rise and run again when she saw two strangers. Both male; they were a rough-looking pair and Lorrie dropped down again, frightened. The brown homespun and leather of her clothing would be hard to see against the earth and faded straw, and her hair was much the same colour. The late afternoon sun was throwing long shadows, and the landscape was now painted in bright edges around opaque darkness. In the shadow of the ancient oak she was invisible to the men. They would have had to have been looking straight at her as she ran down the hill to have seen her before the fall.

The men looked exactly like the kind of men who seemed to haunt her mother's nightmares, with their greasy hair and filthy clothes and faces that bore witness to a life lived hard. They were young and strong, though; she could see the corded muscle in their necks and forearms.

They were standing over something on the ground that she couldn't see from where she lay, and one drew a tool out of a stained burlap bag. It looked like the sort of long-handled pliers the blacksmith used, but with a broad front end.

One of the men worked the handles of the tool while the other bent over something on the ground. With a cry of disgust the man with the tool yanked and stepped back, something wet and floppy held in the grip of what looked like teeth.

Lorrie realized that it was blood and meat and her breath froze in horror. If they'd butchered a sheep, why tear it apart like this? Why not cut it up with the perfectly serviceable-looking knives they wore at their waists?

‘Makes me want to puke!' the man with the pliers said. He dropped the torn meat into a sack and reached forward with the tool again. ‘Why do we have to do it this way?' He dropped another strip of meat into the sack.

‘We have to do it this way,' the other said, rising, ‘because this is the way we're being paid to do it.' He gave a snaggle-toothed grin. ‘And if I'd known you was a girl, I could have got more use out of you.'

The other man spat close by his companion's feet by way of comment, but not quite on them.

The second man studied what they'd been tearing at. ‘Do you think that's enough?' he asked.

‘It is for me,' the one with the pliers answered, dropping the tool into the sack. ‘Let's get out of here.'

They moved away as Lorrie watched. She waited until they'd vanished behind a hedge and she scuttled over to see what they'd
been doing, staying low. Glancing nervously in all directions Lorrie caught sight of one of the strangers disappearing over the hill toward her home and froze. She held her breath until she was sure they were gone, then cautiously moved forward again until she stood over what they'd been tearing apart.

For a moment Lorrie couldn't even breathe; was so shocked that all she knew was that this used to be a man. Suddenly something went snap behind her eyes, and she realized she knew him.

It was Emmet Congrove, the man of all work; she could tell by his clothes, and the thinning grey hair, and the wart on the back of his right hand, always inflamed where he picked at it.

He'd been with the family since just before Rip was born. How could they do that to him? How could anyone do such a thing?

Tearing her fascinated gaze from the terrible wounds on the body Lorrie turned aside, her hands covering her mouth. Falling to her knees she was instantly, helplessly sick; heaving and sobbing uncontrollably. Finally the nausea passed and Lorrie hugged her middle to ease the ache, spitting to clear her mouth.

A sudden stab of fear that was not her own sobered her.
Rip!
Lorrie leapt to her feet and ran toward home. Rip was in danger.
But where is Mother? Why can't I feel her?
In her heart Lorrie feared the answer, and she refused to believe it.

The smoke was growing thicker.

Coming over the hill that hid the house and barn from view she ran into a pall of black smoke so thick that she could see nothing. Lorrie stopped, choking. She heard hoof beats and the neigh of a horse, but no longer felt the panicked fear that Rip had projected just moments before. A puff of wind parted the smoke and she could see that the barn was wreathed in orangered flame, thundering where it had got to the packed hay in the loft and turning almost white along the roof tree. Beyond she thought she saw two figures on horseback riding fast down the road.

Thick sooty-black smoke poured out of every window of their house; wisps of it were coming out of the thatch too, and as she watched a few tentative tongues of flame. Lorrie let out a cry like the wordless shriek of a hawk and ran down the hill, careless of where her feet went, not minding the pounding shock as they hit the ridged furrows.

The wind shifted again, sending billows of smoke toward her, blinding her, blurring her eyes with tears. She coughed with a racking intensity, her lungs dry and burning with her effort and the harsh smoke. Then she tripped over something and fell forward with a thud. What had she tripped over? Slowly she turned, her heart hammering with dread, and looked behind her. It was her father, his throat torn out, his eyes staring sightlessly upward, his beard moving slightly in the wind that bore the smoke. His blood pooled out around him, so much blood that the ground was turning to mud beneath it. His wood-chopping axe lay not far from his outstretched hand, the edge still shiny.

She tried to scream, but her throat closed and all that came out was a pathetic squeak as she scuttled backwards across the dirt. Then with a choked sob, she forced herself to stand. For a long moment she looked down upon the grisly sight. Lorrie reached toward him, halted and drew her hand back, holding it against her chest, shaking her head in disbelief. Then she looked toward the house–her head moving in little jerks–and saw her mother, mercifully lying face down. There was blood pooled beneath her too, so much blood that Lorrie knew her mother could not possibly be alive.

Lorrie gave one sob and stopped herself. Rip was still alive! Rip had only her now, and only she could save him. Forcing herself to turn away from the horror, she wrenched her gaze away from her mother's body, turned and ran around the house, and down the road after the vanishing riders.

She ran until her lungs ached and she could taste blood in
the back of her throat. She raced up one hill and down another until she came to the top of a rise and saw them; two men, one of them struggling with a small boy.

Rip
, she thought. One of the boy's shoes fell off, and the man holding him clouted him across the side of the head. In what seemed like a moment they were out of sight around a curve in the road and soon she couldn't even hear the hollow sound of the hooves on packed dirt.

Running full out Lorrie came to the place where her brother's shoe had fallen. She reached for it and fell to her knees, gasping as she was overcome with sobs and desperation. Finally, still weeping, she forced herself up and staggered down the road in the direction the kidnappers had gone. After a few steps she stopped.

I need a horse
, she thought. The only one they had was Horace, their old plough horse. He was no champing stallion, but he was better than shanks's pony. The kidnappers couldn't keep galloping, they'd have to slow down sometime.