Tarah Woodblade (3 page)

Puppy fell to his knees and shuddered, then the guards let go and he rolled onto his side. By the time the gnome handed the towel back to his stewards, the rogue horse had stopped breathing.

Blayne kicked Lenui in the side. “I said, ‘on your horse’!”

Lenui stood and spit out the blood that filled his mouth, noticing that one of his bottom front teeth came out with it. Numbly he realized that Blayne must have landed a knuckle right on it. Only twenty-four-years-old and he’d already lost a tooth. Maggie wouldn’t be happy about that. He climbed the set of stirrups and swung his leg over the saddle.

“I told you not to get attached to them critters!” his uncle said, then walked over to talk to the steward.

Lenui swallowed and ignored the snickers of the other smugglers as he looked at Puppy’s unmoving form. He clenched his fists. This was wrong. This was all wrong. He knew what his mother would have said. Maggie would have called this business. What the scholar did with his property was none of his concern. But his daddy would’ve seen things different. He would have told Lenui that your animals needed to be treated with kindness and respect. He wouldn’t have sold any animal to someone that would mistreat it. He wouldn’t have allowed what just happened either. But there was nothing Lenui could do about it now. Puppy was dead. If he tried to go after the scholar now, the gnome warrior would kill him and the other dwarves wouldn’t lift a finger to help.

Scholar Abernathy lifted the scepter and Lenui noticed that it looked completely clean of blood. The gnome nodded and handed the scepter to a steward. “Remove its ears and tail and bring them back with us,” Abernathy instructed, then wiped his face and hands with the towel. “The rest can be left to rot.”

The scholar retrieved his book from the steward and hummed to himself as he walked back to the camel. He opened the book, already reading as he climbed into its awkward saddle. If Lenui had a bow he would have shot him, consequences be damned.

“Uh, you sure you want to just leave the rogue there?” Blayne asked the black-sashed steward, one eyebrow raised. “Wizards’d pay good money fer a whole rogue horse carcass.”

“Would you like to buy it back from us?” asked the black-sashed steward.

Blayne frowned and rubbed his chin as he thought about it. “Well, uh . . .”

One of the other stewards whispered something in her ear and she shrugged. “It seems that the High Scholar may be interested in your second rogue horse. Would you tell Pa Cragstalker we will be contacting him soon in regards to the beast?”

Blayne eyed Puppy’s corpse. “Well, I dunno. Pa’s got other buyers interested-.”

She reached into her robes and pulled out a bulging pouch. “If Pa promises to hold it for the next six months in case High Scholar Abernathy wants it we will include a fifty gold bonus.”

“Fifty gold, huh?” Blayne mused.

“And you can keep this one’s corpse to do with it what you will,” she added with a roll of her eyes.

“You got it,” Blayne said with a smile and took the pouch from her hands.

The buyers soon left. Lenui stared hollowly as he watched the others make a litter to drag Puppy’s remains on. He was glad they didn’t tell him to help. He would have punched all of them.

Blayne saw the look on his face and sidled his horse next to him. “Yer lucky Maggie’s my sister or I’d kill you fer the way you acted back there.”

“I ain’t surprised,” Lenui said. “Hell, maybe you should just kill me now and deal with momma later.”

When they got back to the camp, Blayne had Lenui stripped and bound to a tree and lashed him bloody. Lenui refused to cry out or apologize and was quiet for most of the three-week trip back to Corntown. Blayne thought him sufficiently cowed, but Lenui was spending the majority of his time trying to figure out what he was going to do when they got home. He finally made his decision the day before they arrived.

Lenui put on a brave face when they got back. He laughed about the incident with Pa Cragstalker and his mother. He waited a few days before he snuck over to the rogue horse’s pen in the middle of the night.

“Hey, Monkeyface!” Lenui whispered.

“Wee!” shouted a rough voice from the darkness. Monkeyface was smarter than Puppy. It couldn’t pronounce many words, but it did remember the last part of his name.

A few moments later, the rogue horse approached the side of the pen where Lenui stood. It had the front end of an enormous gorilla, the mid section of a horse, and the rear end of a mountain cat. Its huge face stretched unto a toothy smile. “Wee!”

Lenui hopped over the fence and scratched behind its horse-like ears.

“Come on, boy,” he said. “I think it’s about dag-gum time we set you free.”

Chapter One

“You got money on ya?” asked one of the scruffy men, an evil gleam in his eye.

Tarah fought down her nerves and breathed in the situation using all the training her papa and grampa had given her. She sensed three men altogether, but the two standing in front of her were the immediate threat. They were unshaven and filthy and wore cast-off armor that had been badly damaged and messily repaired. She couldn’t see the third man, but she could hear him shifting his feet behind the bushes.

“Money? Why, are you beggars?” Tarah asked, arching one eyebrow coolly. This wasn’t good. These men were likely leftovers from the war. They wore swords, but didn’t move like trained soldiers so that meant they were probably Ewzad Vriil’s men.

“Beggars?” said the man, frowning. He wore a leather half-helm and his eyes were as yellow as his teeth.

“You asked for money,” she reminded. Tarah forced her body to remain relaxed. She planted her quarterstaff in the ground casually as if it were no more than a walking stick, but she knew that it was imposing. The wood was red as blood and the runes carved into it suggested unknown magic. “Strange. I wasn’t expecting any beggars this far from Sampo. I didn’t bother to bring any coppers to throw to you.”

The man’s sneer turned into a snarl and he drew his sword. The weapon was a longsword and of a much higher quality than she had noticed before. The pommel was worn and dirty but the blade was polished and there were a series of runes impressed along its length. It could have magic. “Does a beggar carry a sword like this?”

Tarah’s hand tightened slightly on her staff, but otherwise she didn’t allow any of her anxiety to show. She just wanted to get to Sampo. Why couldn’t they have been bears? She could handle three bears. Wild beasts were predictable. It was men she had difficulty dealing with.

“So not beggars.” She shrugged and rubbed her chin, giving them a look that suggested mild curiosity. All the while she kept her ears open for sounds of an arrow being drawn from the bushes. “Maybe you’re tax collectors then? Funny, you don’t smell like tax collectors.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said the second man. He had a thinning mop of greasy hair that had probably been blond once. A cruel scar ran across his forehead. He laughed, but Tarah noted that his laugh was forced. He wasn’t as confident as the first man. “We’re tax men. Here to collect our fees.”

“You accept broken bones as payment?” she asked, giving him a bored look. Tarah twirled her quarterstaff with her right hand and planted it in the ground again. Inwardly she calculated how long it would take her to get to the man in the bushes. She hadn’t heard the creak of a bow being pulled back, but he could be readying a throwing weapon.

“You? Break our bones?” said the man with the fancy sword. He wasn’t as impressed by her act. “You’re big for a girl maybe, but no match for us.” He looked her up and down. “Least you sound like a girl. Wouldn’t know it by looking at you.”

Tarah’s jaw clenched. She knew what she looked like well enough. She was indeed tall for a woman, and her frame was more muscular than feminine, especially in her armor. At least he hadn’t made fun of her face yet.

“Ugly though,” the man continued with a snort. He looked at the thin-haired man. “What do you think, Hal? This a girl?”

Tarah’s hand tightened on her staff further, her arm muscles stiffening. She didn’t like that his words bothered her. She should have been used to the ridicule by now. She had always been plain, even as a child, and that was before the fight that bent her nose. Still, being called ugly always riled her up. She refused to let her feelings show and forced a yawn instead.

The first man’s flippant attitude had put his friend at ease. Hal smiled. “Hard to tell what she is under that leather armor of hers, Eddy. It looks nasty. What’s it made of? Dirty dog hides?”

“Moonrats,” Tarah replied and both men’s eyes widened as they looked at it closer. These men were a bit thick. Most recognized it right away. The dead gray color of the fur was one giveaway. Not to mention the moonrat tails that hung at her waistline, the shriveled hands on the ends of the tails were still intact. “They ain’t good eating so I had to do something with ‘em.”

The men took a step back. Moonrats were feared, especially as their numbers had grown during the war. But the shock on Eddy’s face didn’t last long. His sneer returned. “I know who you are. You’re Tarah Woodblade aren’t you? That
hero
?”

The sarcasm in the man’s voice shook her. She knew just how little of a hero she was. She had come back to face her actions and had been expecting the ridicule, but to hear it from this bandit . . . She made herself give her grampa’s teachings one last chance.

“That’s right,” she said confidently.

“Too bad. See, we got a special hero tax,” Eddy said. “Give us your money and weapons and we’ll let you leave . . . unmolested.”

“Unmolested?” Tarah sighed, shaking her head. “If you know who I am and you’re determined to be bandits, I guess I’ve got no choice.”

She shrugged the small pack she carried off of her shoulders. She set it onto the ground next to her, then removed her bow and quiver and laid them on top of it. Eddy grinned, thinking he had cowed her, but Tarah gripped her red staff in both hands and assumed an attack posture.

She gave him a menacing grin of her own. “I’m glad you decided not to be beggars. See, Tarah Woodblade doesn’t kill beggars. But I have been thinking of making my next set of armor out of bandit skin.”

Hal took two more steps back, his face white, but Eddy’s smile broadened. “You know, by what I seen, moonrat skin is pretty thin. I bet it makes a terrible armor.”

The man gave a slight nod and there was a rustle in the bushes. Before Tarah could turn, she felt a thump in her back. It had been a throwing knife after all. She heard the blade fall to the leafy ground. Eddy had been right about the thickness of moonrat skin. That was why her grampa had reinforced the leather with treated fiber mesh. Luckily the blade hadn’t hit a seam.

Tarah turned and ran for the bushes. The hidden man stood up in surprise and drew his sword. Tarah leapt and swung her staff down at his head. The man was able to bring his sword up in time to block, but the strength of her swing, assisted by her staff’s weighted core, slammed the man’s sword blade into his forehead and he crumpled to the ground.

Tarah didn’t have time to wonder if he was dead. She heard a roar behind her and twisted around to find Eddy bearing down on her, his polished longsword swinging. She swung one end of her staff up under the blade, knocking it high. Its keen edge missed her head by inches and she brought the other end of her staff down low, catching the side of Eddy’s right knee.

There was a faint popping sound and the knee bent in a way it shouldn’t have, but the man didn’t even wince. He spun around on his left leg, swinging his sword in a heavy two-handed slash. She blocked the attack, but the strength of the blow quivered through the wood.

Tarah’s eyes widened as she saw his face. Eddy’s mouth was twisted in a snarl, his eyes burning with anger. In her experience, most bandits gave up after a blow to the knee, but this man fought like a berserker. She had seen that same look in the eyes of her papa when he fought. Could this man have been one of them?

The thought slowed her reaction time and she didn’t make a counterstrike. He spun again, bringing his sword around at her other side, but as he swung, he shifted his weight to his right knee. His leg gave way and he stumbled to the side, crying out in pain.  Tarah took a step back, letting the blade cleave the air where she had been standing. He fell to his side.

No, she told herself, this man wasn’t like her papa. He fought with rage, but not with skill. Her eyes darted towards his companion, but Hal wasn’t attacking. He was backing away, fear in his eyes. She gave him her best glower and he turned and ran. She took a deep breath and looked back to Eddy.

“Do you consider your knee payment enough?” she asked. “Or do I need to keep breaking you?”

“I’ll kill you!” he shouted and tried to climb back to his feet.

“I wouldn’t do that,” she warned. “You got some torn ligaments. You try to fight on that knee and you could do permanent damage.”

He roared and stabbed his sword into the ground to help him push to his feet. He stood, heavily favoring his right leg, and pulled the sword back out of the ground. She shook her head. She was no longer afraid, but she was still unsure how to deal with him. She thought on it as he limped towards her.

Her papa wouldn’t show mercy to a bandit. He’d say it’s best to kill the man. That way he could never be a threat to her or anyone else. Grampa Rolf would say leaving dead bodies behind was to be avoided. It would be better to knock him unconscious and take his sword; teach him a lesson.

Eddy reared back and as he swung his sword at her again she made her decision.

She swung one end of her staff up, knocking his attack to the side, and brought the other end around, connecting with the side of his knee again. This time the joint gave way completely. He screamed but refused to fall, she twirled her staff and connected with a blow to the back to his head that silenced him and dropped him to the ground.

She stood over his unconscious form and frowned. Why had she seen her papa in this man? They were nothing alike.

Tarah crouched beside him and removed his leather half-helm. She felt the wound behind his head and nodded. The helm had done its job as she had hoped and his skull was intact. She hadn’t killed him like her papa would have done, but with that knee, the man wouldn’t be accosting people in the woods again.