Dragon Bones (Hurog #1)(47)

At my approach, the village women bunched in a group with the children, including the bloodstained child molested by the bandits, in the middle like a herd of mares facing down a pack of wolves. I looked around for any of my missing companions and saw Bastilla emerging from the woods.

Pansy danced in place. War-trained, the smell of blood excited him rather than scared him. To me, it smelled like butchering time in the fall, and I purposely ignored that it was men not beef we'd been slaughtering. You learn to do that or be sick at every fight.

"Bastilla, have you seen Ciarra?"

"Not since she chased one that way," she motioned through the huts with her bloodied sword.

I took Pansy back through the line of huts and onto the main street. Feather stood ground-tied in front of a sturdy-looking building across the way and snorted at our approach. There was no sound of battle inside the hut.

Raw fear made my ears pound with the sound of my pulse and converted to anger. I'd told her to stay on her horse. I dismounted slowly. Speed didn't matter, because whatever had happened in that hut was already over.

I opened the door and stepped into the doorway. At first, my eyes, adjusted to the sun, I couldn't see anything at all. Something attacked me, hit me hard in the ribs.

My attacker was too close for a sword, so I tossed mine and grabbed my dagger before I saw it was Ciarra I held, her head buried against me. I hauled her out of the hut and looked her over quickly. Her sword was covered in drying blood as was her clothing from chest downward. Her whole body shook, but I wasn't much better: I'd almost stabbed her.

"Are you hurt?" I said, my voice angry and raw.

She shook her head and then pointed urgently at the hut.

I grabbed my sword from where I'd tossed it and cautiously stepped into the hut. It was little bigger than one of the stalls at Hurog. A rope bed was strung up in the left corner, the fireplace in the right. In the close quarters, the smell of sliced entrails was unmistakable, but I had to wait until my eyes adjusted to the darkness before I saw him.

The bandit was curled around his belly wound, but his eyes were open and alive. Ciarra had gotten the first blow in, and it was fatal, eventually. Underfed, he was probably Tosten's age, but his beardless, tearstained face looked younger.

My anger at Ciarra's recklessness fled far too easily and left me weak with horror.

"Please," he gasped in some heavy Oranstonian dialect.

I saw in his eyes that he knew his wound was mortal. He knew what awaited him if my courage wasn't high enough. Seleg, I thought, Seleg wouldn't have left him here to suffer. I raised my dagger, then let my hand drop. Seleg would have saved him. Killing children was for brutal men like my father...and me.

I renewed my grip and slid the dagger's sharp blade into the base of his brain, just as Stala had taught me. For a man of my strength and speed it was the fastest, surest way to kill. He didn't even have time to flinch.

I wiped both my sword and knife clean on his shirt and sheathed them. Then I picked him up and carried him out of the hut. Ciarra looked at me, then turned her face into Feather's mane. Her shoulders heaved with silent sobs. I left her there.

Bastilla was trying to talk to the women when I came around the hut. From the frustrated look on her face, she wasn't getting very far; I realized that she couldn't speak Oranstonian, and they were refusing to understand Tallvenish. There were three bodies in a pile, and I set the boy I carried beside them.

"Leave them, Bastilla," I said in clear if simple Oranstonian. My father had been baffled by my ability to pick up languages, though he said I sounded as stupid in one as I did in any other. "They'll settle down after we leave without hurting them. If you killed anyone, you need to bring the body here. We need to burn the corpses so they won't haunt this place." I repeated what I said in Tallvenish for Bastilla's sake. My voice sounded strangely harsh in my ears.

Oreg and Tosten rode in at that point. Tosten's horse was dripping mud and trembling.

"Fell in a bog," Tosten said shortly.

"We need to gather the bodies," I said.

Tosten gave me an exasperated look. "My horse isn't up to it."

"I'll get them," offered Oreg, glancing from my face to Tosten's and shaking his head slightly at me.

I bit my tongue on what I'd been about to say. It wasn't fair to take out my horror on Tosten. He looked pale and shaken. Unless tavern life in Tyrfannig was more interesting than I thought, Tosten had killed for the first time today.

Bastilla looked cool and professional, like she'd killed bandits before. Either her time as a slave had hardened her to death, or there were things going on in the Cholyte temples I didn't want to know about. Oreg, like Bastilla, looked as if he killed on a daily basis. The thought of picking up the bandits' dead bodies hadn't bothered him at all.

Tosten threw a leg over his horse's withers and slid off. He gave me a humiliated look, stuffed his reins in my hands, then bolted for some bushes. I patted his horse's neck and led him a bit to make sure he wasn't lame. The terrified looks I was getting from the village women were making me uncomfortable.

Tosten looked paler when he came to take his horse, and he wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Stala says some of the most hardened soldiers she knows are sick after every battle," I said. It didn't seem to help, so I gave him something to do. "Ciarra needs you. She stabbed a man in the stomach. I finished him off, but it was rough. She's over there." I pointed to the other side of the huts.