Page 50 of Swordheart
“Her shade give you strength,” said Sarkis politely. “Their father raised them?”
“Yes. He’s a good man. I’ve only met him a few times, though.”
She fell silent again. Sarkis, never skilled at small talk, plowed forward. “Do you have no other family, then?”
“Ironic, isn’t it? I was the middle of five. There were too many of us growing up, always underfoot and too many mouths to feed, and here I am, the only one left. My two younger sisters died of fever a week apart. My brother went off to the mines after Mother died, and he died in a collapse not long after I married. And I already told you about Anatilya.”
“Alltheir shades give you strength,” said Sarkis.Well done. You try to distract her from an unpleasant memory, and you plow right into her entire family being dead. Excellent work.
In the Weeping Lands, her story would not be surprising. It was a hard land, after all. He wondered if it was unusual here, to lose your parents and all four siblings, your husband, and anyone else to care for you.
“I’m sorry,” he added.
Halla shrugged. “Well, someone’s always got to be the last one standing, don’t they? I’m good at planning funerals, anyway. And it’s awful to say, but I probably handled it better than some of the others would have. My brother would have drunk himself to death before too long, mine or not. Anatilya was always tough as nails, but the twins… gods have mercy. They’d probably still be crying. Without stopping, I mean. They always cried over every little thing, and if one of them started, the other one would join in, even if she didn’t know what she was crying about…”
It took Sarkis very little coaxing to get her talking after that. The picture she painted of her childhood was not an easy one, although she remembered it fondly. Her mother had been a fierce, flawed woman who loved her children very much but was hard-pressed to care for all of them. A string of poorly chosen men hadn’t helped in that regard.
When he found out that Halla hadn’t even met her father, that the man had fled as soon as he learned his lover was pregnant, Sarkis’s jaw muscles ached from clenching.
“In the Weeping Lands, he would have been hunted down by her relatives for such a slight,” he said. “And his steading made to pay reparations.”
“Well, she didn’t have any relatives to do the hunting,” said Halla practically. “I mean, she had two children at that point, but you don’t put a five-year-old on a horse and tell her to go bring a man back, dead or alive. Or do they do that in the Weeping Lands, too?”
“We try to wait until the child is at least six for that,” said Sarkis, deadpan.
“You… oh!” She swatted his arm. “Gods, for a minute there…”
He ducked his head, pleased to have steered the conversation away from dangerous ground.
They went on in silence for a little while after that. Sarkis watched an ox cart approach, but it rumbled past with only a polite nod from the driver.
“Out of Amalcross,” said Halla. “We’re getting close.”
It was only a few minutes later that Sarkis heard hoofbeats on the road, and did not like the sound of them.
It sounded like two horses moving at a gallop. The horses were obviously being poorly used—their hooves weren’t hitting the ground evenly, there was a trace of a stumble, and he thought one might even be limping—and of course there were perfectly legitimate reasons why two riders should be galloping hard down a small rural road, but by this point, Sarkis had already thrown Halla into the ditch and leapt in after her, throwing his ragged cloak over them both.
“Ow,” mumbled Halla, from somewhere under his right elbow.
Sarkis cocked his head, waiting. Surely there was no reasonfor the riders to be looking for anyone in the ditches… surely the constables of Halla’s town would not still be riding hell-for-leather so many days after the fact…
The hoofbeats slowed, then stopped. Sarkis heard the jingle of tack as a rider dismounted.
Great god’s hells.
“You there! Why are you hiding in a ditch?”
“Here we go,” said Halla, under her breath.
There was no point in pretending they weren’t. Sarkis stood, helping Halla to her feet.
The horses were indeed tired. They were blowing and panting and one was favoring a hoof just a little. Sarkis had a strong desire to yell at the riders for mistreating their beasts.
The riders were odd. One wore light armor, rather like Sarkis, and had a fierce scowl… again, probably rather like Sarkis.
The other, the one who had dismounted, was a lean man with close-cropped hair. He wore rich, dark blue, almost indigo, with an odd silver symbol across his chest—a teardrop shape that seemed to fan out at the top into tendrils.
“Priests of the Hanged Mother,” said Halla softly.
