The Hunter's Mark Pt. 03

Two years after Sally Atkins left the Isle of Song, she rode a horse up a hillside, nervous as it picked its way through turned-over boulders, mole holes and pits of ash where there had been campfires. The sky above was first blue, then grey, and eventually it turned a sick shade of black-streaked yellow. It was like no sunset she had ever seen.

She never would have come here on her own. But next to her, on his own horse, rode her reason for being here. He called himself Uncle June, and he was the mayor of the town on the hilltop, or so he said, and he was paying for her help to scare off the thieves who had taken his town from him. She was with him half for the money and half because his grandfatherly manner had won her over. She had a soft spot, it seemed, for old people.

She looked around at the tree stumps and ashy tufts of grass and asked him, "I don't mean any offense, but why do you want this place?"

The scruffy old man laughed. "It may not look so pretty, not like much to look at at all, but they've found gold in these hills. There's no better place to be mayor, not for a week's ride!"

"Why is the air like this? We're on a hill, and I can't even see for one bowshot."

He waved her concern away. "People clearing the hillsides, looking for paydirt. And taking advantage of all the easy firewood." He nodded as if she had said something. "Not much to your liking, eh? Very different to the Isle of Song."

She hadn't told him where she was from, but she wasn't surprised he guessed it. The women here on the mainland were nothing like her.

"And how agreeable would I find the Isle, do you suppose? Of course, but... what is it like there?"

"Different, it's very different..." She ached to change the subject. "I left the island and joined the crew of the Razo-- that was a merchant ship-- and I thought I'd be great there, because I knew how to sail. But sailing around the island and sailing across the whole ocean were two completely different things. I was on that ship a whole year, and nothing happened. Nothing at all." She shook her head. "Joining that crew was the worst decision I ever made. I didn't know any of the things they expected me to, the food was rot and I was the only woman on the crew."

"You sound just like a daughter I had..."

Sally sincerely wanted to hear about his daughter, but there was something she needed to know. "You said we'd have help for this, didn't you? Where is it?"

Uncle June frowned for the first time that day. He walked his horse around the corners of the dusty old cabin in front of them. "He should be right here. Said he'd be, and he knew he'd be paid for it too! Ah, this is a shame..."

"I am here," said a new voice, rough but uncertain at the same time. It belonged to a pale, ruddy face under a mane of shabby black hair, peeking over the next ridge. It shifted, and a man vaulted over, lanky and sinewy and with black stains of dirt on his elbows and knees. His mouth hung a little open, and it made him look dull, but there was nothing dull about his eyes. They frightened her. She saw fierce determination in them, and a willingness to kill. His clothes didn't help. They were torn and patched so much that he looked like he'd risen from the grave, and not after a peaceful death.

There was a little boy next to him. Sally did a double-take, but the boy seemed to find nothing strange about standing next to such a savage-looking man. On closer look, she noticed that his black hair and thin frame and narrow face matched the man's so closely that they must have been father and son.

Uncle June blinked at them. "Didn't you know this cabin was for you, young man? You didn't have to wait outside like this!"

The boy aimed an accusing look at his father. "See? I told you!"

"Were you waiting outside this whole time?" the mayor's face twisted with pity.

The man shrugged. "It wasn't so bad." He pointed back at a little camp dug into the hillside. "It was nice there."

"Well," said Uncle June, politely clearing his throat, "Sally, this young fellow is Jens. Jens, this is the rest of the help, Sally Atkinson."

"Actually," she said, "It's Atkins."

"Oh! I do apologize, miss-- this is Atkins. Now, if there's no more to do before we go, let's get to it! We'll all be more comfortable when we're sitting back in my hall. We'll have a nice fire with all the cheap firewood, some full smoking pipes and cider aplenty!"

Jens and the boy went back to their camp and, with amazing speed, they took it down. Tents and cookware and all kinds of unidentifiable bric-a-brac were inhaled into two little rucksacks, and that was it. It was as if the camp had never been there.

The polite thing, Sally figured, would be to offer them a ride on their horses. She tried to think of a way out of it when Jens saved her the trouble by saying, "Lead the way, grandfather."

For what a busy town this was supposed to be, they met very few people on the path to Uncle June's house. They heard them. They heard the crackling of little fires, banging of hammers, the yelling and cursing and the male, raw-throated singing of work shanties from the open-air mines Sally knew were there but couldn't see behind the smoke.

From the obscurity ahead, a bent black silhouette loomed over a cliff. It was a wooden tower, three stories tall and dangerously thin.

"We're here," said Uncle June.

"That's it?" said Sally. She had assumed this was some ruined piece of mining equipment.

"This is my hall," he said. Then, apologetically, "It was a little nicer before the mudslide, I'll admit, but the pantry survived. Remember, that means there's still hope for that cider!"

Uncle June led them around front, and Sally braced for the nasty thrill of confrontation.

Apparently, the mudslide had ripped off the front of the hall to expose the interior, and inside, there were people dining. A big, bearded man with bushy eyebrows sat bolt upright at one end of a long table, attacking a lamb shank with his teeth, while a scabby little man at his side and a few sinister-looking youths gathered around, nibbling on scraps. With all the weapons sheathed under the table, it was a far cry from the family dinners Sally remembered from back home. The richly polished mahogany table was different too, as was the shiny chandelier hanging from an intact part of the ceiling. This place had been nice, once.

"What are you doing here?" barked the big man, spitting out a bit of lamb. "We take taxes in the morning, you fools, in the morning!"

One of the youths, a willowy, copper-skinned lad with a plainsman's ribbon in his hair, looked worried. "Chief? That looks like... looks like Uncle June."

The big chief scoffed. Or coughed. Or burped. It was hard to tell which. But then he got up, hefted a black iron mace and stared the mayor down, and it wasn't hard at all to tell what that meant.

"Now, now," said Uncle June, "There's no need to be uncivilized. Let's all be reasonable and- oh dear!"

He said those last two as one word. It was all he had time for, because the plainsman boy lifted a small bow and snapped off a clumsy shot. It didn't come close to hitting anyone, but it instantly killed the chances for diplomacy.

A rush of fear ran through Sally. She had fought before, but only in scuffles, never with the intent to kill, and these men looked like killers. Her horse got skittish beneath her, and she vaulted off, not wanting to be in the saddle if it bolted.

Her focus narrowed to a tiny circle of her vision. She was faintly aware of Uncle June hiding behind a rock and Jens yelling something like, "No! No!" Then they, too, vanished, and Sally was aware only of the half-dozen men who were so suddenly trying to kill her. Then it narrowed further, down to the shadowy boy who ran at her with a knife. Then she was struck by a flash of memory. She remembered the fin of the mosasaur descending on her boat, and she remembered answering with her harpoon, the harpoon she held now.

She answered with it, and it grazed the boy's side hard enough to make him fall. She counted him out and looked at the rest, five fighters against only Sally and Jens. Two of them bore down on Jens, who shrieked at them to leave him alone, sounding not at all like the killer he'd seemed to be. The plainsman archer was drawing again, this time on Sally, and she ducked behind her horse, scampering around the other side to find a very tall, very thin man loping up to her with some kind of weapon lifted high. His head jerked to the side with every step of his left leg. At first, Sally felt confident, but then his hands rotated, and she saw the weapon was no simple cudgel, but a sword, bold and silver against the black and grey earth. A sword! She backed up, not sure what to do, and made a few uncommitted thrusts that slowed him. He swung his blade at the neck of her harpoon, missed it once as she pulled back, missed it again and smacked the tip of his sword into the ashen dust. A curtain of grey-black rose in front of him, and Sally lost track of him. With a sudden horror, she realized that she hadn't thought of the archer since his last shot. But the ash hid her from him too.

Another brigand got up from the dirt, and he looked like the one Sally had just brought down. It was him, the shadowy boy with the dark hair and dark eyes, and he staggered toward her, one hand on his knife, one hand on the gash that ran all around his side. He paused just out of spearing distance, then took a few steps toward her, testing her.

That was a far as he got before an animal piled into him, tore him open, scattered blood behind him. The animal was a man, and the man was Jens. He screamed as he chopped a machete into the little thug's side, screamed as if he was the one being butchered. Jens rolled over the unfortunate boy, and when he stood up, he held the boy's knife in his left hand.

The swordsman staggered out of the settling cloud of ash. He and Jens faced each other, sized each other up, and the swordsman fell into a tangle on the ground, because Jens lunged when they'd barely made eye contact, and now the poor man's stomach was slit open.

With that, it was two against four, much better odds than against six. Or was it three? Sally looked around and saw the bandit chief lying on his side, holding his hands over his chest as if trying to hold the blood in. Another one down. That left one or two more youngsters she could not find, and the archer.

Jens did not seem to see the archer, so Sally shouted out a warning and drew Jens' eyes to him.

The plainsman archer's eyes bulged, and he dashed out the back door of the hall, out of sight. A moment later, he gave a twangy-accented shout, and a horse's hooves thundered up, hustled to a stop, then faded away into the distance.

The other young brigands must have done the same, because they were gone too. There was no one left but Sally, Jens, Uncle June and Jens' son, whom Sally noticed emerging from under a board lain across a gully. There was no sound except Jens' ragged, throaty breathing. He looked around, still light on his feet, weapons twitching in his hands. His son walked up to him as if he was a trusted old horse, and without looking at him, Jens sheathed his weapons and wrapped his left arm around the boy. He patted the boy on the back, leaving bright red fingerprints smeared on his shirt. Then Jens fixed his glare on Uncle June, his vicious snarl returned, and Sally was suddenly, horribly certain that he would murder the old man. He stormed up to him, jabbed an indignant finger at him and said, "You lied to me, grandfather! You said these men would give up without a fight!"

"Well!" Uncle June smacked his lips with shock. "That's quite a temper, my boy, quite a reaction. Try to remember, I said that hopefully they would give up. But it worked out well, didn't it? It worked out well thanks to you."

"You think I care a shit?" Jens clenched his fists and pursed his lips, tempering himself, and his voice went cold. "My brother could have been hurt."'

Brother, not son. Sally revised her questions about him.

"Life is always full of risk, my boy," said Uncle June patiently. "And how about the hall? Here I was afraid it would be picked clean, but it seems to me we've interrupted a feast!"

Jens looked, and his anger cooled.

When they started to divide up the loot, Sally found her own mood improved too. She would not have to worry about money for months at least. Then Uncle June sent out a call for friends from town, and to Sally's surprise some came. Farmers, smiths and even a banker came to see for themselves that Uncle June was back in the mayor's seat. And they brought rye bread, corn, dates, mead and other exotic things Sally had never had back on the island.

"Who's the cook?" someone asked.

Uncle June pointed outside, and Sally saw to her amazement that Jens was preparing a stew in a pot hanging over a neatly built cookfire that hadn't been there a short while ago. He had finally cleaned the blood off himself.

Sally watched, fascinated, as he peeled and sliced the ingredients his brother brought, then carefully measured them into the stew. He had no table to work on except a board balanced precariously on two rocks, but he never seemed to run out of space.

His eyes did not scare her anymore. The murder was gone from them. The hunch of his shoulders no longer looked vulture-like as it had before, but only focused. Even his parted lips didn't look quite so silly.

Soon, Sally could stand it no longer. She stepped outside, walked over to him and said, "Jens, do you know there's a kitchen in the hall? Everyone is expecting you to use it."

He looked up at her, pausing with his knife halfway through a tuber. "I know," he said. "I want to watch them." His gaze aimed at the men who gathered about Uncle June. For a moment, Sally thought he meant he watched them for amusement, then she saw the flinty look in his eyes. It was not quite the murderous glare from before, but it was partway there, and she almost laughed. "You're afraid of them? They're as old as my grandfather, most of them."

He did not look offended. But he did not look convinced either. "I am suspicious," he said. "Among my people, when you eat with a stranger, that makes you friends. But not here. Anyone can turn on you here." He glanced at her. "I don't mind you, though. You seem nice."

He said it as if it were nothing, something he almost hadn't bothered saying. That made her believe him.

Sally looked over her shoulder at the old men, small but puffed-up, looking like they had already forgotten she was there, and found that she would rather sit by Jens than sit by the fireplace with them. "Can I help you cook?"

Just then, Sally heard the whisper of little feet on soft, ashen soil, and she looked up to see the little brother holding glass phials of spices and condiments. Jens took one and squinted at it. He looked at Sally. "Do you know what this is?"

She glanced at it and laughed. "This is brown sugar! We make this back home, on the main island. Haven't you seen sugar before?"

He looked at is as if it would burst from its phial and attack him. "Why is it brown?"

"It always comes out brown if you leave some of the molasses in it. Here, have a taste." She took up one of his ladles and measured out a shy spoonful.

He did, and Sally delighted in watching his face twitch, then relax. A smile bent his lips. "It's nice."

"Can I try?" The question burst from the little boy's mouth.

"Of course you can, boy. What's your name?"

The little one glanced worriedly at Jens.

"It's okay," said Jens.

"I'm Eric. I..." He cut himself off and snatched the ladle as she offered it. Its wide bowl bowed out his cheeks as he shoved it in. He gave a hum of approval.

With that, Sally took a seat next to Jens and started to measure out ingredients for him. "I've never heard names like yours before. And your accent is new too. Where are you from?"

"South."

"In the Swollen Bay?"

"No. South of it."

"In the Silver Mountains?"

"We crossed them to get here."

"Oh." So he was a tribesman of the dark regions, at the bottom edge of the world. Suddenly, his violence made a lot more sense. But when she compared him to what she'd heard about the dark regions, something still didn't fit. For one thing, dark-region men were supposed to be seven feet tall, and Jens was the same height as she was, his eyes just level with hers. For another: "I heard you have to climb a mountain full of saber-toothed cats when you come of age."

"What?"

"To get a special flower. Don't you do that?"

"Oh! No." He laughed, and it looked good on him. "Among my people, when the boys become men, they have to find a sun-sliver flower. You don't have to go all the way up a mountain to find those. For me, it was just a few days' hike into the foothills. I kept a fire going, so the wolves left me alone."

"And if someone is sick, do you really take him out of the woods and do away with him?"

"Of course not!" He chuckled again. "Who told you that?"

A little heat rose in her chest. She hated the way men here on the mainland were so quick to correct her on everything, and she didn't enjoy this man laughing at all the things she'd heard. But she tamped it down and went on, "I also heard that you duel to the death if someone insults your honor."

Jens' smile disappeared. "We do." His face pinched, and with visible effort, he swallowed. "It's the reason me and Eric and are out here."

Sally knew better than to pry, so she let it hang in the air until she could change the subject without seeming tactless. "Where are you going after this?"

"Don't know."

"While I was talking with Uncle June, he said he's going to need personal guards after he gets his town back. And now he's got it back, so you could stay here and do that."

She waited for him to light up with glee at the prospect of easy living. Instead, he tipped his head down, frowning with thought. Then, with another searching glance at the old men, he returned his gaze to the stew and said. "Yeah, I'll do it."

"I already took him up on his offer. I guess this means we're going to be partners."

He looked the way he'd looked when he tried the sugar. "Good."

* * *

Sally liked most of the other town guards. But she didn't like Mellman.

Back on the Isle of Song, there had been two kinds of young men. There was the kind that postured and pranced around in front of her and waited for her to be impressed, which she wasn't; and there was the kind that would fawn and flatter and cloy at her, hoping she'd take an interest, which she didn't. Here on the mainland, that second kind didn't exist, and there was a new kind, the kind that tried to bully her. They were almost as bad as the meanest girls back home; they treated her like an enemy simply because she had breasts and carried a weapon.

Mellman was one of those men. After almost a year watching the town together, he had only now come to treat her the way he treated the male guards, and he didn't treat them so well at that. On top of that, there were a hundred little things about him that irritated her. From his ugly face and the way he slouched to his enormous chest that dwarfed his bucket-chinned head, just looking at him summoned her anger. Once, she had urged Uncle June to send him away, but when he'd asked why, all of her complaints about him had sounded petty and childish.

None of this tempered her dislike for Mellman, so when he tried to make small talk as they rested in the shade together, she made no effort to listen.

"Jens is leaving," he said. "Must be touched in the head."

With that, Sally's will to ignore him vanished. "What? What do you mean, he's leaving?"

"I didn't ask him. He's not good for answering questions, if you didn't notice." He peered at her for a moment and smirked with understanding. "You care, eh?"