Bloodmoon (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 2) Read online

Merion’s stomach rumbled in agreement. The food at Fort Kenaday was truly awful, to say the least. Tough old meat, if they were lucky, and watery stew if not. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Lasp had billeted all the ‘refugees’, as he called them, in one cavernous shed, where hammocks were stacked five high and bumped together in the night. Merion could barely keep track of which hammock was his. He had almost lost his bag twice, and a faerie along with it. Rhin had taken to sleeping under the lodge, eavesdropping on all the unsuspecting refugees’ precious secrets. Maybe he hoped this would make Merion curious, and cause him to break his vow of silence. Tonmerion Hark snorted at that.

  Lilain was waiting for them at the shed, leaning in the shadows of its doorway, out of the scorching rays of the afternoon sun. The summer in south Wyoming was mercilessly hot. She wore a wide-brimmed hat just like Lurker’s, and was leaning heavily on a crutch Lurker had made for her from some old table-legs. Her knees were still wrapped in bandages, and her face, though on the mend, was a mishmash of bruises and lumps, spanning a spectrum of yellow, purple, and green.

  Stiffly, Lilain tottered out to meet them, ruffling Merion’s hair when he got close enough. Merion endured her affection with a grimace, and she rolled her eyes. He had become a different boy since his final night in the Serpeds’ company. He was quieter, more withdrawn, as if some of the childhood in him had been cut away. Every night since then, she had prayed silently to the Maker that it was only temporary.

  ‘Where’s Rhin?’ Merion asked.

  ‘There,’ Lilain pointed to a barrel over by the fort’s tree-trunk walls, where a faint shiver hid in the shadow.

  Merion nodded firmly. ‘Do you really think he knows a way out?’

  Lilain shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but my stomach is set on tryin’. It’s getting hard to ignore its rumbling.’

  ‘And if …’

  ‘And if so, then we’ll eat well tonight, and leave tomorrow. Maybe that’ll cheer you up, hmm?’

  ‘Be careful,’ replied her nephew, almost begrudgingly.

  ‘I will,’ Lilain replied. Merion just nodded again and trundled past her and into the shed, wrinkling his nose at the smell of too many fort-ripe bodies in close proximity.

  ‘That boy’s not so much a boy any longer,’ commented Lurker.

  Lilain watched her nephew leave, and tutted. ‘Shame on you, John Hobble. That boy has been through a lot. He’s lost his father. He’s both drunk and drawn blood. Now he’s lost a friend, and found a murderer instead. He’s only thirteen,’ she admonished him, lightly.

  Lurker adjusted his hat, saying nothing.

  Lilain broke, letting her shoulders sag and her head hang low. ‘Though you’re right, darn it. He’s not the boy that I met at the railroad station.’

  Lurker put a gloved hand on her shoulder, almost hesitantly. ‘He’ll be fine, Lil,’ he offered. ‘Rhin’s waitin’. You sure you’ll be alright?’

  ‘I need to get these legs movin’, need some fresh air,’ she said, then she took a breath, and patted the hand before hobbling away towards the shadows.

  Lurker looked up at the sun, drifting westwards with all the leisure and laziness of an undisputed king. Reaching inside his leather jacket, he fished out a pipe, and then struck a match against his several days’ worth of bristly stubble. The pipe clacked against his teeth as he puffed.

  The wind blew then, a strong, warm gust from the desert that whipped up the sand and sent the smoke curling into his eyes. Lurker cursed. As he raised a hand to wipe the grit from his face and the sting from his eyes, a scrap of paper cartwheeled across the dust and flapped against his boot. Lurker trapped it with his heel and bent down to read it. The prospector hummed to himself before picking up the paper and folding it into his pocket. The pipe clacked against his teeth once more.

  *

  ‘Are you sure you’re alright to hunt?’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Stop asking,’ Lilain replied between grunts.

  Rhin stared at the ground. He flickered on the edge of visibility, just in case. ‘Sorry.’

  Lilain huffed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re mopin’ too. I already get enough of that from my nephew.’

  Rhin narrowed his gaze, though he kept it lowered. ‘I am not moping. Though I would have plenty of right to. It’s been a week, and still he doesn’t say a word to me.’

  Lilain wanted to reply with ‘Do you blame him?’, but she held her tongue for once, and kept hobbling.

  They were close by the northern edge of the fort, where the walls narrowed into a point. There was a small gate nestled into the walls. No soldiers were in sight, just a few stableboys and a farrier, who was snoozing in the shade of a stable. It was exactly as Rhin had told her, and it had been like this for two days now.

  Rhin led Lilain forward, barely casting a shadow even in the sunlight. She pretended to be wandering aimlessly, staring up at the sky and the spiked walls of the fort. When she looked back down, she had lost sight of Rhin. She kept going, her eyes rushing over the dust and stones. Then she spied a little hand waving towards the gate. The stable boys were distracted by throwing nutshells at the dozing farrier, trying to land one on his lolling tongue. Lilain kept her head down, and ducked as low as her wounds would allow. Even this nervous beating of her heart was far better than lying in a cramped hammock with nothing to do but glare and itch.

  Rhin was now climbing to the lock on the small wooden gate, cut from the tree-trunk walls, resting on thick hinges. There was a rattling of sharp steel in the lock’s mouth, and open it sprang. Lilain helped with the bolts, wincing every time one squeaked. She needn’t have worried; the stableboys were far too immersed in their game. Lilain squeezed through, and then they pushed it to, wedging a boulder under its lip so as to make it appear locked. ‘This way,’ Rhin said, becoming a little more visible so she could follow him.

  A cluster of buildings sat around the angle of the walls, huddled and bunched as if they were queuing to get inside. A few more stables, another blacksmith’s shed, and a handful of houses was all that stood between them and the scrub of the hills to the north. Rhin licked his lips as his keen eyes roved over the buildings. Most of them were abandoned, on General Lasp’s orders, but the stables still held the running horses for the post, and a few messengermen.

  ‘Easy,’ snorted Rhin, as he led Lilain a meandering route around the back of a tumbledown house and out behind an outcrop of rock. Before they knew it, they were in the desert, taking in the warm glow bouncing off the sand, their noses full of the smell of the burning earth.

  ‘The sun’ll be falling soon,’ Lilain said, casting a look back at the fiery orb that dominated the blank, endless blue of the Wyoming sky. There was not a cloud to be spied, not even on the jagged horizon.

  ‘What do you fancy?’

  ‘Rabbit?’

  Rhin patted the sword at his waist, feeling the heat of the pommel against his palm. ‘Easy again,’ he chuckled. Lilain had to smile. The faerie certainly did make hunting more interesting. Lurker said it was boring letting Rhin do all the work, but Lilain wasn’t quite ready to go loping after prey across the hot wilderness. She was already sweating buckets from the effort of using the crutch, and suffering from a dull pain in her legs.

  The odd pair made their way out into the desert, weaving through rocky gullies and between boulders. Rhin sniffed the air and poked into cracks and shady holes. Once a scorpion came out of one to challenge him, but it quickly retreated when a black sword clanged against its armour.

  After an hour, maybe more, Lilain noticed some tracks in the sand that led them a meandering path to a hole between two boulders. Rhin quickly ducked inside to sniff.

  ‘Smells odd. Could be rabbit,’ he mused.

  She hobbled back so she could rest up against a rock, close to the mouth of the burrow. She took off her hat and let the sun shine down on her sweaty and tender face. Poking experimentally, she winced as she felt each cut, bruise, and loose tooth. One of her eyes was still swollen. Rhin woul
d not have dared to say she looked awful, she knew that. Sometimes even a known truth is best kept behind a tongue, and this was one of those times.

  ‘It would have heard our footsteps already,’ she said.

  ‘Probably,’ Rhin replied. ‘I can draw it out once it thinks you’re gone. Just stay there a while, and he’ll come out to sniff.’

  Lilain shrugged. It suited her just fine. ‘How do you know it’s a he?’ she smirked.

  Rhin rubbed his chin, narrowing those purple eyes of his in thought. ‘Just a guess.’

  They settled down in the hot sand and fell quiet, listening to the desert shiver around them in the breeze, to the rattle and buzz of the insects, and the vultures’ cries, urging the living to hurry up and die.

  Another hour passed, and Rhin decided it was time to creep a little closer. His feet fell softer than feathers upon the sand, and he drew his sword without a single whisper of metal. Fae steel can be quiet when needed.

  Rhin peeked around the edge of the rabbit hole and raised a hand. He began to rub his fingers against each other, so they made a strange creaking sound: tough Fae skin rasping against itself. It was loud enough to elicit a soft rustling from deep in the burrow. Rhin fell back from the lip of the hole. He froze there, eyes unblinking, limbs unflinching, just waiting for whatever had burrowed below to rear a head, so he could lop it off. Lilain looked on, as rapt as the faerie was.

  It took several moments for the owner of the rabbit hole to present himself, and he did so quite spectacularly, for it was not simply a fluffy pair of ears or a twitching snout that appeared first, but a pair of wickedly curving brown antlers, like those of a stag. Though much smaller, of course, tiny in comparison, they were still dangerous enough for a creature of Rhin’s stature. They reached almost higher than he did. Lilain looked on, her face wincing with excitement. Rhin faded to nothing, letting his magick hide him.

  Rhin’s body ached to leap forward, but he held back, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Now came the twitching snout, like that of a hare’s. Indeed, the rest of the head that quickly followed it was very hare-like as well. Black eyes embedded in a brown furry face, with long ears that stuck out behind the strange antlers.

  Without a sound, Rhin plunged forward, bringing the sword down like a hammer on an anvil. The strange little beast noticed him at the very last second, as the faerie shivered into view. But by then it was too late, and the sword plunged into the base of its skull, stealing its life away before it had a chance to blink.

  ‘It’s a jackalope!’ Lilain hissed, as though she could scare its corpse away.

  ‘A what?’ Rhin asked, wrenching his sword free and wiping it on the creature’s fur.

  ‘A jackalope, a horned rabbit. And I’d always thought them to be a wives’ tale.’

  Lilain crawled further forwards so she could look at the strange little antlers, sprouting from a bony growth in the jackalope’s forehead.

  Rhin put his hands on his hips. ‘You, a letter who sells the blood of mythical creatures, who not last week had a bunch of wives’ tales sitting in her basement?’

  Lilain frowned. ‘Some myths turn out not to be a lie, you know. And some are just, well, silly.’

  ‘You’ll offend the jackalope,’ Rhin replied, hauling it towards her.

  ‘And thanks for reminding me,’ Lilain muttered stonily as she tested one of the horns with her thumb. Sharp as a tack. Lilain poked and prodded at the dead jackalope as Rhin sheathed his sword.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled sheepishly, for the second time that day.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she replied, as she hummed over the strange little beast. ‘Best take the horns off. Don’t want to arouse any attention at the cooking fire later.’

  Rhin took out his sword once more, and set to hacking the antlers away. The black steel made short work of them. They soon fractured away, and Lilain laid them atop a stone above the burrow’s mouth before slipping the limp jackalope into a bag she had brought.

  ‘Better head back,’ Rhin advised. ‘Before the gates are checked for the evening.’

  Lilain nodded, shouldering the jackalope and reaching for her crutch. Rhin walked alongside her, slower now their work was done. His mouth was already salivating at the anticipation of roast meat.

  ‘Do you think he’ll ever talk to me?’ Rhin asked abruptly, as their feet crunched over the stones. Lilain thought about that for a moment, trying to find an answer that sat comfortably between honesty and hope. Those were always the best kind.

  ‘You’ll have to give him time, Rhin, possibly a lot of it. He’s dealing with so much, and it’s only been a week,’ Lilain replied.

  ‘I suppose this is my punishment, then,’ Rhin mumbled.

  Lilain looked down at him, eyes roving over his black and brown armour, his pale grey skin, his jet-black hair, and of course, the dragonfly wings that hung low as he trudged. ‘I suppose it is,’ she said. ‘But hey, it could be worse. He didn’t try to kill you or anything.’

  Rhin growled softly at her knack for being right.

  The faerie followed in Lilain’s shadow as they retraced their steps back to the fort. She was tired, and could feel without looking that the bandages around her knee had turned bloody again. A permanent sweat had affixed itself to her brow, and she leant on the crutch all the more with every mile.

  Fortunately, the fort was not far, and within an hour they had reached the out-buildings and were creeping through the lengthening shadows of their alleys. The sun was now lingering low in the sky, and the west burnt with oranges and yellows.

  Rhin shivered into nothing and ran ahead to check the door. The stone was still wedged against it, and once he had shoved it aside, the pathway seemed clear.

  ‘The stableboys are gone,’ Rhin whispered as Lilain hobbled up. ‘No sign of the farrier.’

  ‘Off for dinner, I expect,’ she suggested.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Rhin replied, moving through the small gap in the door. The hinges squealed again as Lilain shuffled through. It was darker on that side of the wall, and Rhin had to blink hard to kick his night-eyes into action.

  They made it twenty paces before a shout rang out from the stable. A lone soldier doing the sunset rounds stepped out of a shadow and cocked his rifle. ‘I said stop!’ he shouted again.

  Rhin had already vanished, leaving Lilain alone to deal with him. She leant a little harder on her crutch, let her eyes go glazed, and bit her lip.

  ‘What are you doin’ back here, skulkin’ about?’ barked the soldier, as he came near. The orange sky painted his blue coat a dull brown, and set the bright buttons aflame. It matched his flaming red hair. The man half-lowered his gun as he looked Lilain up and down.

  ‘Major Doggard,’ Lilain began, trying to drop a little more croak into her voice, ‘You’ll forgive a beaten-up old woman, won’t you? I was just barterin’ for some meat, behind the wall. There was a man selling rabbits.’ Lilain hefted the bag.

  Doggard eyed the bag, noting the blood, and then back to the woman, noting her bruises and scrapes, and the way she used that crutch like another leg.

  Lilain leant closer, wavering slightly. ‘We haven’t eaten right since Fell Falls. The food here ain’t the best, if you’ll forgive my honesty.’

  Doggard had to agree with that. He shouldered his rifle and looked around. ‘Fine,’ he said quietly. ‘Off you go.’

  Lilain smiled, a real smile, not a doddery old woman’s. She nodded her head. ‘You’re a good man, Major Doggard. You deserve better than a general like Lasp,’ she said, beginning to hobble away.

  The major flinched at that, but said nothing, merely waving her on.

  Lilain looked back over her shoulder. ‘Oh, and if you find yourself wantin’ some real food later, follow your nose.’

  The major smiled and nodded, staring after the woman until she disappeared behind a curve of the wall. He scratched his head and whistled low.

  *

  ‘All I’m saying, is that I’ve never see
n anybody act so well under pressure before, especially in front of the major,’ Rhin said, from his hiding place between two barrels.

  ‘All men have their weaknesses, great and small, but every man has one in common, and that is his mother. I guessed the good major would be kind to a frail, beaten-up old refugee.’

  ‘You do look the part,’ Lurker smirked, and then instantly realised his mistake. He winced as Lilain smacked him on the arm. ‘I meant the beaten-up part, darnit.’

  Lilain flashed him a smile before tending to the jackalope. It was skewered on a spit, balanced between two boxes. Lilain turned it to roast on another side. She took a deep noseful of the smell. ‘Hurry up,’ she hissed at the roasting jackalope.

  Lurker was avoiding breathing through his nose at all. His keen sense of smell made his mouth water too much, made his stomach rumble like a landslide. Rushing magpie blood did have its downsides. ‘It’ll be ready soon, I reckon,’ he said, a secret prayer.

  ‘I hope so,’ Rhin muttered, nursing a growling stomach. Faerie appetites are not proportional to their size, and should never be underestimated.

  ‘Smells good,’ said a voice, and the three looked up to see Merion standing over them, hands in his pockets. ‘May I?’ he gestured to a spot next to Lurker, and Lurker shrugged.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Jackalope,’ Lilain replied quietly. ‘A horned rabbit. Thought they were a flight of fantasy until this very afternoon.’

  ‘I’ve seen plenty, I told you,’ Lurker rumbled.

  Lilain was indignant. ‘You absolute liar, John Hobble. You’ve never said a word to me about jackalopes,’ she said, waving a finger at him. ‘Not in all these years of me letting blood.’

  Lurker just grunted and lowered his hat.

  ‘Horned rabbit,’ Merion murmured. ‘Wonder what its blood did.’

  ‘I told you, don’t have my tools,’ Lilain replied, stiffly. It was a sore point for her. Her collection of shades and veins, her tools, and her animals were all gone, and she did not dare dwell on those thoughts too long. She would not descend into moping like the others. ‘I’ll catch another one day.’