Smoke and Steel: A Novella of The Trials of the Lion by L.R. Knight

Author:L.R. Knight [Knight, L.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

VI. Offers and Demands

THE BODY OF the bandit Iso lay on the stone steps where he’d fallen. A dagger stuck out of his back, and his neck was twisted at a bad angle from the fall. He lay as still as the Tower of the Children stood. The men within had retreated and offered no further confrontation.

Ulrem watched the shrine through a screen of low pine branches. Imitsu-tan stood on unsteady legs, watching Kinro pull Nihimon’s orange robes over his senshimii. The priest sat blabbering and naked but for a loin cloth and the crude splint on the forest floor. The flesh around the broken ankle was turning a vulgar yellow, but there was nothing more they could do for. Besides, Nihimon had already drunk himself into a numbed stupor.

“An outrage!” the priest slurred, not for the first time. Kinro cinched the priest’s robes around his waist. They were huge on his narrow frame: almost comical.

“The necklace,” Kinro said, thrusting his hand out at the priest. “And the wine.”

Grudgingly, Nihimon handed them over. Kinro settled the wooden beads around his neck, adjusted them slightly, and then pulled the belt of gourds over his shoulder.

“You look like a twice damned fool,” Ulrem said. “This won’t work.”

“There was a farmer whose ox wouldn’t plow his fields,” Kinro said, bending low to tie the priest’s sandals over his bare feet. “So every day he ignored it. And when winter came, the man starved.”

Ulrem grunted. The smaller man seemed to have an endless store of such stories. “And?”

“Don’t be the ox.”

The sun hung low above the western trees now, casting slanting shadows that stretched and crawled almost of their own accord. He was catching snatches of voices again through the trees, though the others couldn’t hear them, whatever they were.

The spirits wake. The ring’s echo came slowly, warily. It was as unsettled as he was, sick of hiding and eager to act. The shadows of these trees are hungry. They will hunt by the moonrise.

Though it galled him, Ulrem saw little choice but to wait. The boy was in there, if the bandits could be believed. And that arrogant fool had gone and fouled any chance of surprise. Imitsu-tan sagged against a pine now, watching from under hooded eyes. His wound had ceased bleeding, but he was in no fighting shape.

So. That left them with Kinro’s gambit.

The thin swordsman was nearly done. He reached out a hand, and Ulrem passed him the sword, Silver River.

“They aren’t going to trust you if you bring that,” Imitsu-tan said.

Kinro nodded. “It is the ransom we pay for your son, morijar.”

“You cannot!”

“Stay your tongue!” Ulrem snapped. The man paled under his fury. “You had your chance. Now we do it our way. Are you ready, Kinro? I am sick of skulking in these trees.” Of what else he felt, of the faint voices he heard playing about the dark trees, Ulrem said nothing.

“Wait!” Imitsu-tan said. “Your hair.” Kinro turned to him. “The priests shave their heads. They’ll know.” Nihimon laughed behind them, but it was the sad, sobbing laughter of a despondent man.

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