The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois
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Taura could wonder about that, a woman came running down the street toward them. She shrieked in terror as she passed two plodding silhouettes then, as she saw the huddled group, she sobbed out, “Help me! Help me! He raped me! My own brother raped me.”
“Oh, Dele!” a man in Taura’s group cried out, and doffed his cloak to offer it to cover her torn garments. She accepted it but shrank back from his touch.
“Roff? Is that you?” the lantern-bearer asked as a tall man strode out of the darkness toward them. The man was bare-chested and barefoot, his skin bright red with cold. He made no response but abruptly knocked a young man in the group to his knees. He tore the cloak from the youngster’s shoulders, half choking him in the process. He wrapped himself in it, glared at the gawkers, then turned and stalked toward a house.
“That’s not your house, Roff!” the lantern bearer cried as others helped the shaken lad to his feet. They huddled ever closer together, like sheep circled by wolves.
Roff did not pause. He tried the door and found it latched. He backed up two steps and then, with a roar, he charged the door and kicked it hard. It flew open. From within came angry shouts and a shriek. Taura stood openmouthed as Roff walked in. “Roff?” asked a man’s voice, and moments later, the sounds of a fight filled the night. Several of the men moved purposefully toward the door. A woman carrying a small child ran out toward them, crying, “Help, help! He’s killing my husband! Help.”
As two men ran in, Taura stood still in the darkened street. “This is what he meant,” she informed herself quietly. He’d been right. She’d thought the king’s man had been mad, but he’d been right.
Into the street stumbled Hatilde and the old woman. They were locked in fierce battle while a small child stood in the doorway and wailed his terror. Some folk sprang to separate them while others went to drag out Roff. In the midst of the shouting and the struggling fighters, Taura looked down the street and saw by the light of the open doorways more Forged ones coming. Folk opened their doors, peered out, and slammed them again. Dread and hope warred in her; would she see her father’s silhouette among them? But he was not there.
The youngster whose cloak Roff had stolen leaped onto his back when the other men dragged him out of the cottage. He wrapped an arm around Roff’s neck shouting, “I want my cloak back!” Another man tried to pull him off Roff while three others fought to detain Roff as someone shouted, “Roff! Give up, Roff! Let us help you! Roff! Stop fighting us.”
But he didn’t stop and while his opponents attempted only to restrain him, he struck out with full force, as pleased to kill them as to drive them off. Taura saw the moment when the other men lost all their restraint. Roff was borne to the ground under the weight of the other fighters. The one man pleaded for Roff to give up but the others were cursing and hitting and kicking Roff. But Roff kept fighting. A savage kick to his head ended it, and Taura cried out as she saw Roff’s neck snap and his ear touch his shoulder. Abruptly, he was still. Two more kicks from different men. Then, like rebuked dogs, they were suddenly, silently stepping back from his body.
In the street, the man who had first greeted Hatilde still gripped her from behind, pinning her arms to her side. The old woman was sitting up in the street, weeping and wailing. Hatilde was flinging her head back, her teeth snapping wildly and kicking her bare heels into the man’s legs. Taura had a flash of insight. The raiders had deliberately released them cold and hungry and soulless, so they would immediately have reasons to attack their families and neighbors. Was this why they had burned only half the village? Was it so that those who remained would know the fury of their own people?
But there was no quiet moment to mull over that thought.
“Sweet Eda!” A man shouted some distance away, and Roff’s friend cried out, “You’ve killed him! Roff! Roff! He’s dead! He’s dead!”
“Hatilde! Stop it! Stop it!”
But Roff was sprawled on the ground, his tongue thrust out of his bloody mouth, and Hatilde went on silently snapping, struggling and kicking. And in that moment of shocked unsilence, Taura heard the cries, the crashes, the shrieks and the furious roars from elsewhere in the village. Someone was blowing a whistle, desperately, over and over. Their folk had come back, Forged as King Shrewd’s messenger had warned them they would be. But now Taura knew what it meant. They would, indeed, take anything they wanted or needed. And some, like Roff, would not be stopped by anything short of death.
The villagers would kill her father. Taura abruptly knew that. Her father was a strong and stubborn man, the strongest man she’d ever known. He would not stop until he had what he needed. The only way to stop him from taking what he needed would be to kill him.
Papa.
Where would he be? Which way would he come? The whistles and shouts and screams were coming from every direction. The Forged were returning and it was worse than the night the raiders had come, setting fires and stealing and raping and killing. That attack had been a shock. But they had known their folk would return. Their dreads and hopes had risen, and fallen. And now, just when the villagers had begun to resume their lives, to rebuild houses and pull the boats ashore to repair them, the raiders struck again. With their own folk as weapons. With her father as their attacker.
Where would he be?
And she knew. He would go home.
Taura ran through the dark streets. Twice she dodged Forged ones. She knew them even in the dim light leaking from shuttered windows. They walked stiff and cold, as if puzzled at being thrust back into a life they had once shared. She ran past Jend Greenoak kneeling in the streets and sobbing, “But the baby? Where is our baby?”
Taura slowed her steps and stared unwillingly. Jend’s wife Salal stood in the street, her garments still dripping seawater, her arms empty of the babe she had carried off to the Red Ship. She stared at the burned rubble of their home. She spoke harshly. “I’m cold and hungry. The baby did nothing but cry. It was useless.” Her words carried no emotion, not regret nor anger. She stated her truth. Jend swayed where he knelt and she walked away from him, her arms embracing herself against the cold as she strode down the street toward a lit cottage. Taura knew what would come next.
But the woman who stepped out of the cottage held a cudgel and called over her shoulder, “Bar the door. Open for no one but me!”
Nor did the woman wait for Salal to try to enter. She strode forward to meet her, cudgel swinging. Salal did not retreat. Instead, she voiced her fury at being thwarted with an inhuman shriek and ran at the woman, her hands lifted to claw.
“NO!” shouted Jend, and found his feet to rush to his wife’s defense. So it would go, Taura suddenly knew. Some would stand with their loved ones, Forged or not, and others would defend their homes at any cost. Jend took a smashing blow to his gut and went down in the street but Salal fought on regardless of a dangling and crooked jaw. The defending woman was screaming wordlessly, turned just as savage as the Forged one she fought. The men who had fought Roff were standing and shouting at one another. Taura dashed past them, powered by both horror and fear. She did not want to see another person die tonight.
“Stand with your family,” her father had always told her. She remembered the day well. Someone had cursed Gef for dashing into the street, entranced by a flock of geese flying overhead.
“Keep your half-wit boy tethered to your porch!” the teamster had shouted at them. He’d had to rein in sharply and his slippery load of fresh fish had nearly slewed out of his cart. Papa had dragged him down from the seat of his cart and thrashed him in the street. No matter how her father might shun his simple son within the walls of his own home, in public he defended him. Her mother had echoed those words when her father came in with his bloodied knuckles and blackened eyes. “We always stand with our blood,” she’d told Taura. Then, Taura had not doubted that she meant it. Perhaps tonight, her mother would recall where her loyalties should be.
Taura was out of breath. She trotted rather than ran now, but her thoughts raced far ahead of her destination. She could well be on the path back to her old life. She would find her