S. L. Viehl - Red Branch

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2024-11-23 0 0 58.64KB 25 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Red Branch

by S.L. Viehl

I didn’t like waking up with a three hundred pound merc sitting on me

and holding a knife to my throat. Even if I had foreseen it the night before.

“Got yer tension now, do we?” The weighty, smelly human tucked the

edge of his blade a little higher up under my chin, scraping off some skin in the

process. “Be gibbin us ‘at web we bin wannin, eh?”

One of Ferboil Danu’s men. They never bathed, and wore badly-cured

skins of animals over their tunicas. This one appeared uniformly coated with

dirt and sported the furs from a dozen snow rabbits. The poor things had

probably smelled him approaching and expired on the spot.

Still, he

had

captured my attention, and I was in the mood to be

charitable. “Get off, rot breath, and I’ll let you live.”

Blood ran down the sides of my neck as the blade bit deeper. “I gots the

steel here, spinner.”

He was too dumb to be a messenger, really, but Ferboil must have

figured on me killing whoever he sent. “You have five seconds.” I yawned.

“Four.”

He lifted up, angling the knife so that the point rested against my pulse

vein. “Marsta Danu wans a web.”

“Three.” I glanced at the window. It was barely dawn. I might have to

hunt down Ferboil just for waking me up before noon. “Two.”

“I said – ”

“Time’s up.” I spit in his eyes and slammed my cupped palms against his

ears. At the same time, I hit his hand with my chin and drove my knee up into

his groin. He screamed, fell back, and the knife slipped onto the bed.

The root I’d chewed before going to sleep lent a temporary acidity to my

saliva, which had no effect on me but was quite corrosive to the merc’s human

eyes. It also saved me from wasting my poisons on a moron. I kicked him to

the floor, stretched, and then retrieved the knife. It was as filthy as my attacker,

so I’d have to remember to clean my neck wound well. I tucked it in my

armband and went to the fireplace to start brewing my morning tea.

“Whaddaya done?” the behemoth shrieked, clawing at his eyes with both

hands. “Blinded me! Yer blinded me!”

Someone pounded at the door. “Spinner?”

It was Kerdup, the innkeeper. I sighed as I went over and saw that my

latest victim had practically hacked the door latch to pieces getting in.

Humans.

I tugged at the remnants. “Yes?”

Kerdup looked a bit like a nest weasel, minus the handsome parts.

“What’s all this noise about, then?” He was about as shrill, too.

I drew the dirty knife, swiveled, and threw it. The shrieking became a

thick, brief gurgle. I turned back to Kerdup. “What noise?”

He shook his head. “I run a clean place here. You’ll have to go.” He eyed

the door. “And pay for the damages and the burial.”

“Fair enough.” I tossed him a kinspiece. “Have my ride saddled and

ready in an hour.”

He bit the coin and grinned at the taste of pure silver. “On second

thought, missus, maybe we could work something out.” He looked at my hands.

“I heard about your kind – ”

“Not interested. And I’ll take care of the body.” I slammed the ruined

door in Kerdup’s face.

The merc’s blood had been sprayed over the bed and the floor, so I

skirted around him and the mess and had my tea. It gave me time to clear my

thoughts and focus on the job the Orb had given me.

Find the son of Tal,

she’d said, when I’d returned from my last hunt. The

jagged mark of her lineage glowed crimson against her black skin

. Find him

and bring him to me.

I had never tracked or taken a human before – but then, I didn’t really like

them. Kerdup was right, they made too much noise.

Alive?

The Orb had smiled.

Oh, yes.

As I prepared for the final leg of my journey, I wondered again why I had

been given this task. It seemed a case of severe overkill, to send me after a

human, even if his father had offended the Orb. An offense that had sat

unanswered for nigh on twenty years, in fact.

Tal Bronif was a legend among humans, for the usual ridiculous reasons.

As part of some idiot warrior-test, his people had sent him into our territory to

capture a spinner and bring her back alive. According to the humans’ bards, Tal

had lured three of my sisters from the Garnet itself, then had crippled and

captured them. Stories circulated for years after that among the outer

settlements. Some humans said the three died of their injuries, others said they

were tortured to death. There were whispers that they were still alive, and were

being forced to spin at Tal’s will. The thought of a human prevailing over a

spinner was what created all the excitement. That had never happened before.

None of it was true, which helped.

In reality three of my sisters had found Tal, bloodied and dying, and had

dragged his body out of the Garne. Human blood made the ground stink for

months. Along the way they were attacked by something genuinely dangerous –

a pack of feral wasp cats – and repelled them only to succumb to the numbing

venom. Tal’s men had evidently come upon the four of them on the edge of the

forest and transported their unconscious bodies back to Bronif Keepe.

Two of the sisters had found their way back to the Garne within a few

days, as soon as they had purged themselves of the venom. The pair had nearly

died of the monotony, if anything, but they recalled enough threads on the wasp

pack for my mother to use for tracking. She’d hunted and slaughtered the cats

the following day. Only the third, Gesa, did not return. For two seasons we

assumed her dead, until she walked in to the Garnet one morning and

prostrated herself before the Orb.

Our Queen summoned Gesa into council with the eldest of the Branches.

At the time I was too young to attend, but my mother spoke of it later, along

with a promise to gut me herself if I ever did such a thing.

Gesa admitted that shame had kept her long separated from us. She had

nearly died from the venom, but that wasn’t the shameful part. During her

recovery among the humans, she had gotten so bored that she had mated with

Tal. If that wasn’t disgusting enough, she had conceived and delivered a

halfling. As it was mostly human and male, she left it behind with Tal.

It was a pink, and it squalled,

she had told the council.

It could not hold

its head still, or walk, or control its bladder or bowels. Then they told me it was

a male.

She threw up her hands

. They wouldn’t let me eat it. What else could I

do?

It was a delicious scandal – we spinners naturally use our stock males

when we wish to reproduce – and there was some discussion of the state of

Gesa’s mind balance. For the sisters, the thought of voluntary coitus with a

human was, well, revolting.

My mother had warned me from the day I left the nesting caverns never

to trifle with humans.

Kill them, eat them if you must, Akela, but never play

with those diseased, mindless things.

Gesa cleansed herself, made contrition and was forgiven by all of us. Any

spinner can fall victim to bizarre impulses, particularly when surrounded by

nothing but blank-brained humans. My own mother had slaughtered two or

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