Catling's Bane (The Rose Shield Book 1) Read online

  At the channel’s center, two wide-set nostrils surfaced, a second larger monster. Whitt retreated a step. The water erupted at his side as a set of serrated teeth gaped and the first crajek leapt at his leg. Whitt slammed the spear into its head. The point scraped over the thick skull and sank through its eye. Splashing backward, he yanked the spear from the body without any idea where the second creature had gone.

  “Foul!” He tripped blindly on the tree’s roots and fell on his ass through an arched gap. His feet flipped out of the water as the second crajek burst from the swamp and clamped its steel jaws on a flailing razorgill. Whitt crabbed backward as the beast chewed on the spiny fish no more than a foot from his right toes.

  The creature ogled him as if contemplating his next course.

  Whitt scrambled over the roots. He snatched up his lasso from the soggy hummock and swung it up with an expertise grown of winter boredom. The rope circled his head until the crajek raised its jaws to gulp down the remains of its fish. Whitt released. The loop sailed and dropped, ringing the spiked neck. He gave it a sharp yank. The crajek thrashed, jaw’s snapping and taloned feet flinging mud. It leapt toward him as he hefted his spear and rammed it into the throat’s soft flesh. He gripped the end of his rope, panting for breath as the reptile bled and drowned.

  Careful of the teeth and claws, he pulled both bodies to the hummock, lashed them together, and hung them from a branch beyond the reach of scavengers. He’d collect them later with Raker, and the village would feast. That chore done, he grabbed his rucksack, crept to the hummock’s end and waded across the channel.

  His heart still racing, he planted his spear on the other bank’s moist ground and listened for hunters. Wraiths of mist played tricks on his eyes. The encounter hadn’t been his finest demonstration of survival skills, but neither was it his worst. Raker and the towheaded rafter, Jafe, had saved him from “too much thinking” more times than he could count, especially in the early days.

  Finally, he’d learned how to survive without relying on pure luck. This wasn’t his first trial either. It pitted him against two peers who’d grown up in the shifting raft villages, putting him at a disadvantage from the start. He needed to last two more days without getting caught or eaten. Everything in the swamps fed on everything else.

  He scouted the hummock for footprints and laid two more snares, baiting them with oakum, the caulking resin a favorite of the hairless rats. To fill his time, he dug a hole for a fire, peeled bark from saplings, and snapped dead wood from drowned trees. Stripped of his clothes, he inspected his skin for leeches and cleaned his brace of rats, tossing the scaly skins to the water. He dressed in dry trousers and sparked a low fire. From his rucksack, he unrolled a hammock for a night free of snakes.

  Two days later, Whitt headed back to the village. His trial complete, he tethered together a crude raft. The swamp covered leagues of territory, and avoiding Leena and Jafe hadn’t been as challenging as he anticipated. Spring gnats and stingers proved far more annoying than anything else he’d endured, including the crajeks and a face off with a skittish lynx.

  The villages reshaped themselves as frequently as the channels changed. He used his spear as a pole to steer the raft through winding waterways, scarcely making a sound. The jade canopy bowed over him, and luminescence swirled in a gentle wake. Waterspiders skimmed the surface on delicate legs, and waterdragons spawned in the deeper channels, the young retreating to submerged tangles of roots for shelter from predators.

  A large shape howled as it dropped from the branches. It hit the rear of the raft. The logs tipped, the front flying up as the whole thing flipped. Whitt flew over Leena and plunged into the luminescence as the pale girl rolled off. Whitt covered his head. The logs crashed down and slapped the water. Something sharp brushed his hand as he kicked against the mucky bottom and broke the surface, spear in his grip.

  Jafe bellowed from the hummock’s edge, pounding a staff in defiance, hair and body smeared with mud.

  “The challenge ended,” Whitt shouted. He swam to the opposite bank where Leena waited, hunched and ready to tussle. “I beat you both. It’s over.”

  “Crajeks on the hunt,” Jafe taunted. “No time for thinking, Ellegean. Fight the lizards or us.”

  Whitt slogged up the bank, feet and spear sinking in the muck. Leena’s foot kicked out and hit him in the chest, knocking him backward into the water without his spear.

  “This way,” Jafe called from the opposite bank as he extended his staff. Whitt grabbed Jafe’s weapon with both hands and yanked. The rafter stumbled forward, slanted jade eyes wide as he barked a laugh and jumped before he fell. He collided into Whitt, the two of them tumbling back into the channel.

  Jafe got Whitt in a crag bear’s grip, both wrestling underwater until Whitt jammed an elbow in the bigger boy’s face. They gasped when they broke the surface.

  “Crajeks! Crajeks!” Leena yelled, pointing up the channel.

  Without bothering to look, Whitt clambered to Leena’s shore, Jafe behind him. Whitt grabbed his abandoned spear and swung at Leena’s head, using the weapon like a staff and moving the grinning girl back. Jafe had lost his stout stick, but that didn’t stop him. He ran at Whitt, impervious to the spear’s shaft that rapped his thigh. His shoulder caught Whitt in the gut and landed him on his back. Whitt rolled, scrambled to his knees, and swung backhand, whacking Jafe in the calf and knocking his feet out from under him. The rafter rolled down the mud into the water and jumped onto the bank as the nearest crajek dove.

  Weapon tucked, Whitt lunged, and the butt of his spear punched Leena in the stomach, drawing a gasp before he swung around and popped her in the head. Whitt grinned, his battling with Raker paying off in his opponents’ bruises. He flipped the spear into readiness for an assault but checked himself, the sharpened tip pointed at Jafe. The rafter opened his spotted arms wide, thrust out his pale chest and laughed.

  With a toss, Whitt discarded the spear. He sat on the bank and chuckled, shaking his head.

  “Real hunts don’t end at sunrise, Ellegean.” Jafe sank down beside him.

  “This wasn’t a real hunt,” Whitt replied.

  The rafter considered the statement as Leena joined them, pressing her three fingers to the knot above her temple. Slighter than Jafe, Leena was still a half head taller than Whitt. “Need a taste of spike to clear the ache,” she said.

  “I have two crajeks hung in the caliph.” Whitt pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “Help me haul them in, and we’ll have all the spike we can drink.”

  ***

  Though welcome at the elders’ circle, Raker sat at the fringe of light ringing the food and fire. He sucked steamed snails from their shells and whittled a toy crajek from the swamp’s pliant wood, one of many creatures he carved and sold as curiosities or charms. The crajek spanned his hand with open jaws and a curled tail. A larger reptile’s white meat roasted on a snapping fire at the rolling hummock’s height. Other smokier fires kept the stingers at bay.

  Rafts tied up to rafts, skirting the soggy ground. Lashed to the waterlogged caliph trees, they bridged the waterways, forming a temporary, floating village. Fire-winged blackbirds swooped from the branches, perched on gear, and hunted rats. Luminescence gleamed in the water as if the channels coursed with treasure. Gods rose from the swamp and drifted through the trees with the evening fog.

  Whitt hadn’t only prevailed over Leena and Jafe, he’d fed the village, an honor that raised his standing in the tribe. The boy lounged by a smaller fire with Jafe, prying the teeth from the crajeks’ severed jawbones. The gods hovered, pleased with the celebration.

  At Raker’s side, the more beautiful of the twilight wraiths stroked a finger of warm mist along his jawline and throat, her lips caressing his cheek. Other gods whispered in other ears. All but the most fevered or demented were deaf to the murmurings and blind to the apparitions’ fluid grace. Only he saw, heard, and felt them.

  “You now see my wisdom?” she purred.

 
; “I acquiesce to your interference,” he said. “I wouldn’t have helped the boy otherwise.”

  “The ever pragmatic and unimpressed Raker.” She brushed through his body, eliciting a flush of heat, and her throaty laugh made him smile. “Indifferent to the ways of the tiers, are you? Unsympathetic to their descent into strife?”

  “An Ellegean gouged out my eye,” he reminded her.

  “And luminescence filled you with vision.”

  What she stated was true; luminescence had flooded his wound, seared the raw flesh, and left him wondering if he weren’t mad. He rubbed the scar beneath his eyepatch. “The boy has a role to play in your plans, and I’m your instrument.”

  “Don’t deny your care for this life.” She pouted, drifting behind him and curling her arms around his chest.

  “I like this life, goddess. I don't give two teeth about anything else that's happening in the world.”

  She cooed and tickled his earlobe with her tongue. “Freethinkers of the fens, not troubled by high wards, kings, Farlander brothers, or influence. Lives born to fish, drink, hunt, breed, and feed the fishes.”

  “Befits me.”

  “And when strife and war roll over your world? What then, my love?”

  Raker turned to study her. She blew through his body once again, this time filling him with the sincerity of her inquiry.

  “I don’t know,” he replied.

  “I do.” She traced her finger along the carving in his hand. “You will be our savior.”

  The laugh that bellowed out of him caught the attention of gods and fenfolk alike.

  Jafe reared up, slit eyes gleaming at Raker, a daring grin creasing his face. “You think he can do it?”

  “Do what?” Raker asked between laughs. He wiped a tear of mirth from his eye, and the goddess smiled.

  “Rope me.” Jafe stomped his feet, beat his fists against his chest, and strode in a circle, arms raised in anticipated triumph.

  At the light’s edge, Whitt calmly prepared his camgras rope. Raker had watched him weave the fibers and stiffen it with resin, seen him practice on tusked boars wandering the larger islands. If Jafe proved smarter than a boar, Raker would enjoy his second laugh of the day.

  “An unusual talent.” The goddess uncoiled from the ground beside him.

  “His brother taught him.” Raker had heard the story of Whitt’s family and the girl Catling with the rose eye. Did the gods know she too had landed in Ava-Grea?

  Whitt passed the slack end of his rope through a knotted eye, creating the larger loop of his lasso. The balance of the rope, he coiled at his hip. Jafe jumped from one foot to another, mud-caked body dodging side to side, prepared to evade capture. The fenfolk opened a wide corridor for Jafe’s escape across solid soil before he hit the rafts.

  “Hands on top of your head while you run,” Whitt said, “or the rope will choke you.”

  “You think I’m slow as a crajek?” Jafe taunted.

  “Hands on your skull,” Raker ordered.

  Jafe’s eyes narrowed. He grinned and threaded his fingers over his head, body hunched and ready to run.

  “Go.” Whitt grabbed the loop with a length of slack. The rafter bolted. Whitt twirled his wrist over his head as he advanced. The loop circled in complete control. Jafe ran in erratic rings and jagged lines, hands on his head and howling like the Fangwold winds.

  The loop flew from Whitt’s hand, slapped Jafe in the shoulder as the boy dodged left, and dropped to the ground. Whitt jogged forward to retrieve his rope as Jafe danced away. Raker climbed to his feet for a better view.

  Loop back in his hand, Whitt picked up his pace. Jafe ran toward the rafts in a crooked line. The rope twirled over Whitt’s head, and when it came around to his side, he released. Jafe jumped from the bank to a raft and stumbled as the deck rocked. The loop struck the back of his head and slid off. The rafter howled with glee, ran to the edge of the raft, and leapt to the next.

  Most of the tribe had followed and gathered on the bank, Raker among them. The gods hovered above the water, observing the chase. Whitt stepped to the rafts, the loop again circling his head. Jafe reached the end of the floating village and sprang into the luminescence. In the fading light, the spray glittered like diamonds.

  “Crajek!” someone shouted. “Crajek!”

  Jafe swam underwater to avoid capture, making for the muddy bank. A dark shadow swayed down the channel toward him. The crowd on the hummock began to shout. Raker bounded forward onto the rafts, grabbed two hunting spears, and threw the first as Jafe surfaced at the opposite bank.

  “Crajek, run!” Whitt shouted from the last raft, his lasso twirling. Raker halted at his side, the second spear poised for a throw.

  Without pausing, Jafe scrambled from the water, feet and hands grappling with the bank’s mud. The crajek reached land a moment behind him, talons slicing into the slick surface with ease. The jaws gaped.

  “Now,” Raker yelled, “now!”

  The lasso flew and dropped, encircling the reptile’s upper jaw. Whitt yanked and the loop cinched. The creature thrashed for a mere heartbeat before the razor teeth severed the rope. Raker’s spear gouged it rear of the foreleg. More annoyed than injured, the beast spun, jaws yawning as it hissed. Jafe reached the bank’s peak and bent over, laughing like a lunatic.

  The crajek snapped its jaws closed and lumbered into the channel while Whitt reeled in his shortened rope.

  Clio’s yellow, full-moon face shone through the mossy trees, her sisters still hidden on the horizon. Raker glanced at the goddess drifting beside him.

  She smiled her approval. “You are not mad, my love, and neither am I.” She caressed his cheek and slid from the raft to curl above the luminescence in a silver fog.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Whitt tugged his cowl lower against the squall gusting up from the south. Layered clothes woven of camgras snugged as soft as a high ward’s furs. Only his nose and cheeks suffered. He paddled one side of the raft, Jafe on the other, looking no less miserable as he squinted into the wind. Raker whittled cross-legged at the raft’s center as if it were a Summertide day.

  The three moons birthed high tides, engulfing the far away delta in Elan-Sia. Coupled with endless Winterchill storms, the season’s floods stole dry ground from the fenfolk. The sheltered swamps proved increasingly navigable with the high water, but the winds and currents around Ava-Grea made for pitiless labor.

  The Slipsilver surged as they neared the city, the river’s might threatening to wash them downstream. Whitt pulled hard on his paddle. He transported a basket of fresh fish and three young crajeks; their skins, teeth, claws, and meat all favored by the city’s privileged. Raker and Jafe carried bottles of fresh luminescence. The influencers preferred the richer, brighter water from the fens over that scooped from the river. Payment in coin would purchase salt, metal tools, and sacks of grain.

  Whitt and Jafe maneuvered the raft to the pier’s lee side and tossed two ropes to rivermen who lashed the ends to the pilings. Whitt helped unload the luminescence, then hefted his catch and prized reptiles to the pier. Braced against the wind, he waited for word to spread.

  The bitter cold and flood tides kept all but the hardiest and most desperate from the docks. The fish sold for a handful of copper, scarcely worth his effort. He prodded a spiny crajek with the toe of his boot. “Jafe, help me haul these up to the tier market.”

  “I will carry two, Ellegean.” Jafe thumped Whitt on the back, always keen to flaunt his larger size and strength. True to his word, he balanced one on each shoulder while Whitt lugged the third.

  On the first tier, traders and lower merchants had arranged their stalls out of the rain and under the protection of the guards’ watchful eyes. Whitt scanned the market for Catling, never expecting to catch a glimpse of her, but always hopeful. He sold the crajek carcasses in less than a quarter bell for six whole silvers, four of which he slipped in his pocket. One he pressed into Jafe’s palm. The sixth he flipped Raker when th
ey returned to the pier.

  Raker snatched the coin from the air. “Today’s the day.”

  “The day for what?” Whitt asked.

  Raker’s black hair shone in the rain. He studied Whitt while listening to whatever jabbered inside his skull. Jafe believed the former Ellegean both mad and gifted, and Whitt saw no reason to disagree. “Sell the rest of the luminescence,” Raker said and strode off in pursuit of supplies.

  His back to the piling, Whitt burrowed into his cloak while Jafe sold glowing bottles for three coppers and collected empties for a half. The squalls kept the influencers tucked in their quarters, which meant heartier profits on the docks.

  Whitt hunched his shoulders as rain trickled down his neck. Beyond the piers, waterdragons sluiced through the swift river. Nearer the city, the floodwaters brought chaos. Riverfolk, bargemen, and ferrymen wrestled with the punishing currents, their crafts bumping and crashing into each other as they maneuvered around and between the piers. Curses barked between crafts, and a few altercations descended into blows.

  Not far from him on the circular dock, a Cull Tarr preacher shouted dire warnings into the wind. He’d shaved his dark hair from the sides of his head, and what remained on top, he’d twisted into a long braid. His frosty ears were as scarlet as the shirt beneath his jacket. A belt of coins jingled, and his red-trimmed cloak flapped like the wings of a wounded bat.

  The man yelled, his voice quivering with the cold, “If the wards heed you not and complain of discord, shout in unison that your one voice may be clearly heard. Stand arm in arm, yet take no arms against them, for they are your ancient kin, equal in the almighty Founders’ eyes. Rise up and demand equality, then let humility purify your desires. Risk not their corruption. Forsake not the eternal treasure of the afterworld for the transient riches of today. Live your lives in kinship, and you will sit at the Founders’ table and rule gloriously at their sides.”