The Price of Hate Read online

  I eye the guards, who make no move to attack. “I have all the time I need. Down here, no one can hear you scream.”

  The sheriff glares at me with as much hate as he can muster. “There’s nowhere you and your friends can hide that I won’t follow. My men are on their way to your little hideaway as we speak.”

  Rourke was a traitor after all. I hope Talon gutted him. I twist the blade, prompting a pained cry. “I want answers. Where are Diarmuid’s wife and daughter?”

  The sheriff’s brow arches in alarm when he realizes I overheard his conversation with Angus. “You’re a fool if you think I’ll tell you anything. Queen Scathach would have my head.”

  “I’m the one you should worry about.” I twist the knife again. “You’ve heard what I did to Eberdon and his men. Bodies strung from the walls. Severed limbs left for the crows. Now talk.”

  The sheriff is already pale from blood loss, but his face goes whiter still. He’s used to meting out brutality, not receiving it. He’s been hunting Duke and the rest of us for months and knows the stories about me as well as anyone. “Princess Elyssa and her daughter are under guard in Laird Cowan’s stronghold.”

  Faolán barks a warning. Having regained his footing, Angus slams into me, and we crash against the table. The two guards exchange glances and rush forward, but Faolán intercepts them before they reach me. I grapple with Angus, whose fingers dig into my face, and my hand closes around the dagger and rips it free of the sheriff’s hand. The blade barely nicks Angus, who nevertheless stumbles away. I whistle to Faolán and give the sheriff one last look before fleeing the dungeon. It’s his lucky day.

  Bast and Talon wait for me in the square with horses. “What is it?” Bast knows something’s wrong.

  I swing myself onto my horse’s saddle and seize the reins. “Princess Elyssa and her daughter are in Laird Cowan’s stronghold. Let’s go.” I dig my boots into my mount’s flank to spur it forward.

  Bast looks worried. “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “If there are royals, there’ll be gold there. A lot of it.” That does the trick on Talon. Bast remains uneasy, and not without cause. There are only three of us, and Redmyre and the stronghold are teeming with guards. Moreover, it won’t be long before the alarm goes out, so we’ve lost the element of surprise.

  “Come on. We don’t have much time.”

  Talon glances over at me. “I had a word with Rourke. That bastard was working with the sheriff the whole time. He told him where to find our hideout. I took his tongue as a message to other traitors.” He wipes his blade on his horse. “What about the sheriff? Is he dead?”

  The bell begins to ring before I can answer. Bast looks at me with growing apprehension. “They’re onto us. We should go.”

  I stare at a towering structure in the distance. Laird Cowan’s stronghold’s crumbling walls rest against a mountainous cliff nearer the marsh. Like the rest of Redmyre, it’s a shadow of its former glory. The outer wall is a ruin, and one of two towers is partially collapsed. Still, it’s easily the most imposing structure in the area.

  The sheriff’s men haven’t yet given chase. That’s means we have at least some time to locate Elyssa and her daughter. A second bell tolls when we pass into the courtyard, where a statue of a former king in the courtyard missing half his face looks on. A few sentries take aim with their bows, and I lean forward in the saddle and ignore their arrows.

  Bast looses an arrow, and an archer topples from the wall. “Laird Cowan’s men know we’re here. There’s no time to find the princess and get out.”

  I’m too close to turn back now. Besides, I know exactly where they’ll be. “Laird Cowan will try to move Elyssa and her daughter to safety if he’s expecting an attack. There are tunnels underground that lead to a secret passage through the marsh. That’s where they’ll go.” I jerk the reins to the right and veer off the main path. “This way.”

  Bast eyes me suspiciously. “You’re cleverer than you let on.”

  The secret entrance—a rotten wooden door at the base of the cliff—doesn’t take long to find, even partially hidden by trees and shrubs. It’s been left unguarded. I dismount and ease my sword from its sheath. “Bast, keep watch. Cover us if something goes wrong. Talon, you’re with me.”

  Faolán leads us through the tunnel, which is even darker than the sheriff’s dungeon. Rats scurry away from skeletal remains as we pass, and fog unfurls across the damp earth at our feet. There’s not much down here, and it’s obvious the tunnel has long since fallen into disuse. Two paths diverge ahead. Rubble blocks one, so we take the other.

  Talon looks around uncomfortably. The longer we’re here, the more danger we’re in. He starts to speak, but Faolán growls, and I hold a finger to my lips. “Listen.”

  Voices echo off the tunnel walls, and torches burning in the dark reveal shadowy figures approaching. “This way, Princess.” The voice belongs to a middle-aged handmaiden ushering a well-dressed noblewoman and a child down the corridor while two guards light their path with torches.

  A golden tiara worth more than the collective wealth of the village where I grew up rests on Elyssa’s head. Dirt from the ground clings to the hem of an elegant dress. My wife had to sew her own dresses. Elyssa walks with her daughter’s hand in hers. “Just a little farther, Aithne. We’re almost there.”

  My blood boils with hate. I’ll never hold my daughter’s hand again. Queen Scathach and her nobles believe themselves untouchable. They ravage this land with their armies and hide in their strongholds while the common folk suffer. My fury grows with each step that brings me closer to vengeance.

  Ahead, one of the guards comes to a halt. “Did you hear something?” He waves his torch in the dark.

  I put my sword through his chest, and Elyssa screams. The guard’s companion has already drawn his weapon. It doesn’t do him much good—Faolán leaps on him before he can raise the blade, and Talon carves him up like a hunting trophy. Elyssa tries to flee with her daughter, but I grab her arm and shove her against the stone wall.

  “Please…” Elyssa trembles at the sight of me, and her voice breaks. Even in the dark, I must look like something monstrous. She searches my expression for a hint of compassion, but my face is hard like stone. “Please don’t hurt her.”

  My brow tightens, and I bare my teeth. “What about my daughter?” My voice seethes with venom. Scathach took everything from me. I want her to suffer. I want her to bleed.

  Elyssa screams again. Full of fury, I react without thinking, take Elyssa’s head in my hand, and slam it against the wall. Her skull splits with a crack. I release my hold, and she slides down the wall, leaving a bloody trail on the stone behind her. The handmaid cries out before Talon runs her through, but I hardly hear it. I look from my hand to Elyssa in disbelief. Her fingers twitch and fall still, and torchlight reflects off her lifeless eyes.

  I killed her.

  “Mamma?”

  For the first time, I notice Elyssa’s daughter, and my blood runs cold. Her hair is the color of fire, just like my daughter’s was. She’s probably five or six—younger than Aileen was when she died.

  “Mamma, wake up.” Aithne shakes her mother’s body, which slumps over in response to her touch. “Please, wake up.”

  “You were right.” Talon’s voice startles me. “The handmaid’s bag was packed with silver.” He nods approvingly at Elyssa’s corpse. “And they say I’m a nasty piece of work.” He starts toward Aithne, who stands paralyzed as he raises his blade. “Come here, little one.”

  My back stiffens. “What are you doing?”

  “If the Ice Queen learns what we’ve done, she’ll do much worse than kill us. No witnesses.”

  I grab Talon by the throat and apply enough pressure to his wrist to make him drop his blade. “She’s a child.”

  Talon shoots me a baleful look. “You’re one to talk. Look what you did to her mother.”

  My fist balls in anger, and I let him go and hit him in the face. Talon glances
at his fallen blade, which rests inches away, and for a moment, I think he’ll go for the weapon. Without warning, more voices reverberate off the tunnel walls, and everything goes to hell. Torches blaze in the dark as guards flood the corridor. Talon secures the satchel of silver, grabs his blade, and leaves Aithne behind.

  We flee with guards hot on our trail. An arrow grazes my arm, and a spear misses my head by inches. Without warning, more guards spill from a door to an adjacent corridor, trapping us in place. The archers pin me down and prevent me from emerging from cover. I spot Talon watching the fighting from the shadows. While the archers train their fire on me, he recedes into the darkness and leaves me to my fate.

  Guards corner me. I stab one with my sword and take another’s hand at the wrist. Faolán does her best to help, but there are too many. A guard draws blood with a lucky hit. I can’t die here, not while Scathach lives. When I make it out of this, I’ll skin Talon alive.

  An archer has me in his sights. Faolán bounds toward him, but there’s too much space between them. At the last moment, an arrow lodges itself in the archer’s heart, and he topples over backward. Another arrow fells a second archer.

  “Come on!” It’s Bast.

  I wince and stumble to him. “You came back for me.”

  “‘Course I did. We’re in this together, remember?” He looks around. “Where’s Talon?”

  “Bastard got his silver and left me to die.”

  “Just between us, I never did like him.” Bast kills the final archer, freeing our path to the entrance. “Come on. There’ll be more after us soon.”

  Sunlight awaits at the secret door, and with it, our freedom.

  We camp in a cave in one of the mountains bordering the Widow’s Vale. There’s no point in returning to Crow Hill, and we can’t go back to our hideaway now that the sheriff has discovered it. While I hope Arlo gave any hunters the slip, right now we have ourselves to think of.

  Night closes in fast. It’ll be a mercy to see the end of this day. Hunger pains gnaw at my gut. The rations Bast purchased in Redmyre are barely enough to last the rest of the week. Once we’re past the mountains, I’ll go hunting.

  Bast pokes at the flames with a stick. “So, what’s next?”

  “We find Duke and the others.” I inspect my wounds in the firelight. “Everyplace west of the Sperrins is too dangerous for us. After today, the sheriff won’t stop until he finds us. Duke will go east and lie low until things calm down.” I wince and pull my torn shirt over my head.

  “You alright?”

  “I’ll live.” My injuries aren’t serious, and my father taught me how to live with pain a long time ago. “I owe you one. If you had any sense you would have left me there to die. I don’t say this a lot, but thanks.”

  Bast shrugs. “You’d have done the same for me.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that.”

  Bast holds my gaze. “You’re a hard man, but you’ve never done me wrong and I know you have my back. Can’t say the same for everyone else.” He fishes into his sack and tosses me a flask of whiskey.

  I raise an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you drank.”

  “It was meant for Arlo, but it looks like you could use it more than him.”

  I can’t argue with that. I pop the lid from the flask and swallow a mouthful. A hush falls over camp. Bast moves closer to the fire to warm his hands. Unlike me, he doesn’t have Faolán or a bearskin cloak to keep the cold away. While he clearly wants to talk about what happened earlier, he knows better than to pry.

  I stay awake long after Bast has fallen asleep. He’s lucky. I can’t close my eyes without seeing Elyssa’s dead gaze. Although the flask lies empty at my feet, the whiskey didn’t help. It never does.

  I killed a defenseless woman.

  I’ve done terrible things. I’ve lied, stolen, and murdered when it suited me without batting an eye, but this…this is something else.

  Isn’t this what you wanted? Elyssa was a noble, just like all the rest. Worse, she was married to one of Scathach’s sons. Some part of me must have known what would happen when I went into that tunnel seeking blood, and yet, try as I might, I can’t forget the look on that little girl’s face.

  What have I become? I hardly recognize myself anymore.

  We leave the cave when daylight comes. Mercifully, the rains have finally stopped. We’re out of the Widow’s Vale by morning’s end, and while that doesn’t mean we’re beyond the sheriff’s reach, at least we have some room to breathe. It’s roughly three days to Siren’s Reach. The gang has a contact there who might know of Duke’s whereabouts. If the guards at Redmyre were correct, the journey will take us through territory swarming with goblins. So long as we don’t encounter the creatures, that could work to our advantage, as the sheriff’s men are less likely to follow us through monster-infested lands.

  Bast mostly leaves me to my thoughts. He brings down a deer that afternoon, and we make camp early and share a meal like a pack of ravenous hounds. Once we’ve eaten our fill, we stop to fill our drinking horns at a nearby stream. Judging from how well Bast knows his way around the wild, he’s been on his own before.

  “How’d a lad like you cross paths with Duke?”

  Bast splashes water on his face. “I come from Buckley. It’s a small village in the midlands. A group of deserters tore the village apart not long after the war started, and I barely escaped with my life. When it was over, there was nothing left to go back to.”

  “Whose soldiers?”

  Bast goes quiet. “Does it matter?”

  “No. I suppose it doesn’t.”

  Bast’s expression grows distant. “I moved around a lot after that and did what I had to do to survive. Eventually I grew tired of thieving for scraps and looking over my shoulder for guards. Duke offered me the closest thing to a family I’ve had since before the war.”

  “Any real family out there?”

  Bast shakes his head. “My sister died of the kink. Sometimes I’m glad she didn’t live long enough to see what’s happened to the world.” He returns his gaze to me. “What about you? How’d you meet Duke?”

  “We helped each other out of a tight spot. The Ice Queen’s hunters and assassins had driven me into the wild, and I was down to my last coin. That’s what happens when you kill a prince.”

  Bast finishes filling his drinking horn, and we trek back to camp. “I thought you would kill me in my sleep when I first joined the gang.”

  My brow furrows. “Really?”

  “Can you blame me? You’re always stalking around like you’re about to swing that axe of yours at a moment’s notice. The Bloody Red Bear, just as fearsome as the bards say.”

  I give an angry grunt. “I hate that name.”

  Bast chuckles. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile.”

  “Not much to smile about.” I give Bast a look to let him know I’m done talking and pull ahead.

  It takes us longer than expected to make it to Siren’s Reach. These lands are teeming with goblins in numbers not seen since the goblin wars—maybe even before that. We even spy a few giants and trolls in their patrols. The guards at Redmyre were right. While the lords of Fál fight among themselves for land, nonhuman armies gather for war. Let them come. I don’t care anymore. Vengeance is the only thing that matters to me now.

  We follow the River Barrow through Hallowfall Forest. Other than the constant threat of danger, the journey is peaceful. The wilds have a serene beauty. Everywhere we look, there are relics from when giants held dominion over the north and the land was full of fairies. The ancient trees are giants themselves, and their immense roots run deep under the earth to drink from the water. Bast swears he glimpsed a group of pixies playing in the river. We pass an occasional farm tucked away in a clearing, but most are abandoned. The people have retreated to walled towns and cities to survive the chaos bred by war and upheaval. In times like these, nowhere is safe.

  Finally, we come to a sleepy village at the fore
st’s edge and pay a ferryman to transport us upriver. Citing danger in the area, he refuses to take us any farther than halfway. I can tell he knows we’re trouble. The Barrow widens over its winding course, and lofty cliffs on either side of the river cast their shade over us. Bast looks on in wonder at titanic statues carved by giants into the cliffs in a bygone era. The ferryman leaves us where we agreed and half-heartedly wishes us luck, though he avoids meeting my gaze.

  Bast and I continue for another day before crossing the river at a stone bridge with an abandoned watchtower. The sun is shining when we arrive at Siren’s Reach. It’s a warm day, and doves flock through the sky. Bright blue banners wave from a castle overlooking fishermen’s boats and shipping vessels below. While not untouched by war, Siren’s Reach is cleaner and brighter than Redmyre. The people here are happier, if only a little, and the streets are livelier. Bast and I slip into the crowd and make our way farther into the city. Although small by the scale of Munster and Leinster’s grand cities, Siren’s Reach is one of the most populous settlements east of the Sperrins. While the recent upheaval across Fál has slowed the abundance of trade resulting from its proximity to the river, the influx of refugees from neighboring lands has further bolstered the city’s masses.

  I grunt to get Bast’s attention. “Keep up.”

  He trails behind me while glancing around in awe, and just for a moment, I catch a glimpse of the wide-eyed optimism he keeps hidden from the rest of us. Despite everything that’s happened to him, Bast holds out hope things will get better, even if life has taught me otherwise. He isn’t like the rest of us. Bast has killed to survive, but he’s not a murderer—just another lost soul in a godsforsaken land. This isn’t the life for him, and deep down, I think he knows it.

  Bast follows me to The Ironmonger, a blacksmith’s forge not far from the city square. Although the shop isn’t much to look at from the outside, the products are first-rate. Still, it’s a smaller enterprise, and the lack of customers suggests those with enough coin spend their money at either of the two more prominent rival shops.