The Hob's Bargain

And then it wasn't.

The knife slid out of its sheath and onto the cloak. Despite the thrashing of the pikka, the knife traveled smoothly up the cloak until I could shift and snatch it up.

Knife in hand, I looked across the wet grass to the pikka's victim. It was Poul. He'd rolled over onto his stomach and his eyes were on mine. He gave a short, painful nod, then his eyes closed as he grimaced in pain.

My left hand held the pikka's head against the ground while my knees on its shifting shoulders kept it relatively still. I drove the blade of my knife into its throat through the cloak. I stayed where I was until the creature was still.

I looked up and saw the people who'd been gathered in the neat garden. I had to laugh at the irony. The pikka had interrupted a meeting of magic-haters. Poul's mother was there, and the smith's wife. I wondered if the smith knew his wife was involved with the people who'd killed his brother. No, I'd forgotten, he'd been told it was the raiders. Perhaps it had been—or the fetch, or any one of a number of deadly creatures. The pikka weren't the only things invading the valley.

I couldn't help but wonder if the smith's wife had found Touched Banar a burden she could do without—a grown man who couldn't tie his own bootlaces without help. Had she encouraged these people to kill him?

Since everyone was too scared to come closer—scared of me or the pikka, I didn't want to guess—I left the pikka's cloaked body and hurried to Poul. Poul, who'd saved me by using magic to give me the knife.

Poul lay limp, but I could see his chest rise and fall. His shoulder was a mess. Someone should have been trying to stop the bleeding while I was fighting the pikka. He'd lost a lot of blood.

I could almost hear Gram's dry voice saying, "The bleeding will ensure the wound is clean—if it doesn't kill him."

I stripped out of Caulem's green tunic, wadded it up, and pressed it into the wound. Poul's mother knelt on Poul's other side and pulled off her apron. She ripped it into strips and began wrapping the cloth around his shoulder over the tunic, to hold it in place.

"It's bled freely enough to take care of most chances of infection," I said, my voice sounding shaky to my ears. "My gram would tell you to leave the bandaging alone for a bit to let the bleeding stop."

"I've been tending my menfolk long before you were born," she said in the same sour tones she'd always used to hide her soft heart.

I backed away from Poul, glad he wouldn't die—at least not today. My cloak lay in the mud where I'd thrown it. Like me, it was covered in blood. Clad only in Caulem's thin linen undershirt, I shivered in the cold.

I couldn't look at any of the people in the yard. They were the core of the hatred that threatened the village every bit as much as the bloodmage and the earth spirit. I couldn't bear it. So I walked to the pikka Torch had killed. Kith's horse had done a fair job at pounding it flat. I took a close look at the wounds and noticed blistering where Torch's iron-shod hooves had touched flesh.

I pulled the cloak off the one I'd killed. This one had taken far less damage. Long, black fangs showed through lips pulled back by death. It looked more like a small bear than a dog or cat, but its face was narrower. The pikka's side was caved in where my staff had hit it. It would have died soon even if I hadn't managed to slit its throat.

Someone threw a dry cloak around my shoulders. I looked up to meet Poul's mother's eyes.

"I've got to go," I said abruptly. "I have business to attend to. Someone might get the priest—he and Koret have been studying the new creatures that've been plaguing us. Tell him that I think it's a creature the hob called a pikka."

"We'll take care of it," she said.

I looked away and nodded. "Thanks. If more show up, you might try fighting them with steel. The hob says that some of the wildlings are sensitive to it."

Torch was waiting patiently, his rump turned so he wasn't facing into the rain. I looked him over for wounds as best I could in the dimming light. His legs and underside were covered with mud. He didn't limp when I walked him out. I swung to the saddle and settled the cloak so it didn't interfere with riding.

"Aren," she said.

I looked up.

"When people are hurt and scared, they do stupid things. Cruel things."

I thought about Touched Banar and glanced around the yard at the people clustered about Poul, people who almost certainly had something to do with Banar's death. The smith's wife looked up and met my eyes briefly.

I rubbed my face wearily, heartsick, and said, "I hope that thought comforts you, madam." I was going to do something evil myself—who was I to judge these people? "I hope it comforts me, too."

I think she would have said something more, but I leaned forward and Torch lifted into an easy canter, then popped back over the hedge.

I called the spirits of the bog first, thinking it was only just to follow the order Caefawn had laid out. Ghosts, with their ties to bloodmagic, I would leave alone.

The ground gave off sucking sounds as I stepped closer to the bog. My call was strong, driven by my anger and by my hatred of the kind of person I was soon to become. My call echoed in my head like a shepherd's horn.

The noeglins came, not just one this time but all of them. As my call strengthened, I could feel them inside my head, a great, dark wave of maliciousness.

I'd learned a few things about magic from the hob—rituals to twist for my use. I held up a branch of mountain ash, what Caefawn called rowan, stolen from a tree in someone's backyard. My knife in one hand, the branch in the other, I said, "By rowan and iron I bind you to me. By iron, rowan, and the bit of you I hold, you will obey my words."

The slight breeze wafting across the bog stilled for a moment as I spoke.

"You will await me at the eastern entrance to the town tomorrow at dawn. There's a two-story cottage" — where I'd been sleeping—"with moss growing on the roof and a maple tree set to the north of the main doorway. You will stay there, in the attic, until I call for you."

I waited until all the protesting was done before sending them off. I kept something of them inside me, imprisoned in that cold part of my mind. Evil, I thought, not cold. To fight evil, I had to become evil myself.

I tested the power I held. It wasn't a tithe on what the ghost had offered. But the ghost was old, older than the manor, maybe older than the hob's long sleep—and she was gone anyway. I couldn't use ghosts. The bloodmage used death magic, and he was more experienced than I—a valid excuse, but not the real truth. I just couldn't forget Touched Banar's ghost cuddling against me as if I could protect him. They had been human once; the newer ones could be people I knew. I couldn't expose them to the evil I was doing.

Torch shoved his head against my shoulder, and I turned to find him wet with sweat and white-eyed. I patted him consolingly, trying to ignore the noeglins' presence in my mind.

"Come on, Torch," I said. "It'll get worse before it gets better."

So I called the widdles from the gardens and houses, the afanc and fuath from the river, and the frittenings and groggies from the woodlands. Locking them in their own cells in my mind until I thought I might go mad with the screaming, the piteous weeping, the insidious seep of evil.

The sun finished its run in the west, and the weariness of its setting bore down upon my shoulders. But Fallbrook couldn't afford to have me give in to fatigue.

The last of the groggies left my sight. Dizzy with the taste of power, unable to concentrate from the noise in my head, I turned toward Torch and stumbled forward. I didn't see the woman holding his reins until I was near to touching her.

She stood in the open, letting the pale light from the moon touch her face so I could see it better. Her face was ashen, the stubborn mouth tight with fear and sorrow. Her eyes held a wildness, like a trapped wolf. There was something strange about those eyes, and I stared at her until I picked it out. Her pupils were pinpoints, though the night should have opened them until her dark brown eyes were black as night.