“I don’t know,” the thug answered. “Ask the king.”

  Aranok looked up the rocky crag toward Greytoun Castle. Rising out of the middle of Haven, it cast a shadow over half the town. “I will.”

  There was a hiss of air and a thud to Aranok’s right. He turned to see an arrow embedded in the ground at the thief’s feet. He must have crept a little closer than Allandria liked. The rat was lucky she’d given him a warning shot. Many didn’t know she was there until they were dead. Eyes wide, he sidled back under the small canopy at the front of the forge.

  Cargill fired into life, brandishing his sword high. “I’ll cut your fucking head off right now if you don’t walk away!” His bravado was fragile, though. He didn’t know what Aranok could do—what his draoidh skill was. Aranok enjoyed the thought that, if he did, he’d only be more scared.

  “Allandria!” he called over his shoulder.

  “Aranok?”

  “This gentleman says he’s going to cut my head off.”

  “Already?” She laughed. “We just got here.”

  All eyes were on them now. The tavern was silent, the crowd an audience. People were flooding out into the square, drinks still in hand. Others stood in shop doors, careful not to stray too far from safety. Windows filled with shadows.

  Cargill’s bravado disappeared in the half-light. “You… you’re… we’re on the same side!”

  “Can’t say I’m on the side of stealing from orphans.” Aranok stared hard into his eyes. Fear had taken the man.

  “We’ve got a warrant.” Cargill pulled a crumpled mess from his belt and waved it like a flag of surrender. Now he was keen to do the paperwork.

  Perhaps they’d get out of this without a fight after all. Unusually, he was grateful for the embellishments of legend. He’d once heard a story about himself, in a Leet tavern, in which he killed three demons on his own. The downside was that every braggart and mercenary in the kingdom fancied a shot at him, which was why he tended to travel quietly—and anonymously. But now and again…

  “How much does he owe?” Aranok asked.

  “Eight crowns.” Cargill proffered the warrant in evidence. Aranok took it, glancing up to see where the rat had got to. He was too near the wall for Aranok’s liking. The boy was vulnerable.

  “Out here,” Aranok ordered. “Now.”

  “With that crazy bitch shooting at me?” he whined.

  “Thül!” Cargill snapped.

  Thül slunk back out into the open, watching the balcony. Sensible boy. Though if this went on much longer, Allandria might struggle to see clearly across the square. He needed to wrap it up.

  The warrant was clear. The business owed eight crowns in unpaid taxes and was to be closed unless payment was made in full. Eight bloody crowns. Hardly a king’s ransom—except it was.

  Aranok looked up at the boy. “What can you pay?”

  “I’ve got three…” he answered.

  “You’ve got three or you can pay three?”

  “I’ve got three, sir.”

  “And food?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “A bit.”

  “Why do you care?” Thül sneered. “Is he yours?”

  Aranok closed the ground between them in two steps, grabbed the thief by the throat and squeezed—enough to hurt, not enough to suffocate him. He pulled the angular, dirty face toward his own. Rank breath escaping yellow teeth made Aranok recoil momentarily.

  “Why do I care?” he growled.

  The thief trembled. He’d definitely underestimated Aranok’s speed.

  “I care because I’ve spent a year fighting to protect him. I care because I’ve watched others die to protect him.” He stabbed a finger toward the young blacksmith. “And his parents died protecting you, you piece of shit!”

  There were smatterings of applause from somewhere. He released the rat, who dropped to his knees, dramatically gasping for air. Digging some coins out of his purse, Aranok turned to the boy.

  “Here. Ten crowns as a deposit against future work for me. Deal?”

  The boy looked at the gold coins, up at Aranok’s face and back down again. “Really?”

  “You any good?”

  “Yes, sir.” The boy nodded. “Did a lot of Father’s work. Ran the business since he went away.”

  “How is business?”

  “Slow,” the boy answered quietly.

  Aranok nodded. “So do we have a deal?” He thrust his hand toward the blacksmith again.

  Nervously, the boy put down one sword and took the coins from Aranok’s hand, tentatively, as though they might burn. He put the other sword down to take two coins from the pile in his left hand, looking to Aranok for reassurance. He clearly didn’t like being defenceless. Aranok nodded. The boy turned to Cargill and slowly offered the hand with the bulk of the coins. Pleasingly, the thug looked to Aranok for approval. He nodded permission gravely. Cargill took the coins and gestured to Thül. They walked quickly back toward the castle, the thief looking up at Allandria as they passed underneath. She smiled and waved him off like an old friend.

  Aranok clapped the boy on the shoulder and walked back toward the tavern, now very aware of being watched. It had cost him ten crowns to avoid a fight… and probably a lecture from the king. It was worth it. He really was tired. The crowd returned to life—most likely chattering in hushed tones about what they’d just seen. One man even offered a hand to shake as Aranok walked past; quite a gesture—to a draoidh. Aranok smiled and nodded politely but didn’t take the hand. He shouldn’t have to perform a grand, charitable act before people engaged with him.

  The man looked surprised, smiled nervously and ran his hand through his hair, as if that had always been his intention.

  Aranok felt a hand on his elbow. He turned to find the boy looking up at him, eyes glistening. “Thank you,” he said. “I… thank you.”

  “What’s your name?” Aranok asked. He tried to look comforting, but he could feel the heavy dark bags under his eyes.

  “Vastin,” the boy answered.

  Aranok shook his hand.

  “Congratulations, Vastin. You’re the official blacksmith to the king’s envoy.”

  Aranok righted his chair and dramatically slumped down opposite Allandria. The idiot was playing up the grumpy misanthrope because every eye on the top floor was watching him. He looked uncomfortable. Secretly, she was certain he enjoyed it.

  Allandria raised an eyebrow. “Was that our drinking money, by any chance?”

  “Some of it…” he answered, more wearily than necessary.

  Despite his reluctance, Allandria knew part of him had enjoyed the confrontation—especially since it had ended bloodless. The man loved a good argument, if not a good fight—particularly one where he outsmarted his opponent. Not that she’d had any desire to kill the two thugs, but she would have, to save the boy. It was better that Aranok had been able to talk them down and pay them off.

  “You could have brought my arrow back,” she teased.

  He looked down to where the arrow still stood, proudly embedded in the dirt. It was a powerful little memento of what had happened. Interesting that the boy had left it there too… maybe to remind people he had a new patron.

  “Sorry.” He smiled. “Forgot.”

  She returned the smile. “No, you didn’t.”

  “You missed, by the way.”

  Allandria stuck out her tongue. “I couldn’t decide who I wanted to shoot more, the greasy little one or the big head in the fancy armour.” The infuriating bugger had an answer to everything. But for all his arrogance, she loved him. He’d looked better, certainly. The war had been kind to no one. His unkempt brown hair was flecked with grey now—even more so the straggly beard he’d grown in the wild. Leathery skin hid under a layer of road dust; green eyes were hooded and dark. But they still glinted with devilment when the two sparred.

  “Excuse me…” The serving girl arrived with their drinks. She was a slight, blonde thing, hardly in her teens if Allandria guessed right. Were there any adults left? Aranok reached for his coin purse.

  “No, sir.” The girl stopped him, nervously putting the drinks on the table. “Pa says your money’s no good here.”

  Aranok looked up at Allandria, incredulous. When they’d come in, he wasn’t even certain they’d be served. Draoidhs sometimes weren’t. Innkeepers worried they would put off other customers. She’d seen it more than once.

  Aranok tossed down two coppers on the table. “Thank you, but tell your pa he’ll get no special treatment from the king on my say-so, or anyone else’s.”

  It was harsh to assume they were trying to curry favour with the king now they knew who he was. Allandria hoped that wasn’t it. She still had faith in people, in human kindness. She’d seen enough of it in the last year. Still, she understood his bitterness.

  “No, sir,” the girl said. “Vastin’s my friend. His folks were good people. We need more people like you. Pa says so.”

  “Doesn’t seem many places want people like me…”

  “Hey…” Allandria frowned at him. He was punishing the girl for other people’s sins now. He looked back at her, his eyes tired, resentful. But he knew he was wrong.

  “Way I see it”—the girl shifted from foot to foot, holding one elbow protectively in her other hand—“you’ve no need of a blacksmith. A fletcher, maybe”—she glanced at Allandria—“but not a blacksmith. So I want more people like you.”

  Good for you, girl.

  Allandria smiled at her. Aranok finally succumbed too.

  “Thank you.” He picked up the coins and held them out to her. “What’s your name?”

  “Amollari,” she said quietly.

  “Take them for yourself, Amollari, if not for your pa. Take them as an apology from a grumpy old man.”

  Grumpy was fair; old was harsh. He was barely forty—two years younger than Allandria.

  Amollari lowered her head. “Pa’ll be angry.”

  “I won’t tell him if you don’t,” said Aranok.

  Tentatively, the girl took the coins, slipping them into an apron pocket. She gave a rough little curtsy with a low “thank you” and turned to clear the empty mugs from a table back inside the tavern.

  The girl was right. Aranok carried no weapons and his armour was well beyond the abilities of any common blacksmith to replicate or repair. He probably had no idea what he’d use the boy for.

  Allandria raised the mug to her lips and felt beer wash over her tongue. It tasted of home and comfort, of warm fires and restful sleep. It really was good to be here.

  “Balls.” A crack resonated from Aranok’s neck as he tilted his head first one way, then the other.

  “What?” Allandria leaned back in her chair.

  “I really wanted a night off.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re having?” She brandished her drink as evidence. “With our free beer?” She hoped the smile would cheer him. He was being pointlessly miserable.

  Aranok rubbed his neck. “We have to see the king. He’s being an arsehole.”

  A few ears pricked up at the nearest tables, but he hadn’t said it loudly.

  “It can’t wait until tomorrow?” Allandria might have phrased it as a question, but she knew he’d be up all night thinking about it if they waited. “Of course it can’t,” she answered when he didn’t. “Shall we go, then?”

  “Let’s finish these first,” Aranok said, lifting his own mug.

  “Well, rude not to, really.”

  Her warm bed seemed a lot further away than it had a few minutes ago.

  if you enjoyed

  THE TRAITOR

  look out for

  GODS OF THE WYRDWOOD

  Book One of The Forsaken Trilogy

  by

  RJ Barker

  Ours is a land of many gods, and we are a people with the ability to pick the worst of them.

  Cahan Du-Nahere is known as the forester—a man who can navigate the dangerous Woodedge like no one else. But once he was more. Once he belonged to the god of fire.

  Udinny serves the goddess of the lost, a keeper of the small and helpless. When Udinny needs to venture into Woodedge to find a lost child, she asks Cahan to be her guide.

  But in a land where territory is won and lost for uncaring gods, where the woods are teeming with monsters—Cahan will need to choose the forest or the fire… and his choice will have consequences for his entire world.

  1

  The forester watched himself die. Not many can say that.

  He did not die well.

  The farm in Woodedge was the one rock in his life, the thing he had come to believe would always be there. Life had taken him from it, then returned him to it many years later – though all those he had once loved were corpses by then. The farm was mostly a ruin when he returned. He had built it back up. Earned himself scars and cuts, broken a couple of fingers but in an honest way. They were wounds and pains worth having, earned doing something worthwhile and true. He liked it here in the farthest reaches of Northern Crua, far from the city of Harnspire where the Rai rule without thought for those who served them, where the people lived among refuse, blaming it on the war and not those who caused it.

  His farm was not large, three triangular fields of good black earth kissed with frost and free of bluevein that ruined crops and poisoned those foolish enough to eat them. It was surrounded by the wall of trees that marked Woodedge, the start of the great slow forest. If he looked to the south past the forest he knew the plains of Crua stretched out brown, cold and featureless to the horizon. To the west, hidden by a great finger of trees that reached out as if to cradle his farm, was the village of Harn, where he did not go unless pressed and was never welcome.

  When he was young he remembered how, on Ventday, his family would gather to watch the colourful processions of the Skua-Rai and their servants, each one serving a different god. There had been no processions since he had reclaimed the farm. The new Cowl-Rai had risen and brought with them a new god, Tarl-an-Gig. Tarl-an-Gig was a jealous god who saw only threat in the hundreds of old gods that had once littered the land with lonely monasteries or slept in secret, wooded groves. Now only a fool advertised they held onto the older ways. Even he had painted the balancing man of Tarl-an-Gig on the building, though there was another, more private and personal shrine hidden away in Woodedge. More to a memory of someone he had cared about than to any belief in gods. In his experience they had little power but that given to them by the people.

  The villagers of Harn were wont to say trouble came from the trees, but he would have disagreed; the forest would not harm you if you did not harm the forest.

  He did not believe the same could be said of the village.

  Trouble came to him as the light of the first eight rose. A brightness reaching through Woodedge, broken up into spears by the black boughs of leafless trees. A family; a man, his wife, his daughter and young son who was only just walking. They were not a big family, no secondmothers or fathers, and no trion who stood between. Trion marriages were a rare thing to see nowadays, as were the multi-part families Cahan was once part of. The war of the Cowl-Rai took many lives, and the new Cowl-Rai had trion taken to the spire cities. None knew why and the forester did not care. The business of the powerful was of no interest to him; the further he was from it the better.

  He was not big, this man who brought trouble along with his family, to the farm on the forest edge. He stood before the forester in many ways his opposite. Small and ill-fed, skin pockmarked beneath the make-up and clanpaint. He clasped thin arms about himself as he shivered in ragged and holed clothes. To him the forester must have seemed a giant, well fed during childhood, worked hard in his youth. His muscles built up in training to bear arms and fight battles, and for many years he had fought against the land of his farm which gave up its treasures even more grudgingly than warriors gave up their lives. The forester was bearded, his clothes of good-quality crownhead wool. He could have been handsome, maybe he was, but he did not think about it as he was clanless, and none but another clanless would look at him. Even those who sold their companionship would balk at selling it to him.

  Few clanless remained in Crua. Another legacy of Tarl-an-Gig and those that followed the new god.

  The man before Cahan wore a powder of off-white make-up, black lines painted around his mouth. They had spears, the weapon the people of Crua were most familiar with. The woman stood back with the children, and she hefted her weapon, ready to throw, while her husband approached. He held a spear of gleaming bladewood in his hand like a threat.

  Cahan carried no weapon, only the long staff he used to herd his crownheads. As the man approached he slowed in response to the growling of the garaur at the forester’s feet.

  “Segur,” said Cahan, “go into the house.” Then he pointed and let out a sharp whistle and the long, thin, furred creature turned and fled inside, where it continued to growl from the darkness.

  “This is your farm?” said the man. The clanpaint marked him of a lineage Cahan did not recognise. The scars that ran in tracks beneath the paint meant he had most likely been a warrior once. He probably thought himself strong. But the warriors who served the Rai of Crua were used to fighting grouped together, shields locked and spears out. One-on-one fighting took a different kind of skill and Cahan doubted he had it. Such things, like cowls and good food, belonged to the Rai, the special.

  “It is my farm, yes,” said Cahan. If you had asked the people of Harn to describe the forester they would have said “gruff”, “rude” or “monosyllabic” and it was not unfair. Though the forester would have told you he did not waste words on those with no wish to hear them, and that was not unfair either.

  “A big farm for one clanless man,” said the soldier. “I have a family and you have nothing, you are nothing.”

  “What makes you think I do not have a family?” The man licked his lips. He was frightened. No doubt he had heard stories from the people of Harn of the forester who lived on a Woodedge farm and was not afraid to travel even as far as Wyrdwood. But, like those villagers, he thought himself better than the forester. Cahan had met many like this man.