Imin encounters a man-knife

Imin glanced back to be sure his son didn’t need a hand, then flung a leg over the top of the wall. He felt out a cleft with his foot, wedged his toe into the crack, and heaved himself over with no more than a gritty scrape and a slight catch in the billowing in-​and-​out of his breath.

Gripping, sticking, scrabbling like a beetle he made his way down the weathered face of the wall, while above him Llen’s hulking form grunted and slipped and clung.

Su swallowed up Imin’s head start and slithered down alongside him. Father and son hit the ground together: two lithe bodies leaping away from the wall to clear the shrubs that choked the lowest courses of stones. They shared a wolfish grin before Imin looked up to be sure he wasn’t about to be squashed by Llen.

Su’s sixteenth winter was near enough its end for this to count as his first adult raid. Imin had been hoping the experience would season the boy a bit, but when he looked up at the towering wall he had just scaled, with its dark face frosted by moonlight, he felt alive and eager as a sixteen-​year-​old himself. It had been a while since he’d set out to rescue an elf who wasn’t already dead.

Imin backed down the slope to clear a space for Llen to come thudding to earth. He fumbled when his feet sank into the dirt a few paces below the wall, where the ground changed abruptly from a hard-​packed bank into tender soil. The warm, sweet musk of rotting manure rose into the smoky chill of the air, just in time for Ilal to hit the ground.

“What did I just land in?” he whimpered.

Llen answered, “Shit,” and strode straight into it.

“I think it’s a gar-​den,” Su whispered, showing off his English. “They plant their vegetables in it.”

“How can they bear to live like this?” Ilal asked miserably as they waded through the soft soil.

“Probably doesn’t bother them,” Imin said, smirking over the elven footprints the men would find tomorrow in their shit-​patch. “If they can’t smell their own stench, I don’t see how it would.”

Llen stopped just shy of the garden fence. “Shit,” he said again. This time he added, “Company.”

They all stopped, and in their silence they heard the ragged panting of a couple of dogs trotting between buildings on their way to investigate.

“I’ll take them,” Ilal whispered.

One of the animals barked a lazy challenge as it trotted along, and Ilal answered with a yipping invitation to come join the fun. The dogs missed a stride as they hunched back, scrabbled with their claws, and sprang into a run. In no time they came tearing around the corner, whipping their tails and whining with eagerness at this unlooked-​for excitement on another boring night spent shut up within the walls of the keep.

Imin and Llen leapt the garden fence, but Ilal opened the gate to prevent the dogs from raising a racket with their claws as they attempted to go under, over, and through. Once clear of the manured plot, Ilal dropped to his knees to accept his due of writhing canine adoration.

Imin sniffed and stuck to Llen’s side, but after a few paces he noticed Su coming up behind him. A sudden protective urge made him stop. His boy was not yet grown—not quite.

“Stay with Ilal,” he ordered, “and go with him if he goes.”

“But Dad—” Su laid his hand on the knife Imin had given him a few days ahead of time and unsheathed it far enough for moonlight to flash off the virgin blade.

Imin grabbed Su’s shoulder and shoved it down, forcing the knife back into its sheath. “That’s not it, kid. This might get mushy. I don’t want you traumatized right before your wedding night by the sight of Llen in love.”

Su hesitated but finally broke into an awkward grin, whether over the joke or his bashful excitement about his imminent marriage. Imin winked at him and shoved him off. Su was his mother’s pet, but he was a good kid.

Imin jogged across the path to join Llen just as he was tiptoeing up a set of wooden stairs. The steps creaked and snapped beneath his weight, striking an ominous note of intrusion through the nighttime murmur of wind, water, and restive beasts. The elves would remain hidden from the men unless the men were looking for them, but the creaking might make them look.

Imin crept up the steps in his turn, keeping to the side so that the boards would not flex. Sure enough he didn’t make a sound. Llen was an idiot, a problem compounded by the fact that he was huge.

“I’ve seen bears tiptoe more convincingly than you,” Imin muttered.

Llen paid no attention to Imin’s remark. He was already gripping the iron bars in the window and pressing his face to the gap, trying to pull the bars loose or squeeze himself through. His deep, passionless voice had gone tight and thin with emotion. “Aia! Aia! You little fool!”

For Aia was in there behind the bars, in the tall building of pale stone, just as Palina had said she would be.

Aia whispered, “Oh, Llen!”

Imin peeked past Llen’s shoulder to smirk at her. He succeeded in briefly diverting her attention and snorted in amusement over her sudden look of unease.

“Hello, sweetheart!” he drawled through the bars. “Never thought you’d be glad to see me.” He smacked Llen’s arm with the back of his hand and turned away from the window. “Hurry it up,” he muttered.

“Aia!” Llen whispered.

“Llen! Listen, there’s a ladder—”

“You little fool!” Llen said again. “Palina says you killed a man!”

“I know, Llen, but—”

“You know what they do when you kill a man? They tie a rope around your neck and hang you up till you’re dead! I’ve seen it!” His voice caught, and he sobbed, “Aia!”

Imin rolled his eyes and glanced back over his shoulder to see Llen slide one arm through the bars, reaching for her face. Aia caught it and clasped his big hand between hers.

“I didn’t mean to kill him!” she whispered. “He was about to rape a little girl! I had to stop him. I didn’t think he would die so easily. But on second thought I’m glad he did, because he was a filthy dog who didn’t deserve to live!”

Llen laughed painfully. “Oh, Aia! You heroic little wretch! Just like your father!”

That was more than Imin could stomach. He whipped his head around and whispered, “Can we save this chat for later? What was this about a ladder?”

Aia’s gaze lingered a moment on Imin’s profile before she turned it back to Llen. “There’s a ladder up in the loft. And there’s a window without bars up there, right above us, but you’ll have to climb up there somehow. You can use the ladder to get down from the loft to get me, and then if it fits through the window we could use it to climb down. Palina thought you could do it!”

Imin pressed himself against the rope railing and craned back his neck, but he could not see over the edge of the roof. Ilal stopped play-​wrestling with a dog long enough to step back on the path and look up to the second story. “I see it,” he called softly, pointing. “It’s plenty big enough, I bet. More like a door.”

Imin tucked his hair behind his ears and wiped his hands on his pants, eyeing the flimsy-​looking railing on the roof above. He would have to trust his weight to it as little as possible.

“Here goes,” he said to Llen. “Give me a hand up.”

Llen did not move. “I want to go.”

“You what?”

Llen twisted his grim face into a pleading expression. “I want to go,” he whispered. “I want to save her.”

“Stinking Mother! You weigh two of me!”

“I’ll have to carry her out,” Llen said. “She can’t climb a ladder.”

“I can carry her! I’ve carried heavier bodies than hers, for a lot farther than that. But that doesn’t mean I have any desire to heft your weight tonight, nor have your shit-​encrusted boots stomping on my shoulders, so get out of the way and give me a hand up!”

Llen still did not move. Ilal stood and brushed dog hair from his sleeves. “I’ll hand you up, Llen,” he offered. “I know I’d want to carry Pima myself, if it was us.”

Imin clapped his hands to his forehead. “Stinking Mother! Come on, then, I’d rather smell your boots than listen to any more of this shit.”

Llen’s woebegone face relaxed back into its usual stone cold expression, warmed only by the quirk of one corner of his mouth that in Llen passed for a smile.

Imin laced his fingers together and bent, giving Llen a step for his first foot. He heaved, and the second foot stamped on his shoulder, making him wince in pain and outrage. Llen used the bars as a temporary handhold as he climbed, and he whispered, “I’m coming for you, beloved!” as he went by. Imin grimaced at that as much as the smell.

With a last shove, the weight was lifted from Imin’s shoulder, and he staggered back.

The first thing he saw was a pair of dark eyes framed by iron bars. His heart lurched. The expression in those eyes was not coolly mocking or disdainful, however, but rather smoldering with resentment. It was only Aia. And when she saw the scorn flare up in his eyes, she turned away and disappeared into the building. Imin snorted and turned his back to the window once more.

Overhead Llen’s boots trod warily across the roof. The thudding grew muffled between one step and the next, and Imin supposed he had crossed through the window into the loft.

Meanwhile Ilal and Su were giving the dogs an enthusiastic rubdown, and their whispers, whines, and panting seemed intolerably loud. A haze of cold clouds cloaked the stars but not their shine, and the moon was an oily blur whose light seeped around corners and cast soft-​edged shadows. The wind swept silently over the treeless court like the fringed wing of an owl. The elves were exposed. All it would take was one man peering outside, convinced something was not right.

But Aia had plotted her escape well. Once she had taken Llen by the tip of his ear and reminded him that there would be time for grateful kisses later, they were soon both up in the loft, and Llen and Imin were wrestling the ladder down. Imin was grateful Llen had gone up after all, for it took all his strength to hold the ladder silently away from the wall as he lowered it to within Imin’s reach. It must have been nothing to him to climb down with the girl clinging to his broad back.

“Might as well stay on there,” Imin whispered to Aia when Llen’s boot left the last rung and gingerly felt out the ground. “He’s just going to have to take you up again to scale the wall.”

Llen stood away from the ladder and straightened. His face was dark. Perhaps it was only from the exertion. Or perhaps, standing with the crippled girl’s arms tight around his neck and her crooked leg dangling from his hip, Llen was embarrassed to finally have witnesses to his strange love. Imin thought he ought to be. But the black eyes peering over Llen’s shoulder seemed to be daring him to say it out loud.

“Think we should put the ladder back?” Llen asked Imin.

Imin choked at his stupidity. “What difference does it make once we’re gone? Come on.”

Imin turned, but Aia said, “Wait! What about Wendel?”

Imin stopped. “What about what?”

Llen turned his face aside and grimaced where Aia could not see him. “Beloved—”

Aia lifted one arm from Llen’s neck and pointed up at the stone and timber construction that was built into the corner of the wall, right beside the shit-​patch. “He’s in there. A kind woman has him. I can hear him when he cries.”

“Wendel is her baby,” Llen explained in an undertone. “Aia…”

“Oh, no,” Imin said. “We are not taking any man-​babies. Lar is already going to kill us for coming in here to rescue her!”

Llen hung his head. Behind his lank hair his lips moved in fruitless search for words. Aia slipped from his back and stumped around to face Imin.

“Lar can’t kill you twice,” she pointed out.

Imin shuddered with the urge to whip back his arm and slap her right over the railing. But Llen would be upon him then, and they could not risk so much as a scuffle so close to sleeping men. There would be time enough to settle their scores once they were in the woods.

“We are not going into a man’s house to steal a man’s baby,” Imin whispered harshly, “and maybe wake the guards, and get the men combing the woods searching for it even if we get away. No, and no, and no! Lar would kill us twice then, and you had better believe it!”

Imin heard Ilal coming up to the foot of the stairs behind him, and he swung his arm around to point at him, stopping him cold.

“And I don’t want to hear any of your ‘If it was me and Pima’ shit! I’m in command here, and we’re leaving.” He swung back around to face Aia and Llen. “I’m not putting my son at risk to save your sickly little man-​child. We have lots of orphans back home for you to love, girl. Let the men take care of their own.”

Aia’s mouth curved into a childish pout, but her eyes blazed with dark fire. “I am not leaving without my baby.”

“Then you’re not leaving. Goodbye!”

Imin turned, but Llen caught his arm in a painful grip. He looked up. Llen was staring over his head at Ilal.

“Take her over the wall,” he said in his deepest, stoniest voice, “and wait at the edge of the woods. If something happens, don’t come back for me tonight. Get her safe first.”

In his outrage, Imin found strength enough to jerk his arm free of Llen’s grasp. “You are not going in there!”

“Save your son,” Llen replied. He gave Aia a gentle shove towards the stairs. “And mine.”

Aia flung herself back at him and wrapped her arms around his waist, suddenly as warm and wriggly and eyelash-​batty as a dull-​witted lover could desire. “Thank you, Llen! Thank you! He’s in the top of that house. But please, please don’t hurt the woman. She was so kind! She brought Wendel to visit me today, and talked to me so kindly, and told me about my sister and her—”

Imin had twisted his fist in her gown and whipped her around almost before the word “sister” had soaked into his mind. He could not even name his objection. But a knot of unfocused hatred throbbed in his chest, threatening to burst.

“Nobody,” he whispered, since he had to say something, “wants to hear about your sister!”

Aia was wide-​eyed and speechless. Llen’s big fists took Aia in one hand and Imin’s wrist in the other and pulled the two of them apart.

“Just wait for me outside,” he said in his monotone. “Either I’ll be quick or I won’t come at all.”

He stepped between them, pushing them farther apart with the breadth of his body, and then his heavy tread squeaked down the stairs. Ilal waited just to the side, ready to go up and take Aia onto his back. Imin leaned over the railing to whisper at Llen’s passing head.

“If they catch you, they’ll turn you over to Lord Osh!”

Llen only grunted and kept walking.

“Or his son!”

The dogs wagged their tails and wandered in happy confusion between the feet of the elves. Ilal started up the stairs, and Imin squeezed past him on his way down. He gave Su’s cheek a rough pat as he went by him, knowing it might be for the last time, and jogged up to Llen’s side.

They rounded a fence and walked up a few steps together. These stairs were of stone, and even Llen mounted them without a sound.

“Well?” Imin whispered. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

They stopped before the door to the house, and Llen tipped back his head to look at the overhanging upper story.

“Windows too small.”

“I meant something like ‘Thank you?’”

“Have to go through the door.”

Imin snorted. There was no talking to Llen once his mind was fixed on an idea.

“Listen,” Imin whispered, “I’m a lot quieter than you. You stay here. I’ll get the kid.”

Llen finally looked at him. “What if they have two kids in there?”

Imin swore.

Llen grabbed the handle—careful, at least, not to jangle it—and gently pulled. The door moved an inch and stopped with a faint clank. “Shit.”

Imin sighed in frustration. “It’s locked. Of course it’s locked.”

They heard a grunt and a scuffle as Ilal attacked the wall, presumably with Aia on his back. Llen stood with his arms hanging at his side, listening. His lips moved, pronouncing Aia’s name. Or maybe just dumbly opening and closing again.

Goaded by fear and exasperation, Imin pulled up a tuft of dead grass and set it ablaze in his hand. He ran its light up and down the crack between the two heavy doors, and finally found a black bar that spanned the gap on the far side.

Imin extinguished the grass and tossed the frizzled black stems into the weeds. “It’s bolted on the inside,” he whispered to Llen.

“Shit.”

Imin sighed and pressed his palm at bar-​height against a door. Within seconds, tendrils of smoke were curling out from between his fingers.

Llen whispered, “Thank you.”

“It’s about time.”

Then they were both free to listen to Su and Ilal as they heaved and dragged Aia up the wall. They heard a pause and a brief, dextrous scramble, and Imin supposed his son was going over the top and climbing down ahead of Ilal after having climbed up behind him. Imin relaxed a little. His son was free.

By now the stench of scorched wood was thick in his throat and drifting on the wind. He had to hope the men would think it was only a fresh log added to some other man’s fire.

The iron bar was hot by the time Imin’s hand had burned through the door. He slipped his fingers under it and gently lifted. The other door swung outwards under its own weight. Llen caught the edge of it above Imin’s head.

Imin grinned up at him and sifted a handful of smoking ash through his fingers. “And you were worried about leaving the ladder out.”

Llen snorted in amusement, and silently the two of them propped the door open with a couple of stones. Then they stepped inside.

Nothing lived in this lower room but rats. By the open door and the single barred window, there was enough light to make out hulking dark masses on either side of a narrow aisle: barrels, trunks, sacks. Spilled grains and seeds crunched softly beneath their boot soles like the husks of dead insects. Cloaks and robes hung in folds near the door, and farther in, sparks of moonlight hinted at metal tools or weapons hanging on the wall. Imin’s blood surged again with the excitement of sixteen winters.

“I’m taking something,” he whispered to Llen.

“No you’re not.”

Imin patted delicately over the top of a pile. “Help me find something small enough to carry. Not food—something to keep.”

“Quit it, Imin.”

“A knife would be the thing!” Imin whispered. “I’ll give it to Seven. A man-​knife! Lar would never take it away from him then.”

“We’re here for Aia’s baby. Lar is already going to kill us twice.”

“He can’t kill me three times. What’s this?”

The thing in his hands had a wooden handle and something like the heft and form of a knife, but it was not a blade. A tool of some sort?

A thump interrupted his investigations. Something round and clattering bounced a few times on the paved floor and rolled, making a thin, drawn-​out, hollow sound that well matched the sudden plunging void in Imin’s stomach. The round thing stopped rolling, and there was a moment of silence in which Imin dearly hoped they had not been heard.

Then a pair of feet thudded to the floor overhead, and a man’s voice shouted, “Who’s there?”

Llen whispered, “Shit.”

Imin slipped the tool into his belt and grabbed Llen by the sleeve. “That’s it,” he whispered. “I’m calling it off. Get out, and get up that wall. I’m right behind you.”

Imin shoved, then leaned with all his weight against Llen’s arm. Llen did not move.

“You can tell her you tried!” Imin whispered frantically. His pulse was thudding in his ears. The floorboards overheard creaked beneath the man’s feet. “Move it! I’m ordering you! You can blame it on me!”

The stony resistance of Llen’s body melted away, and Imin gratefully released his sleeve. But Llen was only moving to shove Imin aside and lumber past him up the stairs, heedless now of the barrels he jostled or the hollow banging of his heavy feet on the wood.

Llen’s legs disappeared into the blood-​red glow of the firelit room above. Imin clapped his hands over his forehead. “Stinking, seething, purulent Mother!” he swore.

Then he ran up the stairs after Llen.

This was where the man lived, in a warm, rough-​hewn room filled with wooden furniture and the light of a smoldering fire. At first all was a jumble of strange sights and sensations, but Imin’s mind quickly pushed all that to the periphery and focused on the man. He was only a silhouette against the fire, but Imin saw spindly legs and arms, a fat belly, and a pair of small, sagging tits. Then he saw the knife.

“There’s two of them!” a female voice wailed from the far side of the bed.

Llen said, “This Aia baby!” and pointed imperiously at a wooden basket beside the man. Imin saw nothing but a pile of cloth, but he supposed Llen could see better from where he stood. Imin crept closer.

The man shouted, “Get out of my house!”

Llen shouted back, “No you have this baby, no! This Aia baby!”

The woman pulled herself up by the bedclothes. “They’re coming after Aia and her baby!”

“Get back there with the kids!” the man shouted at her.

Imin crept closer still.

“Get out of my house!” the man roared. He grabbed the edge of the baby’s basket and slashed at the air with his knife to hold back the elves.

“Move towards the wife,” Imin said softly to Llen. “He’ll defend her before he’ll defend a kid who isn’t his.”

“Get out of my house!” the man shouted again, uncomprehending.

“Are you here to take Aia?” the woman asked in a wavering voice. The baby was awake now, pawing through its bedclothes in an effort to sit up, and whining in drowsy distress at all the racket.

Llen whispered, “Get behind me and make for the wife. I want to get the baby. Man-​babies are fragile.”

The woman was creeping around the foot of the bed. Imin watched her out of the corner of his eye, but he kept his gaze fixed on the man.

“You’re not getting any babies till that man is on the ground,” he hissed at Llen. “Do what I tell you!”

While he was busy speaking the man swung at him with the knife. Imin easily ducked to the right, but Llen must have believed he was lunging for the baby, for he grabbed his wrist and jerked him back up—right into the stroke of the knife.

The blade struck his arm just below his shoulder and bit into the flesh. A blast of pain erupted in Imin’s arm, blinding him, and its shock waves seemed to fling everything back. Llen’s grip on his wrist vanished. A body tumbled to the floor with a series of thuds, and the knife clattered away across the boards.

Imin was too battle-​hardened to cry out, but he gasped, “Mother!” His right hand clamped around his shoulder, and something hot leaked through his fingers. Now that he was breached, he could feel his blood surging through his body in search of the outlet. He could hear it whisking through the hollow space behind his ears.

Then, faintly at first, he heard the woman shrieking, “Take the baby! Take the baby!”

Imin lowered his unseeing gaze from where the man had been to where the man had gone. The woman had tackled him to the floor, and they were fighting; the man was bellowing and swinging at her, and the woman dodging and wrestling him down.

Imin shuffled backwards towards the stairs. Blood soaked the length of his sleeve and fell in drops from the fingertips of his limp hand, spattering a broken line across the wood. He twisted his gritted-​teeth grimace into an ironic smile. Footprints, ladders, holes burned in doors, trails of elven blood. If he made it out of here, Lar was going to skin him alive.