Peter Brett – The Core (страница 17)
‘Thank you, mistress,’ Elissa said. ‘We gladly accept.’
‘S’fine,’ Briar said. ‘Got a briarpatch in Gatherers’ Wood.’
Leesha looked up at that. ‘You’re sleeping in my wood?’
‘Ay,’ Briar said.
‘Do you know my Painted Children?’ Leesha asked.
Briar nodded. ‘Seen ’em lots of times. Live in the night like me. Brave, but …’ He searched for a word. ‘Angry.’
‘Will you look in on them for me tonight?’ Leesha asked. ‘I’ve been away some time, and would like to know what I can expect when I visit them.’
Briar nodded. ‘Ay.’
334 AR
Briar padded on bare feet through the Gatherers’ Wood. The soft leather boots he wore out of respect for Mistress Leesha’s carpets were laced together and slung over his shoulder under his father’s battered shield.
Bare feet told much that boots could not. Where footing was sure and silent. The residual warmth where prey had been. The rush of nearby water. The thrum of hurried feet. Things that made you part of the night, instead of something clumsily passing through it. Things that could mean your life.
Briar loved the Gatherers’ Wood. Too vast to conform to magic’s shape, it was one of the few places in Hollow County not protected by a greatward. After dark, wood demons roamed the boughs and prowled the forest bed. Water demons swam its ponds. Wind demons skimmed the wider paths and circled above the clearings.
But even amid the wild nature, Briar could see how Mistress Leesha was shaping the wood from within. Some changes, like warded crete walkways and posts, were obvious to all, safe as sunlight. Others, their power shaped by natural features and cultivated plants, were so subtle the unwary might never know they were under the mistress’ protection.
It was why Briar trusted Mistress Leesha so implicitly. She had taken the time to understand the cories. How a certain slick moss on the branches could make wood demons avoid a copse of trees, or a patch of dry ground limit how far a bog demon might range. How fruit and nut trees drew cories in search of prey, and other plants urged them away.
Briar helped as he wandered the wood, cutting hogroot stalks and planting them in strategic places. There was a wild patch growing in a ring around an ancient goldwood tree, limbs hanging over the stalks like a parent bending to embrace a child. A half-frozen stream ran through the patch, eroding beneath the thick roots. It created a small hollow Briar could widen and expand, the moist soil pungent enough to drive off demon and human alike.
He grew the wood’s protections with love and harmony, leaving no sign of his shaping hand. The wood returned his love, providing sustenance and shelter from the cories.
The Painted Children were less delicate. Here and there Briar found signs of their passing, scattered like trash in the street. Broken limbs, trampled plants, wardings carved into the living bark of great trees. Some of their traps were cunning enough to catch a demon, but most were so obvious even cories could spot them.
Still, Briar had seen them fight. For all their clumsiness, the Children had power in the night. It would be foolish to underestimate them. Mistress Leesha was wise to want to learn more.
Briar drew near his patch, but he never went directly to the entrance. He circled, checking the defences. Like Mistress Leesha, he preferred stinks to snares, urging demons gently away. A few shoots of hogroot, transplanted and allowed to grow wild, were enough to turn a stalking demon onto another path.
Other scents had a similar effect on humans. Even the brave souls living in the Gatherers’ Wood hesitated to step into a patch of skunkweed, or a place reeking of rot. In one place, a diverted stream turned the path into sucking mud that woodies and humans alike would avoid.
Everything seemed in order, until he found a fresh snare. It was an area he’d littered months ago with animal carcasses stuffed with hogroot. Unlike plants and diverted streams, some deterrents had to be maintained. The carcasses were gone and Briar saw signs demons had returned to the area.
The trap was a good example of the craft, evidence that at least one of the Painted Children had claimed this place as a hunting ground. The child knew enough to use the deterrents around the Briarpatch to herd the demon into the path of the hidden snare. The loop lay in a shallow groove dug into the soil, covered lightly with the natural detritus of the forest bed.
The rope had been rubbed with sap and dirtied, leaved twigs stuck along its length to give the impression of natural vine as it disappeared into the branches of a wintergreen tree. Briar had to climb the boughs to find the net holding the counterweights.
Even the wary might be caught in so cleverly hidden a trap, but Briar knew this part of the wood intimately, and the snare stood out to him as if ablaze. It was discomfiting – so close to where he laid his head – but it made Mistress Leesha’s request all the easier to fulfil. At dusk, the hunter would be positioned and waiting. All Briar had to do was watch.
Briar woke to darkness in his sleeping hole, but after a decade living without wards, he could sense the approaching night like a chill.
It was no great space, but every time he returned, Briar dug a little more, added a vent, or shored the packed dirt. The walls and floor were lined with tough, dried hogroot stalks – comfortable to lie upon and resistant to water. Even if the entrance was discovered, the scent would keep cories from investigating further.
Stretching, he listened carefully, checking his spyholes one by one. When he was confident no one was about, Briar lifted the trap just enough to slither into the centre of his hogroot patch.
As its name implied, the roots of the plant were aggressive, knitting a thick sod that pulled up like a carpet. He quickly and carefully smoothed the trap back down, strewing leaves to obscure the faint impression.
Here and there Briar snapped off leaves as he made his way through the patch, leaving minimal sign of his harvest. Some he ate, filling his pockets with the rest. There was another trapdoor away from the sleeping den where he made his water and squatted out his night soil.
Making his way to the snare, he was surprised to see the hunter in plain sight, not bothering to hide as she waited by the rope with a ready knife.
Mistress Leesha said Stela Inn wasn’t much older than him, but she was taller, looking more a grown woman than he felt a man. Magic had made her body hard, and she wore little to cover it. A loincloth. A binding around her breast. A leather headband.
Her bare skin was inked with wards. The pattern started on her feet, winding up her calves and thighs, twisting about her midsection, then slithering down her arms. Looking at her, Briar felt his chest tighten and his face heat.
He shook it off, circling the area. He expected to find other hunters in hiding to assist, but after several minutes he became convinced Stela was alone.
It was curious. In his experience, the Children hunted as a pack. This was something new.
Slipping quietly behind her, Briar shimmied up the far side of the tree holding the counterweights. From its boughs he could study Stela while keeping view of the surrounding area.
She carried neither spear nor shield, though a number of pouches and ornaments hung beside the knife sheath on her belt. Stela froze as full dark fell, but made no other effort to conceal herself.
There was an unmistakable crunch as the wood demon that claimed this part of the forest lumbered down the path Stela had laid with fresh carcasses. Briar kept expecting her to hide, but she remained in plain sight. Did she mean to use herself to bait the trap?
But as the corie approached, it showed no sign it saw her. The wards on Stela’s flesh had taken on a soft glow, and the demon’s eyes slid past like she wasn’t there.
It was a good trick. The corie moved past her, oblivious as it stepped into the snare.
Stela moved fast, kicking the back of the corie’s knee, driving it into the ground. She spun like a dancer, whipping her knife through the rope that held the counterweight. Laden with heavy stones, the net dropped and the noose caught the woodie at the knee, yanking it to swing upside down. Stela had measured well. The demon’s flailing talons scraped the air just above the ground.
Stela tamped down as the corie’s body swung her way, eyes hard as she watched its claws. When it swung back in, she shot forward, slapping its branch-like arm aside to step inside its guard. Close in, she delivered a quick combination of punches and elbows, blows flashing with magic. Before it could recover, she push-kicked it back out of reach.
She skittered back and forth three more times, controlling the battlespace fully as she kept the corie disorientated, hitting it again and again.
But wood demons were strong, their armour thick. She could cause the demon pain and some temporary hurt, but its magic would heal those quickly unless she brought her endgame. Briar glanced at the knife, still sheathed on her belt.