The Knave of Souls - Fantasy - Sequel to The Jack of Souls

Chapter 5a

The Blood Tooth is singular to adult Phyros mares. Stallions do not have them. Composed of ivory and shaped much like a boar's tusk, the tooth hangs from the upper jaw on either the left or the right side, like a single fang. In combat it is a formidable weapon, but its primary purpose appears to be blooding their offspring.

        —From Notes on the Sacred Isle, Sir Gregan Lamour

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TAINTED BLOOD & MAGIC

Caris found Lane at the butcher's block in the middle of the kitchen, quartering a freshly skinned goat. The sergeant glanced up when she entered, lip curling in distaste. He slammed the cleaver down, severing a joint. "Buckets on the floor." He gestured with the bloody blade to a pair of wooden buckets beside the door and resumed parting joints and sliding the bits aside—chunk! scrape—and scowling up between blows.

Caris dropped the sack of oats from her shoulder to the table, and set the buckets beside it to mix the meal. The stink of warm blood and bone meal filled her nostrils.

"Shame to feed a holy Phyros on the blood of goats." Lane spat in the straw. "Some would say sacrilege." Caris emptied the oats into the bloody meal. "Rightly done, it's the blood of virgins and bastards."

Caris dropped the empty sacking on the table and picked up a heavy rolling pin to mash in the oats. "You volunteering?" She tried to keep a straight face, but grinned in spite of herself. She was never the one with a verbal riposte, but that was a good one. Harric would be proud.

Lane slammed the cleaver into the block, eyes blazing. Caris put her hands on her hips and looked down at him from at least a head taller, let her gaze travel down his unarmored body and back up, and raised an eyebrow. This was a look her brother taught her before she left home, anticipating the many fools who would question her legitimacy.

Seething, Lane threw down his rag and apron and stormed past her, never dropping his glare until he passed.

She turned to watch him out the door, then moved the buckets so she could work with an eye on the entrance. Lane was not to be trusted. He'd as much as announced his allegiance to Bannus and the Old Ways just now, and if he grew desperate enough he might act on them. Loosening her sword and dirks in their scabbards, she set about stirring the oats into the mash until the grain, blood, and meal were thoroughly mixed in a heavy filling that—minus the bone meal and with the addition of sage and rosemary—was not unlike the stuffing for Mother Ganner's bladder sausage.

Relieved to leave the confines of the fort, she emerged into the courtyard beneath open sky, and hiked toward the stables. The stone walls and cobbles still slept in the shadow of the pass, but the river murmured tirelessly in its channel along the far side of the courtyard. Against her cheeks the morning air felt chill and damp with the breath of the river, but in it too were the liberated scents of sap and wildflowers from the meadows beyond the pass—the perfumes of late summer.

She smiled, imagining Rag and Idgit and Holly's delight when in those meadows after days of cramped stalls and dry fare.

A shout of alarm from the stable broke her thoughts. She looked up in time to see a groom spill out the central door into the yard and nearly falling on his face. Dropping the buckets, she hurried to him, ten explanations swarming her head, none of them good. "What is it?"

"It's broke out!" he spluttered. "Blood everywhere!"

Caris's heart stuttered. "Molly? She's out—"