Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 63

‘The raiders sold you?’ Jula asked, horrified.

Nona had fallen silent, staring down at the water far below. ‘No. My village did.’ Nona looked up and saw the three girls staring at her as if she was something altogether new to them. ‘The raiders took me, but they didn’t get far. When dawn broke they camped in the Rellam Forest. The village hunters don’t go there. They say there are spirits in those woods, and not kind ones.

‘The Pelarthi broke into small groups. There weren’t more than twenty to start with. Five stayed with me: four men and the sister of the woman my mother stabbed. I found I had blood on me.’ Nona looked at her hands, turning them over as if the story might be written there. ‘While the Pelarthi were settling to sleep the forest fell silent. They didn’t seem to notice but I felt it watching us, the whole place – the trees, the ground, the darkness – all of it watching. A warrior came out from the shadow where the trees grew thick. He had bramble in his beard and a shock of wild hair. He didn’t speak, just raised his sword and came on barefoot. None of the Pelarthi even looked up – just me, lying on my side with my hands tied behind my back. I thought he might be one of them, only he looked too … wild, as though he hadn’t ever lived anywhere but right there in the Rellam. And his sword was polished wood, black, or very deep brown.

‘First the wildman slew the warrior who had killed Mother. He just swung his sword overhead and brought it down on the Pelarthi’s neck. The man’s head came right off. The others jumped up then and they weren’t slow, but he moved among them as though it were a dance – didn’t say a word, didn’t make a sound … none of them met his blade with theirs … and every time he changed direction there was a wound behind him spraying blood, and someone falling.

‘The woman fell over me, stumbling away from a swing of the wildman’s sword. By the time I’d struggled out from underneath her it was all over. The Pelarthi lay dead and the man had gone. Just me and the corpses and the forest moving all around us.