Lowborn Ch. 02

"Get some rest. We're safe here."

He didn't have much choice. He fell dead asleep a mere minute after lying down.

****

"Think I'm gonna have to pinch a new mattress before I use this kip again," Raven remarked when Cerebus sat up after awakening from an increase in light and a change in the sounds of the cellar hideaway. "We pretty much did that one in. Whole place smells of sweat and sex."

She glanced down at his cock and licked her lips. "Worth it though."

Mindblind chuckled, and noticed that she'd placed a bucket filled with water next to the mattress. A scrap of cloth hung from the side.

"That one's for cleaning up. Got some for us to drink, too. It's right around dawn. Sun hadn't popped up yet when I was out."

Noticing that her clothes were wet, he asked, "Still raining?"

She nodded. "Lousy traveling weather. For them too, though."

Mindblind grabbed the cloth and went to work washing away the abundant evidence of the previous night's tryst. They could leave the road and make far better time than the wagons bogged down in the mud. It was about the only chance they had of catching the slaver's caravan.

Once he'd cleaned up and dressed, Raven handed him a small pack. "A few essentials. I keep a couple in every kip. Should be enough for us to survive, if not comfortably. Ready to go?"

"What do you think our chances of finding them are?"

A crooked smile spread across her face. "The slave traders always take the same route south. They avoid the few places where the law might harass them, and the most expensive bribes. People have started calling it the Weeping Way. Weird for any of them to come this far north during storm season. They don't like our weather. We'll find them."

Cerebus responded with a nod and a grunt. He didn't know exactly what they were going to do when they did find the slavers — he just knew that it wasn't going to be pretty.

The walk was dreary and dismal from the start. Even off the muddy road, the thick grasses of the plains made traveling unpleasant. The rain came down at a light, but steady pace, soaking them both to the skin in only a short distance.

"There — see that?" Raven noted, pointing toward the road. "Those ruts are a lot wider than normal."

"Yeah..." he said, not making the connection.

"Draxnians use wider wheels on their wagons. The place is dry, with lots of spots that are sand. The wider wheels help keep them from bogging down as bad."

He and Raven both turned at the same time, recognizing the sound of a horse moving at a fast pace.

"C'mon," Raven said in a low voice, and tugged him farther away from the road. She ducked down into the tall grass, facing the road, and Mindblind joined her.

The riders came into view a minute or so later, horses in full gallop. Cerebus' eyes narrowed when he realized who the lead man was.

"Reed," he growled, as he stared at the man's back.

"Who?"

"The captain of the Lakenshire guard."

"Know him, huh? Must be suicidal, going after them with only three. Wonder what made him change his mind?"

Mindblind doubted that he had. Reed was of old Egorian noble blood, and considered most people beneath him. The only people he really protected in Lakenshire were those rich enough to provide him with the lifestyle that he thought he deserved.

"Have to pardon me if I don't care who wins out in that case," he said as he stood back up.

"Ha! I like you," Raven said, and then twitched her eyebrows suggestively.

"Let's get going. Whatever Reed is up to, it doesn't change anything."

She nodded her agreement, and the pair set out again.

****

Nightfall was approaching, and the rain had never stopped. Mindblind was constantly blowing puffs of air at the huge drops of water hanging from the end of his nose. If it wasn't for an image of Delly lying cold and dead on the floor of her room, he'd have turned around and gone straight back home.

"Stand of trees over there. Looks like there's some evergreens. Good a place to spend the night as any. Bad idea to travel after dark out here. The plains cats can eat you before you even know that they're there. They stay away from fires, though."

Cerebus was about to say that he didn't know if a fire was a good idea, but then saw smoke. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw yet another thin, twisted column fighting to rise against the rain.

She saw him looking around and said, "Bandits, the plains barbarians, and a lot of people living in dirt houses. Nobody will even notice another fire out here."

He had to acknowledge the wisdom of that, and followed her toward the trees. Luckily, the rain was light enough that the evergreen boughs actually provided a relatively dry spot beneath them. The thick litter of needles would provide cushioning as well — so long as they picked out the sticks and pine cones first. Once they set up the small tent that he carried in the pack Raven had provided, the evening might actually be tolerable.

It certainly wouldn't be pleasant, because neither of them were going to get more than a half a night's sleep.

A fire proved to be no trouble, with plenty of dry tinder and fuel around. Of course, that meant that they'd have to keep a close eye on it. One errant spark could have them sitting in a fireball, no matter the rain that was still falling.

"You'd think that this would have blown itself out a bit in that thunderstorm," Raven complained as she pulled some jerked beef and hard traveler's bread from the pack that she carried.

"Haven't seen a break in the clouds. It'll keep raining until daybreak, at least."

She handed over some of the rations, and then took a bite of bread. "First watch, or last?"

Mindblind tore loose a bite of the beef and answered, "Doesn't matter. I don't sleep much, and I already had more than I wanted when they tried to bash my skull in."

"I'll take first, then. Easier for me to stay up than to get up." She took another bite of the bread and made a face. "If we don't find them first thing tomorrow, we can take a little detour and grab some decent food from this little farm town that's not far away."

"I've got a little coin left."

She laughed. "I said grab. They've got more than enough, and they're old bluebloods. They grub around in the dirt all day, but they still think that they're better than everyone else. They've got it coming."

He wasn't in any mood to argue morality with her, and hardly adverse to saving what little money he had. He of course agreed with her that most of the old nobility still in the country weren't worth a pile of dung. Given half a chance, any one of them would step on you.

Raven sat close to him as they finished their meager fare in silence. He had to wonder what was going through her head. She was more than attractive enough to have any man she wanted, but she seemed at ease around him. As he thought about it, he felt an odd sort of kinship with her as well.

"You from Lakenshire?" He asked her after washing down the last bite of his meal with some water.

She shook her head. "A bit north of Fightershaven. Place doesn't even have a name, so far as I know. Just took my sis there because Yasmine treats her whores better than any other madame. Got tired of pinching all the bread we lived on while she fucked anything with a dick, so I took her someplace where she could take care of herself and keep her cunt filled."

"Don't get along very well with my sisters, either."

"Half sisters, I assume. We're probably a lot alike. Outcasts. Lowborn. The scum of the earth in most people's eyes."

"Their problem, not mine."

She chuckled. "Yeah, you can think that. You can even believe it, sometimes. You wouldn't have took off if you didn't think that you were gonna get blamed for what happened at the Cat."

He shrugged, a little irritated at first, until he took a closer look at her. Her expression was distant — bitter. She was venting. "So, what's your story."

"Mom was a whore. We'd be playing with dirt and sticks out back of the shack while somebody was screwing her inside. I was nine when one of them killed her — busted her head open for the coppers he'd paid her."

She let out a snorting chuckle. "Thief with a lame leg took us in, and we earned our bread by pinching for him. Once we got older, we earned our keep in his bed, too. I took better to his teaching, Yani took better to repaying him. Died of something about six years ago. We got it too, but we lived, and I took over his kip."

Mindblind took his best guess of her age and felt a little sick about how young the two had started earning their keep. It put his own life in perspective.

Most people shunned him, and his sisters teased him — often hatefully — but his mother and stepfather didn't treat him any differently than any of their other children. His brother nearly worshiped him, and the few extended family members that he'd met had accepted him as well. A far cry more than what she'd had growing up.

"Rasp stank to high heaven, and he was a taskmaster, but he taught me everything I know. Always knew when I was doing good, because he'd pinch us some new clothes or something, even with his gimpy leg."

Her voice softened a little as she spoke of the lame thief in almost fatherly terms. It helped explain to Cerebus why she'd warmed to him so readily. She was used to far worse, and he was a rare median between the world she knew, and the one she could never walk in.

She shook her head, almost as if snapping out of a trance. "Sorry. Damn rain always makes me like this, especially when I'm stuck out in it."

Feeling as though he owed her a little in return, Cerebus relayed his own history, as his stepfather had told it to him when he asked. "Mom and Pops lived up along Normandal. They were supposed to get hitched in a few days when the goblins raided the village and took her. They had her for five days before Pops and his brothers found her."

He could remember the barely controlled rage in his stepfather's voice when the older man had told this part of the tale. "Three of 'em killed two warrior goblins and six reds with knives, hoes, and scythes. None of 'em really remember anything but seeing red when they did it. Cut their balls off, stuffed them in their mouths, and hung 'em upside down from a tree."

Raven smiled, obviously approving of the brutal violence. Truth to tell, so did he.

"They got hitched when Mom pulled out of it, even though they knew she was pregnant by then."

"Not many men like that..." She began, and then suddenly snapped her gaze behind her, though there wasn't anything but low-hanging pine boughs to see.

A second later, he heard it. It sounded like a female voice — a scream to be more exact. If it were any farther away, they never would have caught the slightest hint of it.

Raven stood up, checking her knives and daggers with quick pats, and said, "That's my sis."

"You sure?"

"Trust me. One of them is humping her, and she's playing along. I've heard it often enough until I took her to the Cat."

Suddenly wide awake, and coursing with nervous energy, he stood next to her and cinched up the buckles on his armor. She dumped her skin of water on the fire, and then kicked the dirt from the shallow pit that he'd dug on top of it as well.

Without another word, they set out into the darkness and rain, side-by-side, with naked steel in their tightly clenched fists.

****

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Chapter 3 should be out in a few days