Servant of the Serpent (Serpent's War Book 1) Read online

  Allie grinned. “My daddy taught me to take care of myself,” she told the buzzards. “Now what’s got you three so interested?”

  She stepped over the log and saw the ground dropped away down a steep hill. It was a short drop, only about four feet, but it led to a dry stretch of ground that would be underwater in the spring. The river circled the tiny peninsula on three sides and then swept downstream towards Almont. All of that registered but went ignored. Her eyes widened and she let out a startled cry at the woman lying face down on the ground, her feet still half submerged in the river.

  She stood paralyzed for several seconds. Allie could make out the curved and pointed ears of the woman. She wasn’t just a woman—she was an elf! Was she dead? She had to be; the elves lived on the other side of the mountains. Her shirt was dry and so was her hair, but it was dried by the sun. She must have washed ashore.

  Allie nodded and slid down the hill to stand next to the elf maid. She crouched down beside her and reached out towards the side of her head. She hesitated, afraid to touch a dead body. What had killed her? She pulled her hand back and looked at her again, studying her from head to foot. Her gaze caught up on a tear in the back of her pants, high enough on her leg to make Allie blush at the thought of seeing her skin.

  “This is silly,” she whispered and leaned over to look at the wound. She could barely see the wound itself. All she saw was the pink flesh and the dried puss and blood that caked it. Was the wound infected?

  Allie looked at the dead elven woman from her new position and saw the torn fabric of her shirt beneath her right arm. She leaned as far as she could without putting her hands on the woman’s body and could barely make out a similar looking wound. She shook her head and sighed. Her first elf and it was a dead one.

  “I wonder who you were,” Allie mumbled. She shifted and reached up to brush the hair away from the woman’s face.

  The dead woman’s eyes snapped open, proving she wasn’t as dead as Allie thought. Not only that, but with her face uncovered, Allie realized she wasn’t a she.

  “Are you a nymph?” the injured man breathed through split lips crusted with dried blood.

  Allie screamed and jumped back. She dropped her stick and fell backwards, and then kept scrambling on her hands and feet to get back. In no time, she splashed into the river and fell back, splashing and choking on the water that she sucked into her mouth. She jerked up, sputtering and coughing, and then remembered the elven man on the shore. She dropped back down, kneeling in the river and keeping herself underwater from the shoulders down.

  He didn’t move or speak. Allie waited several minutes and then lifted herself a few inches to get a better view without exposing herself too much. “Hey!” she called when he didn’t move. “Are you awake?”

  The man didn’t move.

  Allie frowned and glanced around. Her stick was on the ground and her clothes were downstream. She didn’t even know how far downstream; she’d walked for at least an hour, maybe two. Allie bit her lip. “Don’t move. I’ll go get help.”

  Her answer was the caw of a buzzard. She spun and glared at the bird sitting on the side of the river. “You leave him alone—he’s hurt!”

  Neither bird nor man responded. Allie clenched her teeth and let out a frustrated growl. “I’ll be back, I promise!”

  She turned and lunged into the water, kicking hard and swinging her arms to swim with the current back downstream to where she’d left her clothes. She had no idea what she’d do when she got there, other than get dressed, but she would probably need help. Whoever he was, he’d been hurt and probably almost dead. A healer, maybe? Her grandpa would know. He’d even told her that he’d worked with elves in the past.

  Allie swam towards the eastern shore, her arms and legs getting tired. She wanted to be ready to climb out and walk if she got too tired to swim. It wouldn’t do the elf or her any good if she didn’t make it back!

  Chapter 10

  Allie ran into her grandfather’s house almost as sweaty as when she’d left it. She tossed her soiled clothes in the pile that she’d wash later and dashed back out, anxious to find her grandpa. She didn’t have to run far; he was heading up the road towards her as she rounded the corner of the house.

  “Whoa there, Allie, wha—”

  “Grandpa! I found something,” she panted. “Somebody, I mean. You’ve got to come help him!”

  Bucknar held out his hands to slow her down. “Hold on a minute. What’s this? What do you mean?”

  “We can’t hold on!” she insisted. “He’s upstream. By the river. He’s hurt really bad.”

  “Allie—”

  “Grandpa, he’s an elf!”

  Bucknar stiffened and looked past her towards the river. “Hurt how?”

  “I don’t know. I saw a couple of wounds but I couldn’t see close. His leg and his side, just under his arm. He’s been cut or something. And his face is all beaten up and bruised. I don’t know if he washed up on shore or pulled himself out, but he’s up a ways.”

  Bucknar frowned. “We can find out why you were out that far by yourself later.”

  Allie swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  “An elf,” Bucknar mused. He nodded. “All right, let’s get Stinkeye and Brownie saddled.”

  Allie’s eyes widened. She hadn’t thought about the horses. “Good idea!”

  “So go!” he snapped. “And give me back my sword.”

  Allie jumped and then had to spin back. She looked down and realized she still had his sword buckled around her waist. She unbuckled it and handed it to him, letting her dress move a little more freely without the belt.

  “Go get changed,” Bucknar said, reversing his decision. “Can’t ride a horse worth a damn with a dress on.”

  Allie’s eyes widened. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face as she turned and ran back to the house. She grabbed her other set of pants and shirt off the clothesline strung outside and then rushed inside to change into them. She didn’t bother climbing up into her loft or using her grandpa’s bedroom for privacy—she was in too much of a hurry. By the time she made it back outside, both horses were saddled and Bucknar was finishing up with the horses.

  “Sorry,” Allie said.

  Bucknar grunted and waved for her to hurry up. She jogged over to the horses and stopped when she saw a scabbard hanging from the pommel on Brownie’s saddle. “Um, what’s this?”

  “Figured you needed your own so you stop getting mine so dirty,” Bucknar grunted. “Now hurry up. If he’s as bad off as you say, we might find the scavengers fighting over him when we get there.”

  Allie gulped and all but leaped onto her horse. Brownie whickered at the rough treatment but a soothing hand and a promise of a carrot settled the horse down. She turned and saw Bucknar climbing into his saddle and took the opportunity to buckle her new sword to her waist. She drew it out and grinned. Etched into the crosspiece was a desert star, a flower with white petals and a yellow center. Allie had them growing all over the place when she was younger and would thread them in her hair every chance she had. On the sword there were no colors, but she recognized the flower instantly.

  She drew the sword the rest of the way and admired how it glistened in the afternoon sun. The curved blade of the talwar was oiled and sharp; she didn’t need to test it to see. The blade looked a little thinner from front to back than the ones she’d been using. She swung it through the air in a slow arc and grinned. It felt lighter and easier to move. She loved it, and that was saying something for a girl who didn’t want to fight!

  “Grandpa, remind me to give you a big hug when I can!”

  Bucknar spared a moment to smile at her and then gathered his reins. “Lead the way!”

  Allie put her heels to Brownie, leading her grandpa out of town to the north and then finding one of the wider trails she used to make her way through the scrub to the edge of the river. She guided them north, marveling at how much faster they moved on horseback than when she walked the rive
r. It scared her too—a rider would have come across her on one of her swims too quick for her to realize it and hide. She was either going to have to walk farther and faster, or ride her horse the next time she tried it.

  Another ten minutes of guiding her horse along the river led her to the bend where the peninsula the elf was on jutted out. She leaned forward and pointed at the still prone elf. The buzzards were back and they’d invited four more friends. All seven were hopping around the elf but hadn’t yet tried to land on him.

  “Grandpa, that’s him!”

  Bucknar mumbled something and spurred his horse ahead of hers. He stopped once he was even with the elf but on the far side and dismounted. He glanced up and down the river and tilted his head to sniff the air.

  “What are you doing?” Allie wondered.

  “Making sure I don’t smell rotting meat.”

  “Gross!”

  Bucknar shrugged and turned back to his horse. He pulled a coil of rope out of a saddlebag and tied one end around the pommel of his horse’s saddle. He turned and studied the river before looking back up at Allie. “You seen him from over here?”

  She nodded.

  Bucknar fixed her with his knowing gaze. “I don’t see no cuts on him. Can’t see his face either.”

  “I swam across to check,” she mumbled. It wasn’t entirely a lie, she supposed.

  “Uh huh.”

  “I changed when I got back!”

  He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. “I’m going to go and get him. I’ll tie the rope around him in case I get in any trouble.”

  “There’s no trouble,” Allie insisted. “The current’s slow here. Or, um, it was earlier.”

  “I bet,” he muttered. “You stay put and keep an eye out. Keep Stinkeye from wandering off too. Damn horse can be worse than a mule sometimes.”

  Allie moved Brownie up next to Stinkeye and reached over to pat the horse on the neck. She gathered his reins and held on to them while her grandpa stopped to take his boots off before wading into the river. He hissed as the cool water rose higher and higher on his legs. He kept going and threw himself forward when it reached the top of his legs. Allie thought she heard a high-pitched squeal as he went into the water.

  Bucknar swam a dozen feet before standing. The water was up to his chest but he was able to walk to the other bank. He swung his arms and shook his legs before hopping up and down a few times. Finished with whatever strange ritual he was performing, he tugged on the rope he’d tied to his waist, pulling the slack out of the water, and then walked over to the elf. The buzzards cried out and flapped their wings, flying back to higher perches but staying close to their hopeful meal.

  “This ain’t no man,” Bucknar said loud enough for Allie to hear him. He reached down and pulled up on the elf’s shoulder, lifting him and giving him a better look. “Oh, I’ll be damned, it is!”

  “Is he okay?” Allie called out.

  Bucknar knelt down next to the fallen elf but Allie couldn’t see what he was doing. He stood up after a moment and turned back to her. “He’s a tough bugger,” her grandpa admitted. “Not sure he’ll survive the night but we’ll try.”

  Allie’s heart leapt in her chest. A real live elf, and she was helping him! She swung her leg up to dismount and then realized she didn’t know what she could do to help. She settled back onto her saddle. “What can I do?”

  “Sit there and look pretty,” Bucknar said. “If I lose him in the river, have the horse pull him out.”

  Bucknar tied the rope around the unconscious elf. He rolled the man over and got his hands under his shoulders and dragged him back to the water. Once they were in the water, Bucknar moved easier. The elf started moving too. Allie couldn’t make out what was happening or being said, but she heard her grandpa’s voice. He was talking to the elf while pulling him back across. He stopped talking when he had to swim on his back and tug the elf after him.

  “Help,” Bucknar grunted when he dragged the elf near the eastern bank. The old man was blowing hard from where he rested while holding the barely conscious elf out of the water.

  Allie leapt off her horse and hit the ground running. She ran into the water without bothering to take off her boots and waded in until the water was above her knees. Her grandpa was resting on the bottom and trying to catch his breath while he held the elf up.

  “Pull him—to shore,” Bucknar wheezed.

  Allie grabbed the elf under one arm and tugged him towards the shore. He pulled through the water without any problems. When she reached the edge and started dragging him across the ground, she found what she was in for.

  The elf was thin but awkward. She couldn’t pick him up; he was too large and heavy. She struggled to drag him because she didn’t want to hurt him. By the time Bucknar climbed out of the river, she was huffing and puffing. The elf was laying on the bank, his knees bent and feet still in the water.

  “Up on your horse,” her grandpa said.

  Allie straightened. “Me?”

  “No, the elf. You’re young—you walk.”

  Allie frowned and then shrugged. She’d walked it twice today already. And a lot farther. “Okay. Help me—he’s too heavy for me to lift.”

  Bucknar nodded and bent over to pick the elf up by the shoulders. Before he lifted, he looked up at Allie. “We’ll flip him on his belly and lay him across your saddle. You stay beside him and keep him from falling.”

  “Got it.”

  Bucknar heaved and twisted the elf around. The injured man groaned and his eyelids fluttered but he didn’t wake up enough. Allie grabbed his legs and they managed, through a couple of mishaps that nearly dropped the elf on the ground, to get him positioned over her saddle.

  “Be careful, Grandpa! That doesn’t look like it feels good,” Allie said while Bucknar was using the rope to tie the elf to the saddle.

  “Good,” her grandpa grunted. “Make him comfy and he might relax so much he stops fighting.”

  “Fighting?” she asked. “He’s not up for fighting anything.”

  “He’s fighting to live. That man’s got infection running through him from them wounds and there’s no telling what kind of beating he took in the river. A miracle he’s lived this long.”

  Allie bit her lip and nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Yep,” her grandpa said. He looked at his horse and sighed. “Let’s go.”

  Bucknar stepped up to Stinkeye and saw the horse looking back at him. He whickered and stomped a foot.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Bucknar grumbled. He fit his foot in the stirrup and climbed onto the horse’s back with only a few groans. He turned Stinkeye around and said, “I’ll lead. We’ll come in around back. There’s nothing wrong with an elf in these parts, but it’s not normal. Especially one being roughed up like this. Best we don’t let anybody know about him.”

  “Oh!” Allie turned to stare at the hanging elf. His long hair fell most of the way to the ground. “Okay, should we wait until sunset?”

  “You trying to make your horse go lame? We’ll bring him in; just don’t draw attention to it.”

  “Um, okay.”

  Bucknar nodded and snapped his reins, starting his horse on the long walk home. Allie grabbed Brownie’s reins and twitched them, sending her horse after her grandpa and making her fall in beside him so she could keep track of the elf. She watched him as she walked but he’d fallen into a deep sleep again. That or he’d died—she wasn’t sure which.

  The walk back to Almont took almost three times as long as it took them to head north. It felt even longer, especially when the elf shifted in his precarious position and Allie had to scramble to make sure he didn’t slide and fall out of the saddle. The rope would have held him on the horse, but he would have been dragging and probably been stepped on.

  Bucknar led them around the eastern side of the village and took care to move through the countryside between two small farms rather than taking the roads. He moved ahead, putting some distance between
himself and Allie, and scouted the path. Allie slowed Brownie’s walk and waited until her grandpa waved her on. They hurried forward, Allie reaching out to put her hand on the elf’s back to help hold him steady.

  Bucknar had to dismount and pop the beams out of the fence on the back of his house to let them through. He left the fence open and rushed ahead, motioning for Allie to hurry. She followed and joined him at the door to his house.

  “I’ll get him down and inside. You take care of the horses and see about that fence.”

  “But Grandpa!”

  “Do it,” Bucknar snapped. Allie knew better than to argue with him.

  Together, they untied the elf and slid him off the saddle without breaking his neck on the ground. Bucknar wrapped his arms under the man’s shoulders and locked his hands together so he could drag him inside. Allie waited for the door to bang shut behind them before she led Stinkeye and Brownie back to the small pasture.

  She worked fast, removing saddles and hanging them up on the wall of the small barn. She tossed their blankets and bags on a shelf and then started towards the house before she remembered the fence. Growling in frustration, she turned and ran to the fence. Fixing it was a simple matter of sliding the ends back in place and making sure the rail was adjusted so it wouldn’t slide out on its own. She took off at a run as soon as she finished.

  “How is he?” she blurted as she flew through the door.

  Bucknar was kneeling next to the elf on a sleeping pallet he’d made out of throwing a few furs and blankets on the floor. The elf’s torn and dirty clothes were on the ground beside him in a bundle. Bucknar nodded to the clothing. “Wash those and mend them if you can.”

  “Now?” she whined.

  “No,” he agreed. “But as soon as you can.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Years ago, like before you came along years ago, part of my pay for a job I done was a bottle of this special elixir. I figured it for snake oil like them traveling priests sell, but it came from the elves, so I kept it.”