Deniably Dead (Arucadi Series Book 4)

by E. Rose Sabin

  Small animals surely inhabited this wood, but he had no hope of being able to snare any. He would have to look for edible plants or find a tree with fruit or berries. How did people survive in the wild? Having lived all his life in a large city, he had no experience with living off the land. Renni would be more resourceful, but she wasn’t here, and if she were, she would laugh at his ineptitude. His head still hurt, though not as badly, but he could tell that his power had not returned. He needed food and more rest to be rid of the headache and the other pains that still plagued him. Until he could meet that need, he’d just have to get along with what nature endowed him and forget about using any special abilities.

  He stumbled along for what seemed a very long time, but could not have been as long as it seemed. Without the aid of the walking stick he could not have kept going. He despaired of ever finding a way out of the woods and began to fear that he’d only been going in circles, when he stepped over one more tree root and onto a path. At first he could not believe it, but standing on the level bit of ground and looking ahead and behind him, he saw a clear path winding through the woods. He couldn’t help himself; he wept with relief.

  He had no idea where the path might lead, but it had to lead somewhere, and it made for much easier walking. Now he wouldn’t have to worry about doubling back. He only had to stay on the path and keep walking in the same direction.

  But which direction?

  With his thoughts still muzzy, it took some time to figure out by the position of the afternoon sun which way was east, the direction in which he was certain he’d originally been heading. Gathering what stamina he had remaining, he set off in that direction. He hadn’t gone far when he heard a slow but steady clomp from the path ahead. A horse?

  He stepped off the path and held his walking stick before him, grasping it firmly in both hands. The horse came into view. And seated on it was Blue, his head nodding as though riding in his sleep. Thank the Power-Giver!

  Lore stood very still while the horse approached. As it passed him, he reached up and grabbed the reins with one hand, jerking them hard, at the same time swinging the stick in his other hand at Blue. The startled horse shied, and Blue, caught unawares, toppled off. Lore kept a firm grip on the horse’s reins and pulled it away from Blue, who had curled into a ball.

  Lore patted and calmed the horse and walked it a short distance to a tree growing beside the path. He tied the reins to a low branch and walked back to the groaning Blue. Lore kicked him. “Where’s the woman you carried away?” he demanded “What did you do to her?”

  Blue just shook his head and kept moaning. Lore didn’t think he was badly hurt, but he didn’t much care if he was. “Answer my question,” he said, nudging him with his foot. “Tell me the truth and I’ll let you live.”

  “I tossed her body in with all the others,” Blue said.

  “What do you mean? What others? Where? And what did you do to her?

  “Nothin’. She was already dead.”

  “You didn’t hurt her?”

  “How could I hurt a corpse?” He rolled out of reach of Lore’s foot and sat up. “I told you, I didn’t do nothin’ to her. I shouldn’t’ve took her. Should’ve let Shiny burn ’er up like Thorny told us to.”

  “Where is she?” Lore moved toward him, foot poised for another kick.

  “Go ahead and kill me. I’m dead anyway when Thorny finds out what I did.”

  “Why won’t you just answer my question? Where is she?”

  “She. It’s a dead body. A corpse. I told you. I threw her in with the others.”

  “You need to explain that. What others? What are you talking about?”

  “What d’you care? Why were you carrying a dead body in a coffin clear across the country anyway?”

  “That’s no business of yours. You stole her because you thought she was too pretty to burn up. I heard you say that. Now you’re saying you just tossed her somewhere. I want to know why and where. No, you can’t get up.” He used his stick to push Blue down when he tried to struggle up. “Stay there on the ground and answer my questions.”

  “All right. Just leave me alone.” He glared up at Lore but made no further attempt to rise. Lore saw that the man was tired and frightened and probably as hungry as he was. He prodded Blue with his foot, and the man continued. “I rode as far as I could, but I had to stop for the night. I tied the horse to a tree and put the dead girl on the ground. I didn’t do anything to her. I thought about it, but when I took her, it was ’cause she didn’t look dead, and now she did. And I couldn’t, well, you know. So I just went a little ways away and laid down and went to sleep.”

  Lore was both relieved and alarmed. Relieved that this brute hadn’t violated Kyla but alarmed at Blue’s declaration that she now looked dead. Had some spark of life that had somehow remained until then been snuffed out by the rough ride on the horse? He should kill this miserable, sniveling brute right now. But no. He still had to know what he’d done, where he’d left Kyla’s body. If possible, he intended to reclaim it even if all hope of life had gone from it. “So go on. Then what?” he said, enforcing the words with a kick.

  “Leave me alone,” Blue begged. “I’m tellin’ you what you want to know. I slept through the night, woke up, and thought about leavin’ the dead body right there and going back. But I was too scared of Thorny to go back. I don’t know why I threw the body back onto the horse, but I did. And I walked the horse for a while, lookin’ for water. I found a little stream and let the horse drink from it, and I drank too, and I splashed some on the corpse, but it didn’t do anything. So I got back on the horse and rode off again. I’d decided I needed to get rid of the dead girl, maybe bury her, except I didn’t have nothin’ to dig a hole with. And somehow I couldn’t just throw her off the horse and ride off. I don’t know why. It’s what I shoulda done. Anyway, I just kept going. I was following a path, but then I came to a road, and I could go faster, but I didn’t want to ride the horse too hard. After a while I came to a signpost that said how far it was to Pescatil. Too far to reach it, I thought, but it seemed like there wasn’t much on the way. Maybe I’d come to a farmhouse or some place I could get somethin’ to eat. ’Course I’d have to ditch the corpse. So I kept lookin’ for a place to drop her off. Then to make things worse, the sky got dark like we was gonna have a bad rainstorm. So I looked around for some kind of shelter. I didn’t want to get under trees and maybe get hit by lightning. I didn’t hear any thunder, but it sure looked like a storm comin’.”

  Lore hadn’t encountered dark skies or any hint of rain. Could Blue be making all this up? “Hurry up,” he said. “Get to the point.”

  “I was just expainin’ why I left the road and cut across some fields. I didn’t see no farm buildings nor houses, but these fields looked like they’d been planted with crops at one time and then just left to grow over. Well, I kept going, lookin’ for some kind of building or shelter, and I heard a rattle and looked down and saw a big snake. Th’ horse saw it too, and took off runnin’ and we raced through the fields until all of a sudden the horse stopped short. Nearly threw me, it did. I started cussin’ at it, not seeing any reason why it stopped like that. I tried to get it to go, but it wouldn’t move. So I got down and looked around, hopin’ it wasn’t another snake. I didn’t see nothin’, so I tugged at the horse’s reins, tryin’ to get him to move. I walked around in front of him to show him there wasn’t nothin’ there. Only then I tripped over somethin’, and I looked down to see what it was, and it was a skull. A human skull. Well, I backed away and somethin’ cracked under my feet, and it was another bone, looked like an arm bone. And then I walked around a bit, and ever’where I stepped, I was steppin’ on bones. That field was full of ’em. Whole skeletons. And bits of clothes, and shoes and boots. Looked like they’d just gone into the field and laid down and died. A whole bunch of folks. The horse didn’t like it, and neither did I. We both wanted to get out of there. So I turned the horse around, and that’s when I figgered, w
hy not leave the dead lady here? What’s one more dead body matter? So I pulled her off the horse and just dropped her there with all the bones. And I got back on the horse and headed back the way I’d come. I wasn’t gonna hang around there, I’ll tell you that.”

  Lore didn’t know whether to believe the strange tale. “How far away was that? It’s up this road?”

  “Yep. And I’ve been ridin’ back no more’n about an hour, I’d say. The horse trotted pretty fast for a while to get away from that place, but then he slowed way down. We was both tired. I was noddin’ off when you come out of nowhere and grabbed the horse and threw me down.”

  “So was this field of bones on the right or left side of the road?”

  Blue gave him a puzzled look. “You ain’t gonna try to find it, are you?”

  “I mean to try to find the body you dropped off,” Lore said.

  “Man, you’re plain crazy!” Blue scooted on his backside away from Lore as if the madness might be contagious.

  Maybe he was crazy. But after coming this far, he couldn’t stop, knowing that he was near his goal of retrieving Kyla’s body. Corpse. Whatever it was. He couldn’t just leave it lying in a field, not even if Blue’s tale of a field of bones was true.

  He turned away from Blue and went to where he’d left the horse. He found it grazing on the plants around the tree he’d tied it to. He untied it and prepared to mount.

  “Hey! That’s my horse. You can’t take it!” Blue yelled, hauling himself to his feet.

  “Can’t I?” Lore said with a sneer. He still had the branch he’d wielded to fell Blue in the first place. He brandished it as Blue approached. Wide-eyed, the man backed away.

  “I don’t have any sympathy for thieves,” Lore said. “And you’re doubly a thief. You helped steal our wagon and supplies, then you stole a dead woman. Now I’m taking your horse.” He led the horse to a berm on the side of the road and from the top of the berm managed despite his aches to mount the horse.

  Blue’s yell of protest followed him as he rode away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ON THE ROAD

  It was late in the day when at last Camsen could set the horses in motion. He had Jeppy beside him on the driver’s seat. He didn’t trust Ril, but he trusted Jeppy even less, so Ril had been told to stay in the wagon with Thornbridge, who seemed still alive but had not given any sign of regaining consciousness. If he did show such signs, Ril had been instructed to call out to Camsen at once to let him know.

  Camsen had examined Thornbridge and seen the deep imprints of the horse’s hoofs on the bandit leader’s chest. He certainly had cracked or broken ribs, and possibly a punctured lung. If his injuries were less serious, he would have awakened by now.

  The horses plodded along, hauling the heavy wagon. Camsen could not drive them to go faster. He proceeded along the road at their slow pace, hoping to see Renni or Lore coming back toward them. He didn’t mind solitude, but he disliked being alone with two untrustworthy individuals and possibly a third, if Thornbridge’s condition improved.

  He had put himself into this predicament, he kept reminding himself. He could have left Thornbridge lying in the road for his men to find and help, if they returned to look for him and if he could be helped. But having had no assurance that either possibility might come about, he had made the decision that his current companions found unfathomable. In taking Thornbridge into the wagon, Jeppy and Ril both seemed to feel he had taken a rattlesnake to his bosom. However, though Camsen was no longer a priest of Ondin, he had been one most of his life, and that meant that the ethics he’d espoused as a priest were not easily cast aside. Since leaving the priesthood to become a follower of the Power-Giver and a member of the Community of the Gifted, he had of necessity done many things he would not have done as a priest. But leaving a man to die alone on a dusty road beneath a merciless sun was not among them.

  Despite his rash decision to place Thornbridge in the wagon, he was well aware of the danger the man posed, should he survive. Camsen had no idea what gifts the man had in addition to the ability to shield. That ability was ominous enough, since it meant that Camsen’s gift of throwing fire could not harm him, and Renni, if she rejoined them, could not take away his memories. And anything Lore used his power to hurl at him would only rebound and strike Lore.

  Yet the alternative to taking Thornbridge would have been to kill him rather than leave him there to suffer. And that he could not have done. His conscience still tortured him for taking the lives of the two thieves he had burned to death—a terrible way to die. He would carry the memory of their screams and of the odor of their burning flesh for the rest of his life. Their deaths would haunt his nightmares. He had killed them in self-defense and in defense of Lore. He’d had no choice. Why should he have been given this terrible gift, if not to use it to preserve life, even when that meant taking life? He had to believe that the Power-Giver had bestowed the gift on him knowing he would use it wisely and rarely. Yet that belief offered small comfort ever since witnessing the terrible sight of men burning alive as a result of his action.

  “Master Wellner, Master Wellner.” The call from inside the wagon jolted him free of his dark thoughts. “I think he’s waking up.”

  No need to ask whom he meant. Camsen slowed the horses and looked at Jeppy, who’d sat for some time in stony silence. “Take the reins,” he said. “Just keep the horses moving forward at this same pace.”

  “What’re you gonna do if Thorny wakes up?” Jeppy asked nervously, accepting the reins with some reluctance.

  “I won’t know that until I see what condition he’s in,” Camsen said. “Just follow my orders.” He jumped down from the driver’s seat, and let the rear of the wagon come to him as the horses moved forward. When it did, he grabbed the sideboard and vaulted up into the slow-moving wagon.

  “I think you got here just in time,” Ril said just as a loud groan came from Thornbridge.

  Thornbridge lay just as they had left him, occupying the space between the coffin and the sideboard where Camsen and Lore had slept on the way to Marquez. He’d been given more space than they had had, though if he survived, the space would have to be again divided among four people. And if Renni returned … well, they’d deal with that when it occurred.

  Thornbridge let out another loud groan, and his eyelids fluttered, trying to open. Ril, his eyes wide, backed himself into a far corner of the wagon and seemed to be trying to make himself invisible. Too bad he wasn’t gifted and blessed with that particular talent. Ril had good reason to fear Thornbridge.

  Camsen bent over the bandit leader. The eyelids won their struggle and popped open, allowing green eyes dulled by pain to gaze up at Camsen, blinking in an apparent attempt to clear blurred vision. Thornbridge’s mouth opened and closed several times before words emerged. “My horse …” The husky voice might be asking a question or possibly casting blame for his present condition. Camsen didn’t see that a reply was called for.

  The eyelids fell shut, but opened again moments later, revealing clearer eyes. “Water?”

  Camsen nodded, responding to that clear request. “Ril, please get me the canteen there on the box near you.”

  The boy shook his head frantically, but Camsen merely stretched out his hand for the requested item. With a trembling hand, Ril grasped the canteen, stepped forward only far enough to reach out and place it into Camsen’s hand, and then shrank back into his corner.

  “Ril’s here?”

  Again the frantically shaking head showed Camsen what response the boy wanted him to give, but knowing the impossibility of concealing the boy’s presence if Thornbridge’s condition improved, Camsen said, “Ril, Master Thornbridge is no danger to you at present.”

  “H-he’ll kill me soon’s he can,” the boy stuttered.

  “Won’t kill you,” Thornbridge said, his longest utterance thus far. “Jus’ punish.” He managed to add, grimacing from the effort.

  Camsen squatted beside him and lifted his h
ead. He held the canteen to the man’s lips and let him drink. When Thornbridge finished, Camsen eased his head back.

  “Why?” Thornbridge returned to his one-word utterances.

  Camsen assumed he meant, Why did you spare me? though he supposed he could also mean, Why is Ril here? He didn’t answer either question. He watched as Thornbridge let his eyes fall closed, reckoning that the man would sleep again. But in just a few moments, the eyes opened, and Camsen thought they looked a bit brighter green than before. The same shade of green as Ril’s, and the boy’s hair color was only a shade redder than that of Thornbridge. Interesting.

  “I wouldn’ve,” Thornbridge said, and his eyes closed again. Soon his deeper breathing indicated that he had indeed fallen back into sleep.

  With the day drawing to a close, Camsen needed to find a spot to pull off the road, feed and water the horses, and get what sleep they all could while Thornbridge was again unconscious. So long as Thornbridge was helpless, he trusted Jeppy and Ril to help him keep watch, allowing him to catch some much-needed sleep.

  By now they had turned onto the main road from Marquez to Pescatil. They passed no side roads leading off it, and the woods bordering one side of the road offered no place to which a wagon could be drawn. The other side ran along fields of grain ripe for harvesting, but seeing no sign of harvesters, Camsen decided to take a chance. When they reached a bridge that crossed a small stream, Camsen pulled the horses to a halt and turned them from the road to follow the stream into the field, taking them far enough that the high stalks of grain would partially obscure wagon and horses. The prospect of water and grain for the horses was too good to pass up. They’d rest and depart at dawn, before any harvesters arrived to thresh the grain.