‘Tell me more.’
‘Some Marsh Men have fled their villages, too, and have set up a camp on Garal’s lands. He has threatened them with eviction but they are too afeard to return home. It is a rum situation. Garal is far more interested in his own intrigues than in what is happening on his own borders.’
Esric nodded slowly. ‘Return to his lands and resume your duty there. My man here will arrange your payment, and get me some proof of the treachery you speak of, if you can.’
The Baron left the room and climbed back up the stairs. Once in the corridor, he pulled out a piece of parchment he had been hiding in an internal pocket in his robes. Slowly he read and reread its words, words he was familiar with already. He replaced the parchment and rejoined the ball.
Enough alcohol had been consumed to loosen up the dancers’ inhibitions. The stiff formality of the earlier hours had been replaced by the more frenzied reels. The musicians, knowing what was required, had stepped up the pace considerably; there was much laughing and joking; his sisters were swirling about the place, knights draped on their arms. Esric circulated, spoke to the people he had to, until finally he joined Josar in the shadows at the back of the hall.
‘I need a favour from you,’ he told his old friend.
‘What? Someone needs beating up? A friendly word in a maiden’s ear? Young Lady Selmia has kept her eyes on you all night.’
‘No, I need you to stay here for a couple of days. I want you to travel to Eburg with me the day after tomorrow. My patience with the Baron is at the point of snapping.’
Josar raised an appraising eyebrow. ‘And what exactly has driven you to this conclusion – one, I may add, that many of us came to a while ago.’
‘You know his seneschal, Carey?’
‘By Artorus yes, a good man, his boy, too; he was with us when we cleared the island on the Axe.’
‘Exactly. You know I naively thought all the sedition and treachery we have had to face had been put to bed after Morgan’s visit. He said not all the vipers had had their fangs drawn when he left and it appears he may have been right. Earlier on I received a missive from Carey; apparently Eburg is planning some executions in a couple of days and one of the victims is a Marsh Man. It is a matter he should have consulted me about but he has instead decided to press on regardless.’
Josar looked sceptical. ‘But surely that is more a mistake on his part than out and out treachery.’
‘I agree. Ordinarily, I would let the matter pass but according to Carey this Marsh Man has knowledge of a matter of a troubling nature about problems on our borders. Before you laugh, I have had corroboration from another source which more or less confirms that there is trouble in the Marshes, trouble that both Eburg and Garal are keeping from me – either through stupidity or malice, I know not. And then there is this...’ He pulled the parchment out of his pocket and gave it to Josar. ‘Carey found it on Eburg’s desk and decided to let me look.’
Josar read the brief message. ‘Border trouble my end. War on two fronts? Time to sit back and profit from the demise of the Prosecutors? Will write soon. G.’
Josar looked up at Esric. ‘If he hadn’t mentioned the demise of the Prosecutors, this would be ambiguous rubbish, but because he does this is treachery. And this was written by Garal to Eburg?’
‘No,’ said Esric. ‘Firstly Garal doesn’t sign it; it could be from anyone with a name beginning with G. I am having him watched anyway; maybe he can lead us to all those involved if there is treachery among the barons. Secondly, it was not addressed to Eburg.’
‘Not Eburg? Then who?’
‘I will tell you on the way there; I want no one overhearing.’
‘Very well. One other question, why aren’t we going tomorrow?’
Esric shook his head, affecting a world-weariness brought on by companions with no sense of subtlety. ‘Josar, my friend, you have absolutely no sense of theatre. We will arrive unannounced an hour or so before these executions are supposed to commence; I want to see Eburg’s reaction. Well no, perhaps all I actually want is to see him squirm.’
‘Now that,’ said Josar, draining his goblet, ‘is something I wouldn’t miss for the world. Now let me introduce you to Selmia, a lady whose only fault is a terrible taste in men.’
The two of them emerged from the shadows, their smiles showing they had not a care in the world.
It was dusk over Tath Wernig. Lights were beginning to appear through the windows of the inn, the magistrate’s house and a couple of the smaller residences. Outside the smithy, several tethered horses were munching contentedly at their feed. Crepuscular shadows clung to the trading post and the houses close to it. The river, glittering like a studded leather belt, threaded its never-changing course southward. Outside the inn, two men hung around the doorway sharing a mug of ale and several fanciful stories. It was a scene of serene tranquillity.
Or maybe not. High among the twisted branches of an ancient oak, close to the magistrate’s house and unseen by anybody was a crouched figure, swathed in black from his hood to his boots. Whitey was not a man who gave up easily.
The guards had run him out of town; he had only barely avoided a beating. Once he was clear of them, he returned to digs in Eburg, sat and pondered all the recent events in his life, and realised that without the big merchant his prospects were as poor as ever.
It was time for revenge.
The magistrate had kept the Marsh Man’s trade goods for himself; he had taken his share and sent the rest to the Baron. They were gone now and there was nothing he could do about it. The magistrate’s silver, though, was another matter. He had seen it when he was inside his house – candlesticks, plates, spoons – much of it just displayed on a dresser. And so he had returned. He had spent a day or so casing the place. There were two guards at the front gate but no one at the servant’s entrance at the rear. There was a seven-foot wall to scale and a lock to pick, but then he was in; it was child’s play for a seasoned professional such as he. He would wait for the dead of night when everyone was asleep, including the guards (well, they had slept through their watch the night before), and the only noise was the sound of the owls and their victims, the river and the chill wind in the trees. He could be in and out in fifteen minutes. All he had to do now was wait.
A couple of guards were strolling around the village; one was by the waterside, the other was stroking the horses. It was just them and the two men at the inn, them and the rapidly receding light.
Whitey had great night vision and was watching the man at the river’s edge. Boredom was always a problem with these jobs, keeping focused, not letting the mind w...
What in the name of Artorus happened there?
In the blink of an eye he saw something. Shapes, man shapes, emerging out of the river and smothering the man at the water’s edge. Then they were gone, back into the river with a soft splash, leaving the bank clear. Then silence.
Had he dreamed it? Nobody else seemed to notice what had happened. Were the Marsh Men attacking in vengeance?
Then at the very same place the river started to boil.
One black figure, its silhouette close to human, but definitely not human, leapt on to the bank. Then a second. And a third. Suddenly the bank was alive, swarming with dozens of these things. And then they started creeping into the village.
The guard could see them now. He bellowed a warning to the other men and ran forward, his halberd lowered. The men raised a hue and cry in the inn and several of their companions emerged bleary and confused.
The black figures started to attack them. There were shouts and screaming from the men and suddenly from their assailants a blood-curdling unearthly howl. From the house he had been planning to rob the magistrate emerged with a dozen or so armed guards. They joined the fray outside the inn.
It was a terrible battle. These creatures were unarmed but were biting and clawing there victims; blows were struck on them but seemed to make little impression.
Artorus’s divine bollocks
, thought Whitey, the Marsh Man was right!
Ever the one for executive action Whitey made a decision. It was time to flee. He gracefully swung out of the tree and landed softly on the muddy ground. Quietly he made his way to the smithy. The horses were rearing and white-eyed but they were not being bothered at the moment. He always had an empathy with horses and managed to calm one sufficiently enough to lead it away from the others. Eventually it was still enough to mount. He swung his leg over it and started to ride it into the trees.
Suddenly from nowhere one of the creatures leapt in front of him. He saw it only briefly – its strange, lizard-like eyes, its sharp white teeth, its coat of wet glistening scales – before his horse reared in terror. Whitey clung for dear life to its neck barely staying on but he had lost complete control of it. In its terror to get away, it rode at full pelt towards the inn.
It was all a whirl of lightning-fast images, brief impressions gleaned from the back of a panicked horse for Whitey now. The sound of these creatures devouring the other screaming horses, the slick of slippery blood at the inn door, the sight of them carrying the dead and dragging the wounded towards the river, the crunch of his horse’s hoof on one of these monster’s skulls as it ran in front of him. As helpless as a baby, Whitey held desperately on to his mount as it plunged through the carnage at the inn. Women and children were fleeing into the woods; a small knot of desperate men, halberds in hand, thrust and stabbed at the ever-increasing enemy trying frantically not to be swarmed. They were far too preoccupied to notice Magistrate Onkean, blood masking his horrified face, as he punched weakly at two of his assailants, before being dragged bodily under the river’s foaming surface.
But Whitey was gone, plunging down the road to Eburg, clinging with all his strength to his crazed mount, leaving behind the scene of irreparable carnage that was once the village of Tath Wernig.
50
Sir Trask got to his feet, adjusted his breeches and smacked his lips lasciviously.
‘See, as I told you, no pillars of fire, no explosions, no shards of ice, nothing. Tie her up and gag her and she is no different to any camp whore.’ He turned away from the subject of his discourse and walked towards the horses picketed by the south road.
The girl he walked away from lay on her back in the tattered remnants of her robes and stared blankly at the slate-grey sky.
She was beyond anything now – pain, suffering, fear, all had melded together into a melange of unending agony, leaving her empty, devoid of everything that had made her human, stripped of everything that once was Cheris. All that remained was nothing more than what she actually physically was – skin, blood, hair and bone. She had nothing more that they could take.
They had hauled her up the road kicking and struggling every inch of the way. Once they were back in the clearing, she managed to wriggle free of her captors and made a desperate bolt for freedom, towards the path that lead to what was left of Anaya’s cottage. The three men caught her just as she drew alongside the caravan; she was pushed against its wooden panelling and went crashing to the floor sending her staff rattling to the ground from where it rolled into the shade under the caravan’s chassis. Then they all started to kick her, steel-capped boots finding many a soft mark. Bound and gagged, she still managed some muffled screams, her only outlet for the hurt they were causing her.
Then Trask arrived and they stopped. They were all obviously as frightened of him as she was. Although she knew what was to come, she had no idea of how it would feel. Mikel had been her only long-term lover, following a series of frantic fumbles in her teens with other similarly inexperienced initiates – the blind leading the blind as it were. Mikel knew what he was doing, though, was expert and attentive, and her times with him had always been passionate, energetic and fun. What had just happened to her here was about as diametrically opposed to that as it was possible to get. Trask’s body was a muscular, crushing weight, squeezing the air out of her and reigniting the pain in her damaged rib. When he forced himself into her he seemed to delight in the way she winced; it seemed to encourage him, to make him try to find new ways to hurt. An inner conflict raged in her mind as she fought against the pain and revulsion: she wanted to remain stiff as a board, be utterly emotionless, to give him no gratification at all; she also wanted to break into floods of tears, to beg him to stop, to plead for her life, for his mercy.
Ultimately, she did neither. She gauged him to be a man utterly without pity, so sobbing like a child would not avail her; neither could she remain still under him – every thrust was a spear of agony and her body’s instinctive reaction was to move away from the source of the pain. It was a mistake, for every tic of her body seemed to excite him, but one she could not control. He took an age to finish with her; he found every entrance that she had and when he finally spent himself on her, she had to fight hard to control the shaking convulsions that shock had induced in her. Eventually she resorted to digging her knuckles hard into her back and biting her own tongue as a distraction, tasting the coppery blood as it ran down her throat.
He looked at her for a while, as a cat watches a mouse, curious as to the way she reacted in her fear. She could not meet his gaze, steeped as it was in malice and sadistic pleasure; she stared at the sky, fighting to control her trembling, taking an age to succeed. Finally, when she had regained some composure, he decided it was time to leave. His companions watched the whole thing, adding comments, encouragements and suggestions that only added to her trembling nausea. The younger lad, however, remained with the horses; his stomach was obviously not strong enough for what was going on before his very eyes.
‘I have to leave now.’ Trask took the reins the boy handed to him. ‘Fresh horses at regular stops mean that I should be back in Grest by the morning. No one is looking out for you lot, so make your way back when you have finished with her.’
‘And what do you want us to do with her in the end, sir?’ The soldiers seemed to regard Trask with awe.
‘She is a witch, is she not? I thought in these parts any witches the knights didn’t get you burned. How you kill her is not important to me as long as you do kill her – oh and let the boy have a go at her next. Don’t worry about violating an innocent, son; I got the impression she has been ridden more times than Felmere’s charger. Can’t blame her, though – entertainment must be sorely lacking trapped on an island for years on end with nothing but books to read. Do your job, lads, and when I see you next we can celebrate our upcoming triumph.’ Trask whirled his horse around and was gone, riding as quickly as possible over the mud-churned track.
While they were talking, Cheris managed to crane her neck to her right. She saw, under the caravan’s wheels, her staff lying unnoticed among the dead leaves. She could also see its blade; it had come free of the staff and was lying close to the front left wheel. Tantalisingly, it was only a few feet away from her but she was trussed up like a joint of meat and had no way of moving there unseen. Even when talking to Trask, at least one of the men always kept his eye on her. Frantic and hopeless, she looked to the heavens again. Blood was congealing on her thighs and the stabbing pain in her womb never relented. What hope was there for her?
With Trask gone, she became the centre of attention again. All four of the men came and stood around her. Her robe was bunched up at her waist and she had no way of concealing herself from them, her dry eyes stung with tears at what was to come next.
‘Did you see Trask?’ one of them was saying. ‘Hung like a prize stallion. Hey, missy!’ He prodded her with his boot. ‘None of us can rip you apart like he did, not that it will stop us from trying. Sam boy, you heard the man; it’s your turn next.’
The boy’s voice betrayed his nervousness. ‘Could I be left alone with her. Having you all watching, well, it might just put me off.’
‘Ah, you big milksop. Have it your own way; we will be the other side of this wagon... Oh and if you lose the desire, just give her a squeeze; I am sure you know where.’
Laug
hing among themselves, they moved out of sight behind the caravan. The boy started fiddling with his clothes. How old was he? Fifteen? Fourteen? He had a feeble attempt at a moustache and was obviously not shaving yet, she thought. He moved into position on top of her. Unlike Trask who kept his head high, eager to see her discomfort, the boy lay full on her. He was taller than her but not by much. He kept his head close to hers; she could smell his damp clothes, his sweat, feel his breath on her cheek. He had difficulty finding the right place and manoeuvring into a comfortable position, but once he had got going it was all over in less than a minute. Unlike Trask, she had barely noticed him. Once he was done, he put his head next to hers and in the tiniest voice he could manage whispered into her ear.
‘I am sorry.’
As he dressed himself, she could hear the other men discussing the best way to kill her.
‘Trask wants her burned; that was what he said.’
‘Don’t be a fool! The smoke could attract anybody. The wood here is damp and hard to light; it would take hours to do the job properly.’
‘You want to hang her then?’
‘We could, but I really want to be out of here as soon as possible. The quicker we do it the less chance she has to use her witch tricks on us. When we are done with her as Trask wants, let us just cut her throat and leave her for the wolves and crows.’
The boy had gone back to his horses and suddenly Cheris realised that she was on her own. For the first time she was alone. Her torpid acceptance of her fate, the one which caused her to lay motionless and unfeeling under the boy, was replaced by a spark, the barest flickering of hope in a dark place. Making as little noise as she possibly could, she wriggled so that she was plumb next to the wheel on the caravan, the one which was barely a foot away from her staff’s blade. She swivelled and sat up, her head and upper shoulders resting uncomfortably against the main body of the caravan next to the wheel. Her hands started to scrabble among the leaf litter reaching for the blade.
The Forgotten War Page 70