by Glenda Larke
A dark shape took form, moving slowly. She eased her dagger into her hand, although she had every intention of allowing the fellow to pass unmolested. He drew level and stopped, a short fellow in an enveloping cloak. No horse, no lantern.
She froze. She was half-hidden by the tree trunk, but perhaps he’d caught sight of her when she moved off the track. Pickles ’n’ pox, now what?
He spoke then, and his voice quavered. “Who… who is that?”
She stood frozen, dumbfounded.
I’ll be beggared. Perie.
He really had followed the fobbing lancers. She stepped out on to the track, hands on hips, to confront him. “What the pickled pox are you doing here? I left you at the shrine! And how the grubbery did you know I wasn’t one of the lancers?”
“Well, I know you’re not one of them pitch-marked men, don’t I?”
“But I could have been anyone else with unfriendly intentions!”
“I suppose so. But I reckoned anyone who’s not a pitch-man around here is in as much danger as I am, and that makes them a friend.”
“You walked all the way here? Are you daft? Injured the way you were?”
“Red Trefoil healed me good, so I left. Followed the smutch.”
“You dewberry! Why? What can you hope to achieve, one lad against a hundred lancers?”
“I already killed one.”
She stared at him, stilled with shock.
“Knifed him with his own blade, when they left him behind ’cause he was sick.” His tone was flat, as if he was talking about something that had no real meaning. “Then I stole his food. And his cloak.”
Oh, help. He’s just a child.
“They deserve to die. All of ’em.”
“Well, yes, perhaps. But you can’t kill them all.”
“Maybe not. But what else am I supposed to do? First I was a long ways behind. Thought I’d never catch up, ’specially when my bones ached something awful. But they leave their mark behind like scat and they’re real easy to find, ’specially when the mud made the going hard for the horses. In the end I was going lickety-spit compared to them. So I caught up. Why else was I given a witchery if not to hunt them down?”
He had a point. Who could understand the whys of a Va-granted witchery? “I think… I think you had better argue that one with a cleric, not me. For now, no more killing. Unless it’s a matter of life or death. Our life or death, all right?”
“So what are we going to do now?”
“We?”
He was silent.
Pickle me sour. I guess it is we.
She took a deep breath and assembled her thoughts. “I want a horse,” she said. “I lost mine. In fact, we need two horses. We’re going to take advantage of the confusion there’s going to be when the group you were following meets up with a group that’s camped ahead of them. If anyone sees us, with luck they’ll think we belong with the other lot.”
“We’re going to steal two horses.”
“We are indeed,” she agreed.
“I can help. I’m very good at sneaking. I always know where they are.”
“Yes, that’s right, you do, don’t you? You taste them.” She wanted to cry for him. Instead, she said, “We’ll rest here a while until they sort themselves out.”
“Have you got anything to eat?” he asked, sitting down on a nearby log with a sigh of relief. “I’m starving hungry.”
She dug into her pack and gave him a piece of cheese and some strips of salted meat.
“What have you been eating?” she asked, watching him cram the food into his mouth.
“Stealing,” he mumbled with his mouth full.
“From them?”
He grunted his assent.
“You took huge risks.”
He shook his head. “Not me. You’ll see.”
“Right then,” she said, “when we get close to any of them, you warn me. I don’t want any surprises. You’ve got to show me just how good this witchery of yours is.”
There was a short silence while he ate, then he said. “You know, Proctor Gerelda, I don’t like having it very much. Makes me sick to the stomach every time I come near any of them. That filthy smutch they have…”
She sat next to him and slipped an arm around his shoulders. “That skill of yours may save our lives tonight.”
“Then I guess it’s worth it,” he said, but his tone was stark.
She felt ill. Sometimes she wondered at Va. “They don’t set much of a guard. This track is not used much, and they don’t fear anyone anyway.”
“Who are they? You never said. I heard some of this lot say they’re meeting up with East Denva folk. Training, they said.” He tore off another hunk of stale bread and chewed hungrily. “Trained as what?”
“Soldiers, I’d guess.”
“To fight who?”
“Shenat people. Shenat beliefs.” She sighed. “I don’t really know, Perie. But I am going to warn the Pontifect.”
“Her army can fight them.”
Except Fritillary had no army.
When she was silent, he added, “I will join her soldiers.”
“You and me both,” she said dryly. “I’ll take you with me. For now, we are going to rest right here for a couple of hours. Then we will steal horses and flee.” I just wish that was going to be as simple as it sounds.
“I know the way,” he said. “We–Da and me–we went from the Oak on the Clouds to the border ferry once a year. The turn-off is about six or seven miles back. But this path here also returns to the main track. We could go straight on across the river. There’s a ford.”
“Not anymore. Too wet. But there is a bridge now.”
“They all be asleep except for the guards,” Perie said. His tone, hard-edged, was chillingly cold.
They were a bare fifty paces from the first of the lancer’s tents, but Gerelda wasn’t worried about being overheard: the constant thunder of the swollen river plunging under the bridge swallowed up all other sound.
“Do they all have the pitch-mark?” she asked.
“Yes. Most be sleeping, except for the guards. I can tell you where they are.” His reply was confident.
Astonished, she asked, “You can tell what they’re doing without even seeing them?”
“They’re pitch-men! Guards stand up, so they’re easy to pick.”
“I don’t suppose you can sense the horses.”
“No, of course not. Can tell you this though: we can’t take the mounts of the men I was following. They treated them real bad. Didn’t give ’em time to graze, hardly had any oats. Reckon they’d drop dead afore we got ’em another mile.”
“In that case, we’ll look for a couple of the others.” She pointed over to her right. “There’s a picket line of them that way, near the river bank. Can you get us there without being seen by a guard, or will I have to kill someone?”
“Oh, we’re already well inside the ring of guards,” he said blithely. “We passed through them way back.”
She went cold all over. And he hadn’t said anything? Va above.
“The only men we have to worry about are the two over there.” He pointed. “I don’t know if they’re sentries. They’re sitting down next to one another, like they be on chairs.”
“How far away?”
“Two hundred paces.”
Which would put them in the middle of the river. “Ah. Then my guess is they’re sitting on the edge of the finished bridge with their legs dangling over the side.”
“We could kill them and toss them in the river,” he suggested. He sounded cheerful. “Easier and closer,” he said.
Pox on’t, a lad of twelve shouldn’t be pleased at the idea of murder.
With an inward sigh, she acknowledged he could be right, on both counts. Leading horses through the undergrowth in the dark would be a nightmare, especially when they were doubtless already unsettled by the new arrivals.
Va-damn. She hated killing people. “Right. First things first
. We steal the animals.”
As they edged through the trees towards the picket line, she blessed the obliterating sound of rushing water and wind in the trees. The horses jostled and stamped and snorted, expressing their irritation with the wind and with one another. She ignored the more restless ones and unhitched two of the more phlegmatic, handing him one of the leads.
“Anyone stirring?” she asked Peregrine.
“No.”
“Walk directly behind me.” Leading the horses, they picked their way back to where they’d left their belongings. “You can stay with them,” she said as she tied them to a tree. “Keep them calm. I’ll be back shortly.”
She returned some minutes later with pilfered oats inside a saddle-cloth. “That’ll keep the two of them happy,” she said, as the horses snorted and jostled to get at the grain. “I’m going to scout around for tackle and supplies. You can come with me this time. I think I know where their storage area is, but I’ll need help to carry the saddles.”
The men had constructed a three-sided shelter for their supplies and saddlery, using strung-up canvas for a roof and roughly cut poles and brush for walls. A corner of the canvas had worked itself loose and flailed in the wind; she jumped every time it cracked against itself.
A lighted lamp hanging from a pole made rummaging easier, but being illuminated like a whore on display did not alleviate her anxiety. She was scared halfway to apoplexy.
Confound it, what did I do to deserve this?
Food for them, oats for the horses, horse tack… She began pulling out odd items of food, tossing them higgledy-piggledy into her pack, then grabbed up several saddlebags and stuffed them with oats.
“Someone’s coming!”
Peregrine grabbed her by the arm, pulling her down to the ground even as he hissed the warning. She fell awkwardly, spilling her load. The canvas thrashed and whipped in the wind. She ducked down between sacks and saddles, Peregrine crouching beside her. He still held her arm in a tight grip, and placed his other hand over his mouth warning her not to speak.
Time crawled by. At first she could hear nothing except the wind and the canvas against the background roar of river water, then someone swore, so close she thought he was going to tread on her. Peregrine’s clamped hold tightened. She desperately wanted him to let go because with him clinging like a limpet she couldn’t reach her sword.
“Leak on you, you slubbering piece of a whore’s petticoat!”
A man stepped into the light. She expected him to be looking at her, but he wasn’t. He was staring at the flapping canvas. “Poxy greenhorns who can’t tie a knot to save their lives!” he muttered, his voice heavy with sleep.
He reached up, grabbed the loose rope and tied the canvas down. She could have touched his boot, but he didn’t look her way.
When he walked away, she and Peregrine both exhaled at the same time. She grinned at him, her relief exquisite. They continued to lie side by side until he nodded that all was safe again. She gathered up the equipment she had selected, then slung a saddlebag, bridle and reins across each of the saddles.
“Think you can carry one of these?” she asked.
In answer he picked up the pile. She shouldered her pack and picked up the other. “Let’s go,” she said.
Perie watched, fidgeting, while Gerelda saddled and bridled the horses and distributed their belongings as best she could between the saddle bags. “I’ll dispose of those two guards,” she told him matter-of-factly. “You are to count to one hundred, and then follow with the horses. Do you think you can do that?”
“I suppose so.” In truth, he was nervous around horses. They were so much larger than Tucker.
“No supposing, Perie. This is for real. Can you do it?”
“Yes. Yes, course I can.”
“Good. Where are the two men now? I can’t even see them; the moon’s gone behind a cloud.”
“They’re still sitting down. On the far side of the bridge, I reckon, facing downstream.”
“Good. Let’s hope they stay that way. You’ve been a tremendous help, Perie. I’m grateful. If anyone raises the alarm, we mount up and ride like all A’Va’s devils are on our heels. We cross that bridge, guards or no guards. Understand? Hang on tight and just let your horse follow mine.”
He nodded.
She hesitated, then added, “If you have to do it alone, then do so. In a fight, at the end, you are only responsible for yourself. Understand?”
He nodded, knowing she was also saying that if he lagged behind, she’d leave him. That was the way it had to be and he did understand.
Sometimes there wasn’t an easy choice.
He stood between the two horses, holding them the way she’d showed him, and watched her go. Well wrapped in her cloak to hide her lack of a lancer uniform, she kept to the side of the track. Overhead, a three-quarter moon broke through the gauze of cloud cover.
Every now and then, when clouds hid the moon, she disappeared into the darkness as if she had been erased. That felt odd; he’d grown used to knowing exactly where the lancers were and what they were doing every minute of every day. They had no privacy from him, ever. His awareness of Gerelda was much more dependent on sight and smell, on his normal senses.
He switched his attention to the two guards. He couldn’t see or hear them either, but he didn’t need to; they were solid shapes to him. Pitch-men, oozing their thick evil. It was difficult for him to even think of them as men. They weren’t, not really. They’d been contaminated, their humanity rotting from within leaving only the appearance of men as a shell, a covering, to the smutch. They still sat side by side, occasionally looking towards the other side of the river.
They don’t expect trouble from this side, he thought. Good.
He felt no compassion for them.
They didn’t see her coming.
They weren’t talking to each other; they weren’t doing anything except sitting there. The logs of the bridge had been spread with river sand to provide an even surface, and her footfall would have been muffled, even without the roar of water.
If they’d been sentries in any unit of soldiers she controlled, she would have been rabid in her anger at their complacency. Instead, she was grateful. She dropped her cloak from her shoulders.
The closest man caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He started to turn as she swung at him with a two-handed stroke to the neck. The blow jarred her from wrist to shoulder, but she’d judged it correctly. The edge of the blade caught him across the throat.
Blood spurted in a black shower. He tried to draw breath but his gasping mouth made no sound. He fell sideways. She raised a boot and nudged his body forward so it slipped off the bridge into the rushing torrent below.
The second man scrambled to his feet, panicked, fumbling for his sword. She lunged at him, hoping to kill him before he could gather his wits. Unable to draw a weapon in time, he dived at her. He was a large man and desperate, and he hit her just above the knees with the force of his shoulder.
She lost her footing and came down flat on her back, hard. He’d tangled himself in his own cloak and for a moment each of them scrabbled to stand before the other could. She beat him to it by a sliver, and she now clutched a handful of the sand in her fist, snatched up from the bridge surface. He ought to have yelled for help; instead he drew his sword. She used that moment to throw the sand into his face. When he jerked back with his eyes closed, she lunged with all her weight behind the thrust. His blind parry missed and her blade went through the inadequate padding of his jack into his midriff. It ripped his stomach open as he fell. His intestines tumbled out on to the boards of the bridge as he collapsed, the weight of his body jerking her sword out of her hand. He began to scream. She stomped on his throat. The screams abruptly halted, but he didn’t stop moving. His limbs jerked, his hands twitched.
Another sound behind her sent her spinning around into a crouch, but it was only Peregrine. He’d arrived with their mounts and one of them, sp
ooked by the smell of blood and guts, was shying and pulling back. She left her sword where it was and scrambled to help him before the reins were pulled out of his hand. He had the sense to leave it to her and released his hold to lead the other horse away before it, too, was spooked.
For several minutes she battled the terrified animal while it tried to pull her arms out of their sockets as she murmured reassurance that it probably couldn’t hear over the sound of the water. At last she had it standing still, trembling, and she was able to stroke its neck and whisper calming nonsense into its ear.
All the while she stared at the camp, watching for any sounds of alarm, but there was nothing. Evidently the scream of the injured man had been drowned over the roar of the river.
Once the horse had settled, Peregrine, without saying a word, handed her the reins of the second mount and walked over to the dying man. He bent to extract her blade from the bloody mess of flesh and intestines, then wiped it clean on the lancer’s cloak. Before he straightened again, he casually rolled the still twitching body into the water and tossed his bloodied cloak after him. She swallowed back her nausea.
Picking up her cloak, Perie brought it back to her with her sword. “I don’t think anyone could have heard the scream,” he told her calmly. “No one’s coming.”
“Up you get, into the saddle. We’re getting out of here.”
He scrambled inelegantly up on to the more imperturbable of the two horses, and she took the time to adjust the stirrups for him. Once she was mounted herself, she flicked the horse into a brisk walk and thought back over the result of their evening’s work. Two horses and tack stolen, two men missing, a whole lot of blood and gore on the bridge. She could have done with some rain to clean up the evidence, but the clouds were clearing, Va rot it. She didn’t know what the lancers would make of it all, but she hoped their reaction would be for the first group to blame the second.
With a little luck and Va’s grace, by the time the lancers realised something was amiss, she and Peregrine would have a substantial lead.
She turned in the saddle to check on him. “I’m relying on you,” she said. “You tell me if you sense those bastards following us.”