Across the bridge, fires glowed through the veil of rain. In its dim light, figures, armored and cloaked, hunched beneath roughly constructed shelters of planks and branches.
The leaves hissed next to him as Bones crawled to his side.
“Look at all them,” said Bones. “Are there even more than before?”
“Who can tell in this light? Hard to see anything beyond the fires.”
“Well, all things considered probably a good thing because they won’t be able to see us either.”
“Let’s hope,” said Spear. He stared at the bridge, a dark blur against either side of the gully. “Even if we were four times our number, I don’t think we could get across that bridge. Picked off one by one as we tried to make it across.”
“Night could do it,” said Bones. “But that coward vanished into the shadows. Happy to be rid of him. Scared the shit out of me, always hiding in that cursed cloak.”
Spear imagined Night, a shadow in the darkness, slipping unseen across the bridge, his knives cutting the throats of any who watched from the other side. Then the rest of the crew could dash over and be on the others before they knew what happened. But Night was gone and Spear had no way to find out if Little Boy still lived.
The chasm beneath the bridge was a dark gash in the earth, a black rip from which cold air billowed. From its depths, water churned and cracked against stones. The water, relentless, had over the centuries cut its own path through the stone. He imagined what it must have once been: a trickle in the mud pooling and overflowing, forever seeking lower ground. Eventually it cut a small path in the earth until over time that path became a furrow finding its way through the rocky earth. Then the stone succumbed and the water cut a deep wound in the earth. At some point, men had decided to build a bridge.
“We should leave,” said Bones.
“Kiara’s going to want an answer and if there is any chance he’s still alive, I’m not going to leave him.”
“I mean we should abandon this job. Longbeard’s right in one way. Not about joining up with these bastards, but we got enough coin. More than enough. Get it in our hands and we’ll be fine. Three gems, that bag of coin. Enough to put me in the bottle, a few ducks to shove down Biroc’s throat, and we’ll even have enough to get those extra men you are always talking about. Back to Grymr’s Hold. I saw enough men looking like they would follow coin.”
Spear slid his fingers into his purse and touched the cold ruby. One he had already broken for coin and this other would bring even more coin. Would the third gem Val owed him be enough?
A week ago, he had seen no way out of his predicament. His coin had been near spent. Only poor pilgrims walked the trail in his territory. The armies of the warlord were pressing in. Almost every one of his crew talked of leaving.
“Maybe three gems are enough,” said Spear.
Beyond the fires of the mercenary camp, the keep on the mountainside was lost in the gloom. He could not even make out the cliffs behind the trees. What he sought had been swallowed in rain.
Maybe he could live without the keep for now.
Maybe it was better to walk away. The gems he had in hand were already enough to change his life. Once he recruited an army of killers, he could storm the bridge, slaughter the men who stood against him, scale the walls of the keep and hurl Cruhund to the sharp stones below.
“What do we tell Kiara?” Spear asked.
“We say we found his body. Tell her it’s gruesome. Gutted or something like that. We buried him and it’s time to move on. She won’t want to dig him up. She’ll cry a little and then after a few weeks, her tears will have worn out. Maybe she’ll even soften up to an old man.”
A figure moved from the fires to the bridge, laughing, hurrying through the rains. Something stood in the middle of the bridge. Unnaturally thin.
“What is that in the middle of the bridge?” asked Spear.
“Too much rain,” said Bones. “What’s it matter anyway? Let’s go before they come looking for us.”
“Is it a sentry?”
“Standing in the middle of the bridge in the rain?”
“I need to see what it is. You wait here.”
Staying low, Spear crept down the slope towards the bridge, slithering through the mud. He pulled himself over sharp stone and squeezed through a tangle of branches. Cold soaked through his cloak, icy against his skin. The smell of the camp fires drifted to him.
The underbrush suddenly ended more than a dozen yards from the near side of the bridge. He squinted against a sudden sheeting of rain. The figure in the middle of the bridge wavered; caught by the wind, it bobbed back and forth.
Spear could not see through the gloom.
Suddenly, the sky flashed as lightning cracked the heavens, and in that brief moment, he saw who stood on the bridge.
Little Boy.
No. Not really Little Boy. Not at all.
Just his head on a pole, driven into the middle of the bridge.
Then the light vanished, plunging Spear back into gloom; he waited in the cold, shivering in the rain; he waited for the inevitable roar of thunder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“HIS HEAD? MY sweet love?” Kiara tore away from the arms of Biroc and ran through the sheeting rain at Spear. Her face glistened with tears; remnant woad streaked down her cheeks. She threw her arms towards the sky and then collapsed to the earth, fists pounding the grasses of the meadow. “They killed Little Boy.”
The rain drummed hard on Spear’s helmet, streaming off the surface and seeping beneath his already wet armor. Longbeard had set up a small lean-to shelter but none of them stood under it. They had all rushed out on the return of Spear and Bones.
“We need to avenge him!” screamed Kiara. “They murdered him!”
Biroc whispered to her, his voice too low for Spear to hear.
“I don’t care!” yelled Kiara. “Let them kill me on that bridge! Kill me! I’ll die right alongside him!”
Seana had come over to her and tried to lift her from the ground, but Kiara yanked her arms free.
“What kind of clansmen are we? One of ours struck down… and we tremble in the rain. Blood for blood! The old ways! Paint our faces and descend on them with war cries on our lips! War cries! Are we nothing more than cowards now? Only coin will make us swing our swords?”
Spear walked away from the others.
He was freezing. He had been too long in the miserable rain and wind. His fingers were puckered, and he imagined the rot beginning to take hold in his flesh. A dull persistent ache throbbed in his knees and sharper pain erupted in his knuckles. He wanted to strip off his wet clothing and warm up by a fire but they were too far from any real shelter.
Spear ducked into the lean-to and pried away his wet cloak. Longbeard squeezed in next to him.
“Won’t dry out any time soon,” said Longbeard. He looked at Kiara wailing in the rain. “Wasn’t like we haven’t been taking heads the whole way through. Bound to come back to us, sooner or later.”
“Little Boy deserved better than that.”
“I’m sure these other three did, too.” He nodded off towards the three blood-stained sacks sitting beneath a tree. One of the bags bled darker. “But what can you do?”
“Just thought it might be less bloody than all this.”
“Are you mad? Less bloody? It’s only going to get more bloody. You know that as well as I do. But we can cut our losses.”
“Can we really turn back now?” asked Spear.
“You made your promise to a girl. A girl. Five gems for five heads. Ain’t no way we’re getting across that bridge. Pretty sure Little Boy is their idea of a scarecrow. They’re waiting for us. Walk in there and we die.”
“I made a promise!”
“But your other promise is to split what we earn! This is the unspoken promise you have with all of us. Your promise to us is more important. Your brothers! It’s how the deal works. We follow you, and you keep us in the coin. And that�
��s not happening! It’s not just about you and your promises, old man. I’m done with this! I want my share! Then I’ll be out of here. Even your old chum, Night, saw this was only going from bad to worse.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Are you thick headed? I just want my share of coin. That’s what I want. A bigger share now that Night and Little Boy are gone. So let’s get the third gem from the girl. Then back to Grymr’s Hold, exchange it for coin, split it and anyone who wants to stay with you can. Maybe share one last cup of mead. Break one more bench like the heroes of old.”
Spear’s laughter could not be contained behind his lips. “The heroes of old? Blood and shit and more blood. The songs are lies! Look at how we wallow.”
“Let’s get our gem from the girl!”
Spear pushed himself to his feet and stalked out of the shelter. The cold drops came down so hard he could barely keep his eyes open. The others were retreating from Kiara. She had pulled out her axe and was slamming it against a tree. He’d let her do that for a little while but the dull thud would echo through the woods and if the others came after them, they would follow the sound with their swords.
Spear was done with it. He wanted to get out of the weather. They would return to Grymr’s Hold. He would walk away. To where he did not know, but away from all this. He stared into the fog of rain. The keep was invisible, lost to him forever, like so many of his dreams of old.
Valda crouched in another lean-to, a smaller one.
“It’s all over now, girl.”
“I’m sorry about Little Boy,” she said. Dark strands of hair clung to her cheek. Her jaw trembled, and her teeth knocked together uncontrollably. “But it wasn’t me.”
“Course it wasn’t you. But we’ve done what we’ve done. The game is over.” He looked over the others, all shrinking back into the other lean-to. “They’re done with all this. We got you three heads. You can find someone else to get the last two.”
“You won’t do it?”
“For what? In the end, it will be me standing here, a handful of heads at my feet and you dropping that last ruby in my hand. Is it worth it? How soon before it all slips away?”
“You are a coward.”
“Not a coward. Just tired of this. Need to go back to something simpler.”
“A thief?”
He laughed. “Got a mouth on you despite everything. We’re going back to Grymr’s Hold. You can buy someone else with your two rubies. I’ll even vet them for you if you want. Make sure they won’t just outright rob you. You know Longbeard wanted to do that to you, don’t you? Crack you on the head and find those other gems. Well, I got you three heads.” He spit in the direction of the piled heads. “End of business between us. Hand over my third ruby and we’ll be on our way.”
“No!” she shouted.
A snort burst from his nostrils. “I’m not sure you can say no.”
“We had a deal!” She pounded his chest with her fists. His heart beat with more force. “You can’t break your promise! I want them all dead! You promised!”
“Consider the promise broken then,” said Spear. He opened up his palm to her.
“I won’t go back! I’ll kill them myself!”
“Do what you want, girl. Give me my fucking ruby!”
Her lower lip trembled so fast he wondered whether she would be able to get any words out, but she did. “I…I can’t.”
“You can and you will.”
She let out two long breaths through pursed lips. “There are no m-m-more.”
“What?”
“I only had those two.”
“You lie!”
Her eyes glanced quickly to the others and then back to Spear.
“I’ll let Longbeard knock you out and find those gems. You won’t like that. I promise you.”
A small bubbling laugh fell from her lips. “Nothing to find.”
“You lied to me!”
“I needed someone to kill those men!”
“You really don’t have any more?” His breath rose in a rising pitch. A sudden pain dug behind his eyes deep in his skull. “This last head! Little Boy! You let us walk into that knowing we would get nothing? How’d you think I wasn’t going to find out?”
“I don’t know.” She bit hard on her lower lip. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“Fuck!”
Longbeard stood just beneath the lean-to behind the steady drip of rain. “What’s wrong over there? What’s going on?”
Spear turned sharply to Valda. “He’s going to fucking hurt you! Bad! And don’t expect me to put my neck out for you again. You are so stupid!” He raised a hand to Longbeard. “Hold on.”
Spear glared at Val, shaking his head. He wanted to say something but all he could do was spit out his breath and clench his jaws. He let out a sudden sigh and ran through the rain back to the lean-to.
They looked at him in the dim light, those who remained: Longbeard squinting against the rain cast in the rising wind, Bones pulled tight in his cloak, Biroc in the deepest part of the lean-to squeezing water out of the corner of his cloak, Seana who did not even look up as he stood before them. Behind him in the heavy grasses, Kiara continued with her hammering and wailing.
“It’s all a mess,” Spear said.
“When has it not been all a mess?” asked Bones. “Long as I could ever remember.”
“Not your fault about Little Boy,” said Biroc yawning widely.
“Are we back to the Grymr’s Hold?” asked Longbeard.
Spear nodded. “Girl not coming with us.”
“You’re just going to leave her here?” asked Seana.
“Where’s the gem?” asked Longbeard.
Spear looked up into the sky. The rain bit into his cheeks, drummed on his eyelids, rapped against his lips. Lightning again broke across the sky, the trees suddenly as pale as ghosts. The ground reeked of stagnant water as if the rains had pushed up something long neglected from beneath the surface.
“There are no more gems,” he muttered. “She lied. She only had two.”
Longbeard cursed and pushed Spear aside, but he only got a half-dozen steps before he wheeled back. “Where is she? Where did she go?”
The clearing was empty, other than the hunched over, weeping form of Kiara.
“Where the hell did she go?” asked Longbeard. “Better be hiding!”
The wind had now gathered speed and landed in gusts. The tops of the trees all bent to the east. Spear stared into the gloom. “The bridge,” he said. “She’s gone to the bridge! She wants the other two heads!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
CRUHUND SAT ALONE with Yriel in one of the shelters by the bridge. The rain crackled on the roof and swallowed the last of the day’s light. With one hand he fed damp, rotting wood into a small fire and with his other he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Even through layers of cloth and leather, she felt cold as ice.
“Won’t be able to go right away,” he said. “Move a little closer to the fire.”
“We should just go back up to the keep,” Yriel said. “If One Eye is out there, and who else could it be, that would be the safest place. He’ll find us if we follow the pilgrim’s path.”
He shook his head. “If we go back to the keep and he lays siege, we’d be stuck there for the better part of the spring. We’d be trapped there.”
“More than enough food to last a siege. He’ll get bored and tired of dodging arrows and stones. He can’t drag a siege engine up the slope and even pulling up ladders would be fruitless. We could outlast him.”
“If we go back,” said Cruhund, “you’ll die there. I know it. I feel it deep in my bones. We can’t return.”
“You think we could hold him for more than a day here at the bridge? We’d be overrun. We don’t have enough men.”
“We don’t need to. Let the others hold the bridge and retreat to the keep. You and I head west along the chasm. There are spots where you and I could get across with a horse.
Then on the road to find She Who Has Risen. That’s what all this is about.”
“You’ll lose everything.”
“Berin will stand for me.”
Her breath rasped through gray lips. “You’ll come back to a closed gate and taunts from men who covet everything you have rightfully won.”
“What choice do we have?”
Berin hissed from the foot of the bridge. From behind one of the small defensive walls, he waved.
“What’s he want?” said Cruhund.
“Someone is coming.”
Cruhund shook his head. The bridge was dark. Half lost to his failing sight and the wall of rain. “I don’t see anything.”
“Of course not. By the gods, you’re like an old man, rotten teeth, half blind, stubborn to a fault.”
“Stay here, and if we cannot hold the bridge, take the horse. Follow the chasm west and find a spot to cross. The bags are packed with coin. She Who Has Risen won’t be able to refuse you.”
“I won’t run,” Yriel said. “And neither should you.”
He darted from the fire ducking through the rain until he crouched next to Berin. The man smelled of sweat: musky and suffocating. Next to him, a half dozen of his reavers hid behind their shields. Two of them already had spears cocked on their shoulders. “What is it?”
“There. At the other side of the bridge.”
Cruhund squinted past where the head of their prisoner was stuck on a pole in the middle of the bridge. It was hard enough to see anything in the gloom. He leaned forward, eyes straining, and was about to ask Berin again when he saw the figure.
It materialized slowly from the mists and at first he thought his eyes were deceiving him and then he saw a small figure walking along the planks, a child.
“Some kind of a trick?” asked Berin.
“Archers in the trees?” said Cruhund.
“I don’t see anyone else. But in this weather, I can barely see the end of the bridge.”
The child paused to stare at the head propped on the pole in the middle of the bridge, and then walked another dozen steps before stopping. “Rot Mouth,” she called. “I can see you hiding in the shadows. You coward.”
Five Bloody Heads (The Hounds of the North Book 3) Page 13