by Helen Lowe
The Sea Keepers might never catch up, Kalan thought, if they insisted on trying to repair the wagon. He was on the point of saying so when he realized that the activity—and curses—around the foundered vehicle were not a repair attempt. Instead, the Sea Keepers were endeavoring to prevent the wagon tipping the rest of the way into the riverbed and smashing apart, while they removed its contents. These appeared to be necessities for the road, together with personal possessions, which were being ferried to the waiting mules. The quickest way to get the company on the road would be to help—and Taly and Rhanar must have reached the same conclusion because they were already dismounting.
Murn, Nimor’s secretary, winked as they helped him with a particularly unwieldy sailbag. “It’s the envoy’s state robes,” he said. Taly’s expression suggested she was uncertain whether this was a joke or not, although Kalan thought the bag was too heavy for clothes. He left them to hoist it onto a mule while he returned for another load, but Tyun—working with two others to wedge the listing wagon more securely in place—waved him back. Halting, Kalan wiped his hands against his trousers and studied the sky. The sun had now risen above the Wall’s dark mass, but the moon was still visible, a pale disc against the Wall’s familiar leaden sky. He thought it seemed both frailer and less ominous than when he climbed the ridge in the dark.
And we’re almost done here, Kalan told himself, with most of the day ahead, so we’ll catch the caravan before nightfall. He turned as Taly and Murn rejoined him. “We’re ready, sir,” the secretary told Nimor, at the same time as the bridge lookout pointed toward the foothills.
“Riders incoming,” he called, “with more wyr hounds.”
It was only then, as the rest of the Sea company gathered, that Kalan realized he had not yet seen Faro. “Where,” he asked Nimor, “is my page?”
The envoy sighed. “Not with us.” He spread his hands. “He resented being given into our charge, and although he usually turned up for meals, otherwise he was off about his own business. I did warn him against leaving the caravan, but I didn’t anticipate,” he added ruefully, “that the caravan might leave us.”
“I saw him last,” Tehan put in, “observing some spine-legged creature on a thornbush. With everything else that happened, I didn’t realize he wasn’t with us until well after the last of the caravan disappeared.” She pulled a face. “I’ve been trying to keep an eye on him ever since that so-called Honor Captain threatened to have him beaten.”
“Beaten?” Kalan said, clamping down on his anger at the entire situation—although he supposed a threatened beating might justify Faro making himself scarce. “Because he was my page?”
“There’s no love lost, that’s certain.” Tehan was cautious. “But Kolthis said Faro had been making a nuisance of himself, hanging around the Bride’s pavilion and dogging her palanquin on the road.”
“Was he?” Kalan asked, and frowned when Tehan nodded, because he had not thought Faro cared much for Lady Myrathis.
“He wouldn’t tell us why,” Nimor said, before Kalan could ask.
Taly looked perplexed. “I thought he couldn’t speak.”
“He can. He just doesn’t very much.” To others, Kalan thought, still frowning, because before they entered Blood territory and he had warned Faro against speaking at all, the boy would chatter incessantly whenever they were alone.
“He’s a canny lad and good at lying low,” Tehan said, sounding unhappy. “He’ll know to keep clear of Kolthis until we return.”
“Which we need to do as soon as possible.” Nimor inclined his head in grave apology. “I’m sorry if we have failed in our charge, Khar, and so failed you.”
Kalan nodded, accepting the apology, although his initial anger lingered. “How soon can we move out?”
“Murn says we’re ready.” Nimor waited for his secretary’s nod before indicating the new arrivals. “Unless your friends need to rest and eat?”
But Jad, whose scouting party had joined up with Dain and Aarion, assured him they could report in and eat as they rode. “We saw fresh ’spawn-sign, plenty of it,” he told Kalan as the Sea company mounted. “And riders’ tracks, although they were older: long range scouts maybe, ahead of the caravan passing this way.” Dain and Aarion had nothing further to add from scouting the road, beyond evidence of the caravan’s passage. Once the Sea company and exiles rode on together, Kalan saw more such evidence, from wagon tracks and dropped belongings, to a trail of animal dung. Eventually they met Jaras and Nhal, riding back to the bridge, and their report reflected those from the other scouts.
The habitual Gray Lands’ wind was blowing steadily now, but the grit from the plain was not thick enough to check their steady pace. It was during a break to spell the horses that Tyun, lying flat on a pile of rocks with a mariner’s spyglass, picked out shapes in the distance. “They look like trees beside the road,” he said, offering Kalan the spyglass. “But that’s impossible out here.”
Even with the glass, the haze prevented identification of the anomaly. But it was not, Kalan thought, his earlier foreboding returning, country where you wanted to detect anything out of place. The wyr hounds whined as if sharing his unease, and their agitation increased once the company moved on. They growled and bristled, staring across the plain until the riders caught their tension and eased blades in scabbards as they approached the treelike shapes.
Definitely not trees, Kalan thought. He was almost sure they were standards, although the great banners looked misshapen. The way they hung motionless reminded him of his Red Keep dream, as though no wind blew where they stood. And there was something wrong about them, beyond the way the grotesque outlines matched his memories of were-hunters and the Darksworn’s bestial helms. The company around him murmured, infected by a similar apprehension, and Kalan wished the grit would clear—then checked Madder as the nearest standard moved. Behind him the entire company jolted to a halt, and the wyr hounds lifted their muzzles and howled.
The movement was crows, clustered on the standards and flapping up as the riders drew close. There were nine standards in all, but Kalan finally understood—from within the detachment that allowed him to assimilate exactly what the banners comprised—why they did not move with the wind. Rather than colors, stripped and mutilated bodies had been lashed to every cross-tree, with ears, lips and noses, breasts and genitals, cut away so only clotted wounds remained. This close, he could see the insects that crawled in the cavities, and the pecked-out eyes and guts where the crows had been at their business.
The deaths had not been swift or easy, there was no doubt in Kalan’s mind about that. Despite the mutilation, he could still recognize most of the dead faces from the Honor Contest. Rhisart hung on the standard closest to them, with one of his cronies, whose name Kalan did not know, a few paces further along. But it was the two bodies that hung at the far end of the grisly line that gave him pause. Slowly, he walked Madder toward them and stared up at what was left of Malar and Tawrin.
“Do you know them?” Taly asked. She was the only one who had followed him, and Kalan was not sure whether she had done so voluntarily or been too shocked to prevent Tercel from following Madder. He could hear Rhanar cursing, a low continuous stream of vituperation, and someone else—Murn, he thought, without looking around—was murmuring the invocation for the dead.
“They’re Sword warriors,” he said. “We took ship together from Grayharbor.” He wondered what had become of Orth and Kelyr, but turned as the rest of the company joined them. Everyone looked strained, while the wyr hounds continued to keen, although more softly now, as though recognizing the likely proximity of enemies.
“Rhisart and those with him were scouts,” Nimor said. “Kolthis sent them out the day before yesterday. Rhisart questioned the order, I remember that, because one scouting party was already overdue and he was concerned the guard on the cavalcade would be too light.”
“Rhisart questioned Kolthis?” Taly shook her head. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“He was right about the numbers,” Tyun said, “but Kolthis ordered him to go anyway.”
Kolthis, Kalan recalled, had been angered by Rhisart’s refusal to attack the wyr hounds in the Red Keep—but he had not been the Bane Holder’s captain then. For Rhisart to have publicly questioned an order now, something must have felt really wrong. Not, Kalan thought grimly, that it did him any good.
“Do we take them down?” Murn sounded uncertain.
“And say Hurulth’s first rite, at least,” Kion, the Sea physician, suggested.
“We leave them.” Kalan heard his own harshness as he surveyed the grisly row again. “They are beyond caring, and our priority has to be the caravan.”
“I agree,” Nimor said, as grim as Kalan. “Undoubtedly, they’re intended as a warning, so let others who pass by heed it.”
Kalan turned Madder back onto the road, and first Taly and then the rest of the company followed, the wyr hounds flowing around them like a tide. They held the horses to a steady pace, but everyone was tense, intent on the surrounding terrain, and no one spoke.
41
Caravan
They found the caravan shortly after noon, far sooner than Kalan had expected because it was still encamped. Dain, who had been scouting ahead, rode back with the news, while Aarion awaited their arrival below a long rise in the road. “You’ll see the camp over the crest,” he told them. “It’s too far to make out details, but something’s not right.”
If all had been right, Kalan thought, as Tyun dismounted with the spyglass, the caravan would have broken camp at dawn and they would have needed most of the day to catch it, despite its slow pace. From this distance, he did not need the glass to see there were no sentries on duty. Like my Red Keep dream, he thought—except the bridal banners were crimson streamers on the grit-laden wind, and carrion birds were circling the far side of the encampment.
“Whatever attracted them,” Tyun said, his eye fixed to the spyglass, “there are people alive on this side of the camp. But they’re concealed among the wagons.”
“You and the envoy’s party should stay here,” Kalan said. He gestured toward Taly and Jad’s eight. “We’ll ride in.”
Tyun nodded, but Nimor pursed his lips when they conveyed their plan. “How will you fare as exiles in a House of Blood camp, even if this is no-man’s-land?”
It was the sort of question an envoy should think to ask, Kalan supposed. “Your wagon was sabotaged,” he said, “so envoy or not, you can’t approach first. And whatever’s happening in the camp is primarily Blood’s affair, and we’re still Blood.” Jad and his unit murmured their agreement. “So we’ll ride in as what we are, Derai warriors on legitimate business.”
“And find out what’s going on,” Taly added. She spoke crisply, but Kalan could hear her fear. Clearly Nimor did, too, because his expression lengthened—but he nodded agreement, and his company reformed into a small, bristling square while Kalan and the exiles rode on.
The camp was situated on a small hill that looked like the site of an old redoubt, with an earth dike ringing its base and a terraced upper slope. The cavalcade was large enough for its carts and wagons to circle the hillock twice. The outer circle reinforced the dike, with the main camp behind it, while the inner circle of carts was situated on the upper terrace, ringing the Bride’s pavilion and a second tent. Another shallow stream curved around the side of the camp where the carrion eaters circled, although whatever had drawn their attention remained obscured.
No one challenged the exiles’ approach, although Kalan detected surreptitious movement among the outer wagons. All his companions had settled shields onto their arms, except for Palla and Machys, who rode behind the rest with arrows ready. Kalan held Madder to a walk, studying the entrance into the camp, which ran through a gap in the old earthworks and between the wagons beyond. At the same time, he picked out several watchers crouched to either side of the gap. From what he could discern, the defenders were not guards, but retainers: the caravan’s grooms and carters, farriers and cooks. Still no one challenged their approach, but Kalan held up his hand anyway, signaling a halt.
“I am Khar of the Storm Spears, the Bride of Blood’s champion,” he called, “together with Jad of the Red Keep and his unit, escorting the Sea envoy, Lord Nimor. Who’s in charge here?”
At first no one answered, although Kalan saw more movement and caught a murmur he could not decipher. Finally, a man carrying a longbow rose to his feet, standing so he was still protected by the wagon. No arrow was fitted to the longbow, but Kalan was almost certain his companions would have arrows trained on the new arrivals. “I’m Sarr,” the man called back, “a farrier with the camp. I wouldn’t say I’m in charge, except of those on watch right now.” He glanced down, and this time Kalan overheard his low-voiced query. “Are you sure it’s the Storm Spear, Aiv?”
“It’s his roan. I’d recognize that brute anywhere. And the others do look like Jad and his eight-guard.”
“Real honor guards,” another voice put in, just as low. “They have wyrs with them, too.”
Sarr nodded, and spoke to Kalan again. “If you really are the Bride’s champion, show us your face. Sir,” he added.
The request was a fair one, despite providing a better target for archers within the camp. It also proved Sarr and his companions had no experience of facestealers. “Cover me,” Kalan said to Palla and Machys, and removed his helmet.
The carrion birds had been attracted to the remains of the caravan’s animal herd. “Slaughtered,” Sarr said, showing Kalan and Jad the oxen, mules, and horses, all with their throats torn out or bellies gutted. “Those guarding them were slain, too. The attackers came out of nowhere in the predawn and ran the majority of the herd off. The rest they just killed, as though for the sheer pleasure of it.” The farrier stopped, frowning. “When the alarm sounded, the rest of the camp came running, but no more guards. From what we’ve worked out, the remaining honor guards left sometime between the last change of watch and the attack.”
“What, all of them?” Kalan heard his own incredulity, and Jad was shaking his head.
Sarr nodded. “All that were left, given the scouts already sent out. But these attackers—I’ve never even heard of such ’spawn, let alone seen ’em. But Aiv and Baris got a good look.” The farrier turned to the two grooms, both of whom Kalan remembered from the Red Keep stables, when Aiv had called Madder a killer and Baris wanted the roan put down. The fourth sentry, a wagoner called Rigan, had remained on watch.
“They looked like a cross between beasts and men.” Briefly, Aiv’s expression worked. “Their speed was terrifying and none of our weapons, arrows or spears, could touch ’em.”
Were-hunters, Kalan thought, remembering how the same thing had happened at The Leas until members of the Oakward countered their magic. Frowning, he studied the savaged bodies of the caravan’s dead. “And these sentries really were the only guards left?”
“Other than the medical orderlies, and they’re garrison auxiliaries, not Honor Guard.” Kalan glimpsed bewilderment and fear beneath Sarr’s surface calm. “Captain Kolthis had sent out so many scouting patrols there were barely enough guards left to secure the camp.” Sarr paused. “He seemed to think that with so many of us ex-garrison, he could afford to do it, but most of us are too old for active service or were invalided out—”
He stopped as Aiv cut in, her voice tight. “Not just no guards, Storm Spear. No sign of ’em having left the camp, let alone which direction they might have gone, or why.”
“The wind would disperse obvious tracks, especially in this country,” Kalan pointed out. After a moment, Sarr and Aiv nodded, but Baris continued to stare at the line of dead.
“What about your wyr hounds?” Jad asked. “Have they vanished, too?”
“What wyr hounds?” Aiv demanded. “After a third of the Red Keep pack left with you, Captain Kolthis was adamant they couldn’t be relied upon anymore, especially in open country. He said experi
enced warriors were far more dependable.”
Convenient, Kalan thought, although he was not convinced Blood wyr hounds would have prevented the slaughter. “I take it no one’s gone after the stock that was run off?”
Sarr and Aiv looked blank, but Baris turned on Kalan. “On foot? Pursuing what killed armed warriors on guard here?” The groom was shaking, his face twisted with loathing and fear.
Kalan kept his voice calm. “I didn’t say I thought you should have gone. I asked if anyone had.”
“Not that we know of.” Sarr straightened, his expression turning bleak. “I know the caravan’s crippled without ’em, but . . .”
“Baris is right,” Kalan said, still calmly. “Pursuit would be folly.” Suicide, he thought somberly, although with the camp immobilized and no guards to defend it, those who remained here were only marginally better off. And he had to assume the attack was just the opening gambit from an enemy who—adding the death standards to the crippled caravan—enjoyed toying with prey. Kalan read the same awareness in Jad’s eyes, before swift footsteps made him turn.
“Khar!” Aarion, who had gone with Taly and Dain to find Lady Myrathis, spoke urgently: “Ensign Taly wants you at the Bride’s pavilion now.”
Sarr and Aiv’s stricken exchange of glances told Kalan that checking the Bride’s pavilion had never crossed their minds, which fitted with Tehan’s suggestion that Myr was little more than a cipher to most of the camp. A vital cipher, he thought, his anger rising—before he reminded himself that in addition to the shock of the attack and the guards’ disappearance, the retainers had also been catapulted into unaccustomed roles. He was still dumbfounded they had overlooked the Bride’s safety, but berating them would not achieve what needed to be done now.
“You’ve done well,” he said instead, “but we all need to do a lot more. Jad’s an eight-leader, so I’m putting him in charge of securing the camp, but I’m relying on you, and those who’ve worked with you so far, to pull in everyone we’ll need to make that happen. Fast,” he added. Neither Sarr nor Aiv argued against his assumption of authority, and although Baris looked sullen, that could simply be a reaction to events. “Send Rhanar to bring Lord Nimor in,” Kalan told Jad. “Brief him once he gets here and ask his permission for Tyun to help you organize a defense.”