If this information was correct, Loyal was giving them an opportunity to hobble Mokad’s army. Argoth looked at his opponent, his gentle smile and honest face. A man who looked like he had nothing to hide. “Why would you give us this information?”
“How many times must I say it? Our Sublime is not like the others.”
“More likely you simply see a way to gain the upper hand over Mokad without spilling your own blood.”
Loyal held out the pouch with the nightingale weave in it. “Test us,” he said. “Test me.”
Argoth looked at the pouch. That weave might be anything, but, then again, wouldn’t they want to deliver something that would actually work and build his trust? Besides, he could examine its operation well beforehand. He wasn’t going to join them, so what harm could there be in accepting a gift?
He reached up and closed his fist around the pouch. It would do no harm to lead Loyal and his Glory on. In fact, it might do great good. “I will indeed test this,” he said.
Loyal of Nilliam nodded. “You’re doing the right thing.” He said this without revealing any sort of deception or gloating, just honest sympathy. “It is a hard decision you have to make. I know. It was offered to me once as well. But do not delay. You do not have the time. Raise a red pennant on your north tower when you are ready to talk. I will be waiting for you on the same hill you found me today.”
Argoth put the pouch into his pocket. “Who else in Shim’s army have you made this offer to?”
“I told you: we are careful about who we raise to our ranks. This offer has been made to none other.”
That was a lie. It had to be. Moreover, why would Nilliam be the only one playing this game? Could Urz, for instance, be making their own offers? Maybe they were behind the traitor in Shim’s midst. What about Mungo and Cath? Both of them were neck-deep in their own games; why wouldn’t they be trying to steal the New Lands from Mokad just as Nilliam was? Surely someone had made a similar offer to Shim or Eresh.
“Who is the traitor in our midst?” Argoth asked.
“Mokad does not share such secrets with us.”
Argoth told himself Loyal of Nilliam was wrong about the nature of Divines. He told himself he’d just given Shim’s army an advantage, perhaps an opportunity, by discovering the Bone Faces were not part of Mokad’s coalition. Furthermore, Argoth might be able to play this Loyal for even more information or feed him lies.
But underneath all that he wondered: there was so much he didn’t know. Over his many years, he had learned, as painful as it might be, it never did any good to fight against the truth. Was it possible the teachings of Hismayas were dreams? Was Loyal of Nilliam actually bringing light?
Loyal smiled.
Argoth did not return the gesture. He simply turned his horse around and rode it out of the woods. Above him the storm clouds darkened the sky.
* * *
A thunderstorm broke upon the troops as they rode into Rogum’s Defense. Argoth settled his horse in the stables, then walked across the bailey to Shim’s quarters. He climbed the stairs, his clothes dripping rain, and reported everything that had occurred with Loyal to Shim. Everything except the last bit about the red pennant.
“We have to act on this knowledge,” Shim said.
“It could be a trap.”
“It could be their undoing. Their dreadmen don’t know any lore. They rely on the Kains to fill their weaves. What happens when their weaves begin to run dry while ours wean themselves off weaves and begin to learn how to wield Fire on their own? Every day our forces will grow stronger while theirs diminish. We need to plan.”
“We need to send word to the families of the men that have fallen. We need to send word about the mists to all our outposts.”
Shim nodded. “It’s going to be a long, rough evening.”
Argoth sent riders with messages, then helped Shim oversee the preparation of the dead bodies in the great hall. As they worked, the rain lashed the fortress walls and the cobbles of the inner bailey. Lightning cracked and boomed. At one point Serah, his wife, and the girls entered the hall to silently view each of the bodies. They somberly added coins and gifts to the small piles forming next to each of the men. On their way out, Grace ran over to Argoth and put a small straw girl she’d made in his pocket. She was always giving him things to remember her by.
When the bodies had all been prepared, Shim said to Argoth, “Get something to eat. Then meet me in my quarters.”
Argoth wasn’t hungry, but he knew he should eat. So he got a bowl of cold swamp from the cooks and took it to his quarters.
Grace and his other daughters sat around their mother stitching various bits of clothing. They’d shuttered the window against the storm and worked by candlelight. Nettle sat to one side on the floor with a piece of chalk and a slate, painstakingly drawing something Argoth could not recognize. A few moments later a tremor began to shake Nettle’s head and arm.
“Serah?” he asked.
“It comes and goes,” she said. “It will pass. Matiga is reading her codices to see if there might be an herb to stop it.”
He knelt by Nettle and put his arm around him. Nettle trembled in his embrace. A few minutes later the trembling stopped. Argoth rocked with him. He thought back over the last weeks. Nettle was getting worse, just as that Divine of Nilliam said.
In the beginning, there had been flashes of the old Nettle. He would say something or do something, and Argoth would think that maybe he’d come back despite the soul he’d lost. But those flashes were coming less and less. Sometimes it seemed Nettle hardly even knew who Argoth was.
He looked at his family. He knew what would happen to them if Shim lost. A man had to take care of his family. They were his first duty. He had to take care of them in this life and the next.
Serah poked her bronze needle through a quilted tunic that soldiers wore under their armor and tugged a sturdy piece of thread through. She was pregnant, only a month away from delivering.
He said, “Will you talk to me?”
She glanced at him, then went back to her work in the candlelight. He took that as a yes. “Let’s say you had a choice. Perhaps you were in a capsized boat in a heaving sea. Or you were on the beach and saw a sleeper wave coming toward you. And you knew you could save our children, get them to safety, but not the children of your sisters. You know that if you try to save them all, you will all perish together. What would you do?”
“I have not forgiven you,” she said.
“I’m not talking about Nettle,” he said. “I’m asking you a question. How do you prioritize? I want to know.”
“Why do you even have to ask?” She tied a knot and then bit the thread off.
“What would you do?”
She sat up straight and felt her pregnant belly. Their child must have kicked. “You know what I would do,” she said and turned back to her work.
And he did. She would save her children. Then she would go back and perish trying to save the rest. Which was how it should be.
“I think I know how to heal Nettle,” he said. The moment he uttered the words, he regretted having said them. He didn’t know that Nilliam could restore his son. It was probably a lie. But what if it wasn’t? What if it could save Nettle from going into that world unprotected?
Serah stopped, bronze needle in one hand, thread in the other.
“Forget I said that.”
“Do you wish to torture me with false hopes?”
He wondered how much he should tell her. He had kept her in the dark for so many years. He’d thought keeping her in the dark would keep her close. In the end, it only led him to lose both her and Nettle. But he couldn’t tell her he was thinking of Nilliam’s offer. “It might be nothing. Just an old scrap of something I remember. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Serah looked up at him. The anger and hurt were
plain on her face. She knew he was lying. “You’ll never give it up,” she said referring to his secrets and lies, “will you?”
How could he bring her into his confidence on this matter? How could he not keep some secrets from her? If he told her what he was thinking, she would tell Matiga who would tell Shim and Eresh. They would watch him. And then this opportunity, if it was one, would be forever beyond his reach. Besides, he hadn’t committed to anything. He didn’t know yet if Loyal even spoke the truth.
He felt the pouch in his pocket with its bird weave. “We have information that might turn the upcoming battle before it even starts. I’ll know better tomorrow if it will work,” he said. “That may give me more time to focus on our son.” Then he finished his food and went out into the rain and across the bailey to Shim’s quarters.
30
Mission
SUGAR WAS RIDING back from her meeting with Withers. It was raining and, despite Urban’s riding cloak, she was soaked. Up ahead, yet another messenger galloped toward them from the direction of Rogum’s Defense. She and Urban moved their mounts off the muddy road for the third time.
The messenger rode up on the shoulder where the grass would provide more traction instead of down in the mud of the road, but the horse’s hooves still threw up soggy clumps of earth. Sugar recognized this Shimsman as he approached. She waved a small hello as he went by. He gave her a nod as he flew past, his face grim with determined purpose.
“Something’s up,” said Urban.
Sugar agreed, and they urged their horses into a trot. Not much later they arrived at the fortress. Despite the rain, it was buzzing with activity.
Sugar had been excited to return. She’d walked for hours today. She’d beheld wonders, and couldn’t wait to tell Legs all about it, but then she saw the faces of the soldiers and knew something terrible had happened.
They received the news from the grooms at the stables. She and Urban hurried to the great hall and saw the dead men lying there. She had not known any of them well, but their deaths still struck her. She had nothing to give, but Urban opened his purse and placed a coin next to each of them. Off to the side, one of the men who’d been at Woolsom was telling the tale of the battle. She and Urban moved into the crowd of people about him. She listened with horror as he told of the Bone Face Kragow and the wraiths.
As the story progressed, Urban’s expression became more and more concerned. When the soldier finished telling the tale, Urban turned to her. “I need to talk to Argoth.”
She nodded, and they left the hall, him to speak with Argoth and her with Legs. Sugar found Legs sitting on a barrel under the eaves of the kitchen with group of men eating swamp. Flax sat next to him. He stood when Sugar arrived, smoothed both sides of his long blond moustache. “Just the person I’ve been waiting for. I was under strict command from the chief lady of the tub not to leave the boy’s sight.” He paused.
When she didn’t respond, he repeated, “not to leave the boy’s sight . . .”
“Ah,” she said and faked a laugh.
Some of the other men shook their heads at the joke.
Flax stood. “I dared not risk the wrath of that formidable woman. But now that you’re here, I deliver him to you and take my leave.” He turned to the other men. “Take heart, boys. The Bone Faces will pay.”
“Thank you,” Legs said to Flax.
Flax reached out and gave Legs’s hand a friendly squeeze. “You remember what I told you.”
“I will.”
Flax gave a sympathetic look to Sugar, then walked out toward the stables.
“He’s grand,” said Legs.
“He’s a foreigner,” one of the men said as if that trumped everything else.
“Foreigner or not,” another said, “he’s the one I want next to me when the fighting gets thick.”
Sugar put her hand on Legs’s shoulder.
“So?” he said to her.
She didn’t feel comfortable sharing everything that had happened today with these men. “Come with me,” she said. She took his hand, and he hopped off the barrel. Then she led him away. When they were in the privacy of their own cellar, she said, “Brother, you cannot imagine. You won’t believe the things I saw.” Two of the ferrets were awake in their cage, playing, wrestling with each other.
“Start from the beginning,” he said.
She did and told him everything from the moment she found the thread while working with the washerwomen to the goatherd and howlers. When she finished, she remembered the honeyed nuts. She withdrew the cloth from her pocket. “Here,” she said. “I saved these for you.”
She pressed them into his hands, but his face was cast down. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you think they made it?”
He was talking about Mother and Da. She put an arm around him. “If Mother can’t make it, nobody can. Remember, she went to find Da. I’m sure they’re safe as stone.”
But in her heart she wondered. Furthermore, after the tale of Woolsom, she realized how important Urban’s suggestion had been. She and Legs did need a plan should things fall apart, one for this world and the next. War was upon them, and soldiers died all the time. What if she and Legs were killed, and the ancestors didn’t come? What if the same happened to her friends here?
She thought about the skenning and blackspine and realized she might be the only thing standing between those she loved and the perils of the yellow world.
A few minutes later Urban darkened the doorway. “It’s begun,” he said. “The ferret is being sent to war.”
“Where?” she asked.
He looked at Legs, glanced behind him to make sure nobody was there. “Blue Towers.”
31
The Wilds
TALEN KEPT an eye out. They were in the Wilds proper now, and who knew what foul thing might attack them here? He held Scruff’s reins, leading him along the rocky crown of a ridge. River sat up in the saddle, every minute growing worse, looking like she was going fall off with the slightest nudge. In front of him, the maze of wooded hollows and hills that made up the Wilds stretched for as far as he could see. And Talen was about to see much less, for the thick clouds of the approaching storm were not far behind, blotting out the sky and moving fast in his direction.
The wind picked up, gusting into the trees with a heavy hand. Talen loped as fast as the terrain would allow, weaving his way along the rocky crown of the ridge in his bare feet, taking them both deeper into this forsaken wilderness.
He’d taken his weave off a few miles back. He needed all the might he could muster, not only to move faster, but also to defend himself and River should some abominable thing come at them through the trees. His Fire burned inside him, filling him with vigor.
The crows flew above, fighting to keep pace in the increasing winds. Behind him thunder boomed. A smattering of hail fell from the sky, bouncing on the ground. The brief hail stopped. Then a gust of wind brought another squall, the pellets stinging his face and arms. Then the winds picked up even more and the hail was replaced by a sweep of rain, a huge curtain of it hissing as the drops struck rock and tree.
The wind buffeted the two crows. They cawed, tried to stay aloft, but then dived out of sight.
Now was his chance. He dropped off the ridge, down the slope River had told him to take and into the trees. He made sure to wrap the reins tightly around his hand. Scruff was a calm horse, but the lightning could spook the best animals, and he didn’t want to throw River.
The leading edge of the rain crossed over and engulfed them in a gray torrent of water that soaked his hair and clothes. Then the thick rain and clouds folded them in, cutting visibility.
A few minutes later he struck out along a saddle and then climbed back up to the crest of another hill at a lower elevation. They were going to come to a vale with a lazy river. They would cross that, climb the slope on the
far side, then drop down into a hollow, which would lead them along for a few miles. There was a cutoff, and a jutting rock that looked like a rabbit’s head, which was the marking that would tell him Harnock’s vale was close.
Talen led Scruff along the hill, trying to keep to the thinner parts of the wood because River seemed barely able to avoid the branches. After about fifteen minutes they came to the far side of the hill. Talen looked down the slope and saw a gentle valley below with the serpentine coils of a slow river.
“Is this it?” he asked.
She didn’t reply.
“River,” he said. Her cloak’s hood hung down over her face. He went to her and grabbed her hand. “Sister, is this where we go down?” He pushed the cowl of her hood back so she could see. Her eyes were rolling in her head.
Good lords, not here. Not now. He patted her hand and called her name again.
She slurred something.
“What?” he asked.
“Down,” she moaned. At least, that’s what he thought she said. Then she slumped to one side and almost fell off the horse.
Talen grabbed her and righted her in the saddle, and then he retrieved some rope from the saddle bags and lashed her feet in the stirrups and legs to the saddle flaps. With her securely tied in, he set off, descending the slope slantwise, hurrying through the trees and scrub.
Toward the bottom he jammed his toes on a fallen branch and stumbled. He cursed and proceeded on. When he broke from the trees onto the valley floor, he stopped.
Wurms were said to make their burrows in the valley bottoms. He scanned the tall meadow grass, then quickly realized there would be no burrows here—the whole valley bottom was a boggy marsh. He moved forward. As he proceeded, he sank to his thighs in the brackish water, the mud sucking at his legs. The good thing was that the rain kept the mosquitoes grounded. He was bound to pick up a few leeches before he made it to the other side, but that was far better than falling into the hands of what chased him.
The river in the middle of the valley was not fast, and he and Scruff were able to easily swim to the other side and climb up into slightly less boggy ground. When he reached the base of the far slope, he looked back across the valley. The slope he’d come down was shrouded in mist and rain. He thought he saw something brown flash through the trees, but when he looked closer, nothing was there. The hackles rose on his neck. The last thing he wanted to meet was woodikin. He waited, but whatever it was didn’t reveal itself again. It was probably just some animal—a deer or badger seeking cover.
Curse: The Dark God Book 2 Page 30