The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

  When the men and women looked back up, they almost seemed to glow with the power of their new-found devotion. Dasen did not address them further. He climbed onto the bench at the front of the lead wagon and ordered the man driving it to take them out of town. As they pulled out, he heard his new apostles fall in behind. He could not decide whether to laugh or cry. He was on his way to sainthood as a woman that didn’t even exist.

  Chapter 50

  The 38 – 41st Day of Summer

  The saddle was a good place to think. That did not mean that Cary usually used his extensive time there for such a purpose. Usually, he spent that time remembering the woman he had been with the night before or dreaming of the one he would find when his ride was done. He wished now that he’d spent more of it thinking about the reports he carried. Maybe if he’d spent more time wondering why he was carrying messages between generals and nobles and governors and kings, he’d have some idea how to untangle the intrigue that had kept him awake through the night. Something was happening. Something wasn’t right. There was a plan afoot that Juhn, and Chulters, and even Nyel did not see. He could feel it, but he could not figure out what it was. In the saddle, he told himself again, I’ll figure it out in the saddle.

  He had to find his saddle first. An old Morg led him and the two rangers that were to accompany him back to the cloak room where they’d entered the lodge. Now, he just needed to remember where he’d left his things. The rangers went to the pile of leather seats and harnesses and picked up the first two from the pile. Cary took his time, not wanting to reveal where he had hidden his most prized possession. He found his jacket first then stuffed a fur cloak into his saddle bag, watching the old Morg to make sure he did not notice the theft – was it even theft since the Morgs did not believe in ownership? Finally, while the rangers searched the racks for their woolen cloaks, seemingly concerned that they had their own cloaks even as they’d selected the first saddle off the pile, he snuck to the back of the room and lifted furs until he found his own saddle peeking out at him like a lost friend.

  He pulled the saddle out and inspected the tooled leather. It felt good in his hands, smooth, strong, supportive, the one lover he would never leave. It smelled of oil, leather, horse, and sweat and home. He did not even realized how much he had missed it over the past two weeks – probably the longest he’d been away from horses in his life.

  The thought took him back to his childhood, to the stables where he had grown up. Those were good memories: caring for the tack, oiling saddles, brushing horses, even sweeping the dung. His father had been a different man there, jovial, confident, respected. He had been king in those stables, and Cary, his only son, the prince. His father had always been good to him, had spoiled him really, had taken the time to teach him his craft, given him duties far beyond his age, let him warm up the noble’s horses or take them out when they needed exercise. He had dreamed of his son racing those horses, had trained him to ride before he could walk and let him practice more than he should have on the beasts in his care, the finest horses in Liandria, if not the world.

  It was only when they returned home that things changed. His father always seemed to shrink when he walked through that door, when his wife started in on him, when the bottle was in his hand. And when their mother left for the kitchens in the small hours of the morning, he changed again.

  Cary shook off the thought. Why had he been remembering that? Noé, he knew. Though the Order knew he tried, he could not separate the Morg girl from Allysa, could not keep his mind from mingling them, from complicating everything he thought and did. Some girls fuck you here, some of them fuck you here, his father had told him when he caught his adolescent son doting on a noble girl as he saddled her horse. And the only fucking that one will be doing with you is with your head. Trust me, fucking with your cock is a whole lot better. Even though he’d hated his father for it at the time, Cary always remembered that. Beautiful women fucked with your head. He’d made it a habit to find the ones that fucked with their bodies. So which was Noé? he wondered as he hoisted the saddle onto his shoulder.

  #

  Not only were the rangers slowing him down, they did not give Cary any time to think. When he’d asked for Yerl and Pence to accompany him, he’d thought only of their riding, not their personalities. He regretted that now. Yerl was a taciturn old bastard, the oldest of the rangers but somehow still a private. If not for the uniform and clean shave, you’d have thought he’d spent his life as a hermit in some mountain cave. Pence was his opposite. The boy, and he was still a boy, never stopped talking. Cary hadn’t noticed before because the young ranger had been constantly on patrol ahead of the main party. Cary had mistakenly thought he had been given the role because he was the best rider; now, he wondered if it was his mouth that had earned him the solitary honor.

  “So you saw some of the women, then?” Pence asked. It must have been the twentieth variant of the question, though they were certainly not all unique. Cary had been dodging them all day, but now that they were settled at their camp, it was going to be impossible to find a reason to ride out in front or point to something on the horizon that might be the prince. The sun was still an hour from setting. The horses were tended, tied on long leads and chewing at the grass. They’d just eaten their meal. The pots were clean. They had water and wood for the fire. There were no excuses remaining.

  “Yeah, I saw them,” Cary admitted.

  “Dog!” Pence exclaimed and pounded his hand on Cary’s knee. Even Yerl seemed to take notice over the stem of his pipe. “You have to tell us everything. Everyone in Holden knew where we were heading, I can’t go back and tell ‘em I didn’t see a woman this whole time. Are they huge like the men? Do they have beards?”

  “They look like women,” Cary stopped the boy before he could go any farther with his ridiculous conjecture. For some reason, he found that thinking offensive, though he’d have said the same two weeks ago.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Come on, tell us the truth. Did you see any of them . . . ?” Pence’ whole face lit. “You did, didn’t you? You saw them fucking. I bet it’s like watching a couple of bears go at it or something, all hair and muscles and claws.” He waved his hands around and bared his teeth, drawing a chuckle from Yerl.

  “Idiot,” Cary scolded. He’d have laughed too if not for having actually seen the act and never wanting to see it again. “I was a spy, not some peeper. Besides, the only men in the lodge were old enough to be our gran’dads. I wouldn’t watch old people fuck if it were the king and queen. I’m tellin’ ya the truth. Their women look just like ours. If they swapped clothes, you’d barely know the difference. It’s only the men that are big.”

  “You . . . are . . . fucking . . . with . . . us,” Pence insisted, emphasizing each word. “Even if that were true, I can’t say that to the boys back home. They’d know I was lying.”

  Cary sighed. What was the point? “You’re right, Pence. The women are bigger than the fuckin’ men. Some were ten feet tall. They walk around bare breasted and fuck anything that moves. The men stay in their own sections because they’re exhausted from all the fucking.”

  Pence was awestruck. “No shit!” he gasped, missing the irony completely. “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  Yerl laughed, flashing the first honest smile of the trip, and pointed the stem of his pipe at Cary in appreciation. Cary accepted the silent compliment with a nod but couldn’t muster a smile to go with it. His mind was solidly on those Morg women, but it was their politics, not sex, that held him. “How long before we find the prince, do you suppose?” he asked no one in particular, hoping to change the subject.

  “Got ta be close,” Yerl mused. Cary hoped for more but did not get it.

  He supposed he should be thanking the rangers. They had already saved the mission from certain failure. Left on his own, Cary would have gone to search for the prince, his hundred guards, and twenty wagons along the same path he had taken with Ambassador Chulters to rea
ch the Fells. The rangers had wisely directed him away from the mountains to the south toward the open plains to the west. Though shorter, there was no chance that the prince, his wagons, and entourage could make it through the mountains. As Yerl had said at the time, the very fact that there were no roads running through the Fells would restrict the prince to the plains.

  Cary hoped that Yerl was right, that it would not be more than another day or two. He was anxious to get back to Noé, to make good on the promise his kiss had implied. He had no doubt now that it was an offer that she would accept. But he was also anxious to get things finished here, to ensure that the Thull and Callik went as expected even as his intuition told him that they never would.

  “How do they do it?” Pence asked, seemingly just now getting his head around Cary’s exaggeration. “I mean, if the women are that tall, how do the men fuck ‘em?” He seemed to be thinking through all the possibilities and dismissing each.

  The line of questioning was one that Cary was intimately familiar with, though it was strange to hear it directed at someone other than himself. “You do know how it works, don’t you, Pence?” he asked, mocking. The kid couldn’t have been shaving for more than a couple of years, and the look on his face made Cary wonder if he really didn’t know.

  “Of course I do. I got a girl back in Holden that’ll see me any time I want.”

  Yerl scoffed. “When yir pocket’s full of pay and there ain’t no one else in line.”

  Pence shot him a look, but the older man just held it until it fell into a smirk. “She’s worth every cent,” he admitted. “But she ain’t no giant. However we do it, she’s just the right size. I can’t imagine if she were a head taller than me.”

  Both the men looked at Cary, Yerl with amusement and Pence with real curiosity. He couldn’t decide if it was because he’d seen the Morg women or because he was most likely to have experienced the situation personally.

  “You’ll have to use your imagination.” Cary reached to the bag at his side and pulled out the fur he’d taken from the lodge. The rangers gawked then glanced at their own cloaks. “One of the women gave it to me,” Cary said as he adjusted his saddle bag beneath his head, pulled his hat over his eyes, and covered himself with the fur. “She didn’t have to use her imagination, and neither’d I. Night, gentlemen.”

  Pence stammered, asking questions, demanding answers. Cary ignored him, thoughts on making the lie into the truth when he returned to Torswauk.

  #

  Cary and the rangers rode for the entirety of two more days with no sign of Prince Winslow or his entourage. Riding as hard as their horses would allow, spread out, weaving back and forth to cover as much ground as possible, even Cary was growing tired of the saddle. The rangers, continuously fighting to keep up, had lost the enthusiasm of the first day when they were simply happy to be away from the lodge. Pence had grown almost as taciturn as his fellow, speaking now only to complain. Yerl’s range of expression had fallen to grunts and shrugs.

  The third night, Cary had tried to lighten the mood by telling of his exploits: the women he’d seduced; the fathers and husbands he’d duped or ridden from as they gave chase, knives or pitchforks in hand; all the places, he’d had women, stables, smithies, haylofts, fields, forests, and foyers. For a while, the stories had kept the complaints at bay, but they had soon been met with snores. Cary had wondered then how much harder he could push them. The mountain ponies were as sturdy as any horse he had ever ridden. They weren’t fast, but they never seemed to tire. The same could not be said of their riders, but Cary was desperate to get back to Torswauk, to see Noé again, to see the negotiations completed and all this political intrigue done.

  They just needed the prince. That is what Cary told himself over and over, but he somehow didn’t believe it. The benefit of the long search was that Cary had plenty of time to think, but he had still not pieced together what was happening in the lodge. He could not help but think that Zhurn was planning to use Noé in some way, that it required the Callik to remain in stalemate, that the Mother from Mehret may be involved, but he could not get past what Juhn had said. It was decided. The fact that the Callik had not rejected Liandria only confirmed it. Nyel was always going to win. The prince was the final piece. The only thing Cary had to do was find him and return to Torswauk with the news. Then he could make good on the foundation he’d laid with Noé, and if the negotiations happened to drag on, maybe he’d be able to make good more than once. You’re being paranoid, he told himself every time his mind slid back to thoughts of conspiracies. It’s all the intrigue and skulking making you see things that aren’t there. Still his mind could not seem to let it go.

  #

  “Smoke!” Pence announced the morning of their fourth day. They had just put out their own fire and saddled their horses. The boy had climbed a nearby hill to take a piss and ended up nearly wetting his boots in his excitement. Yerl joined him and confirmed the smoke rising from the horizon, a wisp of grey cloud on a cloudless sky. Cary hid his relief as he finished saddling his horse. Never leave a horse half-saddled, his father would chastise. I don’t care if the stable’s burning, you cinch the harness before you run out.

  The rangers were still admiring the wisps of grey when Cary joined them, leading his horse by the bridle. Though he’d given up naming horses years ago, he was fond of the beast. He rubbed its nose and fed it a carrot from the dwindling supply in his saddle bag – food would have started running low if they’d spent much more time searching. “You sure that’s them?” he asked the rangers. It didn’t look like much to him, a smudge on the horizon that might have been nothing more than a trick of the rising sun.

  “That’s fires,” Yerl confirmed. “A bunch of ‘em by the looks of it. Probably still ten miles off but at least fifty men.”

  Cary stared again wondering how the ranger possibly got that much information from a smudge on the horizon. He was not sure he’d have even seen it if he hadn’t been shown where to look. “Alright then, let’s go. They’ll be riding soon and there’ll be no smoke to guide us.”

  That proved to be a lie. The smoke grew from wisps to a column as they approached. Yerl’s estimate on the distance proved to be accurate, and it took over an hour to reach the hill above the prince’s camp. The day was cloudless but the summer sun lacked the strength here that it had in the South making for a comfortable ride. At least they’d had good weather, Cary thought, as he considered the distance they’d traveled. Rain would have been miserable on the plains. They’d been lucky to find a tree to tie the horses to at the end of each day, let alone enough shelter to weather a storm.

  Though the sun had been up for hours, the wagons were still circled in the camp below. The prince’s cobalt blue tent still stood, gold eagle of Liandria unmistakable on its round roof. Soldiers were just now putting out the fires that surrounded those wagons and gathering themselves to depart. “Well, they’re not hurryin’,” Yerl mumbled. The reason for the prince’s delay could not have been more obviously stated.

  At that same moment, someone in the camp noticed the riders on the ridge above. Cary thought about riding down to them but thought better of spooking a royal delegation in a foreign land. He untied his reins, giving his horse the lead it needed to reach the grass at its feet. He untied the leads on the two pack horses behind him as well. “Might as well let them eat,” he told the rangers. “It’ll be a while before that lot gets up here.”

  It took far less time than Cary expected. “Who are you, and what is your business?” a soldier with the uniform of the Royal Guard and stripes of a captain asked as he pulled up. A dozen knights in mail and helms flanked him. Over their armor were blue tunics with the golden eagle soaring down, talons extended, beaks snapping. Those tunics were clean and smooth. The men beneath likewise showed no signs of the wilderness around them or the journey they had taken through it. These were all the sons of noble families. Typically outside the line for significant inheritance, they, nonetheless, had the res
ources to maintain a comfortable life even on a journey to the Fells. The great chargers they rode towered over the stocky mountain ponies, making Cary feel even smaller than he already was. He knew that any of these men could be his commander in a few years, could be the man who summoned him to carry a message or dismissed him when it was delivered. Even the lowest of their number would outrank him, no matter how long he served or how high he rose.

  At the same time, being a courier did have its privileges. “Corporeal Lanark of the Liandrin Royal Couriers,” Cary introduced himself and saluted. “I have an urgent message for his majesty from Ambassador Chulters in Torswauk. Please let me pass so that I may complete my mission.” Cary bowed his head slightly to the officer but did not moderate his tone – though he would never outrank this man, his pouch outranked everyone.

  “I see,” the captain responded, eyeing the interlopers’ sweat-stained, crumpled uniforms with distaste. “What news brings you to us in such a state?”

  “I will deliver my message only to its designated recipient,” Cary snapped. “Please let me pass, or I shall have to tell his majesty why I was delayed.” He showed the captain his satchel, wishing it were red. It wasn’t even a proper courier’s satchel, but it did the job.