Death's Collector

by Bill McCurry

  Limnad remained quiet for half an hour or so. Her breaths came slower and shallower. Her shoulder wound was closing, but I feared to loosen the bandages and inspect her leg.

  When the afternoon was getting along toward evening, Limnad sat straight up. “Thank you, Bib.” She looked at Desh. “All right, I’ll never do that again.”

  I unwrapped her leg, and it looked scarred but well healed, while her shoulder looked as if it had never been touched. I sat back as Limnad stood and walked a circle around us.

  “I believe that was some of my best work,” I said, pushing out my chest. “I wish I knew how I did it.”

  Desh laughed. “Limnad is mostly spirit, which makes her powerful. And not much of her is flesh, which makes her fragile but also very quick to mend. You did the hard work by keeping her alive that first hour.”

  “Illuminating. Hell, Desh, by now you’re probably the foremost expert on spirits in all the southlands. Maybe in the world, and you two haven’t even copulated yet. Well, I don’t suppose you have.”

  Desh shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”

  “You’re welcome,” Limnad said, touching Desh on the head. She walked off over the rise and out of sight.

  Desh bent, and I accepted his hand up. “Is that spirit sweet talk? You’re the expert, son. Educate me.”

  “No. She was saying that she saved my life and I should be thanking her. Limnad told me she was going to save me from the ambush, and then rushed ahead to get there first. I would have stopped when you warned us and never gone over that hill. But I had to go save her from the ambush that she was saving me from. This may be her way of telling me that if I don’t fall in love with her soon, she’ll make sure we both get killed.”

  “Damn. I am glad to no longer be young and susceptible to complicated romances.”

  “Sure.” Desh knelt by a Denzman he’d killed with his sling and began removing the relatively blood-free shirt.

  “Desh, I don’t want to pry into your dealings with the gods, but if you are willing, I’d like to know what you paid.”

  He didn’t look up. “What do you mean?”

  I pointed at his sling lying on the grass. “You didn’t have that weapon back at the river. You may have just found it beside a rock, but I doubt it. The gods would admit it looks like something that fell out of a goat with three different diseases. But since you’re suddenly a mighty warrior when you hold it, I suspect you made yourself an enchanted sling.”

  Desh had pulled on his new shirt and was wrapping his horrible magic sling around his waist. He didn’t say anything.

  I smiled. “You don’t really trust me, do you? I’m proud of you, son! You’re wise not to trust me. Unless I earn it. Well, if you don’t mind—and only if you don’t mind—I’m curious about what you paid for the power. As an infinitesimal token of trust, I’ll tell you about my last trade.”

  I didn’t want to tell him about my last trade. I didn’t want to tell anybody, and I wish I didn’t know myself. But I had spent a lot of my power already on healing and rotting various people and things, and I might need more before I was done in the Denz Lands. Any little detail about how the gods had just bargained with Desh might give me a useful advantage.

  Desh said, “I don’t promise anything, but you can tell me if you like.”

  “Gorlana traded me four squares. In exchange, she gave me the knowledge that it’s not my debt that makes me behave like a bloodthirsty killer who loves murder. I’m just that way all by myself.”

  “Is that all?”

  I had been expecting more of a reaction. At least a little surprise. “That is the knowledge, yes.”

  Desh shrugged. “I thought that was obvious.”

  “Obvious how?”

  “You seem to hate Harik just a little too much. It’s as if you blame him for every bad thing that happens. Wait!”

  I stopped and realized that I’d already grasped my sword without thinking about it. I let go and took two steps back.

  “See?” Desh said. “Obvious.”

  “All right. Do you feel you can share?”

  “Fingit traded me two squares. In exchange, I will have six nights of horrible nightmares within the next year, on nights of my choosing.”

  “What was his first offer?”

  “That I will accidentally cause the death of the next three women I fall in love with. I suppose that sort of thing is typical of a first offer.”

  “Sadly, yes. It’s that son of a bitch Harik’s fault—” I paused, and Desh raised an eyebrow. “I mean, thank you, Desh.” It didn’t sound like something that would help me, but I couldn’t predict the future. Someday, it might be exactly what I needed to know.

  Ella walked over and said, “Gentlemen, has your consultation on profound and profane matters concluded?”

  “I believe it has, dear,” I said.

  “Our two devoted but morally questionable gentlemen have collected as many stray mounts as possible. They secured three of our enemies’ horses, and Stan discovered this.” She held out a ragged piece of parchment. Someone had drawn a simple map in what looked like a hurry.

  I peered around Ella’s shoulder and pointed. “This is the trail, and this must be the keep we just fought through. This mark may be right where we’re standing.”

  Ella said, “Then this figure farther south suggests a sizable habitation—perhaps a city.”

  “What’s this circle then? And the little drawing?” Desh asked.

  The circle rested off the trail to the east, between our location and the city. I examined it for a moment. “That’s a horse. My guess—it’s a camp where they station horses and supplies. If I were Vintan, I’d at least pause there to resupply, and maybe to rest. We can catch him there.”

  “Marvelous,” Ella said. “It must be a facility of great importance, since we discovered the same map on another horse.”

  “What?” Desh yelped.

  Ella held out another parchment with roughly the same map.

  “That sneaky wad of rat excrement,” I said. “May Effla break off his dick and Krak give him the runs for a year. These soldiers didn’t need two copies of the same map to get back there. They needed two copies to double the chance that we’d find the map. This circle isn’t where we’ll catch Vintan. This circle is where he plans to kill us when we follow this map to ride in and surprise him.”

  Ella smiled. “My, that flopping little intestine is a devious fellow. This is sterling information. Bib, how far?”

  I said, “Limnad, how far are we behind the Denzmen?”

  Limnad walked over the rise and stood beside Desh. “I don’t know.”

  We all paused. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I don’t know. When they crossed my river, they took water with them. Now they’ve drunk the last of that water, so I don’t know where they are anymore.”

  I sighed. “That’s all right. We were getting lazy, always depending on you to scout for us. We’ll pursue Vintan the regular way. We’ll guess where he is, and then be terrified that we guessed wrong.”

  Twenty-One

  “Emphatically not. The idea is idiotic, and you are an idiot. I refuse to endanger the prince by accepting your simplistic and reckless scheme.”

  Ella did not like my plan. That stung a little since I was once known to be a superior planner, although I was a horrible leader. I had no patience with followers and would rather kill them than listen to them bitch about the crap they thought was important. I was about as inspirational as a rusty anvil. The last time I led an expedition, two men were killed by arrows, two more were struck by lightning, and one was eaten by a crocodile. Only I survived.

  Yet whenever we required a plan, everybody would go off to drink and chase women while I planned our next move. I created plans of all sizes, from assaulting castles to sneaking out of bars without paying. And my current plan, which Ella hated, was so simple, clear, and compelling.

  Of course, I knew exactly why she despised it. Ell
a hated Limnad. I had known they weren’t on friendly terms. I hadn’t known it had boiled into full loathing until this argument began, and Ella called the spirit a “moist, rutting harpy” as she planted herself between her and Desh.

  In my plan, Limnad would scout ahead for Vintan’s camp, commit it to memory, and bring us her report. It was a wonderful plan. The best part was that Limnad could move around entirely unseen and unheard. Even Ella should have agreed that the Denzmen were unlikely to be alerted by something they couldn’t see or hear.

  However, Ella continued to object. “We cannot hinge our success upon this gullet-faced bruise on everything that is pure and vital.”

  “Limnad, please don’t kill her,” Desh said, his hands out to his sides, palms up.

  “Just because you ask, I won’t.” Water erupted over the spirit, soaking everybody around. “Yet. I’ll let the marrow-sucking bitch live. For now.”

  Ella stepped toward Limnad, wiping at her soaked hair and face. “This whore from hell is merely biding her time. When opportunity presents, she will betray us and destroy us all.”

  “Ella, please let this go.” I reached out to her and snatched my hand back when she glared at me.

  “Let ’em keep going,” Ralt said. “It’s better than listening to you moan about being a killer.”

  “Don’t talk to me about betrayal,” Limnad said. “Will you go with Bib when he has sacrificed himself to save your foolish prince? I doubt it very much! You’ll leave him to die! While he lies dead, you’ll be in some nasty bar drinking whiskey and letting sailors feel between your legs!”

  That made everybody stop talking. Limnad had turned a deep, shiny blue, and Ella had gone pale. Apart from being outrageous and profane, Limnad’s last observation concerned me. Spirits can sometimes see a little of the future.

  I jumped in before the insults resumed. “Ella, as a favor to me, please stop trying to get yourself torn into pieces shaped like unicorns, or something Limnad decides is equally whimsical. And please go along with my plan for now. I know you hate it, but if it fails, then I’ll buy you five beers and a kitten when you get home with the prince.”

  Ella sneered at Limnad, clamped her jaw, nodded once at me, and walked away toward a thicket of trees.

  “Limnad, if you would please…” I looked around for the river spirit, but she was already gone.

  Resting in the early afternoon seemed unnatural, and I couldn’t sleep. No one else slept, either. Desh stood watch, and the soldiers sat near me reminiscing about the worst officers they’d ever served under. Ella came back from the thicket and sat ten feet away from me without talking.

  “We make an awfully glum group,” I said. “It’s like we all just got our hearts broken and will be miserable forever after.”

  “Right,” Ralt said. Stan nodded, and they went back to discussing their most awful memories. Ella just looked away from me.

  “Hell, I’ve seen a hut full of smoked hams livelier than us. We may all die tonight, and I’ll be damned if I sit here and have a funeral before I’ve even been killed. Do any of you know how to juggle, or dance? Have a flute hidden away in your pouch? Anything except reciting poetry.”

  Stan said, “Ralt can sing songs he’s wrote by himself. A person might think that a gloomy-looking turd like him would sing depressing songs, but he can liven up the barracks some, especially if we’ve all been drinking.”

  Ella took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “Serenade us, Ralt. I would feel honored to hear you sing. What is the topic of your ballad?”

  The rest of Ralt’s face was turning red to match his nose.

  “Whores,” Stan said. “That’s his best one. Always cheers everybody up, even when one or two of the lads was killed that day. Best one of all.”

  Ralt shook his head and mumbled something, but then he stood and cleared his throat. “Got some money in my pocket—Want to see how much it buys me—If I pay for me, can my mates all play for free?—We washed our willies ’fore we came here.”

  Right away, I recognized the melody as an old lullaby my father used to sing to me, and I sang it to my little girl when she was a baby. Ralt had changed the words, of course, and he sang out strong with real feeling.

  He went right into the second verse. “Want my whores to have some padding—Gives me something to clamp on to—I don’t want to fall off a whore and smash my balls—I know they never give no refunds.”

  “Got no money in my pocket—Whores just laugh at me and kick me—I can tell you, whore, I’ll be back to screw some more—Soon as I rob some pasty rich man.”

  Ralt took a tiny bow, and we all applauded, even Desh who’d been listening from thirty paces away.

  “Thank you, sir. Miss.” Ralt blushed. “I got more songs. I got one about scurvy, and this other one about how when you drink different alcohols, you get different colors of vomit.”

  “They sound mighty artistic, Ralt, but I don’t want to ruin my appreciation of the Whore Song by listening to a different song so soon after.” I nodded and caught Ella’s eye. She nodded too.

  That unwound the tension, and within ten minutes, we all were asleep, except for Desh.

  Later in the afternoon, Ella woke me by shaking my shoulder.

  “Stop!” I said. “Damn, I was sleeping hard. A bear could have walked in here and eaten me up before I knew it was happening.”

  “The grasping, predatory deceiver has returned.”

  I hopped up and faced Limnad. Based on the height of the sun, she had been gone about two hours.

  I walked right up to her for her report. “Where is Vintan? What did you find?”

  “He is one hour’s ride south of here.”

  “More specifically?”

  “He’s camping next to a fine stream. It would be a happier stream if the Denzmen didn’t throw their rotten food into it.”

  “What else is nearby?” I asked.

  “One hundred and thirteen trees, six of them killed by lightning. Sixty-five rabbits, four foxes, two owls, almost five thousand rats and mice, and a panther that would like to get one of the Denzmen alone one night.”

  From behind me, Ella coughed.

  “Are there any landmarks that would help us find this camp?” I asked.

  Limnad said, “The ground is very boggy near the stream, probably the wettest in this part of the forest. Also, there are eleven men, nineteen horses, five dogs, and seven cats in the camp. That is a mix of creatures unique anywhere south of the Blood River.”

  I started feeling sick. “Limnad, could you take us to this place if we asked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wonderful! Tell me about the men in this camp.”

  “They weren’t very interesting, except for the sorcerer.”

  “What was interesting about him?”

  She blinked. “He’s a sorcerer.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Walking around.”

  Ella cut in. “Did you see a boy?”

  “Yes, he was walking around with the sorcerer.”

  “Did he seem well?”

  “I guess so. He was sad.”

  “Do you know why?” I asked. “Did something bad happen?”

  “I didn’t see anything bad. Maybe the sorcerer made him sad. The sorcerer is sad too.”

  “What else?”

  “What else? Nothing else. That’s everything that’s important.”

  “Then… thank you, Limnad.”

  Ella hissed, “I told you that she would fail us!” She grabbed my sleeve, pulled me around, and shook me hard.

  “Leave something for the Denzmen to aim at,” I said.

  “Be happy I don’t grab you by the ear. Your plan failed us. How will you repair this damage?”

  And that’s how I came to be lying on my belly in boggy soil one hour later, my face full of the smells of stale water and rotting rodents. I whispered, “Thank you, Limnad,” knowing that she was close even if I couldn’t see her. I crawled a little farther throu
gh some brush to a spot between two questionable-looking bushes, and I scanned Vintan’s camp.

  The place sat in a large square area that Denzmen had cleared in the woods, and it was modest. I could sprint from edge to edge in fewer than fifteen seconds. A rough log stable took up most of one side, with several horses tied up outside it. Four smaller but equally rough log huts lined the camp’s opposite side. Their doors stood open, and from what I could see, each hut held three or four cots. Trenches ran around the whole camp, with gaps wide enough to let a horse pass. I couldn’t tell how deep they were, but they looked to be eight or ten feet wide.

  From my bushy vantage, I saw seven men. If Limnad had counted right, that meant four men were on guard out among the trees. I spotted just one blond ten-year-old boy, and I had every right to think he was the prince, although I have been proven wrong on more obvious assumptions than that. He was sitting on a pile of firewood stacked against one of the huts. He looked healthy, if a little ragged in soldier’s clothes far too big for him. Vintan sat next to him, 180 compact pounds of smug, icy bile in a blue doublet that cost more than a soldier would make in ten years.

  The prince looked relaxed. He was chatting with Vintan as if the man was his favorite uncle. That would be Uncle Vindictive Ass-Scraping, Child-Beheading Knobby Little Thug to me.

  I whispered, “I will see you eat toenails in hell.”

  “Did you hear that?” said a snuffling man’s voice off to my left.

  “I don’t hear nothing.” Another man coughed. “Nothing.”

  I tried not to breathe or move. I also tried to ignore a sizable bug I felt crawling from my pants leg toward my buttocks.

  “Poke around in that bush,” Snuffy said. Before I could grasp my sword, the other man began kicking through a bush ten feet away from me.

  The bug crawled onto my right cheek. It was far more disturbing than I would have imagined. I concentrated on guessing whether it was a beetle or a grasshopper.

  “Probably nothing here,” Snuffy said. A chain of coughs answered him.

  I started to relax, but then one of the bastards began randomly swinging his sword through the underbrush. He almost took a slice off my forearm. I realized it might be a spider crawling on me, and I hoped it wasn’t a venomous one. I wasn’t keen on getting bit and having my ass fall off at an inconvenient moment.