by Eric Lewis
“Gods damn that old coot, I warned him not to tax them joints! All right, just let me get— Hey, beggin’ your pardon, but why are you two fetching me?”
Ulnoth and Corren looked at each other, then at the physic. “What?” they both said.
“Surely that’s a job for a messenger, not a pair of householders.”
“Well,” mumbled Corren, “that is, you see, we were—”
“Who are you, anyway? Don’t I know you from some—”
The inquisition was cut off when Ulnoth suddenly leaped forward and socked the man in the jaw. He went down easy, without another word. “Hmm. Not a fighter, that one.”
Corren caught the physic as he fell and lowered him the rest of the way to the ground. “What the hells! You trying to get us caught?”
Ulnoth shrugged. “Seemed like you were fresh out of ideas. Problem solved.”
They loaded up with whatever would fit in the saddlebags. Then they tied sacks together and laid them across the horses’ rumps, but the coursers were used to heavy loads and bore it easily. “I think that’s all we can take,” said Corren when supplies started falling from where he stuffed them. “Leave the mule, it’ll slow us down. We best go before anyone notices.”
“With you there. But you said there’d be food and—”
“Oi!” They jumped at the bark. Someone was coming. “Oi, Joby, where you get to? I gots me a splittin’ headache from all this— Oh.”
Ulnoth heard Corren curse under his breath. He knows this one, Ulnoth thought. Not good.
“Sorry to bother you, m’lords. You happen to know where physic Joby got to? Still sufferin’ a few minor aftereffects of victory, if you take my meaning.”
“He’s away,” Corren said after a few seconds, keeping his face turned away even behind the mask of mail. “Tending to Gadanga. Come back later.”
“Oh. Cack on my luck then. All right.” The man was about to go back the way he came when he noticed the horses and their cargo. “Say, where you takin’ all that? If we’s movin’ out in a hurry it’d be good to know about it—”
“Requisitions. Lady No’s personal request. Now stand aside.” Corren held out an arm to wave him away as well as to block him from coming any closer. The mail hauberk extended most of the way down his sleeve, ending short of the wrists. There were loops to attach matching mittens to cover the hands but he wasn’t wearing them, so Corren’s exposed hand was thrust right in the man’s face. A hand suspiciously dark for a Bergovan household retainer.
The soldier looked at the hand, then at the obscured face in front of him. The hand again. A pause. Then his eyes went wide. “Wait. It – it’s you. You!” He began backing away.
“Tancred, wait—”
“What is this? You damn near started a riot when you pissed off. What are you doing in that getup? Sergeant Jaxa—!”
Corren and Ulnoth descended on the man together, wrestling him to the ground as he cried out. Corren bashed his face and neck. When he crushed the windpipe it made a sickening squelch. The man struggled still, making weak moaning sounds.
“Shut up!” Corren hissed, hands shaking and tears dropping onto his writhing victim. “Shut up shut up shut up!” He squeezed. The man’s face turned purple, then blue as he went still. Corren whipped off his helmet and coif just in time to avoid spewing vomit all over the inside of his armor as he gagged into the grass.
“Hey,” said Ulnoth, panting from exertion, “what’re you doing? They’ll recognize your deserting ass!” He struggled to his feet. “Come on, let’s go.”
Leaving the body to cool next to the puddle of puke, they trudged over to the horses and climbed once again into the saddle.
“Stop!”
Ulnoth looked down to see two more soldiers standing before them. One was an older Marzahni fellow in apparent command, with a dozen upset and heavily armed sloggers at their backs. He stepped forward, rubbing his wrist. “Corren lad…what have you done?” He glanced down at the body. “You, you did this? They said you ran and I didn’t believe it, but then…why?”
Corren broke out in sudden bitter laughter. “Why? Why, really? Look around you, Cap’n. That’s why!”
The captain shook his head. “You’re out of your senses. You must be. Come down from there, and I promise I’ll try—”
“No, Cap’n. My senses are clear, maybe for the first time. I’m leaving. Don’t try to stop me or come after.”
The sergeant next to the captain spat into the bloody ground in front of him. “Enough of this. Take ’em down!” The soldiers behind them stepped forward and hurled a volley of spears. Ulnoth was already moving, riding in front of Corren. Ulnoth threw a sack of something heavy to deflect one spear, but a second grazed his hip, just as the hem of the mail hauberk bounced up. “Gah!” he screamed, wrenching the horse away. “Go!”
Corren kicked his courser into a full gallop, and they were soon racing downhill back toward the marsh, toward the forest. Ulnoth looked back once and saw the men giving chase on foot but falling behind fast. He looked back a second time and they were gone, given up perhaps. He bled down his side, droplets flying backward. One spear wound and one dead ex-comrade. Better be worth it, he thought.
Chapter Eleven
Some Unspoken Fellowship
“I don’t know what happened. They said they were going to let us go. Then we heard screams from somewhere. Someone panicked. Then the soldiers just started killing, and we ran. That’s all I know.”
Alessia wrapped the bandage around the man’s neck, snipped the end off with her new stolen scissors. The poultice she’d mixed up squished out between the strips, and she scraped up the excess.
“They weren’t going to let you go,” Corren said. “They had orders to collect heads.”
The man nodded. “Guess I figured that. We all did really. It was just false hope. Good for us we ran into you lot though – others weren’t so lucky. Who are you people, anyway?”
“Just people,” said Alessia, “trying to survive, like you.”
The man glanced up at Corren. “Hmmph, them two fellas ain’t like me, and that’s a true thing. Warriors or uncommon killers, can’t quite tell.”
“Speakin’ of which,” called Ulnoth from where he lay with a cloth pressed against his hip, “when’s my turn? This hurts!”
“Good. That’s how you know you’re not dead,” Alessia replied. She told the man to lie still and rest, then went over to Ulnoth. “You’re next. But I want to talk to you first.”
“Eh? What’s there to talk about? I took a spear in the leg.”
“I know. And I’ll patch you up. On one condition.”
“Condition?”
“Yes. No more random killing. It puts us in needless danger.”
Ulnoth rolled his eyes. “We been over this….”
“And we’re going over it again. Because now I have patients to think about. Here’s the deal: I’ll do my best to keep you alive and somewhere in the general vicinity of healthy. In turn you – and Corren, if he wants – do whatever you have to to keep the soldiers’ sharp and pointies far away from us. But no more unhinged suicide attacks. You want to raid, steal, ambush them, whatever, be smart about it. Just look at what you got for us with a little planning! That’s not so hard, now is it?”
Ulnoth scrunched his face in distaste. “And if I say no thank you, ma’am?”
“Then you can lie there and bleed out until you get what you were looking for. But I think you want to live, whatever you say. I’m betting you do.”
Ulnoth lay still, staring at her. Slowly, he lifted the cloth from his wound, stared down at the mess of blood. “You know, there’s a certain grain factor I’d love for you to meet. I think you could haggle him right out of his fancy clothes.”
“That’s not an answer,” said Alessia, pressing the attack.
“F
ine. You win, again.”
Alessia set to stanching the flow of blood from Ulnoth’s hip.
“Now that that’s settled,” Corren said, “I can think of a few hundred reasons both personal and practical that we should leave here once and for all. It won’t take much imagination for them to figure out what happened to those two riders.”
“Agreed,” said Alessia. “These people need time to heal, but not here. Back south seems safest.”
“I can walk,” Ulnoth said before demonstrating most convincingly that he could not. “Argh!”
“Uh-huh. You can ride. We’ve three horses – that should be enough to carry the worst hurt. The supplies we’ll have to carry ourselves.”
“Lucky wanker,” Corren remarked.
A few hasty prayers were said over the dead both near and far and the refugees moved deeper into the forest, swatting at gnats with every step. Corren and Alessia held to the rear to make sure there were no stragglers, but when a scream rang out they dropped their loads and ran ahead. “What is it?” asked Alessia. “Did they find us?” It couldn’t be that though – they stood gathered around something on the ground. “What is it?” The crowd parted.
It was almost comical that the sight of one more corpse should cause a commotion. It lay naked, face down along a newly pashed-out footpath. Corren frowned. “Now there’s a fresh kill. But out here – I wonder who it is?”
A few of the braver townsfolk flipped the body over to reveal a youngish, smooth-faced man with no marks on him but one – a huge gaping spear wound that ran deep into his chest, a killing blow. “It’s him,” spat the man with the neck wound, his voice a mixture of hate and awe. “The cause of it all. That’s Count Vendreesen.”
“I thought he escaped with the rest of you,” said Corren.
“He must’ve gone off on his own after that, or with a brace of bodyguards. Them as did this I’d wager. Took everything of value, and his life. No point in serving a lord with a price on his head.”
“But,” Alessia asked, “why not take the head and collect it?”
The man shrugged, then winced when the movement irritated his injury. “Who’d bother to pay out a bounty claimed by traitors? Soldiers ain’t exactly known for their honor, after all.” That thought quashed any notions of collecting it now, so all they could do was take turns spitting on the body as they passed by, and the only one to protest was a solitary starling that pecked greedily at the count’s eyes.
When the moon hung high in the sky and people began to stumble from exhaustion Alessia called a halt. “We can’t go any further tonight. We should be safe enough out here in the middle of nowhere…shouldn’t we?”
“I heard a stream a few paces back,” said Corren. “Here’s as good as any place to stop. Wouldn’t recommend trying a fire though.”
The twenty-odd people and three horses made no protest, and many simply dropped where they stood. Once the animals and wounded had been seen to, Ulnoth, Alessia and Corren gathered together in some unspoken fellowship. “So much for my grand military career,” Corren sighed. Alessia threw a sharp look of alarm at him, and Corren waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t worry. He knows.”
“I do,” Ulnoth muttered, half asleep already. “But thanks for the vote of confidence. I don’t get what you was doin’ in that army anyway. You’re a sandcrab, ain’t you? Er, I mean, Pelonan.”
“Partly right. My grandda was from Marzahn. I suppose I’m a little bit of everything, really. How’d you know? I didn’t think you’d have many in the south.”
“Not many, but I know – or, I knew someone with your coloring.”
Alessia tightened Ulnoth’s binding, then slapped his hand away when he moved to fiddle with it. “Stop that! Where are you from then?”
“Either of you ever heard of Vindis?” Neither of them had. “Not surprised. It doesn’t exist anymore.”
“You look a bit young to be from a long-lost city,” Ulnoth said with a chuckle.
“Not that long. It was northeast, where Pelona and Bhasa meet. A port town, and rich enough. Until the Gray Plague. People say it came aboard a slave ship from Ghresh. Killed every adult in the city. Lots of children too, but not all. News of it spread faster than the plague itself, and we were abandoned. I was ten. The Pelonan king and the emperor of Bhasa agreed on something for once when they walled us in. More than a year like that, no one in, no one out.
“Feral. I learned that word later, but that’s how we grew up. In gangs, fighting rats and each other for scraps of food in streets filled with cack and corpses. Altogether unpleasant, you might say.”
“How did you get out?”
Corren shrugged. “Time passed, the plague did too. The city was never rebuilt but the blockades were lifted and I stowed away on the first ship I saw. I figured whatever came after, the worst had to be over. Sailed a few years, drifted a few more. I did a peacetime year in the Pelonan king’s army, all marching and training but no action and less pay. Then some silver-tongued arsehole talked me into joining up with Lady Nostrado’s levy. Said there’d be gold and glory aplenty serving King Pharamund under Lady No’s banner, and I guess it sounded just like what I was after. Figured I’d take a highborn lord for ransom and retire rich. Stupid! We marched out of Fort Nostrado a few days back, just a quick pop across the Carsa to whip Vendreesen then home again. But when we took Wengeddy he escaped out of a tower window, on a rope made of tied-up bedlinens. Tancred was drafted but he knew better than I did what was going to happen then.”
“Is that your buddy back there that you…?” Ulnoth put a hand to his neck.
Corren nodded. “We came in together. Was always reminding him to keep his shield up during drills, move his feet. He took to the pillage like a leech to vein.”
“But not you,” ventured Alessia.
“I’ve seen enough suffering,” Corren said with a shrug, “felt no powerful need to add to it. I tried to stop him from raping a young girl and he beat me senseless. I woke to some bastard from another company trying to steal my boots. Pulled a knife on me.” Corren laughed bitterly. “That was my first kill, if you can believe it. I barely had time to put my boots back on when we were sent to capture the townsfolk. Lady No would’ve been able to pick out Vendreesen, but she never came. Taken ill, they said. So we were ordered to take heads and save ’em for identification later. That’s when I ran.”
“Chthonii,” whispered Ulnoth, shaking his head, “we really are lower than cattle to them noble fucks.”
“I wish I could say I don’t believe you, but I know better,” said Alessia. “We could surely use someone with your skills, though. Teach Ulnoth how to not cut his stones off with a sword.”
“Might do, might do. I need to think on it. Made a few too many snap decisions lately. Right now….” Corren didn’t finish his sentence before nodding off, but no one was still awake to hear it. They slept without fire or food but without fear either, and they slept well.
* * *
“Um…ma’am?”
Alessia looked up from her early morning inventory to see a gangly teenage lad shifting nervously from one foot to another. He was filthy, but who among them wasn’t? She remembered he’d had only minor wounds and now wore a linen band about his brow, but hadn’t caught his name. “Yes, uh….”
“Dannek, ma’am.”
“Dannek, call me Alessia. What can I do for you? Is your binding holding?”
“Huh?” He stammered a bit and rubbed at the cloth. “Oh. I think so. No, that’s…everything’s fine. It’s just….” He looked away.
She really didn’t have time for this. Patience, and sympathy, Tanusia’s voice reminded her. “What is it?”
“Well, I heard some of the others talking….”
“My nanna always said you should believe only half of what you see and none of what you hear.”
“…and they said you
were starting some kind of…I dunno, rebel gang?”
“What? No! Who gave anybody that idea?”
Dannek went on as if he’d not heard. “They said you and those two men you run with made some sort of pact.”
“Oh for….” She sighed. “That’s just something I came up with in the moment to head off a dangerous situation. I don’t know how that turned into…whatever it is you’re talking about.”
“Oh,” Dannek said, downcast.
“Why? Certainly you don’t want that kind of life.”
“Why not?” The boy’s nervousness suddenly gave way to anger. “It’s not like we got anything to go back to in Wengeddy. My folks are dead. The carver I was ’prenticed to is dead. Anywhere you go it’s the same, just waiting around to get nullied sooner or later. Any kinda life is better than that, innit? Better a wolf than a sheep.”
“Oh, you’re a wolf now, are you?”
He sat down next to Alessia, nearly stepping in her poultice bowls in the process. He leaned in close. “Lemme join up with you. I can do things – I can hunt and fish, carve things. Mostly spoons, but once I made a bow! Not, you know, a good one, but—”
“Dannek, stop. That’s very brave of you but you’ll most likely just get yourself killed.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, his voice quivering, “It’s not brave. The brave thing would be staying out there. I want to hide. I want to live. And if that means knifing some of them sloggers in the back, well I got a lot better chance doing that than I have facing ’em straight on. That’s no chance.”
He spoke with such insistence that Alessia didn’t notice the three or four others gathered around until he paused for breath. They all had the same look in their eyes. “I suppose the rest of you feel the same way?” They nodded.
“Let us come with you, wherever it is,” said a tall, redheaded girl a bit older than Dannek.
The man with the salt-and-pepper beard and neck wound stood up straighter. “This here’s my third war, my fourth siege and second sacking. Every time’s been worse than the last. I’m tired of it. Aye, I may die, but I haven’t many years left and I don’t mean to die afraid. So if you’ll have us, let’s join.”