by David Drake
The coins in Garric's purse were silver and bronze, but they were more than sufficient for the purpose. Except for his father, Reise, and perhaps Katchin the Miller, no one in Barca's Hamlet had ever seen as much money in coin as Garric carried; and in Reise's case, not since he'd left burning Carcosa with a wife and two newborn infants the day after the riots.
Liane's expression was technically a smile, but there was no humor in it. “No, Valles isn't a paradise,” she said. “Particularly not the north side of the city where we'll be coming in. I forgot that in the past I always had either my father's servants or ushers from Mistress Gudea's Academy with me when I went out at night.”
She nodded to indicate the chapel by which they'd arrived. “The door is aligned with sunrise on the equinoxes, of course,” she said. “There's a paved road coming into what were the palace grounds only a hundred paces or so south of here. Mistress Gudea had to send a party out with brush hooks to clear a path before each field trip because it's so overgrown, but—”
“I think I can find my way in the woods, Liane,” Garric said. “Even in the dark.”
He was a little nettled at the girl acting like he was a city-bred fool who'd get lost on his way home without a street to guide him. Though just maybe what bothered him wasn't Liane telling him things he already knew, but rather that she'd assumed he knew something he didn't. That temple doors faced east wasn't “of course” to Garric, though he'd felt a current of agreement from Carus. There weren't any temples in Barca's Hamlet; nor, for that matter, within a day's journey of Barca's Hamlet.
“Oh, I'm sor—” Liane began.
Garric hugged her fiercely. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm scared that there's something I'll need to know that I don't. And we'll fail because of what I don't know.”
Liane kissed his cheek. “We're not going to fail,” she said. “The Lady and the Shepherd are on our side, remember?”
“Right,” said Garric as he stepped away. “Right!”
He strode off quickly, so quickly he almost walked into a full-sized beech tree. That'd be a fine answer to the way he'd boasted about being a countryman!
Garric laughed, happy down through to his heart, and then began to whistle a jig called “The Merry Plowman”. He'd piped it a hundred times at weddings and harvest festivals. Danced it, too, hopping high and spinning in the air as Lupa os-Queddin rang the tune with a wooden spoon on three part-filled jugs. Had Mistress Gudea taught her charges to dance jigs?
The old road was closer than Garric expected. In truth, he hadn't been thinking much about what he was doing. Even the vines that caught in his longsword's crossguard and looped the scabbard couldn't put him out of his present good mood.
Roots had tossed the paving blocks into a pattern as irregular as the sea's surface. Garric tried walking on them, then decided to push through the undergrowth alongside instead. The old road helped with his direction, but the forest soil made easier going.
He heard dogs bark; hounds, he supposed, yipping to be let off their keeper's leash. This tract would make good hunting—though what Garric meant by hunting, wandering in the common woods with a bow and blunted arrows listening for squirrels, was very different from the vast royal drives that Carus recalled.
A stray thought from an earlier age made Garric wonder if the site of the old palace was still royal land. That would explain why it hadn't been built on again. Property so near Valles must be valuable for more than brush and ruins.
He continued to whistle. He thought about making himself a set of pipes when he got a moment. There must be reeds and wax on Ornifal...
A hound bayed, sounding birdlike and excited. Garric looked over his shoulder. The dog was very close by.
Three hounds burst from the undergrowth barking in shockingly high-pitched voices as they closed on Garric. Their mottled hides made them wraithlike in the dappled gloom.
“Hey!” Garric shouted. He wished he had a staff.”Get back from me, you!”
He wasn't frightened, just surprised and a little angry. They were good-sized animals, all together probably weighing more than even a large man like Garric. In Erdin savage, spike-collared guard dogs were chained in the door alcoves of wealthy houses or walked on leashes in front of sedan chairs to make sure that nobody jostled the woman of quality within. These were just hunting dogs, though.
Garric put his back to a tree. When two or more dogs were together, there was always a risk that they'd do things that none of them would do by itself. In that they were very like human beings.
These hounds had better go back shortly to their proper business—raccoon, deer, or whatever it was folk hunted on Ornifal. Otherwise Garric was going to trim a sapling with his sword and start rapping noses until they got the idea.
A huntsman in tight-fitting jerkin and breeches came out of the woods. He held a silver-chased hunting horn in one hand and, in the other, a spear with a bar just below the head to keep a boar or other dangerous game from slipping down the shaft onto him. The hounds redoubled the raucous yapping that was driving Garric wild.
“Are these yours?” Garric said. “Get them off me, will you?”
Instead of answering, the huntsman blew a two-note signal. His horn's twisted shape wasn't that of any cow Garric had seen, and if it came from a sheep or goat it was of a much larger breed than those raised on Haft.
“I said get your dogs away!” Garric said. “Is this the way you treat travelers on Ornifal? Sister take you all if it is!”
Carus' spirit coursed close to the surface of Garric's mind, as it always did when the youth was angry or frightened. He put his hand almost unconsciously on the hilt of his sword. The huntsman backed a step, leveling the boar-spear on Garric's chest.
He shouldn't have done that. Garric imagined with perfect clarity his sword coming out of the scabbard in a quick sweep to behead the fellow. A right and left to the hounds, two of them flying sideways, then yelps silenced in gouts of blood, and a quick thrust behind Garric's back to settle the third beast, who'd be going for a hamstring...
A nobleman burst from the night. With him were six other men in helmets and mail shirts. The latter were soldiers, not huntsmen. Three held spears with slender points for piercing armor, while the others had drawn their swords.
Hand weapons were a better choice than bows with the undergrowth so thick, noted a coldly professional mind at the back of Garric's own.
“Watch him, Lord Royhas,” the huntsman cried to the noble. “He's got a sword!”
“Whip your dogs away!” the noble said. “How can anybody hear themselves think?”
Garric was uneasily aware that his clothing, though of good quality to begin with, was very much the worse for wear. They'd been able to wash their garments in the place they'd gone when they escaped the Gulf, but the tunic had stains that wouldn't come out in plain water and they weren't able to mend tears properly.
The huntsman threw down his equipment. He caught two hounds and dragged them back by their collars. The third followed her master and companions, still whining with excitement.
“I thank you, sir,” Garric said. He reached down to tap a clink from his heavy leather belt purse. “My name's Garric or-Reise from Haft. Though I'm afraid I look a little bedraggled, I'm not a vagabond.”
He was glad to relax. The barking had gotten on him in a way that an open threat wouldn't have done. The dogs hadn't been doing anything, so Garric couldn't properly respond to them.
“Yes, I thought you might be,” the noble said pleasantly. “I'm Royhas bor-Bolliman, the Master of the Royal Hunt”
The soldiers moved in from either side, acting without haste. They were already too close for Garric to draw his long sword. Two had sheathed their own weapons. The spearmen were a pace, back where one or both could easily stab Garric if he tried to struggle with the other four men.
“Let us take this, sir,” a soldier said, kneeling to unwrap the sword belt's long double tongue as the first step to unbuckling it. The swordsmen
put their free hands on Garric's wrists. Their blades weren't precisely threatening him, but the points were still close to his face.
“What's the meaning of this?” Garric snapped. He wasn't frightened; part of him was actually surprised at the feeling of cold analysis that drove all emotion from his mind. A year ago—a few months ago—he would have been shocked and afraid. The man he'd become since leaving home merely looked for the way out.
At this moment there was no way out.
“King Valence was informed that a pretender claiming to be a scion of the old royal line would be arriving here,” Royhas explained. He was in his thirties and moved with the ease of a man who spent more time outdoors than he did at the table. “The Master of the Hunt was the obvious person to apprehend him. These men are members of my own household, by the way—not royal troops.”
Royhas gestured to the men holding Garric. The kneeling soldier had the belt off. The swordsmen bent Garric's arms back with firm pressure but not violence; he didn't resist. The fourth man bound his wrists with a soft, strong cord. It was silk, Garric supposed.
“I'm not a pretender to anything,” Garric said. He tensed his wrists as the soldier drew the bonds tight. The men knew that trick: the pair holding Garric's arms rapped his elbows with their sword hilts. As the youth's muscles spasmed, their fellow pulled the slack out of the knot.
How had Valence known that Garric would arrive here? And what did the king intend—
“Master Silyon, the king's wizard, apparently feels differently,” Royhas said without concern. “A nasty piece of work, that one. But he was right about you appearing, wasn't he?”
The cord binding Garric had arm's-length tags. Two soldiers looped the ends around their own belts, attaching Garric to them though he could still walk by himself.
“We'll get you into a closed carriage and then sweep the grounds for the friends you're supposed to have along,” Royhas said. He smiled. “My royal master has ordered that you all be quietly put out of the way. As though you'd never existed.”
Sharina squatted where the ground became flat enough to support a grove of giant tree ferns. Rhododendrons poked hard green leaves through the fronds. “Give me a moment,” she called ahead to Hanno.
Sharina wasn't precisely winded, but her legs hadn't gotten much exercise during long days on the ship and Hanno's boat. The terrain from the cove on the shore of Bight where the dory sheltered was more a cliff than a slope. Previous travelers had notched handholds into the particularly steep portions. That made the climb possible, but Sharina wondered how the hunter was going to carry up his tons of supplies.
“It's not far, missie,” Hanno said. “The rivers here flow north and east, but me and my partner Ansule figure it's better to climb a bit and save an extra two days of rowing to Valles. There's others that feel different, but they mostly use sails on their boats.”
Butterflies with wings the size of Sharina's hands fluttered through the grove, dabbing into the flowers of air plants growing along the branches of the tree ferns. One of them landed on Sharina's shoulder. It felt heavy, and its spindly legs gripped with uncomfortable strength.
She sucked in her breath with surprise. The giant butterfly uncoiled its long mouth parts and prodded her skin.
“Looking for salt,” Hanno said nonchalantly. He carried only his weapons, the huge spear and the knives in his belt. “I figure if there was a way to get the wings back to Valles, I'd be a rich man. They lose their pretty color if they get knocked around, though.”
The insect on Sharina's shoulder was too close for both her eyes to focus on it. Its wings were striped black and white, and there were red dots on the bottom lobe.
Compared to many others in the grove, the butterfly was positively chaste in its patterning. The thought of it being pulled apart for a rich, lady's headdress disturbed Sharina.
The butterfly stepped into the curve of Sharina's neck. “Ouch!” she said. Her index finger brushed it into the air with a determined shove. Scales like tiny feathers spun from the creature's wings, dancing in a beam of light.
Sharina grinned at herself. Aloud she said, “If I were a better person, I wouldn't let one pinch wipe away all my kindly thoughts.”
Hanno smiled, more or less. “Don't get worked up about butterflies,” he said. “They never helped a soul but themself, I figure. There's plenty of people who think it's good enough to sit around looking pretty, and I never had much use for them neither.”
He rose to his feet. “Ready to go on?” he asked. Sharina stood in response.
“Me and Ansule'll rig the cable and pulley tomorrow to haul the goods up to the cabin,” the hunter said. “No point in worrying about it so late in the day. Missing griddle cakes along with our meat for another day ain't going to kill us.”
He led Sharina into a belt of pandanus trees. A skirt of stilt roots rising as high as Sharina's waist supported each scaly trunk. The ground was noticeably lower than at the cliff's edge, so the area probably flooded during storms.
“What about the boat?” Sharina asked. They'd left the dory tied bow and stern in a cove overlooked by giant palms. There wasn't even a hint of a shoreline. While the vessel could ride where it was during fine weather, the first storm from west or northwest would batter it to splinters against the rocky walls.
“Haul it straight up the trunk of one of them palms and lash it till we need it the next time,” the hunter said. “With the mountain so close behind, the wind don't get enough of a run to pull down trees. That's how they got so big. There's the corniche to keep the waves off, all but the spray.”
Sharina heard buzzing; she turned to look. A fungus the size of a man's head bulged from the stem of a woody vine. “What—” she began. When she spoke, a cloud of flies rose from the fungus cup with a terrible odor.
Hanno laughed. “You don't want to bump them stinkpots, missie,” he said. “Though I tell you the truth, it gets mighty ripe around the cabin sometimes when we're curing a good crop of horn.”
They crossed a slight ridge, noticeable more for the fact Sharina heard a brook purling than because the slope reversed significantly. The path Hanno followed didn't show on the ground. Thin soil and lack of light penetrating the forest canopy meant there was no ground cover to be marked by traffic.
The watercourse was a rivulet through blocks of basalt. Ferns, giant philodendrons, and knee-high curls of moss covered both shallow banks.
Sharina smelled wood smoke; she sneezed. “We must be getting—” she said.
The stench of rotting flesh hit her, shocking her mouth and nostrils closed. She thought, Hanno warned me, I guess, but this is awful.
Barca's Hamlet was no more fastidious a place than any other rural community, but meat was a valuable commodity. Very little offal remained after a hog or sheep had been butchered, and that was composted with vegetable waste to decompose before being spread as fertilizer on the house gardens. This was—
The hunter had disappeared. “Hanno?” Sharina called. She walked two paces upstream with her fingers resting on the butt of the Pewle knife. Her skin tingled. She heard the flies.
The clearing lay under a beetling knob covered by bamboo and wisteria. The cabin had backed against the rock so that the brook washed one side of its foundation. The timbers of the wall on that side still smoldered, though the remainder of the building had burned out completely. Flies rose in a dozen separate clouds. There were three complete bodies and the scattered remains of a fourth.
Sharina drew the big knife and felt behind her for a tree. She backed against the trunk. Her mouth was open, but she didn't speak.
Hanno came out of the foliage on the other side of the creek. His appearance hadn't changed in any way that Sharina could describe, but his face was as bleak as a tidal surge.
“They've been and gone,” he grated softly. “Not so long ago that I can't catch up with them, I gues.”
“Who, Hanno?” Sharina said. Her voice was steady; it was like listening to somebody e
lse speak. The Pewle knife didn't tremble in her hand.
“Monkeys,” the hunter said. He prodded with the metal-shod butt of his spear, levering one of the bodies up so that Sharina could see it clearly.
The body was more like a man than not, but it was covered with coarse russet hair. The chest was deep, the arms long, sinewy, and muscled like the forelimbs of a cat. By contrast, the bandy legs looked deformed, and the skull showed scarcely a shallow dome above the thick brow ridges.
The creature's lips were drawn back in a rictus of death. The yellowish teeth included long canines in both upper and lower jaws, though one of the latter had been broken to a stump.
“Hairy Men,” Sharina said. “The Autochthones of Bight in Katradinus' Cosmogeography.”
Hanno let the corpse flop down. A powerful stroke had opened its belly. Coils of intestine, purple-veined and swollen in the damp heat, spilled onto the moss beside thetiody.
“Monkeys,” he repeated as he walked to a lump of the corpse that had been dismembered. He lifted the severed head of a young man with a scar, up the right cheek. The dead man's hair was a butternut color except where the scar tissue continued across his scalp; there it was white and exceptionally thin.
“You're looking poorly, Ansule,” Hanno said. “I guess you should've gone to Valles after all. The sea voyage would've been good for you.”
Sharina squatted, using the tree's presence for support. She'd seen worse, but not when all the victims had been living humans. And this was bad enough in all truth.
Hanno set the head of his partner back on the ground. “We've got a stash up the trunk of that big monkey-puzzle tree,” he said, nodding toward a huge araucaria across the creek from the burned-out cabin. “For all they look like monkeys, they don't like to climb. You can stay there till I get back.”
He disappeared into the forest with the smooth silence of a shadow moving on the ground when a cloud slides across the sun. From the green luxuriance his voice returned, saying, “Or take the boat if you think you can handle it, missie. I won't be any longer man I need to be.”