So she started looking about, subtly, for someone in town who she could approach. There weren’t many opportunities just to walk up to one and start talking. For the most part, the girls around her age didn’t have the kind of leisure time she did, but worked in the fields, or gathered fruits and berries in the forest from which she was now banned, or did laundry, cleaned, ran shops, or the like. And anyway, by now she had been here so long—and admittedly had been generally cool to most of them—that it seemed all the girls already had opinions of her that weren’t likely to change easily. She noticed a lot of the townspeople staring at her, lately, talking about her and Donial. Being the daughter of Invictus—and the girl who had consorted with a Pict—had brought her unwelcome attention.
Finally, she identified a girl she thought might be approachable. She worked in her parents’ bakery most days. Alanya had had many occasions to go there, fetching bread and biscuits for Lupinius’s table and her own father’s before he’d gone away. The girl, whose name Alanya had never learned, had always seemed a little shy but not unfriendly.
She went in on this day with a few pieces of silver in her pocket. The shop seemed empty. But after Alanya called out, the girl appeared from a back room. She had a dusting of flour on her cheeks, forehead, and nose, which paled her normally rosy complexion. Her hair was waist length and dark brown, pulled back behind her ears and bound by several leather bands, which Alanya saw because her thick ponytail was draped across her shoulder and had likewise encountered the flour. Alanya burst into laughter at the sight.
The girl wiped her hands on her white apron and smiled. “It got away from me,” she said. “The flour.”
“I can see that,” Alanya replied. “It looks like it got everywhere.”
“That happens sometimes,” the girl said. “Did you need some bread today?”
Alanya didn’t want to conclude her business yet, as that wasn’t really why she had come. “What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m Alanya.”
The girl smiled again. It was a shy smile that took some time to reach its full potential, but when it did Alanya decided it was very endearing. The girl had even, white teeth and full, ruby lips, and if she hadn’t been wearing half a bag of flour, she’d have been quite attractive.
“I’m Koniel,” she said. “My parents own the shop.”
“I guessed that,” Alanya said. “My uncle is Lupinius. My father was Invictus, ambassador from Tarantia, but he was killed in the attack on the Pictish village.”
The smile faded from Koniel’s face, and her lids lowered over her emerald eyes. “I heard about that,” she said. “I heard that he died valiantly.”
“So they tell me,” Alanya replied. “I would rather still have a live father than a dead hero.”
“I’m sure that is true,” Koniel said. She sounded almost as sorrowful as if it had been her own father.
“It’s lonely without him,” Alanya said. “I have my little brother, but he—do you have any brothers?”
“One, but he’s older. He’s in Brythunia.”
“So you don’t know how annoying a little brother can be. Anyway, it’s just us now, with Uncle Lupinius. He is off supervising the building of that silly wall every day. And . . .” She paused and regarded Koniel’s face. The girl still looked interested in what she was saying, which was good. “Listen to me, going on like this. I’m sure you have much more important things to do.”
Koniel glanced back toward the room she had come from. “I do have some loaves that should go into the oven,” she said. “But there is no one else here. Do you want to come back and talk for a while?”
Which was just the invitation Alanya had been hoping for. Making new friends wasn’t easy—but neither was it as difficult as she had expected.
DONIAL HAD ALWAYS enjoyed Koronaka more than his sister had. He liked listening to the stories and rough jokes the woodsmen told, liked seeing the arms and equipment of the soldiers and being allowed to spend time with his uncle’s Rangers. His father had arranged for a tutor to keep him and Alanya current on their studies—of Aquilonian language and history, of mathematics and science, and so on. But the Rangers also schooled him in other things. They were teaching him how to use a sword—to date, he favored the short swords of the Aquilonian regulars rather than the longer, heavier weapons some of the Rangers used, which he could lift but not manipulate as well. A couple of the Bossonians had taken it upon themselves to teach him archery, and he practiced on their range twice a week. Other Rangers taught him hand-to-hand combat: wrestling, boxing, close-in knife-fighting. None of these skills would have been taught him back in Tarantia, at least not for a couple more years.
So he liked life on the border. He fit in, better than his older sister, with the local boys. He was rarely bored, and he had made several friends.
He had found one other pursuit that he enjoyed, though this discovery was much more recent. Because of his speed, his agility, and his relatively small frame, he was good at surreptitious behavior. He had followed Alanya into the woods completely undetected. Obviously the upshot of his action had been a tragic one—the death of his own father. He felt terrible about that and could not shake the horrible certainty of his own guilt. He had barely slept since it had happened and could eat only a few bites at a time before the nausea rose in him.
But he didn’t object to the soldiers’ incursion into Pictish territory during which it had happened. And on its own merits, the surveillance itself, which had involved skills of stealth, silence, tracking, woodcraft, observation, and others, had been fun, though the results were awful.
During his free time, then, he worked on those skills, and practiced following people about the town. He followed Lupinius to Governor Sharzen’s office, then trailed the two of them to the fort’s gate. They passed through, presumably to oversee work on the wall. He followed Alanya several times, although for the most part she didn’t go anywhere or do anything interesting. She seemed to be depressed, moping about their uncle’s residence or wandering aimlessly around the town.
Today he tracked her to a baker’s shop in town. She entered and stayed inside for a surprisingly long time. Donial had expected her to reappear shortly carrying a basket of breads, but instead he waited and waited. There was no sign that she was ever emerging. Curious, Donial risked moving in closer. The street was relatively clear, since most residents who could carry a stone had been put to work on the wall now that the mass funeral was over. Just the same, Donial checked in both directions before leaving his cover in a sheltered doorway. He dashed at an angle across the road.
His trajectory took him right past the open doorway of the baker’s shop. Had anyone been standing inside looking out the door, he’d have been visible for a fraction of a second. But as he passed, he glanced inside and saw no one. He flattened himself against the wall, listening for a moment, then darted around the corner of the building, into an alley where he was beyond the view of anyone looking down the street.
An open window halfway along rewarded his efforts. He approached it silently and squatted beside it, listening. From inside, he heard two female voices engaged in conversation, one of which was definitely Alanya’s. “. . . doesn’t mean that they’re not our enemies,” she was saying. “Just that some of them might not be as bad as everyone says.”
“Don’t let my father hear you saying that,” the other voice rejoined. “He believes that every single one of them is a bloodthirsty killer who eats human flesh and bathes in blood.”
Alanya laughed. “Seriously?”
“To hear him tell it,” the other voice said.
“I can swear to you that isn’t the case.”
The other girl sounded surprised. “You almost sound as if you know some.”
Alanya hesitated. “Will you promise me secrecy?” she asked.
“Of course, Alanya.”
“I do.” Alanya spoke the two words with enthusiastic certainty. “Or I did, at any rate. He is certainly killed now, in
the raid.”
“You . . . how did you meet him?” The other girl’s voice had gone from surprised to stunned, almost breathless. Donial had heard Alanya’s explanation before, and when she started in on it, he wandered away, not wanting to listen to it all again.
What worried him was that now she was telling someone who wasn’t family. Telling him, and even Uncle Lupinius and their father, was one thing. But telling outsiders—especially people like this girl, who it sounded like she didn’t really know that well—could be dangerous.
The people of Koronaka considered the Picts the enemy—they had been the enemy for a long time. Most were happy about the slaughter at the Bear Clan village and supported the construction of the wall. For Alanya to go around telling people that she had been friendly with one of the Picts could only be a bad idea.
But could he warn her about it? To do so he’d have to admit that he’d been following her again. He wasn’t sure how she’d take that news, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t be happy about it.
LUPINIUS AND SHARZEN made their daily inspection tour of the wall, accompanied on this occasion by Calvert and a dozen Rangers. Rossun met them near the scene of the previous night’s abduction.
“It’s a ghost,” he swore. “Or some such being.” He spoke directly to Lupinius, virtually ignoring the governor. “The other night, when I was on duty, I saw no one, heard nothing. But someone killed Kelan, practically right under my nose. I’ve talked to all the guards who were here last night, and not a one of them saw any sign of anything wrong. They heard a noise, they investigated, and found nothing. But when they returned to the wall—and mind you, Lupinius, they had not all left the wall, by any means—Franto was gone. Just vanished.
“Finally, they found him, tied to a tree, dead. None could say how he came to be there. Some flattened brush showed that he could have been dragged part of the way, but not the entire distance. Otherwise, there were no tracks, coming or going.”
Lupinius nodded, watching Sharzen’s reaction to the tale. The governor’s blunt features showed little emotion, but his eyes roved constantly, flashing from side to side, as if worried that they would be attacked at any moment. His massive fists were clenched. Whoever this “ghost” was, he had Sharzen spooked.
“It is no ghost,” Lupinius insisted, aware that Rossun was using the same description he himself had applied a couple of days before. “It is a man, and a man can be caught. A Pict can move through the forest like a spirit.”
“I believe you,” Rossun said, lowering his voice. “But some of the men are no longer convinced. Especially the ones who were here last night and saw the body of their friend lashed to a tree.”
“Convince them,” Lupinius ordered.
“I will try,” Rossun promised. “The other men would like to hear it from you or the governor,” he added. “Coming from me it will not carry as much weight.”
“Show us where the body was found,” Sharzen commanded him.
“Very well,” Rossun agreed. “We will have to go around the wall.”
They started walking toward the wall’s end. Progress had been made. Even today, after the horrors of the night before, more length was being added. What they needed to do, Lupinius realized, was to build in gates every mile or two. A patrol chased back to the wall by a Pictish force would need to be able to gain access swiftly. And if the soldiers on the inside saw Picts on the other, they needed to be able to get out before the Picts could get away.
Gates would require more soldiers, though. Many more. Every gate would need to be guarded, every hour of the day and night. And once the wall stretched all the way across the border, those guards wouldn’t be able to be housed in the existing forts. New barracks would be needed, one near every gate. They would need supplies, roads. They weren’t just building a wall, they were building a civilization, here at the edge of the wilderness.
As they walked, he was impressed with the enormity of the task he had set for himself. He had not fully considered all the ramifications of it before, only thought about the potential profit and acclaim that would come his way if it worked. Now he realized it was on a much larger scale than that. If successful—if the king came through with the financing Sharzen had requested—he would not only be wealthy, but he would have reshaped the known world according to his own ideas.
Finally, they had reached the end of the existing construction and passed beyond it and into the forest. Calvert and the Rangers swept ahead, swords at the ready, with Rossun leading them to the spot. Behind them came Lupinius and Sharzen, along with Traug, a huge, burly Tauran whom Lupinius had put in charge of the construction teams. Traug rarely spoke, except when asked a direct question. Even then his answers rarely exceeded a word or two.
But today, as they walked through the dark, shadowed woods toward the murder site, Lupinius heard his deep, throaty voice behind them. “Don’t like this,” he said.
“You don’t like what?” Sharzen asked him.
Lupinius glanced at the big man. His brown hair was cropped short, making his rounded boulder of a head look even bigger than it might have. He had no visible neck, and his head seemed to sit directly on his enormously muscular frame. His arms were long, but his legs short for his height, so that he seemed almost apelike. He was no coward, but preferred physical labor to battle. Nonetheless, Lupinius was surprised at his response to the governor’s query.
“Ghosts,” he said simply.
“There are no ghosts here,” Lupinius repeated.
“You say so,” Traug answered. “Haven’t been here at night. We killed many Picts the other day. They may be restless.”
It was quite possibly the longest string of sentences Lupinius had ever heard him utter. Before he had a chance to say so, however, they caught up to Rossun and the other Rangers.
“Here is where they found Franto,” Rossun said. He was pointing at the trunk of an old oak. A leather cord still bit into its bark, a couple of feet off the ground. Blood had pooled on the dirt and discolored it. “He was sitting against the trunk with that cord around his neck.”
Lupinius leaned in and looked at the trunk and the bit of leather hanging there, as if it could tell him anything at all. It couldn’t, of course. Apparently only Franto could, and he was dead.
Franto, and this “ghost.”
Whoever he was.
Rising and stepping away from the tree, Lupinius caught a glimpse of Sharzen. The fear was even more obvious on him now. Sweat ran in rivulets down his broad cheeks and beaded on his upper lip, which trembled slightly as he regarded the death tree.
“Don’t like this,” Traug said again.
“Neither do I,” agreed the governor.
Lupinius kept quiet. But inwardly, he had to admit that he didn’t like it either.
14
SURPRISINGLY, KILLING GOT easier the more Kral did it.
After pulling the man from the wall and killing him in the woods, he gave the settlers a few days to lick their wounds. Either they would drive themselves mad worrying about when he would turn up next, or they would relax again. Kral didn’t care which. Both would further his ends.
But he was constantly aware that the Teeth was missing from its proper place in the cave. The longer it was gone, the greater the chance that something horrible would happen—although he still didn’t know what that something might be.
So the fourth night found him painted blue, armed with a bow and a knife, and crossing back over the Black. The moon was fuller now, and cast a bright glow on the forested hills leading toward the fort. He had suspected that the Aquilonians might have thought to put guards in the woods approaching the wall by now. But in spite of his cautious approach, he saw none. If they had been there, he would have known it.
When he reached a point from which he could view the wall, he saw that there was a new addition to the construction plan. There was a wooden gateway in place, with double gates about twelve feet across, with the same fifteen-foot height as the walls. Torch
es burned brightly in sconces mounted on the wall on either side of it. Two helmeted, mail-clad guards stood in front of the gate, looking off toward the woods. If Kral had been less skilled, they could have seen him where he stood.
But he was a Pict, and virtually invisible among his native trees.
The wall’s progress these last few days had been impressive. It was beginning to look like a formidable structure. Kral had no idea if the project was confined to this region, or if other settlements along the border were also building walls of their own. If they were, then before too long they could have the Picts completely sealed off from the rest of the world, except by sea. Picts preferred to travel overland whenever possible—they had never made the best seafarers and only took to the water for short journeys or fishing expeditions. They rarely ventured out of their own territory anyway, except on raiding parties, because the civilized world held little appeal to them. But they liked the freedom to come and go as they pleased. Aquilonian advancement into the Westermarck had limited that; a wall across the entire border would end it altogether.
Which meant that he had a third goal. He was already trying to slow building on the wall, but primarily as a means of harassing and disturbing the settlers. Now slowing them down took on greater importance, though still not as critical as finding the Teeth. The trouble was, the bigger the wall grew, the harder it would be for him to have any impact on it. He couldn’t single-handedly knock over an eight-foot-thick, fifteen-foot-high section of it.
Still, he reasoned, if he could make them too afraid to be out here working on it, or guarding it, that might ultimately have the same effect. He wondered if he could risk coming here in the daytime to interfere with the building crews.
That, he decided, was for another time. For now he needed to pay attention to his immediate goal—finding out more about where the Teeth had gone. He moved soundlessly up and down the length of the wall, looking for weak points. Finally, he came back to the gate and the two guards who stood there. The wooden gate gave him two ideas.
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