“What do you mean?”
“I’m angry, Fyella. I’m so incredibly furious, it’s like someone poured some black poison into me where my blood is supposed to be. It’s deep down, too, and I don’t think I can ever get it out of me. I know I can be polite and kind with you and with Kuljin, but I wake up raging at night. I already had rages before this pox, things I’ve done when I was angry and had the power to act, and that was for injuries that were nothing to this.
“If I ever see an Aulig again I don’t know what I might do. I might do anything.”
“You’re forgetting what I suffered at their hands, Levin. Do you think I will stay your hand? Do you think because I now ask for honesty and kindness from you that I don’t also burn for revenge?”
“Do you?”
“I’m a crucible.” She whispered, lifting his hand and holding it tightly to the front of her chin. “You could melt steel with my hate.” The track of a single tear glistened on her cheek in the waning light as it traced a ragged line over her pox ravaged skin.
“Gods. You’d do the Black Duke proud, girl.” Levin smiled with the half of his face that still could. “The night is coming on cold. Come and lie beside me and we will dream of revenge. I promise I will not …”
“I know.” She said. “I trust you.”
In the morning they rose with the sun, or a weak and pallid version of it. The night’s chill remained with them and Kuljin did not rise until mid-morning. Levin and Fyella had breakfasted already on ground corn flatbread and scavenged vegetables, but Fyella had made a portion for Kuljin. He ate at it haphazardly, with a weak and pallid version of his former appetite.
“Are you sure you are able to travel today?” Levin asked him.
“I will be all right. I just need to get used to moving again. We will have to go slow anyway, until we know where we are and where our best path lies. I’ll cut a staff for walking if I get tired.”
So they packed up their possessions and made two packs, one heavy and one light, and Levin took the heavy one and gave the light one to Kuljin. He knew that Fyella would be carrying it shortly, for pride is no substitute for strength, but hate is, and she was very strong.
They left the dead village that was ancient and had no name and struck south, away from the coast, following narrow cart paths screened from view by hedges rather than roads. Their path was meandering and they watched constantly for movement, for movement in this war torn desolation was death. They’d had enough of that.
After a league, or almost three miles if you were a sailing man and in possession of a ship, and Levin was the first but not the second, they came to a rise in the land and crested it. Half a league ahead and tucked mostly behind scrub forest was a walled village, similar to the one they had left behind. The houses within had been burned but the wall was old stone and largely intact. They approached not from the front of the town but from an infrequently used side-entrance. Kuljin was tired and asked if they could rest.
Fyella looked at Levin with concern in her eyes, but Levin said nothing. He offered to scout about for shelter and shortly returned. He had found a woodcutter’s small shack, with the door kicked in but nothing worth stealing within. Whoever had raided the place had pissed on the floor, but the roof and walls were intact. A few minutes’ hunting by Fyella found an old and stained quilt. Kuljin lay down upon it and slept immediately, saying nothing.
“It’s a long way to Zoric.” She said.
“Aye.”
“He won’t make it.”
Levin did not answer for a long time, thinking on her words. “He’s my friend.” He said finally. “If he can walk, I will walk with him. If he cannot walk I’ll carry him. If he decides to lay down and die, I will lay down beside him and I will bury him. What I won’t do is leave him behind.”
She nodded, for it was what she had believed he would say. The weak sun warmed the wood cutter’s shack, but when it fell from the sky Kuljin was still asleep, and Levin gathered wood and built a fire, careful to keep it small and down low so it could not be seen through the cracks in the walls. He kept watch while she slept, and she woke well before sunrise and took her turn.
Some days were better than this, and Kuljin seemed almost to be a version of himself, but some days were bad, too, and they did not get very far on those days. On most days they only made a few leagues, with foraging along the way, dodging Auligs and scouting for shelter.
They skirted towns and wide roads for fear of encountering Auligs, but this part of the Emerald Peninsula had been swept by war and pestilence, and they saw no one. The cottages they found were sometimes burned and sometimes not, but always the doors were broken and the easily carried food and livestock taken away. The land became hilly and there were many trees in rows.
Sometimes they saw columns of smoke rising in the distance, most often southward, in the direction of their travel. When the columns were narrow and close, they would hide.
Occasionally and rarely they would find food, usually fruit or vegetables in sealed clay pots in cellars or mouse-eaten sacks of grain. There were still many good apples in the orchards, although wormy and bird pecked, and an occasional cluster of grapes hidden among dense vines too thick for the birds to penetrate. When they found food they ate all they could and carried the rest. The leaves of many trees turned yellow, orange and red, and the days passed and grew shorter. Ahead of them and now to their east and west was war, and at night they hid in barns or cellars without a fire. Sometimes columns of running or riding men passed them, but they hid themselves quickly and carefully and were not seen. Kuljin’s bad days grew more infrequent, but he was still far from healthy.
It was the middle of Leath, the witches’ moon, and winter just waiting to clutch them in her claws when they sheltered in an abandoned church in a dead village along the way. On the next day they came to the walled village of Holdberg. It was late morning and the sun was shining strongly in a pale blue sky.
Levin crouched quietly within a cluster of spiny cedar, enduring the scratching because no one would think a man could. The low and fragrant bush would leave tiny blisters in his skin and make it feel flush and hot later. For now it was just painfully irritating, but excellent cover. Below and ahead of the cedar the close-cropped grass fell away slowly, and there was a wide clearing several thousand paces across. At the center of the clearing lay a village within a wall, and the wall was stone and at least ten paces high. The wall demanded the eye’s attention, for it was long and high and strong, and only the tops of a few slate roofed buildings stood above its great gray height. The wall was round and not cornered, and Levin knew therefore that he was most likely looking at either a village that had been there since the time of the hundred kingdoms or an old keep from that time that had been converted into a village.
The wall had been moated once, and the green lawn around it bore indentations where the old moat had been, but the only remnant of the moat was a creek that passed along the base of the near wall over which a stone bridge supported by an expertly shaped arch passed. The town’s near entrance had a thick oak door banded in iron, at least three paces wide, and the gate looked newly built and was undoubtedly barred from within. Levin could see the tiny shapes of archers moving furtively along the crenelated top of the wall.
Between Levin’s position and the gate was a single round hide tent, although it was of a substantial size and made of sheepskin squares. It was large enough within to hold three or four wagons. It was pitched just beyond bow shot from the walls, and perhaps a dozen Auligs of a kind he’d never seen were standing around it looking bored. They had a string of shaggy horses picketed, with high canted saddles with wooden frames lined with brightly colored fabric. The Auligs carried short recurved bows of horn, iron-tipped spears and what looked like Thimenian broad swords at their hips. They wore padded sheepskin jackets reminiscent of gambesons, and a few had iron breastplates over these. All of their gear was elaborately decorated with animal symbols.
It had been one of Kuljin’s better days, and the halfman was only about fifty paces behind Levin, hiding in a hole like a small cave in the dark space between a dense thicket and a stone wall.
They had been passing through a county of thick hedgerows and sunken roads, surrounding fields that lay empty for the most part, although at first light they had cut open a ripe melon just two or two and a half leagues from here. The trees were losing their leaves, but the trunks were old, thick and densely planted, and it was a country that offered excellent opportunities for concealment to three travelers who did not wish to be seen.
Levin returned to Kuljin, and together they made their secretive way back to where Fyella waited with the packs. “I’ve found a Mortentian town.” Levin told the others. “It’s high walled and under siege, but I don’t see many Auligs.”
“What do they look like?” Kuljin asked, and Levin described them.
“Ah yes. The Sparli. Auligs from the mountains north of Khumenov. They’re tough and ruthless. Even Thimenians are cautious in the Sparli Mountains.”
“Why?”
“They are slavers, and they impale their enemies alive. They are fearless, for Auligs, and very hardy. The winters are bitter there, and they raise sheep.”
“We need to get past them.” Levin replied, for they were come now to the war’s front line, and on the other side of the conflict they might find Mortentians from whom to buy horses and food. They needed to pass this way before their journey to Zoric could truly start.
“They don’t like to fight at night.” Kuljin offered. “Unlike most Auligs, who don’t have any proper gods, the Sparli worship Sheo, in their fashion. They believe that if you die outside at night Sheo cannot see you, and your soul won’t find its way to the afterlife.”
“So we’ll scout them tonight.” Levin replied. “Find a way around them.”
They waited out the day in Kuljin’s little hole by the stone wall, huddling together back to back for warmth. The sun shone brightly, but the wind cut its warmth to nothing. There was no wind where they were sheltered, though, but no direct sunlight either. Small insects kept them company, but the nights had grown increasingly cold, presaging a bitter winter, and even the beetles were lethargic.
When at last the sun had fallen entirely from the sky and twilight had faded to true night, Levin stretched his cramped legs and began his scout. A wide corona of frost lay around the moon like a perfect painted ring, and Levin knew it meant soon it would be freezing. The grass was not frosted, however, and he crept from tree to tree, crouching in the shadows like a fugitive. He knew that the Sparli would be among the trees that surrounded the walled town they were besieging, and he looked sharply for the outlines of their hide tents.
He had been staring at an odd square shape for several minutes before he heard a wet coughing come from it. A sudden brightness flared up in front of him, but still fifty paces away, and a man stepped from a smaller version of a hide tent carrying an oil lamp. The outline of the tent was perfectly obscured by the trees behind it, and had he not heard the coughing, Levin might have blundered into it in the darkness. The man was Sparli, armed with a spear but no shield, and he walked over to the square shape, which resolved itself into a large wheeled cart, with a cage of poles and rope atop it. Inside of the cage were at least ten Mortentians, their clothing in rags, huddling together in the cold.
“Shut Mouth. Silence.” The Sparli commanded in broken Mortentian, waving his spear menacingly.
“Please. We must have water.” Cried a weak voice from the cage in Mortentian. When the guard drew closer still to the cage, Levin could see that several of the people within it had the wet skin and the blisters of the pox.
“No water.” The guard replied. “Water in morning.”
He waited until the guard had gone back into his tent, then he returned to Kuljeen and Fyella.
“You’ve found your pox spreaders, Levin.” Kuljin said once he’d described what he’d seen. “They’re ripening them in the cage, I’d imagine.”
“Aye.” Levin replied. “You still think we should just go around them?”
“No.” Kuljin said after a moment. “But it won’t be easy.”
“Revenge never is.” Fyella said flatly.
The cage made him uneasy. He couldn’t get the pox, for he’d already had it, but watching it kill was not fun, even when it killed only Mortentians. The pox was spreading already, and there was no need for the people in the cage. They should kill them and be done, but the tarl insisted on keeping them.
He never looked at the dying Mortentians if he could help it. It was bad luck to tempt the god of plagues. In the morning there would be more dead to put into the creek that fed the town, but the pox was already inside of it. Let the Mortentians fish from the stream all they wanted, they could not get any more ill than they already were. At least the corpses would remind them that they were besieged.
Bullwalks was a long way from home. He did not know why his tarl insisted on obeying the Ghaill of the Cthochi. Did the Sparli not have enough enemies close to home that they had to go and seek them out in this place?
This land was too warm for the ninth moon of the year. The humid air crept beneath his sheepskin and made him sweat in the night. He looked forward to his tent where he could strip and lay in the furs. In the Sparli Mountains it would be snowing already, and his woman waited for him. He fondled the jade arm brace she had given him and thought of her eyes, like pools at midnight. Three months he had been away from his home. He wanted to finish killing Mortentians and be done with it, but some of them did not even get sick at all. There was the spear for them, but clearing the land with the spear took a long time.
He heard a small noise, like a foot crushing grass, and he wondered if Eaglewatching was back from taking his piss. Eaglewatching and Bullwalks were from the same village, an old place where the men still knew what kind of names to give their sons. In the larger villages in the deep forest the men had taken to giving their children names that told no story, and that was a bad practice, Bullwalks thought. He had earned his name in the proper way, killing a walking bull during his manhood hunt, and he thought all Sparli should earn their names so.
Eaglewatching was an old man, at least fifty summers, and it took him a long time to empty his bladder. He would stand for half of an hour, grunting with pain while the urine dribbled out in tiny spurts. A gift of the pox, he supposed, like his own aching elbow and knee joints.
Still, he had been spared, and that was gift enough. If the price was aching joints and stiffness at morning, it was little enough to pay.
Something heavy fell at his feet, like a small round sack. He looked at it and in the light of his little lamp he saw Eaglewatching’s eyes staring up at him from his severed head.
He grabbed for his sword, but an apparition appeared out of the night, a tall ghostly figure with an eyepatch and a horrible face impossibly ravaged by pox. It was a lesion such as no man should have survived. The monster was already swinging a long bloodied sword that glinted orange in the firelight.
After killing the two men on watch, Levin crept into their tent on cat’s feet and killed the third man he’d seen at this position, finding him by the sound of his snores. He cut off his head and carried it outside in the weak moonlight.
He approached the wagon where he knew they were all awake and listening desperately.
“Are you Mortentian?” A male voice hissed.
“Aye.”
“Beware then. I’m Prior Hoggins. We’ve the pox.” The voice said.
Levin grimly chuckled despite himself. “We’ve had it. If you could see me you would know. I’ve come to let you out.”
“I don’t know that it will do us much good.” Hoggins replied. “None of us but the Walcox men.”
“What does that mean, Walcox men?”
“Walcox men don’t get it. Or it only brushes up against them. For the rest of us it’s death.”
“I’m not a Walcox man and I l
ived through it.” Levin replied. “Not many of us did.”
“No. Once it hits the lungs, it’s over.”
“Not for me. I had it in the lungs and lived, but it took a long time getting well. But be silent now and let me get you out of there. I want to be long gone before your three guards are missed.”
“The Auligs don’t come by us much.” The prior said grimly. “I think you have time. They’ve all had the pox, but still …”
“It’s a thing to be feared, certainly.” Levin said.
He walked to the wagon and found that it was locked with a complicated mechanism of iron and brass, set into a hasp that was fast tied to the wooden door. He did not challenge the lock or look for a key, but instead focused on the ropes, cutting loose the lock with some determined sawing and letting it fall to the grass. He opened the door and found that fifteen people were within the cage, but all were at least a little sick, and three could not stand.
“Fyella will guide you to our camp.” Levin instructed the man he’d been speaking to, an older man in hose and a tunic that might have once been expensive. He had a very large nose, like some bulbous fruit hanging between his eyes. “Carry those who cannot walk between you.”
“They can track us.” The old man said. “They will find you and your friends.”
“We’ll chance it. I’ve scouted this group, and I don’t see how they keep the siege up and track us down at the same time.”
“There are p’raps two score here, lad, but the army they came with was many thousands strong. They’ve gone north, perhaps to lay siege to Mangavolle, but they could come back at any time. I tell you, you should let us be. They’ve men who can track like hounds. Horses, too. What you’re doing is dangerous. We’re already as good as dead.”
“I’m not leaving you, so stop wasting your breath and my time.” Levin said impatiently. “Take this.” He handed the man a sword from one of the dead guards.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving them something to think about.” He cut off the head of the third guard, and held all three by the hair. Then he threw the heads inside the cage and tied it shut.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 99