War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy

by D. S. Halyard

  “Losses?”

  Faithborn spoke first, his voice tired-sounding. “Maybe twelve hundred spears and half a dozen archers for me. Maybe less if some of my wounded can still be found in this cursed blizzard.”

  “Eight hundred swords, more or less.” Busker O’Hiam said. “The pikes took a lot to break.” Then he paused to reflect a moment. “You used the men like you should, Aelfric. It takes blood to draw blood, and you did what was needed.”

  Aelfric nodded, but it took him a moment to speak. Two thousand of his men were dead. “We’ll never know how many of them we killed, but at least fifty-thousand. We’ve broken that army. Get every man with an axe cutting wood. It will be too dark to build a proper sleeping fort, but I’d like at least some kind of walls up, fires and tents. I don’t want this cold to kill us where the Cthochi failed.”

  “Aye.” Busker said. “Will do. Oh, by the way, I saw Aurix on my way up. He’s got an important prisoner, to hear him talk. It might even be Kerrick himself.

  Chapter 85: Levin on the Emerald Peninsula and Points South, latter Leath

  With the horses it was easy to get away from the church where their battle against the Sparli took place, but the pox was not done with the people Levin had rescued from the cage outside of Holdberg, and they needed time for the gods to decide who would live and who would die. Levin took them north, back to the center of the nearly depopulated Emerald Peninsula, and in two days of riding they saw not another soul. They did pass by many abandoned farms and villages, and they rode by devious paths, determined to leave no trace by which the Sparli could trail them.

  Aylmer O’Priam died on the road, as did Lutton Woodcutter, for they had been the worst affected by the pox when Levin found them. It was colder than Leath should have been, but not terrible, and they wore the marvelously warm sheepskin coats and undercoats from the Sparli they’d killed in the church, taking the garments that were the least stained with blood.

  Levin scouted ahead when they traveled, so it was he who found the abandoned farmhouse at the end of a long and narrow lane half way between a village called Hestin and a village called Barliton. Two sheep and a milk cow were in the pasture when Levin first saw the place, and someone had been around in the past week, for the cow had not quite gone dry and a side of beef was still curing in the smoke shed. It was the milk cow that convinced Levin to give the place a try.

  A carved bit of wood in the shape of an owl hung above the front door of the farmhouse, so probably the owners’ surname was something to do with an owl, but Levin couldn’t guess it. Finding the door unlocked, Levin explored the place, and apart from a little dust and a few cobwebs, it was in good repair. The bed linens and all of the potted food was gone, a half-eaten loaf of bread had long since gone green and furry with mold in the kitchen. It was a rambling one-story affair, with solid plank walls carefully fitted and snug. He returned to Kuljin, Fyella and the others and told them of the place.

  “I don’t trust it.” Fyella declared. “Nearly every place within a league has been burned or torn down. There must be a reason the Auligs haven’t burned this place. Maybe they use it sometimes.”

  “You know the bit about beggars and choosers, right?” Levin responded. “We’ve sick people here, and they need to rest. The place has a well, and there is wood to cut for a fire, and food as well. We could hardly do better. I’ll keep watch in shifts with Antor, Eudo and Kuljin, and we’ll keep the horses close at hand.”

  The fifteen of them moved into the Owlhouse on the nineteenth of Leath, according to Prior Hoggins, who kept a calendar in his head. Levin drew water from the well using a milking bucket, for the original water bucket was missing, but it was a nicely covered well with a stone coping, and he lowered a torch to make sure there was no body in it. Someone had built the house with a great deal of craft, and even when they did not have a fire, the interior was warm and comfortable, and there was room for all, if no blankets. A furtive search of the nearby houses and villages found none.

  They stayed in the Owlhouse for many days, living on the cured meat from the shed and milk and butter from the cow, once Fyella managed to get it milking again. Levin was in the barn with Antor Appleman, watching him butcher one of the sheep, when the blizzard came. For two days the skies had foreshadowed the storm, with the western sun sinking into a boiling cauldron of red, in token of a bloody battle fought on a distant hill, perhaps.

  Levin watched in helpless frustration as the pox patiently took its victims day after day, first Awain Tinsmith and Coman Oater, then Byort Fishen, Gamber O’Pendle, Fenlon Marsh, Prondim Irons and Kalnin Wheatacre. By the time the snow began piling up around the Owlhouse in drifts, Kuljin told them that the plague was once again done with them, having taken half of their number. Levin and the Walcox men were busy with the shovels that week. Prior Yan Hoggins said many eulogies.

  Somehow it was easier when it was men who were dying, Levin thought, for all of the people he’d rescued from the Sparli had been men. They still itched and suffered, coughed blood and died, and Jarro O’Vhent came out of it blind, but they weren’t beautiful women to start with, they were men, and somehow their deaths seemed more natural to Levin. The men were casualties of a war, he supposed, and dying in war had been men’s business since the dawn of time. Or at least that was what his father had said.

  Snow fell heavily for three days, piling up in drifts that pressed up against the windows, which were board and not glass. When the blizzard was done the house looked more like a hill of snow than a building, and in all that time no other people came by. Levin stepped out into blinding whiteness on the twenty-eighth of Leath, for snow to his hips covered every last bit of ground, and icicles hung from the trees. In all of that space the only sign of life was the half-hearted track that he and Fyella had made between the house and the barn, him to throw down hay for the sheep and the cow, and her to do the milking.

  During the long days and nights inside of the Owlhouse, the men from the cage noticed Kuljin’s eyes, of course, wide and slitted in the darkness. Levin explained them as a legacy of the pox, and they were satisfied. The pox had blinded Jarro and marked them all, so they saw little surprising in the halfman’s cat-eyes. They let on that Kuljin was from the fens near Zoric Town, a place of strange accents and stranger people, according to Levin, so his accent was also not taken as unusual. Levin’s scarred face and eyepatch drew more of their furtive stares than did Kuljin’s eyes, for he’d been marked worse than they would have thought possible.

  They spoke of many things, and Levin learned that Prior Hoggins first name was Yan, and he had been a wheat farmer for many years before he became a prior. It was the death of his wife that led him to the service of Lio, and his eyes watered and he snuffled his enormous nose when he spoke of her, and her fifteen years gone.

  Antor Appleman had nine brothers and four sisters, all of them living in the same huge house on an enormous orchard near Walcox, and the broad-shouldered and cheerful man was handy with axe, shovel and plow as well as the bow. Fyella cut his hair so that they could see his eyes one morning, and they were a light brown that was almost golden.

  Eudo O’Walcox had known Antor for many years, and where Antor was muscular and strong-looking, Eudo was as spare as Levin and pale-skinned, although by the end of their time together his cheeks were pitted and scarred. He was a mill worker, and he said he wished he’d never left it. On this point Jarro O’Vhent whole-heartedly agreed, for the pox had blinded him, and he grew angry and depressed, even though Fyella paid him special attention. Stremu Acre was from Maslit, where he had left a wife and three children to visit his parents in Holdberg, and he worried about them, wringing his massive carpenter’s hands unconsciously whenever he spoke of them.

  The door to the Owlhouse opened inward, and Levin had to kick snow out of the way before he could shut it again, once he’d come back from the barn. “We’ll need to butcher the other sheep.” He said aloud to the other six.

  “Yes.” Antor said
quietly. “And we eight can’t live on one cow’s milk. Our Fyella is a wonder at soup and broth, but the meat from the sheep will be gone and the bones boiled clean in a week. We need to find more food somewhere.” Like all of the men, Antor had taken on Fyella as some combination of sister and mother, for she had tended to all of them when sick.

  “We need to be moving on.” Levin replied. “We’ve all been through it now, and I know that some of you are still feeling weak and will be for another week or more, but we’re still in country controlled by the Sparli Auligs, no matter how safe it seems we’ve been. When the food runs out we’ll need to go looking, and that means more chance of them finding us.”

  “But which way?” Prior Hoggins asked. “You three are for Zoric, but that’s a far far way to travel in winter. Better to my mind we make for Walcox. For some reason the pox doesn’t seem to have taken hold there, and from there ‘tis not terrible far to Maslit, if it’s not fallen.”

  Stremu was for Maslit first, for his wife and children were there, while Jarro spoke strongly for Brinnvolle. “I’ve family there, and I’m blind now. Where else am I supposed to go, pray tell? Some poorhouse in Walcox? There is no place I won’t be a burden.”

  “Have none of you ever looked at a map?” Fyella said in exasperation as the debate continued. “My father was a travelling merchant, if a poor one, and we had maps on our walls at home. If you want to go to Maslit, or to Walcox or to Zoric, we must first go to New Brinnvolle. From there are roads that will take us to any of the other places. We also must find a way around Holdberg.” She drew a quick map on the tabletop with a bit of charred wood from the fire. When she completed it she turned to them. “You see?”

  “And how do we know New Brinnvolle is still in Mortentian hands?” Eudo demanded.

  “We don’t.” Levin replied. “But Fyella is right. It’s either New Brinnvolle or we take our chances waiting for a boat by the sea.”

  “Or we stay here.” Jarro said. “I’d be helpless on the road.”

  “Tis only Leath.” Prior Hoggins answered. “With the whole winter ahead. If we stay here we will starve at the least, even if we aren’t found by the Auligs. They are right, we must go, and truly there will likely be no ships this late in the year and with the Auligs about. Tis overland we must travel, and all roads go through New Brinnvolle, as Fyella says, but before that, ‘tis Holdberg.”

  Kuljin nodded. “We will have to sneak around Holdberg. We can start tomorrow.”

  “The siege around Holdberg is very light, and lighter with the men we’ve killed.” Levin said quietly. “I think that if the people in the town knew how light, they could break it themselves. As for ourselves, we must have sufficient food. We can butcher the sheep and bake the meat dry so it will keep on the road. The cow won’t keep up. Should we butcher her or turn her loose?”

  “She’s served us well.” Fyella replied. “She’s a good and gentle beast. I say we should turn her loose and let her forage.”

  Kuljin shook his head. “She’ll die of cold or go to feed Auligs if we turn her loose. I’m sorry Fyella, but we need the meat.”

  Killing, butchering and preparing the meat from the cow for travel took an entire day, although they ate well that evening. Meanwhile the cold and the wind lessened, and the snow began to melt during the days, and long icicles ran down from the roof of the Owlhouse to the ground in pretty crystal columns. On the last day of Leath, the eight of them left the Owlhouse with fifteen Sparli ponies, with the meat carried on the ones they weren’t riding. Blind Jarro’s horse they tied behind Stremu’s, who was bringing up the rear of their little column.

  Levin had thought that they would have to walk the ponies through the snow, but these Sparli beasts were sturdy and used to plodding through heavy snow. With the exception of the two Walcox men, Antor and Eudo, the men taken from the plague box outside of Holdberg were still quite weak, and it was a relief that the horses were able to bear them.

  When they were barely half a league on their way, they crossed the trail of another band of riders, at least a dozen, and all of the tracks were of unshod ponies like the ones they were riding. “More Sparli.” Kuljin said grimly. “We were very lucky they did not see the smoke from the Owlhouse.”

  “It was a good hideout.” Levin agreed. “We will need to send out a scout from now on, but at least we won’t likely be trailed. We can hide our tracks with those of this patrol, and none the wiser.”

  “Yes. And I think we need to put on all of the gear and clothing we took from them at the church. From a distance we should look like just another of their patrols.”

  So the little band disguised themselves as Sparli and continued, following in the tracks of the patrol that had gone before them, and Kuljin rode in front, watching to make sure they didn’t follow too closely, for even dressed as they were, they could not hope to pass any kind of close scrutiny, and they were in no shape for a fight. Two leagues south of Holdberg they came upon fresh evidence of the Sparli patrol’s activity, to their great shock and horror.

  It was Kuljin who saw the bodies first, scouting ahead, and he dismounted and approached them carefully on foot until he could be sure that no Sparli were lingering near. The bodies of ten men hung suspended above the snow on freshly cut poles, their feet hanging a pace above the whiteness. They had been impaled, although it was impossible to know if they had been alive or dead when it was done. Half of them were dressed in plain brown robes, and half of them were naked, and they had been mutilated, with ears cut off and scalps taken.

  In the snow all around there was no sign of a struggle or a fight of any kind, but there were many tracks and spots of blood. It was plain that the killing of them had happened after the blizzard. Kuljin remounted and returned to the group to tell Levin.

  “Brown robes, did you say?” Levin’s working eye was intense when Kuljin made his report. “Brown robes and no weapons?”

  “Yes, like pilgrims or priests. It doesn’t look like they put up a fight. I think the Sparli patrol must have caught them and forced them to surrender, then killed them. Interestingly, I saw several shovels nearby, like the men were peat diggers or something.”

  Levin’s eye grew even more intense, and the corner of his mouth turned down. His voice was a bitter rasp when he spoke. “Take me there. Take us all there.”

  Kuljin led the little band in a column to the place where the bodies hung beside the road. Fyella gasped in horror, and several of the men cried out in shock. “Gravediggers! They killed gravediggers!” She cried, and the men made bitter oaths.

  “Is that what these men were?” Kuljin asked, looking with some confusion at the shocked faces of his companions. Even Levin looked aghast, but after all he’d seen, surely it wasn’t the impaling of the men that accounted for his expression.

  “The Order of the Spade.” Levin replied. “We must bury them.”

  “We need to be moving on.” Kuljin said, disagreeing. “There might be another patrol coming. We can’t risk being caught by the road.”

  “We have to bury them, Kuljin. They are gravediggers. Killing them, it’s like …”

  “It’s like slapping the gods in the face.” Fyella said, completing his sentence. “No one may touch them, much less kill them.”

  Levin turned to Kuljin and spoke quietly, not wanting the others to notice the halfman’s ignorance, for it would certainly reveal he wasn’t from Zoric, or any other place in Mortentia for that matter. “This is a sin so deep, I can hardly explain it. In Mortentia, whether you worship the Lord of Light or you follow the Secret Gods doesn’t matter when it comes to the gravediggers. They live apart from us, they have their own homes and neighborhoods, and they never speak to us unless asking for help in their task. They keep no more money than they need to live, and they never carry weapons. Even the Cthochi never put hands on them during the last war.”

  “They’re still just men.” Kuljin replied.

  “No, it’s not like that, Kuljin. They bury the dead, but n
ot just that. They also perform secret rites to ensure that the dead reach the afterlife unharmed. No one who isn’t in their brotherhood knows what the rites are, or even if they are done in the name of Lio or in the name of the Secret Gods. But it’s a terrible sin to touch one or harm one. It’s like the worst taboo you can imagine. If a boy was to strike a gravedigger, even unknowing, his own mother would take him to the local bishop for a flogging, even a hanging. It goes beyond bad luck, it goes beyond common sin or crime. It’s like Fyella said, a slap in Lio’s face.”

  “Is that why you must bury them?”

  “Of course. To leave them hanging there would be a sin equal to murder. There’s no question we must bury them, and bury them now. On top of that, their killing must be avenged.” Levin picked up one of the spades that the gravediggers had been carrying before they were killed, and he began marking out graves at the side of the road. All of the men were helping with the task, with the exception of blind Jarro, who listened to the description of what they had found with horror.

  Fortunately the snow had not frozen the ground except to a very small depth, and the soil was loose and muddy. It was not ideal for digging, and their hands were very cold by the time they had finished, but by nightfall they had completed the task. Meanwhile Kuljin found them an abandoned and burned out farm to shelter in for the night, and they cleared a space in the remains of the stable within which to catch fitful bits of sleep. The structure had no roof and only partial walls, and they had only the heat from the horses to keep them warm, for they dared not make a fire.

  They set off again in the morning, before the sun had done more than slightly pale the horizon, but the light was enough for them to find their way easily in the snow. They returned to the place where they had buried the gravediggers, and Levin searched the place briefly. He recovered five brown robes the color of walnut, torn in many places and bloody.