Gabriella had left Solnos before Erak had begun his hymn singing. She rode out past the thin woodland that grew against the foot of the southern escarpment and explored among the flitting insects and rustling of birds and small animals. She hadn't seen many signs of human habitation, and certainly nothing that looked like it might be the Golden Huntress. There were occasional farmhouses and sometimes a byre or a mill house, but no large buildings that would house a brother catering to such a large area. The last building she came across was a farm cottage nestled in a bowl-shaped cut near a spring at the end of a cart track. Taking some vellum from a saddlebag, Gabriella added the final touch to a map she had been making of the locations she had visited and the route she had taken to get to them. Then she wheeled her horse around, and angled back towards Solnos.
There was a glint of metal and the warmth of flames part way up a low rise in the thin woods to her left, and Gabriella debated with herself whether to investigate. If it was the campsite of a caravan travelling between cities she would be able to ask a few questions. If it was a group of bandits, she would have a less pleasant time.
Gabriella guided her mount up a narrow trail and into a stand of scrubby trees well out of earshot of the camp. There, she dismounted and crept closer until the fire resolved itself into a set of three camp fires, surrounded by about twenty men. Horses were hobbled nearby and the men were all recumbent, or at least sitting eating from iron pots. They wore a mixture of armour and so weren't from the army of a city's Lord, who would all be outfitted by the same armourer. Their tabards bore the shark's mouth design of a mercenary company from Malmkrug.
None of them had noticed her yet, as she had managed to become quite adept at moving quietly despite wearing mail. Since she had recognised their company's insignia as that of a reputable company, and one which had fought with the Faith several times, she slipped away to retrieve her horse. Then she cantered back to the camp in a more open fashion.
Two guards hailed her as she approached the camp. "Well met!"
"Well met and God be upon you." Gabriella wasn't exactly worried about being outnumbered twenty to one, but she was wary. Mercenary companies were not uncommon, but they had rules among themselves. "It's a long way from Malmkrug."
"You're telling us." Their Captain laughed as she approached. She was a bulky woman, all muscle, with black hair, brown eyes and a scar on her chin. "There's nobody to fight at home. You're out of, what, Solnos?" Gabriella nodded. "And this certainly isn't the country for a woman alone. Not unless she's well-trained."
"It suits me fine."
The Captain grinned. "I suppose it's too much to hope you're hiring?"
Gabriella smiled apologetically. "Just looking to share a camp for a few hours. My horse needs a rest, for a start."
The mercenary Captain invited her forward. "Of course. The Faith's always been good to us and I dare say there are some of us could do with confession. If you'll hear us out, we'll give you a hot meal and a groundsheet."
"Fair enough." Gabriella dismounted and tended to her horse. "Thank you, Captain...?"
"Kannis. And you are Sister...?"
"Gabriella DeZantez. You know Solnos well?"
"I've been through it a few times. Don't remember seeing anyone from the Swords Of Dawn there, so I'm assuming you're a new arrival. It's not a bad town. The people are hard working. We've just come up from Fayence. Things weren't too bad, considering."
"Considering what?"
"Ah, the locals down there are getting themselves jumpy about things that go bump in the night. Farmers and villagers from the lands west of Fayence have been flooding into the city, claiming there are goblins out there. There's no such thing within five leagues of Fayence and Lord Aristide is going blue in the face denying that they even exist. You and I know different, of course. But the farmers down there are scared and Aristide's words aren't doing any good."
Gabriella didn't like the thought of goblins. It was something the Order would have to keep an eye on. "How far have these goblins been reported?"
"A few days' ride west of Fayence. Nowhere near the city itself and there are some burned villages right enough. I can't imagine them coming much further, though. You know how they like to stay close to their nests and all the nests are in the World's Ridge."
"Indeed. Well it's certainly a situation that we will keep an eye on. Many thanks for the food and your hospitality, but I must be getting back to Solnos now."
"Well met Gabriella. If you ever need a good troupe of well trained men, be sure to look us up."
Erak and his merry band were no longer touring the town with their hymns when Gabriella rode into Solnos. One of the soldiers was waiting at the church's plaza to lead her to where Erak and the others were waiting for her. "Where did they go?" she asked, once she had turned the horse over to a squire.
"A disused shop in the craft quarter," the soldier reported. "It's this way. You could smell the Dreamweed from half way down the street."
"All right, let's visit this shop."
The soldier had been right enough. She could smell the Dreamweed from several doors down. The street contained several open fronted shops belonging to carpenters and potters. The scent was coming from behind a closed door between a cobbler and a carpenters shop.
Erak grinned as she approached. "Just in time for the fun."
"What happened?"
"Brotherhood. He led us a merry chase, but we followed him here. I was just about to give their door a knock."
She kissed him on the cheek and said: "Don't let me stop you."
Erak marched up to the door and knocked. "Open up, in the name of the Lord!"
"Send in that girlie we can see and we'll show you something to have faith in." There was a chorus of loud guffaws.
Erak scowled and lifted a foot, ready to kick the door down.
"Wait!" Gabriella called. "How can I refuse such a charming invitation?"
She had hoped they would see sense but, if not, that was God's will, and she would do what had to be done. She noticed then that an eye was peering out at her from a peephole in the centre of the door.
She smiled and then jammed a finger into it. The man on the other side fell back with a startled scream and Gabriella slammed the sole of her foot into the door. The thin wooden bar snapped and the door crashed open.
The first man that rushed her caught the edge of the door in his face, and tumbled over the one-eyed body sprawled before him. Gabriella smashed the boss of her shield into his face and slashed with her sword at the man next to him. Another man in the room lunged at her with a short spear, but she sliced the iron head off it with her blade, then punched the iron edge of her shield into his throat. He dropped, rasping and gurgling.
There was a crash from upstairs and Erak and Gabriella both charged up the short stairway, expecting an attack at any moment. An open door banged in the breeze and Gabriella darted through it, just in time to see a man pick himself up in the street below and run like a champion athlete. "Follow him!" she roared to the nearest soldier-at-arms in the street. "See where he goes! Take a horse if you have to!" The soldier was already running.
A moment later, a storm of hoof beats erupted as the fugitive took a horse and fled towards the edge of town. The soldier wasn't long behind him, having acquired a mount of his own.
There was nothing more Gabriella or Erak could do about him for the moment, so they moved around the upper floor carefully and quietly, just in case. She already knew there would be no-one but flies and roaches in the rooms. Every room was the same: mouldy cushions and termite-ridden furniture. Things skittered in the corners and she was perfectly happy for those creatures to remain hidden in their webbed nooks and crannies. In the cleanest of the upstairs rooms, there was a small altar facing a bronze icon with two circles linked together. The symbol of the Brotherhood of the Divine Path. The find lifted her spirits.
"This is our lucky day," Erak muttered.
Back downstairs, Gabriella se
arched the corpses, finding a tattoo of the same linked circle design on one's wrist and one on the other's shoulder. She hauled the surviving man to his feet.
"You look like a fine upstanding man to me, perhaps you can tell me some interesting things in return for your life?"
"Like what?"
"Like where can we find the other members of the Brotherhood?" Erak said.
The man coughed blood and shook his head woozily. "Just us."
"I wish I could believe that."
"'S'true. Just us. Everybody else buggered off weeks ago. Went south."
Gabriella was puzzled. "Went south?" Was Lord Aristide of Fayence gathering support from them, the way the Empire of Vos relied on the Faith in the last war? The Brotherhood weren't numerous enough to provide military support, but they were a ready-made network of spies.
"Because of the gobboes, you know?"
"Pretend I don't," Gabriella said quietly.
The man focussed bleary eyes on her and managed a mirthless laugh. "They're not nesting any more. Un-nested. Nest-less. Down past Fayence, in the World's Ridge, there are now opportunities."
"With gobboes - I mean, goblins?"
"No! Without goblins. Without. Now that they've been driven out."
Gabriella turned to Erak. "Let's take him back to the church. We might get more out of him when he's sober."
"Good idea. I'll see if I can find a Healer. This one could take hours to sober up and days to come down from the Dreamweed."
While Erak and the soldiers-at-arms carried the wounded Brotherhood man back to the church, Gabriella emerged into the sunlight and looked around at the streets and the people in them. How many of the men around her were in the Brotherhood?
She had stood there for several minutes, looking for tattoos and furtive glances, before she realised what she was doing. Cursing herself for being so stupid, she began walking towards the market square. If she could find a Healer, he might be able to make the Brotherhood man worth talking to a lot quicker than would occur naturally.
As she neared the market square, a small boy ran up to her and tugged at her cloak. "Enlightened Sister!"
"What can I do for you lad?"
"Brother Brand says to tell you that he's waiting for you outside the wheelwright's workshop."
"Where is that?"
The lad grinned brightly and held out a hand. Gabriella tossed him a penny, and the lad pointed east. "Past the market square, towards the east bridge."
"Thanks, lad." As the urchin darted away with his prize, Gabriella set off in the direction the boy had indicated.
She moved quickly but unhurriedly along the north edge of the bustling market square, offering benedictions and smiles to those she passed. She wanted the people to know that the Faith was there for them, to help them. Some viewed her with suspicion, she saw, but she offered them kind and encouraging words and promised to pray for the success of their businesses or family lives.
She wanted to make sure that the people knew the Faith took an interest in all their lives. Gabriella was determined that the Brotherhood would not take a hold of this town.
Six steps behind Gabriella, Dai Batsen allowed the dagger to slide down from his sleeve into his hand. The street was busy, filled with the stink of unwashed humanity and the shouts of hawkers, so she hadn't noticed him. With most people, it would be a simple matter for Batsen to walk up, jam a thin blade through the spinal column, and walk on before his victim even fell. Nobody even noticed such things, and thieves and beggars would be the first to surround a body, intent on looting.
This one would have to be different. She was a trained soldier. There was a chance, however faint, that she would be alerted to his approach.
He watched as she turned into a short cut that led through from the market square, just as he'd told the street urchin to direct her. The alley was short, but empty, and Batsen saw his chance. He slipped forward, the dagger already swinging for her neck.
Gabriella heard a faint scrape behind her and began to turn. She got a momentary glimpse of a shaven head, before her assailant lunged forward. A dagger flashed past her face and then the man's full weight slammed into her back. His other arm whipped around her neck, squeezing against the arteries below her ears, while she tried to keep the hand with the dagger pressed between her hip and the wall, so that he couldn't use it. She began to feel light-headed as the crook of his arm crushed the arteries in her neck and she stamped down with her heel as she lashed her head backwards. Bone splintered under the impact of her skull and he let go as he fell. Gabriella turned and kicked him in the face before he hit the ground.
The alley was too narrow for her to use her swords, but he had no such problem with the dagger in his hand. He swung for her throat, but she turned, left hand already blocking and tried to counterpunch him in the gut. He twisted sideways and slashed at her inner forearm. The knife caught on one of her wrist bracers and clattered away.
A kick to her chest knocked her backwards and back out into the market square, giving Batsen distance to draw another weapon, a pair of long pointed bodkins. Gabriella regained her feet and drew her swords. Batsen caught her blades between the bodkins and pushed them away. Momentarily, both of them had their arms spread wide, then each launched a kick to push the other away. They fell back from each other.
Batsen tucked his elbows in and rolled under a cart before Gabriella could get to her feet. She darted round the cart, but he was already gone.
CHAPTER 9
Erak paced around the vestry, looking for something to lash out at. His angular face was flushed with anger. Enlightened One Stoll looked just as angry, but his was more a glowering mood as he studied one of the maps Gabriella had drawn during her scouting trip.
"That wasn't just someone taking exception to a member of the Faith, or even the Swords being here. That was a targeted attack, Gabriella. Somebody wanted to kill you specifically." Erak said.
"And I can make a guess as to who."
"Goran Kell," he said. His lips were still thinned and white, as if he was ready to bite at someone and Gabriella felt momentarily honoured that he felt as she did. "Who else have you annoyed recently?"
"Not as much of Pontaine as I'd intended. Yet" She grabbed a piece of parchment and a charcoal stick and started trying to draw the assailant's face before it faded from her memory. "The man didn't look like someone from this area, though. Too pale."
"Kell hired one assassin," Stoll pointed out, "so he won't have compunctions about hiring another. After all, you've come to find his oh-so profitable Golden Huntress and to hunt him."
Erak nodded. "And you're the one who chased down the assassin he hired."
"Then we must be onto something. We must be closer to finding the Huntress than we know..."
"All right, what did this man look like?" Erak said.
Gabriella returned to the drawing. "He was bald," she said. She finished her drawing and held it up. It was a good likeness, she was sure.
Stoll took it. "You've got a real skill for this, you know. If you'd stayed living in Pontaine you'd probably be a famous artist by now."
"Fame doesn't interest me." She was pleased all the same, She had always loved to draw as a child and it still gave her a thrill when someone got pleasure from a picture of hers. "Does he look familiar?"
Stoll shook his head. "No. But I'll pass this around town later and see whether anyone recognises him."
"I suppose that will have to do," Gabriella muttered. She caught Stoll's expression and reddened. "I mean no disrespect to you efforts, Enlightened One. It's just a little frustrating."
"I can imagine."
"There's something else I'd been meaning to ask you." She handed him a copy of the map she had drawn earlier. "Do you know who lives here?" She pointed to the last location she had visited on her scouting trip. The soldier-at-arms who had pursued the fugitive from the Brotherhood Dreamweed den had returned earlier, and pointed to that place on the map as the place the man had go
ne to.
Stoll studied the page for a moment. "That's Warrigan's farm."
"Warrigan?"
"He's a gamekeeper with a small farm run from his cottage. He's one of several gamekeepers in the vicinity who owe fealty to Lord Aristide. He comes to church perhaps once or twice a year, at the major holidays."
Erak grunted. "One of those 'just-in-case' types?"
"I'm afraid so."
Gabriella took the map back and studied it. "Then why did someone think that taking word of our visit was so important?"
"Well, he is Aristide's man... And any of the Lords in Pontaine would be keen to keep an eye on visitors from the Empire. Still, it seems that you've both had quite a productive day despite the, er, negative aspects of it."
"You could put it that way," Gabriella agreed, putting the map back on the table. "Which reminds me, we have a guest. Would you like to hear his confession tomorrow, Enlightened One?" Since she had never found a Healer, they would need to wait for the man to sober up the old-fashioned way.
"Why not?" Stoll said magnanimously.
The man from the Brotherhood's little Dreamweed den was in a novice's cell with a soldier-at-arms on guard outside. The Brotherhood man had sobered up by morning, which was unfortunate for him, as the agony from his smashed jaw was no longer dulled.
"Remember me?" Gabriella asked brightly. "And this is Enlightened Brother Brand. And I'm sure you know your local Enlightened One."
"Hello, Collin," Stoll said with a smile. "I must say I'm disappointed to find you being brought to me under such circumstances."
The young man looked at Stoll and winced. "It's all right, Enlightened One. I just..." He trailed off. "I dunno. Look, I'm sorry, all right?"
"Remorse is good," Erak commented. "And it's not too late to see the light."
"How d'you mean?"
"You tell us things, and we help you see the error of your sinning ways."
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