by Daniel Ford
“The smell will still sting, men, but the rags will help. Plenty of vinegar if they dry out,” Allystaire told them. “What we do here today will sting in other ways,” he went on, more quietly, “but it needs doing. You have all buried friends and kin before. Think of this the same way—gone to their last rest. Gone to the Mother. As the sun warms the earth they rest in, so will She keep them in the next world,” he finished, before he even knew what he was saying.
Her words came back to him, floating across his mind like a well-loved and remembered song. Prophet and revelator.
“Do I get one o’them rags, m’lord?” Norbert asked, his ash-and-clay-darkened face running with rivulets of sweat, his voice jerking Allystaire out of his sudden and brief reverie.
“No,” he said simply, coldly, and some of the village men turned away quickly. Despite their hidden faces, he could see the ripple of fear that ran through their bodies at the sound of his chilled voice.
“Please m’lord—” Norbert’s words were cut off as Allystaire turned to him and wrapped his hand hard around the lad’s jaw, holding his mouth open; only a whimpering breath came out as Allystaire leaned forward.
“You will breathe every bit of this miasma. You will smell every bit of charred flesh and you will look at every single burnt bone. Every one. Do you hear me?” Allystaire leaned closer until his forehead was nearly touching the smaller man’s, his face suddenly white with anger, his voice like a blade being inched from its sheath. “You will see every bit of the job your crew did. Do you hear me?”
Norbert nodded feebly, as much as he was able, air creaking in his throat, a tear leaking from one eye and cutting a line through the muck on his face. Allystaire let go and stepped away; the angry red imprints of his fingers stood out like welts on Norbert’s neck and jaw, having cut quickly through the ash.
“What about you, m’lord?” Renard asked quietly, as the two of them led men and horses into the village.
“No.” Allystaire turned a baleful stare back at the would-be reaver and said, “Men like him need to know that some of us will endure the worst they can do.” Inwardly, though, he wished for one, and celebrated his choice not to eat so much as a morsel of bread that morning. Then, clearing his throat for more than one purpose, he said, “Timmar! Pick us a likely spot to dig and have men pace off the ground. Mark it with the rope.”
The villagers stopped, all of them, to stare at the pile of bones on their charred green. “I thought you lot were told to pick a spot,” Renard suddenly boomed, and the men hopped away as if stung, turning their backs to the green and scattering across the ruined village.
Allystaire nodded approvingly at him. “Going to have to keep them moving,” he told Renard. “Keep them working. If we let them pause and think on it, it will go badly for them.”
Smiling faintly, Renard replied, “All due respect m’lord, don’t go teachin’ your chief bannerman how to motivate his labor party eh?” Allystaire chuckled, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Norbert. Renard nodded and drew a short, sharp knife from his belt and walked over to the lad, who quailed and took two steps as if to run, only to stop short when Ardent let out a loud whinny and tensed backwards, preparing to rear.
“That was uncanny,” Allystaire quietly echoed the farmers’ earlier reaction, not a little surprised. Renard cut the boy’s hands free and untied the rope about his neck. Immediately the boy set to rubbing at the raw red ring in his flesh, but Allystaire walked toward him, holding out a shovel.
“Peat bog lad like you knows his way around a shovel.” Allystaire raised it so that the sunlight glinted off its sharp, new edge. “You probably know, Norbert, in a pinch a shovel can be a poor man’s axe. Or a hammer. Plenty of ways to kill a man with a good sharp spade.” He lowered it, held it by the haft, and held the rounded wooden end out to the boy.
“If you so much as think on using this like a weapon, I will take it away from you, and I will show you each and every way. Remember, boy. You can dig, or you can hang. I am likely the only man here who wants to see you dig.”
* * *
As it turned out, Norbert did indeed know how to use a shovel. Allystaire and Renard were both handy with a mattock, and the villagers all knew a hard day’s work. In the first turn or so they kept pausing to gaze off in the direction of the village and the stink that followed them, but with the vinegar to hand, regular water, and Allystaire and Renard to encourage or to drive them as needed, soon enough they were stuck into the task.
Timmar had chosen a place just out of sight of the village green itself, where the road wound down into the Ash valley that Thornhurst rested in. It lay a little lower than the ground around it and looked like a well-shaded spot in the afternoon, with a lightly wooded hill rising just above it. The villagers took the lead in deciding all manners of length, width, and depth, but Allystaire worked a mattock faster than any of them, cutting up loose chunks of sod, then hunks of dirt, for the others to shovel into a pile.
With Ardent grazing nearby, unconcerned at the growing piles of dirt around the edges of the pit that now stood above the men’s knees, Allystaire and Renard worked side by side. Finally, his shirt drenched from the morning heat, Allystaire stripped it off and tossed it carelessly onto the grass above, then set back to working. He swung the mattock mechanically, with very little grace, driving the thin point into the dirt beneath his feet, then twisting the wooden haft in his hands to bring the wider head in and pull up clumps and rocks. He swung several more times before he realized some of the men nearest to him were staring.
“What is it, lads?” he asked, grounding the mattock on the flat of the head and leaning on the bottom of the handle with one hand. “Something wrong?”
“Weren’t you wounded, m’lord?” One of the men nearby pointed toward Allystaire’s left side.
He looked down and inspected Idgen Marte’s stitches, which were even and neat, but the flesh around them was indistinguishable from the rest. Gently, he tugged at one of the tiny bits of thread with a fingernail, and it pulled free without pain; the rest followed with little resistance. While there was the typical neat row of scar left behind, the wound was closed. Too fast. Allystaire pondered this a moment, then let the thread fall from his fingers and drop to the ground.
“Was it a Gift from the Mother?” Another man, resting a booted foot on a shovel, peered closely at Allystaire’s bare chest, and added bluntly, “Ya’ve a lot o’scars m’lord.”
“All fighting men have scars excepting the ones who die the first time out. Enough gawping. If you need a break, fall out, otherwise back to your tasks.” Renard didn’t shout, but the futility of negotiation or discussion was implied. The men returned to their task, and two who had been resting hopped back in and set to.
Despite their toil, the pit was far from deep enough by noon, and Allystaire heard the sound of hoofbeats pounding up the road from the village. He pulled himself up in time to see Idgen Marte sliding off the back of her courser, strands of brown hair plastered to her forehead by the heat.
“For all of our sakes put a shirt on, you scarred fool,” she started in, the instant he hove into view. “You’ll fright the children and womenfolk into ill…hang on.” She suddenly strode close and bent toward his left shoulder, poking at it, then looking back at him quizzically. “My stitches don’t pull out.” She frowned up at him, the corners of her mouth pulling at her scar. “And that oughtn’t be healed yet.” She straightened up and asked softly, “Did you use Her Gift on yourself?”
Allystaire shook his head, dropping the mattock at his feet. “Not at all. Have not felt a twinge in it since before the assize, anyway.” Could I do that? he found himself wondering. “Mayhap She urged me on a bit. I have always been quick to mend, regardless.”
“Nobody’s that quick to mend without magic,” Idgen Marte insisted. “Tell me the truth.”
Allystaire half-smiled and said, “I
have no choice but to do exactly that, I think.”
Idgen Marte stared hard at him, then poked again at his fresh, pink stitch scar with one finger. “You’ll explain that to me later.” She wiped her finger on her trousers. “In the meantime, the wagons are pulled up just out of sight of the village. Best not to let them all into it yet.”
“Going to be nigh evening before we’ve got this properly dug, m’lord,” Renard called up from near the pit.
“You’ll want to finish in one day,” Idgen Marte said, where none of the digging men could hear. “This lot’ve got their nerve up for this and it’ll—”
Allystaire cut her off with the wave of a hand. “I know.” Clearing his throat, he called out, “Break for lunch, men. See Renard for a bit of special ration.” The erstwhile gate guard was already pulling a large stoneware jug from his rucksack, along with a series of small cups. Food was produced and spread about.
“Idgen Marte,” Allystaire said, turning back to her. “See if you cannot get a few of the folk to check on some of the outlying farms in the valley.” He paused. “I assume there are some, anyway. Probably animals that need rounding up and tending to, and the villagers will be glad to have them. And if any of them have hand carts or barrows, bring them along.” He looked back at the pit and suddenly shouted, “I said the men could break for lunch, not you, boy.”
Norbert leaped to his feet, arms and legs all a blur with his shovel.
Idgen Marte watched the skinny young man for a moment. “Y’should’ve killed that one,” she said hotly.
“Mercy is a kind of strength, betimes.” As Allystaire heard himself speaking the words, he wondered why they sounded familiar. In a sudden flash, he recalled the darkened streets of Bend; of guardsmen lying upon it wounded, but alive; and of those same words coming to him unbidden. Quickly, he added, “You heard Norbert’s words to me last night; he did not lie. He may die here yet, but until I decide otherwise, he will work.”
“And what gave you the right to decide that, my lord?” Idgen Marte managed to compress a lifetime’s worth of scorn into those two words.
Biting off the angry response that sprang to mind, Allystaire thought a moment, chewing on his bottom lip. “What would the pale and perfect paladins in your precious stories have done? Would Sir Parthalian have slit the boy’s throat? Would Reddyn the Redoubtable have pounded his head to pudding with a hammer while Norbert was tied and helpless before him?”
Idgen Marte stared at him, her lips in a thin line, her scar livid and white. “No,” she finally, grudgingly, conceded.
“Nor shall I. The Goddess did not choose me to make me a murderer, or even a headsman. I may well kill men for Her, but only those who deserve it.” He thought of Her teeth digging into the flesh of his arm, the words She had spoken to him: Terrible to behold, She had said. A thing out of legend. A tiny spot of fear pricked his stomach.
He pressed on. “I am not convinced that our young idiot does deserve it. You heard what he said—the brigands looked better than the bog. Well, I have seen the bog, Idgen Marte, and you have not. I cannot fault a man for making that choice if he has not yet drawn blood, and you and I both know the only blood Norbert has drawn is from his dinner or his own hand.”
The warrior laughed a little, and some of the tension drained from her face and neck, the healthy brown glow of her skin once again relegating her scars to a curiosity of her handsome face. “Y’might be right. Get back to digging. I’ll bring some goat carts or the like.” She made to leave, then turned back, and pointed to a length of twisted white flesh along his ribcage. “What in the name of the Seven Stones did that?”
“A lance. Aldacren Keep, in Barony Telmawr.”
“Tourney? Accident in the lists?”
“One of my first real fights. Knights armored and horsed, arrayed against each other, with the footmen and the bowmen standing around hoping we would settle it on our own.” Allystaire snorted. “We never did. The real work always comes down to them.” Shovels and mattocks began to bite earth and ring against rock behind them once more. “Now get going.”
“Fine,” Idgen Marte replied, with the sigh of the aggrieved and with a bit of her knowing smile resting once more upon her features. “You shall owe me the rest of that story tonight.”
“If you insist.”
“Cover your hide unless you want to owe me the story for each and every scar,” she called, as she pulled herself into the saddle and turned her lean courser.
“What makes you think you see them all, eh?” he called back, and for a moment, felt certain he had finally gotten the last word, until the smallest afternoon breeze carried her ringing laugh to his ears. He returned to the dig with a sigh.
* * *
Two or three turns later, when Allystaire heard Idgen Marte’s courser returning, he didn’t even wait for her news. “Norbert. You are done digging, for now.” In truth, most of them were; the pit might be deep enough, more than three feet down into the earth now, wider and longer than any houses in the village. Won’t hurt to deepen it a bit more. Lot of bones on that green.
Norbert nearly collapsed against the now almost waist-high edge of the pit. “Thank you m’lord,” he gasped in exhaustion. The men working on either side of him paused, leaning on their tools, watching him with unconcealed disgust. Their hands curled around the wooden shafts of their tools, but Allystaire was already walking to the edge of the soon-to-be-grave and reaching down to grab a handful of sweat-soaked homespun.
“I said you were done digging, not done working. “Allystaire hauled him bodily out of the pit and set him on his stumbling feet with a light shove. “Timmar, and any two more of you who have something left of your strength, come with us.” The sputtering boy turned to try out a glare, but quickly thought better of it. Allystaire retrieved his shirt and tugged it back over his shoulders.
Idgen Marte was down off her horse, allowing it to nose on the browning grass by the side of the track. “Folk are out rounding up animals. Found some cattle, some goats. There are two carts, one small and one larger.” She looked back over her shoulder, then to the grave the men had spent most of the day digging. “Going to take more than one trip to empty that green,” she added, more quietly.
“The sun is with us for turns yet,” Allystaire replied, feigning a brightness of tone. “And I mean to put these folk to rest before it sets.”
With somewhat forced confidence, Allystaire quickly strode down the track and back into the village, the men he’d called for following him, none with quicker steps than Norbert. He led them straight to the village green. “Norbert, await me. The rest of you, get those carts sorted and ready to haul.” He indicated the rickety wooden constructions Idgen Marte had retrieved. Dung carts, from the look of them, but no smell from them could penetrate the rotten miasma that had hung over the village for days. “You,” Allystaire said, facing Norbert. “Come with me.”
He walked the boy right to the edge of the green, waited till they were side by side, then gave the lad a gentle shove on the shoulder toward the broken pyre of charred bones. “Begin gathering the bones.”
Norbert halted and turned toward Allystaire, shaking his head, tears in his eyes. “No m’lord, please. An’ you are a merciful man, or you’d’ve hung me. Don’t make me gather the bones, m’lord. I can’t,” he blubbered, cringing as Allystaire stepped toward him. “Ya said I needed to dig, and I dug. How long will ya drive me like a dog?”
Instead of seizing him, Allystaire laid a steady hand on his shoulder. “If you were a dog, lad, you would have no choice in what you had done and I should not treat you half so hard,” he said softly, though not altogether comfortingly. “And you will work until I tell you to stop. That is the way of it. That or a quick drop.” He paused, and then added coldly, loud enough to be overheard, “I know how to tie the rope right, Norbert. When I commanded men, if I needed to sentence one—a coward, a rapis
t, a spy—I saw to it myself. There is rope in the wagons and stout trees a short walk in any direction.” He paused, waiting for that to sink in. “Pick the direction you wish to walk, lad.”
Norbert made for the pile of bones on the green.
Idgen Marte sidled up next to Allystaire, hissing in his ear. “What do ya—”
Allystaire silenced her with a look. “I mean to effect a rough justice here,” he whispered. “Mayhap not as rough as you think. Wait.”
A few of the men motioned as if to join Norbert in the pile of bones, but Allystaire stopped them with a wave; the rest stayed with the carts, and Allystaire stood at the edge of the browned and blackened grass, watching as the tall, thin youth began gathering up armfuls of bones. Some clattered through his hands and a few fell to pieces as he picked them up, charred through in thin places. He started at the edges, filling his arms and walking back to the smaller cart, filling it.
Timmar wandered to Allystaire, spat in the dirt, and said, “Beggin y’r pardon m’lord, those’re our folk. M’sister’s husband is out there, and m’friends. We should be doin’ this.”
Allystaire turned to him, his face calm and impassive. “Wait,” he murmured, then slowly turned back to watch Norbert. Soon there was a path trodden through the grass, and a rounded edge of charred grass had been revealed.
As they waited, they formed a grim tableau: Allystaire watching with arms folded over his chest, the village men increasingly nervous and muttering amongst themselves, Ardent and Idgen Marte’s courser listlessly whickering and nosing for grass. Norbert made one trip after another until he had nearly filled the smaller cart.