by Paul Hoffman
“Dump her in the river.”
So that’s what they did and that was the end of Jennifer Plunkett.
That evening the two of them were eating inside the lodge to be on the safe side and discussing what to do about the day’s strange events.
“The thing is,” said IdrisPukke, “what can we do? If whoever killed that young woman wanted to do the same to you, they would already have done it. Or they could do it tomorrow.”
“You said it stinks.”
“It’s entirely possible that Vipond sent someone to keep an eye on us, even if it was for his own reasons. It is also possible that one of the Mond you humiliated so publicly paid someone to encoffin you. They have the money and the bile. It looked like the woman was coming to attack you: she had a knife in her hand. This man stopped her and then cleared off. Those are just facts. They’re obviously not all the facts, and subsequent discoveries may make us come to see those facts that we have in an entirely different light. But until then, speculation is just that. Stay here or go somewhere else—we remain entirely vulnerable to anyone with a good aim and malice or a reward in their heart. We assume what the facts we know tell us because we might just as well do so. Have you any alternative?”
“No.”
“There we are, then.”
Realizing there wasn’t much point in skulking inside, Cale went outside for a smoke. He could see the sense of IdrisPukke’s fatalism, but it wasn’t, after all, his fate that was the one in question. As IdrisPukke was always saying himself, every philosopher can stand the tooth-ache except for the one who has it. Preoccupied, he barely registered there was a sleek pigeon walking up and down the terrace table eating stale bread crumbs.
“Don’t move,” said IdrisPukke softly from just behind him, and holding out a piece of bread he slowly approached the bird and began feeding it, carefully putting his hand around its body and then grasping it tightly. Turning the pigeon over, IdrisPukke began removing a small metal tube attached to one of its legs. Cale looked on, utterly bemused.
“It’s a messenger pigeon,” said IdrisPukke. “Sent by Vipond. Here, hold it.” He handed Cale the bird and unscrewed the tube, removed a piece of rice paper and began reading. As he did so his face became grim.
“A troop of Redeemers has taken Arbell Swan-Neck.”
Cale’s face reddened in astonishment and confusion.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t say. The point is that she was staying at Lake Constanz. It’s about fifty miles from here. The quickest route back to the Sanctuary is through the Cortina pass—that’s about eighty miles north of here. If that’s the way they’re going, we have to find them and get word to the troops Vipond is sending behind us.” He looked worried and confused. “This doesn’t make any sense. It’s a declaration of war. Why would the Redeemers do this?”
“I don’t know. But there’s a reason. This wouldn’t have happened without Bosco’s nod. And Bosco knows what he’s doing.”
“Well, there’s no moon, so they can’t travel at night, and neither can we. We’ll pack now, get some sleep and start at dawn.” He drew in a deep breath. “Though God knows we’ve got little chance of catching them.”
21
The next day IdrisPukke would not start until it was light enough to see clearly. Cale argued it was necessary to take the risk, but IdrisPukke would not budge.
“If one of these horses goes lame blundering about in the dark, we’re stuck.”
Cale realized he was right, but he was desperate to be on the move and groaned in dismissive irritation. IdrisPukke ignored him for a further twenty minutes and then they were on their way.
For the next two days they stopped only to rest the horses and eat. Cale continually urged IdrisPukke to go faster. IdrisPukke calmly insisted that the horses, and he himself, could not take it even if Cale could. All four of them needed to catch the Redeemers, if indeed they were to be caught. And they had to have one of the horses at least in a fit state to ride quickly back to the Materazzi to give the information about numbers and direction.
“You don’t seem worried about the girl,” said Cale.
“It’s precisely because I am worried that we’re doing this my way—because I’m right. Besides, what’s Arbell Swan-Neck to you?”
“Nothing at all. But if I can help to stop the Redeemers, then the Marshal will have a good reason to feel more generous to me than he does. I have friends in Memphis who are hostages, too.”
“I didn’t think you had any friends—I thought it was just circumstances that brought you together.”
“I saved their lives—I’d have thought that was pretty friendly.”
“Oh,” said IdrisPukke. “I thought you were a reluctant hero in all of this.”
“So I was.”
“So what are you, then, Master Cale, noble by calling or merely by circumstance?”
“I’m not noble at all.”
“So you say. But I wonder if there isn’t an incipient hero growing in there somewhere.”
“What does ‘incipient’ mean?”
“Something beginning to appear, something beginning to exist.” Cale laughed, but not pleasantly.
“If that’s what you think, let’s hope you aren’t in the position where you’re going to find out.”
And with this, IdrisPukke decided to be quiet.
On the second day, they descended onto the main road to the Cortina pass. It wasn’t much of a road.
“No one uses it these days and they haven’t for sixty years—not since the Redeemers shut the borders.”
“How far to the Sanctuary from the pass?” asked Cale.
“You don’t know?”
“The Redeemers didn’t leave maps lying around—nothing to make it easier for us to escape. Until a few months ago I used to think Memphis was thousands of miles away.”
Had IdrisPukke not been distracted by a beautiful vermilion and gold dragonfly, he would have seen a liar’s expression on Cale’s face, just in the moment he thinks he’s given himself away. “I mean,” added Cale, “before I came here and realized it wasn’t.” Now IdrisPukke noticed the awkward tone.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter.”
“If you say so.”
Terrified that he had revealed something he was very anxious not to reveal, Cale stayed wrapped in alarmed silence for the next ten minutes. When IdrisPukke next spoke, it was as if he had forgotten the whole thing—which indeed he had.
“The Sanctuary is a good two hundred miles from the pass—but they don’t need to get that far. There’s a garrison twenty miles from the border—Martyr Town.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Well, it’s not so big, but its walls are thick. It would need an army to take it.”
“What then?”
“Nothing. Materazzi adores the girl. He’ll give them what they want.”
“How do you know they want something?”
“It doesn’t make sense otherwise.”
“What makes sense to you and what makes sense to the Redeemers is a white horse of a different color.”
“So, you’ve come up with an idea—I mean about what they’re doing?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you?”
Cale laughed. “The Redeemers are a bunch of bastards—but do you really think they’d start a war with Memphis over three kids and a fat girl?”
IdrisPukke grunted. “Not if you put it like that. On the other hand, you’ve been lying to me for the past two months.”
“And who are you to be demanding the truth?”
“The best friend you’ve got.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes—as it happens. So there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
“No.” And that was that.
Twenty minutes later they came across the remains of a fire.
“What do you think?” asked Cale, as IdrisPukke sifted
the remains of the ashes through his fingers.
“Still hot. A few hours, that’s all.” He nodded at the flattened grass and lightly scuffed earth. “How many?”
Cale sighed. “Probably not less than ten—not more than twenty. Sorry, I’m not much good at this kind of thing.”
“Neither am I.” He looked around, thoughtful and uncertain.
“I think one of us should ride back and tell the Materazzi what the score is.”
“Why? Will it make them ride quicker? And even if it does, what are they going to do when they get here? Any kind of pitched battle and the Redeemers will kill her. They won’t surrender, I can tell you that.”
IdrisPukke sighed. “So what are you suggesting?”
“Catch them up, stay out of sight. Once we know the notch-up, we can work out what to do. Bring in a small number of Materazzi and do it quietly. That’s what I think until we catch them up. Things might be different then.”
IdrisPukke sniffed and spat on the ground.
“All right. You know them best.”
Five hours later, as it was getting dark, Cale and IdrisPukke crept toward the top of a small hill just before the entrance of the Cortina pass—a huge cleft in the granite mountain that marked out the northern border between the Redeemers and the Materazzi.
The hill overlooked a depression about twenty feet deep and eighty yards long in which they could see six Redeemers preparing camp. In the middle of the group sat Arbell Materazzi, presumably tied because she did not move once while they watched. After five minutes the two of them drew back to a clump of bushes about two hundred yards away.
“Just in case you were wondering why there are only six, there’ll be another four guarding the rim at least,” said Cale. “They’ll have sent a rider ahead to the garrison to meet them on the other side.”
“I’ll ride back and try and get the Materazzi,” said IdrisPukke.
“What for?”
“If they’re close, they’ll take the risk of riding in the dark. Even if the Materazzi lose half the horses on the way, there are only a dozen Redeemers at most.”
“And if you aren’t here and deployed before dawn, they’ll be into the pass and out of reach. And even if they’re not—an attack in daylight means the girl is dead. We stop them before they leave or not at all.”
“There are only two of us,” pointed out IdrisPukke.
“Yes,” replied Cale. “But one of the two of us is me.”
“It’s suicide.”
“If it was suicide, I wouldn’t do it.”
“Then why are you?”
Cale shrugged. “If I rescue the girl then His Enormity, the Marshal will be undyingly grateful. Grateful enough to give me money—a lot of money—and safe passage.”
“Where to?”
“Somewhere it’s warm, the food is good, and as far away from the Redeemers as you can get without falling off the edge of the world.”
“And your friends?”
“Friends? Oh, they can come too. Why not?”
“The risk is too great. Better let her be a hostage, and Materazzi can buy her out with whatever it is the Redeemers want.”
“What makes you so sure she’s a hostage?” said Cale, his voice cold and irritable. IdrisPukke looked at him.
“So—now perhaps we get the truth.”
“The truth is that you think the Redeemers are like you—nastier, madder—but that what you want and they want, well, it’s the same underneath. But it isn’t.” He sighed. “It’s not that I understand them, because I don’t. I thought I did until what happened before I killed that shit-bag Picarbo—the Redeemer. I told you that I did it to stop him, you know, raking her.”
“Raping.”
Cale reddened, hating to be corrected. “Whatever it’s called doesn’t matter—that’s not what he was doing. He was cutting her up.” Then he told IdrisPukke exactly what happened that night.
“My God!” said an appalled IdrisPukke when he’d finished. “Why?”
“No idea. That’s what I meant when I said I’d stopped thinking I knew what was going on in their nasty little minds.”
“Why would they do that to Arbell Materazzi?”
“I told you, I don’t know. Maybe they want to see what a Materazzi woman is like, you know . . .” He paused, awkward for once. “Inside. I don’t know. But it doesn’t make sense that they want her for money. That isn’t their way.”
“It makes even more sense if they want you back.”
Cale gasped, almost laughing.
“They’d like to make an instance of me—a bonfire with all the trimmings. And I don’t deny they’d go to extreme lengths to do it—but starting a war with the Materazzi over an acolyte? Not in a thousand years.” He smiled, grim. “I guess the same thought has crossed the Marshal’s mind. I’m prepared to bet the four of us would be on our way to the Sanctuary in two shakes of a lamb’s tail just as a gesture of his goodwill. Don’t you think so?”
IdrisPukke did not reply, because that was exactly what he’d been thinking. Both were silent for a couple of minutes.
“It is a risk. But it can be done,” said Cale. “She’s nothing to me,” he lied. “I wouldn’t throw my life away for some spoiled Materazzi brat. If the Redeemers take her, I’ve got everything to lose. If we get her back, everything to gain. You too, just as much as me. All you have to do is cover me. Even if I fail you’ve got a better than even chance of getting away. And nobody, let’s face it, is going to thank you if they find out you caught up with her and let them go without doing anything.”
IdrisPukke smiled. “The unfairness of life—always the best argument. Very well. Tell me your plan.”
“There were three words Bosco beat into me nearly every day of my life—surprise, violence, momentum. Now he’s going to wish he hadn’t.” Cale drew a circle in the dead pine needles that covered the forest floor.
“There’ll be four guards around the circle—east, west, south, north. There’s no moon tonight, so we can’t move until first light. That’s when you’ll have to kill the guard at the west—as soon as you can make him out. Then I’ll take the south guard. You have to hold the west guard’s position because it’s the only one where it’s possible to get in a shot behind the rock the girl is next to. That’s where I’m going to take her as soon as I cut her free. Do you know any birdcalls?”
“I can do an owl,” said IdrisPukke doubtfully. “But there aren’t any owls in this part of the world.”
“The Redeemers probably don’t know that.” Cale paused. “What does an owl sound like?”
IdrisPukke gave him a demonstration. “What if the guard makes a noise while I’m trying to kill him?”
“Trying?” said Cale, appalled. “There won’t be any trying. I don’t want to hear anything about doing your best. Bungle it and I’m dead. Understand?”
IdrisPukke looked at Cale, piqued. “Don’t worry about me, boy.” “Well, I do worry. So once I hear your signal, I’ll kill the south guard. I’ll need a minute to put on his cassock. Then I’ll just walk into the camp as quietly as I can. Once the remaining guards work out what’s happening . . .”
“Why don’t we kill all the lookouts first?”
“There’s no chance you’ll be able to crawl around here for long without giving yourself away. This is the safest it’s going to be. They’ll be confused and I’ll look just like the others in camp. It’ll still be near dark. If you do your job properly, one way or the other, it isn’t going to take long.”
“So what do I do then?”
“You won’t see where the lookouts are on the north and east unless they start shooting—if they do, then you shoot back—keep their heads down. I’ll take the girl behind the rock here. They can’t get us from anywhere but directly above.” Cale smiled. “That’s when this gets tricky. You have to stop them getting directly above and behind us until I can make a run for it. She’ll be safe there as long as you can keep them from taking your position. Once
I’m over the lip, it’s two against two.”
“That’s forty yards in the open and up a steep climb for the last fifteen. If they’re any good, I don’t think much of your chances.”
“They’ll be good.”
“Anyway, I can’t see why I’m worrying about a suicidal dash—after all, you’ve got to kill six armed men single-handed first. This whole idea is ridiculous. We should wait for the Materazzi.”
“They’ll kill her before the Materazzi get to her. This is the only chance she has. Depend on it—I can do this quicker than I can tell you about it. They won’t expect it so close to dawn, and they won’t be able to tell me from one of their own in the dark. Once they’ve realized it’s an attack, they’ll be expecting Materazzi all over the place, they’re not going to be expecting anything like this.”
“Because it’s too stupid to believe.”
“It’s my life here, not yours.”
“And the girl’s.”
“The girl is worth something only if we’re the ones who save her. Without this, you descend to a kind of nothing—or worse. The choice is simple enough, I’d say.”
Six hours later IdrisPukke was standing over the body of the dead west guard.
In times gone by IdrisPukke had commanded numerous battles in which many thousands had died. But it had been a long time since he had killed a man face-to-face. He stood for a moment looking down at the glassy eyes and open mouth, lips pulled back over his teeth, and he could feel his whole body begin to shake.
As a result, his effort at impersonating an owl stuck in his throat and might have alarmed anyone who ever heard one before. But within less than a minute he could just make out the figure of Cale moving slowly down the slope, being careful not to make a noise or, if he was seen by the remaining two guards, to be in any kind of a hurry.
A profound dread began to fill IdrisPukke as he watched what, after all, was no more than a boy walk easily up to the six sleeping men and begin.
He had not been sure what to expect, but it was nothing like this. Cale drew his shortsword and in one movement stabbed downward at the first sleeping figure; the man neither moved nor cried out. Still unhurried, Cale moved on to the second man. Again the powerful downward strike and the lack of a cry. As he moved, the third Redeemer began to stir and even raised his head. Another strike—if he called out, IdrisPukke could not hear. Cale moved to the fourth man, who now sat upright and sleepily gazed at Cale, puzzled but not afraid. A downward jab into his throat and he fell back with a cry, strangled but loud.