The Dagger's Path Page 4

  Pain. Pain everywhere. He wanted to scream, but to fill his lungs with the air he’d need to cry out–that would hurt too much. His sight sparked with flashes of light. Everything doubled, then blurred. He couldn’t focus. His hearing rang with noise coming from inside his head.

  He faded in and out.

  Time passed.

  Briefly, he was aware of voices, of words shouted in the distance. But not his name, not his father’s voice. Pain swelled. He moaned. He heard screams, screams that rent his soul. Then, for a long time, he wasn’t there at all, but somewhere else, bleak and dark.

  He emerged from the blackness, clawing his way back inch by inch.

  The wind had picked up and now gusted through the trees over his head. Close by, damp leaves and soil; the sap smell of a broken branch. Further away, a whiff of sweat and unwashed skin, smoke of a fire, horse manure.

  Sweet pickles, I hurt…

  A lot.

  Da, please come back soon…

  No. Not Da. Da had thrown him away.

  Why…?

  His tears fell without sound.

  When the black returned, he welcomed it, let it swallow him whole. It was easier that way.

  Gerelda Brantheld cursed herself for taking the shortest route over the hills between Twite and Sistia. The track was rough, and by the look of it, Needlewhin Pass was still a long way further up. She had to walk her horse because the trail was so fobbing steep. Worse, judging from the mud and ruts, she was following close behind a large troop of horsemen and pack animals also travelling upwards. Traders, she assumed. They’d certainly churned up the ground.

  Serves you right for listening to that whey-faced woodcutter outside of Twite. Fellow had said the path was good. He’d lied. She’d been so anxious to finish the tasks the Pontifect had sent her to do, so keen to return to Vavala as quickly as possible, that she’d been prepared to make the climb. She ought to have guessed it would be a mistake; what was the expression? “Better the horror you know than the outlandish that lies in wait.” She snorted at her own unease.

  The forest was so thick that on her first night out she’d ended up having to call it a day even before the sun was fully set. And now that she was on her way again in the morning, the track was wet and slippery, her horse slow and unhappy and she’d barely slept. This reeky forest had spooked her all night, and she was normally as unimaginative as a log.

  Pox on’t! Fritillary Reedling, the things I do for you…

  As she plodded on leading her mount, she let her idle thoughts drift to Saker Rampion. Strange how often she’d brought him to mind since that day they’d bumped into one another in the Shenat Hills. She’d heard about his subsequent nullification, and later still, Pontifect Fritillary Reedling had informed her that he’d managed to survive it.

  Gerelda had laughed, unsurprised.

  Of course he’d survived. He might have been a rattle-brained idiot on occasion, but he would never be an easy man to kill. They hadn’t met again since then, and she felt a pang of regret. She enjoyed his company and yes, if she was honest, she’d enjoyed renewing their bedroom intimacy. He’d learned a lot since their student days.

  She smiled at the memory. We really should try to see each other more often. We should plan it, not leave it up to chance. It would be good to talk to him about all the worrying things she’d been seeing and hearing. He always listens, she thought, that’s why. He listens carefully. I wonder what he’s up to now? I’ll have to ask Fritillary…

  Leading her mount, she rounded a bend in the path–and stopped dead. In the middle of the track was a mound of bloodied bones and skin. A fresh kill, by the look of it. Her mount laid his ears back and snorted as it caught the whiff of blood.

  What traveller left a mess like that in the middle of the track? Loutish bastards.

  She calmed her mare and tied it to the nearest tree, then walked on to take a close look. There was no one in sight, thanks be, but by the look of it, there had been a string of campfires burning along the trail the night before, where men had roasted meat and feasted. If this had been a trader’s horse train, it had been a large one.

  Crouching on her heels beside what was left of the kill, she examined the animal–or animals–they had butchered. She’d expected to find the remains of a deer, or maybe a goat they’d brought with them; instead she found the head, tail, legs and skin of a donkey.

  Beggar me speechless, someone ate a donkey? Besides being as tough as a sun-dried fish, any beast of burden was usually worth more alive than eaten. Maybe it had broken a leg.

  She glanced around, still puzzled. There was evidence of too many people. Too many fires: one every twenty paces or so along the track. Each one surrounded by the remains of their meal. She was misliking this more and more. A merchant’s pack-train should have a lot of linked pack animals, but not all that many hands to look after them. These mountains were not particularly lawless; traders didn’t need more than a couple of armed guards, if that. So what the rattling pox was going on?

  Guessing that most of the fires had been built for warmth during the night, she looked closely at the largest, the one where most of the roasting had taken place. And was shocked, shaken to her core. A disembodied foot, hacked off at the ankle and still wearing a leather red-tongued boot, lay off to one side. And there, cast away into the ashes of the fire: that was a human legbone. She picked up a stick and poked it, rolling it over until she was certain she was right, only to reveal something worse. The cooked flesh had been hacked away from the bone with a knife.

  Her knees buckled, almost failing to hold her upright.

  Va help us all, they slaughtered and ate a man!

  Her gaze swept the trees on either side of the trail, her imagination–the one she’d once been so sure she didn’t have–supplying her with a stream of possibilities. She was surrounded. They were there, in amongst the trees, laughing at her. Waiting for her to snap with fear, waiting for her to run so they could give chase. The fox after the rabbit, and she was the rabbit. They’d let her think she was escaping, only to catch her just when she thought she was safe.

  Come on, this is not you, Gerelda, milk-livered and as scared as a moldwarp in its burrow.

  She took a deep breath. There was no one there. The camp had been abandoned much earlier that morning, and the men had proceeded on their journey up towards the pass. But who were they? Not traders, she was sure of that now.

  Hunting for clues, she scoured the campsite. She found the dead man’s other foot, still clad in its boot, and more sickening evidence that he’d been eaten. Taking a calming breath, she forced herself to search for a clue to his identity. The saddle packs, probably for use with the donkey, had been thoroughly searched and the belongings scattered. Doubtless the murderers had taken the valuables, but a broken pen, a spilt packet of ink powder, some poor-quality parchment and a broken portable desk-board told her the owner had been an itinerant scribe of some sort.

  As she rifled through what had been left muddied and torn on the ground, she found clothes for a much younger lad. Someone of perhaps eleven or twelve. She sat back on her heels, feeling ill.

  A child. A lad. Eaten as well? Sweet cankers, not that.

  Swallowing bile, she hunted again through the bones and ashes and charcoal looking for any sign that more than one person had died there, but there was nothing. No sign of a lad among the debris. Perhaps the scribe had bought clothing to give to his son, waiting safe in a village somewhere. There was no way to know.

  She examined footprints, counted the number of different boot-sole patterns, looked for where they’d hitched their mounts. She discovered a number of puzzling round marks on the soft soil near the base of a tree. She counted the remains of ten fires; evidence of approximately ten men per fire. Units of ten: one hundred men altogether. That had the feel of a tight organisation: royal guards, or an army contingent. Those round marks? Made by the butt-ends of staves leant against the tree trunk. No, not staves: lances. These me
n were a troop of lancers.

  But when had the King’s army ever turned to eating travellers? The idea was ridiculous.

  So who were they?

  One hundred men, many of them mounted, about two hours ahead of her, heading up towards the mountainous border country; men who didn’t baulk at killing and eating other men. Ahead of them, but still on the Ardronese side, a single shrine, hardly enough to interest them as a destination to pillage. Beyond that, the pass and the vast forests of East Denva, dotted with the occasional mine or quarry.

  She shivered, forced herself to walk, not run, back to her horse. A feeling of dread was wrapping itself around her, reshaping her calm into abject terror. Va-damn, was this some kind of perverse witchery?

  No, never that. Sorcery. The thing that people laughed into nonexistence, the same way folk poked fun at myths, or at tales of elves and sprites told to children. She’d never believed in such things.

  Now…?

  Now, she was not so certain.

  Her fright was telling her to turn around, to go back to the safety of Twite, but rattle-brained terrors had no business trying to rule her head! So… so she would follow these men without ever letting them see her, and once she could pass them without them knowing, she would ride on to Sistia. There she would attend to some Va-faith legal matters the Pontifect had asked her to look into, after which she would ride like the wind for Vavala to tell Fritillary what she had seen.

  She didn’t like this, not one bit.

  She didn’t like the whispers, the rumours she’d heard, either. Wives who spoke of their husbands training as lancers “for when they were needed to defend Va-faith”; mothers who spoke of sons disappearing from the farm or the village; townsfolk who told of journeymen vanishing without trace, leaving the tools of their trade behind. Not many such folk, but a lad from a village here, a man from the farm there, a handful from a neighbouring town. She’d heard a cleric speak about those serving Va–not as clerics, but as soldiers.

  Fox, she thought. In Ardrone, anything to do with Va-faith was in the hands of Prime Valerian Fox. That man was as reeky as a barrel of rotting maggots. But, fiddle-me-witless, even he wouldn’t countenance eating human flesh, surely?

  Riding upwards, all her senses alert, Gerelda had never felt so vulnerable. She’d been in many tight spots over the years while working as the Pontifect’s legal investigator, proctor and agent. She’d known fear before, but never had she felt that she was drowning in terror as she was now, every nerve screaming at her to turn and flee, even as her more rational self was telling her there was little need to be so fearful. The horsemen were unlikely to be keeping much of a watch to the rear, not on this lonely track. Once she’d passed the fires, her horse was untroubled; she herself could neither hear nor smell anything tangible that was worrisome; she had no intention of challenging those ahead of her–so what was the problem? She concentrated on staying alert and watching the forest on either side for any signs of ambush.

  Her vigilance paid off, but not in the way she’d expected. A mile or two past the fires, she spotted a large pool of dark, congealed blood. Nearby, the broken branches of a bush at the edge of the track indicated someone had left the road. Curbing her anxiety, she dismounted to take a better look. A trail of broken twigs, crushed leaves, dislodged stones and scraped bark told her whoever it was had tumbled down the slope, skidding and sliding and flailing as they went.

  She squatted, studying the quantity of blood. There was enough to tell her someone had died there. A man had been slaughtered, probably by sentries positioned along the track to guard the camp. His body had been later taken to the fires to be dismembered and cooked. But that wouldn’t explain the trail of broken vegetation. No, someone must have escaped the horror on the track.

  The clothing that belonged to a lad…

  Frowning, she stared into the forest. No movement, no sound. The slope was too steep and wooded for a horse. She would have to leave it on the track, along with her packs, if she wanted to investigate. Given all she had seen, that would be foolhardy. Better to mind her own business. She climbed back into the saddle.

  They killed a scribe. They ate him. His legless feet were still in their boots… What if there really had been a boy and he was out there somewhere, alone?

  Sweet Va, she so hated not knowing the facts.

  Sighing, she dismounted again, tied up her horse and began to slither down the slope, following the trail of broken twigs and scuff marks. The hillside was so steep she had to anchor herself on saplings and bushes, not letting go until she’d singled out another lower down to grab. Further below, she was grateful for her caution: the person she was following had obviously sailed over a steep drop. She peered over the edge, but couldn’t see anyone. The trail of broken bushes and crushed leaves continued downwards. She contemplated jumping, but decided that would be to risk a broken leg. Instead, she scrambled sideways looking for a way around the drop.

  Blistering pox, it’ll take me an hour to get up that slope again, it’s so fobbing steep. More like a bleeding cliff.

  Once she had circled around the steep section, she worked her way back until she’d picked up the trail again. A few paces deeper into the undergrowth, she found him. Scratched and gouged, he’d started to climb back up to the track. She could see the trail he’d left behind. He was crawling, his face bruised and swollen, his clothing ripped, a shoe missing. He looked broken, exhausted, terrified. He was covered in mud, and there was plenty of blood mixed in with the filth.

  Her heart sank. Oh, what in the name of the Flow am I going to do with him? Aloud, she said, “Don’t be frightened. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “My da,” he said. “Where’s my da?”

  Fiddle me witless, what the pickle do I say? “Was he wearing a pair of boots with tongues of red leather?”

  He was silent, but his eyes widened.

  “Did you have a donkey?”

  He stared at her, his lip trembling, then nodded dumbly. One arm clutched the other arm tight to his chest. Broken collarbone, at a guess.

  He nodded.

  “Then I’m sorry, lad. No easy way to say this. He’s dead.”

  He stared at her, a long bewildered stare. “Tucker’s dead? The donkey?”

  “Yes. And the man who wore boots with red leather tongues. Him too.”

  There was a long silence. When he did speak, he sounded more puzzled than believing. “Da threw me down the slope. Why did he do that?”

  “To save your life, I would think,” she said. “There were armed men, a troop of them. They killed your father and your donkey.”

  Nothing on his face told her he’d understood. Instead, his legs buckled. She caught him just before he hit the ground.

  4

  In Another Man’s Boots

  It took Gerelda three hours to haul the lad back to the track. Concussed, he drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes able to clamber up with her help, but mostly just a dead weight. At least when he wasn’t awake he wasn’t in pain.

  Once back on the trail, she was glad to see him sink into oblivion as she stripped off what was left of his clothing and washed his scratches and scrapes as best she could with water from her water skin. She applied an unguent to the worst cuts, then dressed him in culottes and a shirt of her own. His collarbone was definitely broken, so she fashioned a sling for that arm, tearing up the only skirt in her pack. She hated skirts anyway.

  Having made him as comfortable as possible in her own bedroll on the ground, she squatted beside him. His colouring–a thick shock of dark, unkempt hair, dark eyes and skin a mite more tan than most–told her he had Shenat origins. He was thin and wiry, probably not more than twelve years old. His accent was more that of East Denva than of Ardrone.

  Well, she couldn’t babysit a child. She had a job to do.

  She should just leave him there and ride away. If he was the son of a scribe or petition writer, he ought to be able to read and write. She could leave him a
note telling him to walk on down into the farming valley of Twite. He’d be there in a day or two. Well, maybe three, if he was slow, and he would be. She guessed that was where he and his father had been headed anyway; it seemed likely that they had been coming down into the valley when they’d met the men travelling upwards.

  His eyes sprang open as though he’d heard her thoughts. “Don’t be leaving me,” he whispered.

  She hedged. “Not yet a while. But I’m not going your way. You were going down towards the Twite road, weren’t you?”

  He went to nod, winced and said instead, “Yes. We’ve been in East Denva.” He frowned. “Did you… did you say my da was… dead?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so.” She squatted beside him. “I found his body a short way further down the track. And the donkey too. Sorry. They were killed by whomever it was you met on the way.”

  Fig on’t, if he goes back down the road, he’ll find the remains. She’d not spared the time to bury what was left of the man, and it wasn’t a sight a lad of his age should see.

  He struggled to sit up, biting his lip to stop himself crying out. “Who killed him? I didn’t see anybody! And why would they do that anyways? My da wouldn’t have hurt anybody. Never even carried a weapon, him. Always said folk don’t hurt scribes.” He eyed her sword and the fear in his eyes deepened. “Why’ve you got one? Never seen a woman wear a sword afore.” He looked around, frantic. “Da? Da!”

  She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not lying, lad. At a guess, those men didn’t want anyone to know who they were and where they were headed. Your father–and you–were in the way. Simple as that. Wrong place at the wrong time.”

  He shook his head violently, which made him dry retch. When he ceased his fruitless heaving, he whispered in protest, “Da writes petitions. He drafts contracts and such. Folk don’t hurt us none. I never saw anybody!”