The Dagger's Path Read online

Herbrobert looked over the soldier’s shoulder and yelled, “Hey, you up there behind the desk! Tell your men to let me through, in the name of Va. If you are the leader of this lot, I want to talk to you!”

  “I’m going with you,” she said in his ear.

  “Then sheathe that confounded sword of yours. I’m a man of peace.”

  She hesitated, then did as he asked.

  The man at the desk stood up and stared at them before replying. “Let the cleric through,” he said, nodding to his men.

  She grabbed Herbrobert firmly by the arm, and they slipped between two foot soldiers. One of them made a grab at her and she neatly elbowed him in the midriff. By the time he’d recovered, she and Herbrobert were already standing at the desk.

  “I’m the town cleric. Cranesbill. Who are you?”

  “Names are of no import to us,” the man replied. “We are all agents of Va.”

  Herbrobert inclined his head. “I am that, certainly. But how are you serving Va? You’re bribing young men to leave their families and their trades to become fighting men, when there is no war to fight.”

  “There is always a war to be fought against the enemies of Va the Creator. These men are all here by choice. There is no coercion, no bribery.” He turned to address the recruits. “Men! If there is any one among you who wishes to turn his back on Va and return to the bosom of his family with his gold coin, let him step forward now without fear!”

  No one moved, yet Gerelda felt a blow beneath her breastbone, the concussion radiating outwards like ripples in water. No one had touched her, the blow wasn’t real, yet the ripples momentarily stopped her heart, leaving her hands shaking and her brow beaded with sweat.

  He did that. His voice did that.

  By the light of a torch’s flickering flame, she studied his face. His gaunt features were as cold and hard as carved ice. At first she’d thought he must have been in his mid-thirties, but with a closer look she wondered if that estimation might not have been at least ten years too high. His cheeks were hollow; his eyes lacked life. No emotion, nothing to soften him, nothing that spoke of passion. She suspected all that had made him look older than he really was. He had not even glanced at her.

  “For whom do you fight?” the man asked the recruits. His voice was loud, but she still heard no passionate conviction there.

  “For Va!” they yelled in unison.

  “Who will you fight?”

  “Primordials!”

  “What will you fight?”

  “Shenat superstition!”

  Theatre, she thought. Staged performance from an actor mouthing lines.

  The man turned back to her and Herbrobert. “You see? Go away, you Shenat charlatan. These men are mine now and your time is done. Your world is ending. Your heresy is about to be exposed–and eliminated.”

  No hatred, no joy, no triumph, just cold statement of fact.

  He looks… ill. It’s not natural for anyone to be so gaunt. I wish I had Peregrine with me now. He would know who here has the smudge.

  Herbrobert nudged her arm. “Taminy’s there,” he muttered.

  She glanced at him, and guessed what he wanted. She turned her attention back to the man. “Whom do you serve in this earthly realm?” she asked, eyebrow quirked. “Why is there no insignia on your coats? Are you ashamed of your affiliations?”

  He turned to her then, his smile cold. “When right is on your side, there’s no need of symbols.”

  She was aware that Herbrobert had stepped away from her side, but didn’t look to see where he was going. “Do you follow the dictates of the Ardronese Prime, perhaps?”

  She expected him to ridicule the notion. Instead, something in his eyes flickered. She cursed the lack of good light.

  He said, “Every warren of rabbits has a fox den near. Now get out of here. I have more gold coins to dispense.”

  Behind her, Herbrobert was arguing with one of the younger recruits. When the lad raised his voice, she heard the cleric call him Taminy.

  The recruiter snorted. “Fool. Nothing the cleric says will make any difference now.”

  “I’m off to kill them no good witches in the Shenat Hills,” the lad shouted at Herbrobert, shaking off the cleric’s hold on his arm. “Evil folk who would turn us towards shrines and trees and weeds with their wicked magic.”

  Witches? An old insult from days long gone, a stupidity not often used. Having a witchery didn’t make someone an ugly crone of fairy tales, muttering spells by the full moon.

  The recruiter made a gesture to some of the soldiers. “Get these two interlopers out of here,” he said.

  Faced with a drawn sword, Gerelda shrugged and left. A moment later Herbrobert, still protesting, was pushed out through the ring of armed men. Giving vent to several muttered curses not usually uttered by clerics, he went to join the townsfolk, while Gerelda returned to the house to tell Rock Speedwell what had happened.

  “Is there no town authority who can challenge these men?” she asked him, after she’d related what had happened.

  “On what grounds?” he asked. “They aren’t forcing anyone to do anything.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, all this will result in a resurgence of Primordials in reaction. You know that lot–those who say Va is just a made-up figure and we should all go back to the oldest of Shenat beliefs. There’s going to be trouble unless this is nipped in the bud. Soon. That’s what we want you to tell the Pontifect.”

  “How do you stop folk from believing beef-witted fustian? How can you punish people for not believing what you believe?” Va-damn, I’m glad I’m not Fritillary Reedling! “That recruiter, do you know anything about him?”

  He shook his head, wheezing.

  “I asked him if he followed Prime Valerian Fox. He made an odd remark about there’s always been a fox den near every rabbit warren. He might have just been mocking me by agreeing he was indeed a predator in search of prey. Or he could have been saying that the Fox family had lots of members.”

  “Of which he was one?” His wheezing increased. “Perfectly possible. The Foxes have estates everywhere. I sometimes visit my cousin over in the Marches along the border with Valance, and there’s one near him. Huge place, with its own forest. Valerian Fox has been there once or twice in my cousin’s lifetime. The family paid to have a chapel built in the village recently, I believe. Oh, and they’ve always paid the upkeep on the river ferry and the ferryman’s salary, as well as that of a local roadman and his sons to keep the road from the village to the ferry well-maintained.”

  “Well-liked then, are they?”

  He frowned. “That’s the odd thing. My cousin says the Fox household keeps to itself. Doesn’t mix with the villagers, doesn’t disturb them, doesn’t employ them. Big wall all the way around the outside. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that the villagers at the very least would be indifferent. But they aren’t that. They’re nervous. Even my level-headed cousin. When I asked him why, he just shrugged and told me to go and see for myself. So I did. I climbed a tree and looked over the wall.”

  “And?”

  “I was as scared as a dragonfly stuck on a frog’s tongue. Don’t ask me why; I’ve no idea. I could see the house and it was a lovely old building, surrounded by gardens and stables and so forth. Nothing unusual. I scrambled down that tree and hared off home. Mind you, that was years ago. I was only twenty or so at the time. But I tell you something, every time I’ve been back there, I’ve never had the slightest inclination to take another look.”

  She stirred uncomfortably. The tale reminded her of a fairy tale told to her when she was a child. A castle, enchanted by a wicked sorcerer. Anyone who entered never came out.

  Dread… I’ve felt that lately too.

  “Did you have any problems getting here from Twite?” Rock asked when she was silent. “Forgive me for asking, but you did seem a little worn when you arrived.”

  “Trouble? You might call it that.” She told him all that had happened, and ended the tale by saying, “I lef
t Peregrine in good hands. Well, I washed my hands of him might be a more honest way of putting it. He’s with the shrine keeper in Needlewhin Pass.”

  “And you saw no more of the lancers?”

  “I saw their tracks. They headed off along the high trail through the border country. I came down to Needlewhin.”

  He pondered that. “They could have been heading towards Valance, or even Muntdorn, then.”

  “Or just trying to hide themselves in the rugged hills of East Denva. What’s that route like?”

  “Poorly frequented. Winds its way through dense forest, an advantage to people who don’t want to be seen. Gerelda, I hope you’re heading towards Vavala on the morrow, because the Pontifect needs to know all this.”

  She nodded. “She will.”

  10

  The Unlikely Merger

  There was no easy route from Needlewhin to Vavala. Gerelda was on the wrong side of the Falvale River at a time when melting snows made the fords impassable and ferries closed operations.

  “There’s a bridge at the Valance border,” Herbrobert told her the following morning, “and the mule track through the hill forests will get you there.”

  “Lonely though,” Rock said. “Worse, you could run into your lancers again.”

  “No option. I’m in a hurry.”

  He started wheezing, and she exchanged a glance with Herbrobert over his head.

  “Time we saw the healer again,” Herbrobert said, but they all knew Rock’s days were numbered. He was still gasping for breath when she rode off a little later.

  By the evening of the third day, she knew she’d made a mistake. The weather had turned wet, the landscape was as miserable as dishwater, and a raging forest stream made a ford impassable. As the sun set, she tethered her horse close by and turned in for the night under her oil-cloth cover. When the rain slackened, she drifted off to sleep to the sound of trickling water.

  A cloudburst woke her several hours later, followed by a jolt of thunder and a crack of lightning that left her temporarily blinded. The gelding whinnied in fear. She scrambled out of her shelter into a shock of cold rain. As she reached out a hand to seize the horse’s halter, the darkness vanished into blinding brilliance. A violent thwack of thunder and the splintering of the bough of a tree came together as one mind-shattering assault on her ears.

  Slammed to the ground, air punched from her chest, every bone jolted, blinded, breathless, deafened… She whooped in agony, dragged breath into her lungs. The air around her smelled, the tang of it sharp in her nose. She thought, I’m dead.

  When she finally sat up, wet, dirty and gasping, she wasn’t sure what had happened. Her hearing and vision straggled back as her breath steadied. The next lightning strike was more distant. Clambering to her feet, she steadied herself against the sodden bark of a tree and looked around. She was standing amongst a mess of broken branches.

  Another flash of lightning illuminated the area, and she realised the gelding had vanished.

  When the day dawned, she was wet and cold and there was no sign of her horse. After examining her cuts and bruises, she looked for hoofmarks, but the overnight rain had washed away all traces. No amount of whistling, calling or searching turned up any sign of the gelding, and by mid-afternoon, she admitted defeat. She’d lost Herbrobert’s horse.

  There was nothing left to do but walk on. A newly fallen tree provided a way for her to cross the river. She made a half-hearted attempt to be grateful for that, and for the certificate in her purse, signed by the Pontifect, which would enable the requisition of a mount and riding tackle from any cloister or chapel. She wouldn’t have to walk all the way to Vavala, just to the border settlements, but vex it, that was miles away.

  Another restless night in the forest, and she was on the move again at first light. When it started to rain once more, the track alternated between glutinously muddy, or as slick as ice. Her cloak flapped wetly around her ankles; water streamed from her hood and cape until the felted wool was a sodden burden. Head down, shoulders hunched against the driving rain, she fell into a rhythm of placing one foot in front of another in unthinking misery.

  Va-damn, but she was missing her mare–not just because it would not have bolted far; no, she just missed its company.

  She sighed. Getting sentimental, are you, Gerelda? Going to name your next mount Daffodil or Dandelion, perhaps?

  As the day wore on, unease pricked, until her insides ached with it. The trail was too narrow, too closed in for a mule track, although every now and then she did see a footprint or the mark of a horseshoe in the mire. She plodded on, unable to be sure what direction she was heading in, because the sky was uniformly grey.

  When someone yelled ahead of her, she was so sunk into grim acceptance of her cold discomfort that it was a moment before she stopped dead, jerking her head up to listen. The regular chonk-chonkchonk of an axe on wood reached her ears through the pattering of the rain. Woodcutters working in this weather? More than odd.

  All senses alert now, but feeling exposed on the track, she threaded her way through the trees towards the sounds. A horse neighed and was answered by another. The gusting wind snatched up disjointed words and delivered them in nonsense syllables. She pulled the hood from her head to hear better as the rain lessened, and was appalled to hear not just a couple of people ahead of her, but many. She dodged from trunk to trunk until she had a better view of the valley below.

  There were men and horses everywhere.

  She dragged in a deep calming breath. Don’t panic. You don’t know for certain who they are. They might be harmless.

  Pressed against a tree, half hidden by undergrowth, she watched. This wasn’t a makeshift camp set up for the night. These men had erected tents and bough shelters, built proper fire places of rocks and earth, cut and stacked firewood. She spotted lances stacked like sheaves for drying, glimpsed camp fires through the trees and horses staked out at intervals to forage. These men had been here too long to be the ones who’d killed Perie’s father. These were a different group of lancers, perhaps two hundred of them. All wore coats of a uniform dark grey, although their trousers were more varied in cut and more motley in colour.

  The path she had followed descended to a river, its flow too swift to cross without a bridge, a lack now being addressed. Horses were hauling cut logs; soldiers were wielding hammers and axes. A bridge was not only under construction, it was close to completion.

  Va-damn, she thought in sudden realisation. Somewhere back there, I left the main track. It would have had a bridge. She’d been misled in the rain, blindly following footprints and hoofprints. Their sentries, if they had spotted her at all, must have mistaken her sodden figure lugging her makeshift pack for one of their own wood gatherers bringing in fuel for the fire.

  Her gaze moved on, then snagged on something she hadn’t noticed at first. Two bodies lying near a fire, neither wearing a grey coat. One appeared to be missing a head.

  Oh, pox. Oh, blister it.

  Ordinary folk, she guessed: unfortunate men in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bodgers or hoopers, perhaps, collecting wood. Or hunters. Folk going about their normal business like Peregrine’s father, caught up in a larger conspiracy they hadn’t even known existed.

  Worse, these lancers could well be waiting for the arrival of the killers of the petition writer. If she turned back, she might just meet that second contingent of lancers face to face, and she knew what could happen then. There were those bodies down there to tell her.

  Hang you for a ninnyhead, your luck has really run out, Gerelda Brantheld. Now what are you going to do?

  That night Gerelda bedded down far enough away to think herself safe, and the next morning she followed the river downstream to find another way to cross. She had to admit defeat when the watercourse entered an area of gorges and high cliffs.

  Thoughts grim, she retraced her steps back past the lancers’ camp. She circled around outside the perimeter of sentries and rejoined the track
on the other side. At sunset, she settled down for another cold night huddled into a tight ball inside her bedroll.

  Sounds jerked her from a doze into alertness: horses, jingling harness, the occasional curse. Cautiously she raised her head to glimpse lights bobbing through the trees. She stayed motionless, watching. Men trudged in single file down the track towards the camp, each using a lance as a staff, most also leading a horse, some carrying lanterns. She began to count as they passed her.

  Stumbling with fatigue, pushing their horses hard, they blundered through the night. Around her, the forest still dripped and trickled with water, although the rain had stopped. Every now and then a quiet rustle reminded her there were other creatures abroad. A hedgepig, perhaps, or a moldwarp digging a burrow.

  The long line plodded on. She guessed they were the men who had killed Peregrine’s father, and rejoiced to see how exhausted they were. It had been a long hard haul via the high-country route they’d taken. Bad weather, too. They’d been sleeping rough and hunting for their meat. And the horses? Not much grazing for them, obviously.

  The last few men on foot were strung out, limping, weary. The clouds thinned a little, and moonlight made the night less grimly dark. By the time she was certain there were no more coming, she’d counted ninety-eight men and eighty-five horses, including pack animals strung together. There would soon be a crowd of tired, exhausted men mingling with the men in the camp ahead, probably strangers to one another. She gave a hard smile as she rolled up her bedding; she knew an opportunity when she saw one.

  Just as she was about to hoist her pack up on to her back, she thought she heard the soft whisper of a footfall somewhere in the darkness. Jumpy, spooked by her own fears, she stayed rooted to the spot, her gaze flicking from one movement to another–no matter that it was a leaf shivering or a patter of raindrops from a tree canopy.

  A little later she was certain there was someone else coming, a straggler whose tired feet stumbled and dragged through the wet leaves underfoot. She edged away from her pack and pressed her body close to the trunk of a tree.