01 - Honour of the Grave (24 page)

He examined his new surroundings. The pit was about thirty feet deep. Its
sides were lined with timber that had suffered nothing worse than superficial scorching. The rest of the place, though, was
now just a mound of ash, black mixed in with grey. He saw the remains of dresser
drawers, of bedposts, of chests. There were bits of burned fabric and blobs of
melted glass, already hardened and intermixed with ash. Long copper rods, bent
by the heat into the shapes of snakes, lay scattered throughout. Franziskus
surmised that the halflings had made rooms in their fortress with a system of
curtain rod frames, and that the thin copper tubes were their remains.

He looked up: another hot, bright day. The position of the sun told him that
it was inching up on noon.

He checked Angelika to see if she was awake. Though her eyes were shut, the
pattern of her breathing indicated she wasn’t asleep.

“How did we get down here?” he said. The utterance cost him a little less
pain than his last attempt to speak. He was learning the limit of exertion; how
much he could move before his torn and pummelled muscles would punish him.

“Don’t know.” She kept her eyes closed.

“We couldn’t have got down here on our own.”

“Don’t remember.”

“I’ll be quiet.”

“No. Talk. Distract me.”

“Were there wolves?”

“Remember something about
wuh
—wolves.”

“Were there truly wolves, or did we just think it?”

“We came down here—to—get away from wolves.”

“Were there truly wolves?”

“Not sure.”

“Would wolves not have finished us off?”

“I suppose they would have.”

“Then there were no wolves.”

“Don’t remember.”

“But we couldn’t have got down here by ourselves.”

“Don’t know.”

“The half-folk couldn’t have come back, could they? And taken mercy on us, by
carrying us down here, so the beasts of the woods wouldn’t finish us off?”

“Them?” She loosed a derisive snort, then paid the toll for sudden movement.
She tried to settle herself back on the beam, in the least uncomfortable position she’d found for herself. She
winced. Wincing hurt, too.

“You’re right. They wouldn’t help us.”

She agreed with him, without moving, using only her eyes.

“Maybe we fell in.”

They looked at the drop.

“We must have done it ourselves. Somehow.”

It all seemed very doubtful.

“We’ll probably never know,” Franziskus surmised.

Abruptly, the sun was on its way to setting. Franziskus realised he’d been
unconscious, again. Shallya had heard his prayers, and granted them. Angelika
had moved closer to him and was now lying flat on her back, hands behind her
head.

“Is that more comfortable?” he asked her.

“For the moment. Every so often I stiffen, and have to shift again.”

“That hurts, I suppose.”

“Yes.” The whites of both her eyes were no longer white, but red, with blood.
The swelling on her face had gone down; he could once again make out the natural
shape of her cheekbones beneath her facial muscles.

“Have you slept?”

“On and off.”

“I’m going to have to move soon.”

“That so?”

“My bladder demands it.”

“Hrm,” she said.

“But I don’t want to.”

She turned her head from him.

“When I move, it’ll hurt.”

“If you wet your trousers here, I’ll finish you off myself.”

“Do you think any of your bones are broken?”

“They’re all intact, I think.”

“The same is true for me. I believe.”

“They did as they said. They hurt us just badly enough. Took us right to the
threshold of permanent harm, but no further.”

“Excuse me if I fail to admire their skill.”

A noise came out of her. Eventually, Franziskus identified it as laughter.

“Get up,” she said. “It’ll do you good.” He stayed put.

“You’ll have to sooner or later. The quicker you get the muscles working, the
better.”

“I wish I was dead.”

“Get up and do your business.” He got up. He screamed. He fell. She stood. She
held out a hand for him. He rose.

It was morning. They were black all over now. Not from bruising, but from all
the ash they’d kicked up as they’d dragged themselves around. Soot coated them,
so they could not tell how well they were healing. Franziskus sat against the
timber walls now, knees up. Angelika lay face down a few feet from him, in a bed
of dead embers.

Franziskus was reasonably sure that this was the second morning, but he had
gone in and out of consciousness so many times that he had lost track. He did
not want to ask and make himself sound like he was dazed from concussion, though
he imagined he probably was. At his foot, he suddenly spotted a small barrel of
ale. “Where did this come from?” He clucked his tongue against the roof of his
mouth. It tasted like stale beer. So he must have been drinking from the cask,
he deduced blurrily.

Angelika pointed feebly to a corner piled high with half-burned boards.
“Behind there. Some provisions escaped the fire. There’s even some dried meat,
for when you’re feeling up to it.”

She rolled over, so he figured there was no harm in talking again. “When I
was a child,” Franziskus said, “my maiden aunt, Trine, used to read to me from
storybooks. About the Moot, where the halflings dwell.”

Angelika grunted an unintelligible reply.

“I loved those stories,” he went on. “They were my favourites. In the stories,
the Moot was always a green and tender place, with rolling hills, and meadows
dappled in white hissock and blue fire grass. And the halflings lived in
shingled cottages, with fresh-painted walls, and they ate red-berry pasties and
soft cheese. During the day, they would shade themselves from the sun, and at
night they would gather to play the pipes and dance jigs. Yet, lazy and charming as they were,
somehow the work would always get done. And they didn’t like to fight, fighting
was not in their nature. Though they would sometimes make war for the Emperor
when they were needed, in truth all they wanted was to return to their quiet,
rolling land to eat scones with honey and sit telling jokes, with sprigs of
straw between their teeth. There was this one character in the books, my
favourite, Jarmo Appleday, and he would always outsmart himself but in the end
all would…”

Franziskus trailed off.

“I liked those stories,” he eventually concluded.

“I’ve never been to the Moot,” said Angelika.

“Neither have I.”

“It could be just like you say. The halflings we’ve met, they could be the
exceptions.”

“It goes against what I have learned, since leaving home.”

“And what is that?”

“That to treasure any beautiful thought is to hold fast to an illusion.”

“It isn’t necessarily an illusion.”

“You’re usually eager to part me from all my false and foolish beliefs. Don’t
spare me now, just because I’m hurt.”

“Remember what that Lela Mossrock said—the whole lot of them, they were
exiles. The Moot can still be like the one in your storybooks. Those peaceful,
law-abiding types, they’d be quick to rid themselves of halflings like her—and
Toby too—for being too savage and different.”

Franziskus craned his neck abruptly upwards. He patted at his waist. His belt
was gone, and the scabbard, too. “Those miscreants!” he protested. “They stole my
elven sword!”

Drops of liquid hit his face, waking him. The sky had greyed and light rain
was leaking down into the pit. Franziskus blinked. The raindrops hurt when they
hit, but they were also refreshing, so he turned his face up to meet them.

“This is as close to a bath as we’ll get for a while,” he said.

“You’re up,” she said.

He felt the droplets as they gathered, pooled, and ran down his neck and into
the fabric of his tunic. They were cold, and he shuddered, but it was a good feeling anyway. He realised that it was no
longer so painful to move his neck.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all because of my own accursed foolishness.”

“No,” Franziskus said. He tried moving his hands. That hurt, but not as bad
as before.

“What do you mean,
no?”

“Please relent.”

“I’m telling you that I am sorry, and you bid me to—”

He retreated from her, dragging his legs through the ash. “I can’t think. Let
me enjoy this rain.”

“You can’t think? I was the one who couldn’t think, when I stormed out here,
and said set the place on fire. Without checking. Without stopping to make a
plan or learn the facts. I was the one who got us into this state. Beaten like
dogs. It was my damnably stupid conscience eating away at me. Whenever that
happens—I should know by now—it’s prompting me to do something idiotic. I
broke every one of my own rules. And all the precepts of common sense, besides.”

“Vou thought he might be in immediate danger.”

“I shouldn’t have thought any such thing. Why would he be in more danger
then, than the day before, or the day after? No, it was all my desire to make
good, and to do it quickly and get it done with, so I could stop feeling—I let
my head cloud up with virtue, and this is the result. It’s right that I should
suffer, but to you I apologise.”

“No need to—”

“Shut up. And memorise this moment in great detail, because I promise you it
won’t be repeated.”

Now he stirred in the opposite direction, pulling himself toward her, and
kicking up billows of ash. “But the blame is not yours to shoulder. The idiocy
is mine. I should never have trusted that woman, Petrine Guillame. She batted
those fine eyelashes my way, and I lost all suspicion. The poets say a beautiful
woman must by nature have a soul to match, but now I know that’s wrong.”

“I thought there was only an eighth of a chance she was leading us in the
right direction, but still I went along, because I wanted to take action. That
makes me a much bigger fool than you.”

“No, I am the bigger fool!”

“Horse manure!”

“That’s a fine and eloquent retort.”

“Close your hole!”

The next day, for a few minutes at a time, they both were able to stand on
their own, without their legs giving way. They counted the casks of ale: they
had enough for three more days, if they drank sparingly. The dried meat would
last for ages; neither Angelika nor Franziskus had recovered their appetites.
Rain, colder and harder than the day before, pelted them for hours. They
staggered to a dry corner, under a piece of platform that remained intact. They
shivered in their shelter.

“Do I look better now?” Franziskus asked.

“Better than when?”

“My face. Is it less swollen and bruised?”

She appraised him at some length. “Less swollen, more bruised.”

Franziskus sighed in disappointment.

“In all honesty, you look like a crushed grape,” Angelika said.

“I’m grateful for the encouragement.”

She shrugged. “You asked.”

She looked like she was on the mend. Purple ringed her eyes, and scabs
crisscrossed her face. But underneath, hints of her usual skin tone were
returning.

She pulled some dried meat from her belt, bit off a piece, chewed it
unhappily, then spat it back out. She stared at the leathery morsel as it lay in
the wet ash. “I did not mean to abuse you, yesterday.”

“I understand.”

“But this is what you’ll suffer, if you keep on in this way, dogging my
heels. I’m not a person out of a storybook, either. Not like those heroes you
read about. Though sometimes I forget myself and act as if I am, by plunging
into fights that are too big for me. And every so often—like now—I am
forcibly reminded of my own fragility. I’ve asked you this many times,
Franziskus.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“But this time, you can see where it will lead you. Wretchedness and misery.
You want to protect me. You can’t.

“All you’ll earn is a share of my fate. Promise me. When we get ourselves out
of this hole, you’ll go back home.”

“I’m not going back.”

“Then go somewhere else. I don’t care where, just get away from me before I
get you murdered.”

“It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, but I’m not budging, so you
might as well stop.”

“You wish to kill yourself, is that it?”

“A share of your fate is exactly what I desire. Your foolishness will be my
foolishness. I’ve thrown my lot in with you. Your knife, my sword.”

“Whether I like it or not?”

“I’m sorry if I was churlish with you, and did not accept the apologies you
wished to make. I’m yours to command. I’ll endeavour to please you better from
now on.”

“Then swear you’ll leave me.”

“I’ll follow every order but that one.”

“But I’ll get you killed.”

“Then I promise not to die.”

She knew she was getting better when night came and her sleeplessness came
not from pain, but from bottled-up energy. The moon was bright and shone down on
them. She stood and stretched her arms behind her, as far as they could go. They
did not hurt until they were almost fully extended. She walked to the side of
the pit, placed her hands together against the timbered wall, and pushed off
from it, testing the muscles of her legs. She cried out and fell, landing on her
knee. Franziskus woke and leapt to her side. She sat up, kneading her calf
muscles. He tried to take over the massaging duties, but she fended him off.

“I feel a return of vitality and purpose,” she said. “I feel ready again.
Except that my legs disagree. You’re not ready, though, are you?”

“For what?”

“We’ll go together to the Castello. I’ll leave you there at the cottage, then
I’ll—”

“You’re forgetting: the Castello’s under siege.”

She groaned as her fingers found an especially sore spot. “That will be lifted
by now; I guarantee it.”