A Man Betrayed (65 page)

Muscles that a day
before had been tense and sore were now relaxed and merely tender. Dog bites
had flattened and dried, and wounds had lost their fester. Even the gash in his
chest felt better, the pain not so biting, the terrible itch of knitting flesh
and bones now no more than a simple irritation.

How much was
nature's work and how much Mrs. Wadwell's was impossible to tell. At the end of
the day, Jack supposed, looking over the expanse of tangled woodland, it was
all one and the same.

Time to be on his
way. The sack, which he swung over his left shoulder, was so saturated with
water, it dripped.

Pork, drybread,
nuts, fresh clothing, a few good knives, and his bedroll were all contained,
wetly, within. In fact the whole thing was now almost twice as heavy as before.
Jack smiled grimly. No doubt about it, he was not cut out for adventures. Any
self-respecting hero would have known rain was on its way, built a suitable
shelter in a matter of hours, and buried the remaining supplies in an unmarked
grave. Instead, here he was, shoes squelching with every step, hair plastered
to his skull, and body weighted down with a sack full of little else but water.

Jack looked up
past the branches to the sky. An unremarkable gray met his eyes. It was
impossible to tell which way the light came from.
"Head east and then
northeast, "

Mrs. Wadwell had
said.
"Follow the brook upstream. "
Well, he'd found the
brook; it was behind the group of hazel and hawthorn bushes that he was heading
toward, but judging from the noise, it was no longer a bubbling woodland brook
but rather a raging torrent of purposeful water. Now all that remained was to
follow its path
downstream.

He wasn't ready to
leave Halcus and the garrison town just yet. He had business to attend to with
certain people in a certain well-appointed cottage which, as best as he could
gauge, lay several leagues to the west.

A few hours later
Jack fell under the shadow of the garrison. Rain diluted the sweat on his
forehead, sending it streaming off the end of his nose and down his neck into
his tunic. He judged he was near the place where the tunnel had ended before
someone had sealed it up with dirt and stone. The place where Tarissa said she
would wait for him. The place where he had been betrayed.

Jack knew better
than to pursue such thoughts. Too dangerous by far, especially here, with the
blackened walls of the garrison looming high in the distance. It was neither
the time nor the setting for a second disaster. So he buried his hurt deep,
binding it away from the light of his thoughts, afraid that even as little as
recalling the curve of Tarissa's cheek, or the sheen of her chestnut hair,
might spark the fire within.

The woods in these
parts were patrolled. Rovas had told him that, and his own observations
confirmed it. Footprints freshly embedded in the mud and wads of snatch spat to
either side of the path told of guards passing not long ago. Less than two days
after the fire, they were bound to be on the alert. Jack slipped from the path
and into the bushes. Thorns tore at his britches and barbed branches caught at
his sack. His chest was aching badly now; the long walk and the weight of the
supplies had finally taken their toll. A mouthful of brandy might help. If he
remembered rightly, there was a pewter flask in his sack, and he was pretty
sure that Mrs. Wadwell would have filled it with some of the pale gold liqueur.
Ducking down amongst the undergrowth, he hunkered in the dirt to search through
his belongings.

The second his
bottom landed in the mud, footfalls sounded. Twigs crackled underfoot. The
drizzling rain cut visibility down by half. Voices, muffled, distant, filtered
through the mist.

Jack drew in a
deep breath and settled lower in the bushes. Slowly, he reached for his sack.
"Mistake number four," he whispered to himself: not carrying a knife
at his waist. His hand felt for the sharpness of blade. Under pork and flask,
resting at the bottom in a porridge of drybread and rainwater, his hand closed
around a wooden shaft. He drew it out a finger's breadth at a time, careful not
to disturb the surrounding contents.

The voices drew
nearer. Casual talk at first: complaints about the rain and their superior
officer. Jack dared not look out from the bush. He wiped the knife against a
branch, scraping wet lumps of drybread from the blade. The handle wasn't
important.

He knew the moment
the voices died away that his tracks had been found. The guards were playing it
shrewdly, not giving him the chance to escape by raising the alarm. Picturing
them following the tracks to the bushes, Jack raised himself onto the balls of
his feet, still crouching, yet ready to pounce.

To the right, the
bushes began to rustle. Sharp whispers were exchanged. Steel slithered against
leather. Jack tensed his muscles.

"Who goes
there?" came a voice, nearer than he had expected.

Jack sprang up
from the bushes. Two guards faced him, swords drawn. For an instant their faces
registered fear. A second later they were upon him. The first man sprang
forward, whilst the second took the flank.

Up came his knife,
more a probe than an attack. Rovas' advice played like a commentary in Jack's
ear:
"Never panic. Remember, the other man is always at least as scared
as you. "
Nothing about two men, thought Jack. Or was there? Divide
and separate seemed to fit the bill.

Stepping forward,
his foot brushed against the sack. His mind grasped a possibility. Almost
before the idea formed in his head, he had done it. Jack kicked the sack with
all his might, sending it flying into the chest of the first man. Not pausing
for an instant, he sidestepped to face the second guard. Tiny drops of rain
rested atop his oiled mustache.

Rovas was in
Jack's ear. "Do
anything to throw your opponent off guard: dance,
laugh,
cry.
Anything. "
An earthshattering primal scream
sounded, and it took Jack a moment to realize that he, himself, had made the
noise.

Leaping on the
second man, Jack brought him to the ground. His knife was embedded in the man's
sword arm before he knew it. Blood gurgled onto the mud. The man flailed his
sword and tried to knee him in the vitals. Jack sprang up to avoid the knee.
Landing straight down again, knife carrying the momentum of his entire body, he
stabbed the man in the heart.

Whip-quick he was
on his feet. The entire contents of the sack were strewn over the bushes.
Nervous, circling, the first guard kept his distance.
"Feign a weakness
to encour
age
a careful man to attack "
Blood from the dead guard
ran down Jack's side. He stumbled to the left as if injured, righted himself,
and then came forward, favoring the opposite side. The gleam of weakness
perceived flashed in the guard's eye.

Ignoring the pain
in his shoulder, Jack concentrated on watching the line of the guard's body. He
was about to attack to the left, he was sure of it. The instant the guard made
his move he was ready. The man's sword jabbed straight for the bloodstain. Jack
spun toward it, left fist clenched, and punched the hand that held the hilt.
How he managed it, he would never know. It was perfect timing and placement. He
hit the hand with such force that the man lost his grip on the blade.

"Never
pause to admire your handiwork, no matter how brilliant the move. "
Jack
lunged forward. The guard ducked, hand scraping in the mud in search of his
sword. Thrown off balance for an instant, Jack looked up to see a thin streak
of light heading toward him. The guard had thrown the blade. Launching himself
into the air, Jack leapt to the side. He felt the graze of metal on his shin
bone, and then pain exploded in his chest as he landed, shoulder first, in the
mud.

The guard was on
him before he knew it. No longer with sword, he was brandishing a large wet
rock. Heaving it high above his head, he made ready to slam it into Jack's
face.
"When you've been grounded by a foe, always go for his knees.
"
Jack's leg shot out, he didn't get the knee, but he got the shin.
The guard stumbled backward, attempting to regain his footing. Holding the
knife in front of him, Jack tried to stand. Just as he gathered momentum, his
foot slipped and he was sent hurtling toward the guard. The man's groin was on
a level with his knife.

Jack cringed as
the blade went in; he had planned to get him in the chest. The guard screamed
and screamed again. Blood welled over his thighs, soaking his britches. The
rock fell from his hands and landed harmlessly by his side. Standing now, Jack
aimed his knife with care. Straight for the heart this time, a nice clean blow.
The second the knife was out, the guard slumped to the ground.

Pain throbbing in
his chest, shaking from head to foot, and dangerously close to panicking, Jack
began to run. He had to get away. Two men dead: their screams sounding in his
ears, their blood on his clothes-Rovas had done a fine job.

Not stopping to
pick up the strewn supplies, he fled from the fight scene. Racing through mud
and brambles, jumping over logs and branches, he ran until the pain was too
much. A sticky warmth close to the top of his tunic told him that the arrow
wound had reopened. Slipping the knife into the rope that formed his belt, Jack
pressed hard against the wound with his free hand. He counted to a hundred ten
times before he let his hand down. The bleeding had stopped. The fabric of the
tunic was stuck to his chest. Grimacing, he let it be.

He walked slowly
now, every step a concentrated effort of muscle and willpower. Without
realizing it, he had drawn nearer to the garrison. Through thinning trees he
spotted the gray stone walls. Ahead lay the road and the main gate. The
gatehouse no longer had roof or timbers. The top layers of stone had toppled to
the ground. They lay in a blackened heap surrounded by soot. Something bright
caught Jack's eye. At first he thought it was a flag. Drawing nearer, he made
out the freshly logged lines of a gibbet. A man in a red coat swung from its
upper beam. Slowly the rope turned in the wind, and even from a distance, Jack
recognized the face of his short-lived cell mate, Bringe. The man had lied himself
into a hanging.

Jack had little
sympathy for him.

A sharp blast of
air buffeted his body, chilling him to the bone. Turning away from the
garrison, Jack spied two hills on the horizon. Lit by sunlight escaping from a
break in the clouds, they looked strangely familiar. He stood and stared at
them for a moment before realizing that for months he had looked at them from
the
other
side. Rovas' cottage lay nestled in the valley behind.

Checking that the
road was clear, Jack sprang across it, quickly making for the shelter of the
woods. He walked for hours.

The rain stopped,
the temperature dropped, and the woods thinned to a single line of trees; Jack
hardly noticed. He had his sights set on the joining point between the two
distant hills, and reaching it was all that mattered.

Tavalisk regarded
the artichokes carefully. The look of them was the thing. It told one all one
needed to know about the softness of the yellow flesh within. The broad flat
bottom must sit with a certain indolence upon the platter. Like an aging whore,
it must be ready to yield. The thorny leaves at the top of the bud should look
like the devoted at the confessional; their desire to reveal their secrets so
great that one could see them, ripe, upon their lips.

The archbishop
raised a choosing hand above the platter. They all looked so good that he was
about to resort to
one posy, two posy,
when in walked Gamil.

"No
knock!" Tavalisk's voice was high with anger. "Such news, Your
Eminence." His aide was short of breath.

"There is no
news, Gamil, that is so important it warrants an invasion of my privacy. No
news at all." Tavalisk turned back to his artichokes. "Now kindly
wait until I bid you speak."

The archbishop
grabbed at the nearest specimen. Testily he plucked at the outer leaves, casting
them aside. He would not deign to scrape them between his teeth like a poor
man.

He was only
interested in the heart. For good measure, he threw a few Gamil's way, making
sure that they were good and greasy first. Warm olive oil was near impossible
to remove from silk.

The heart emerged,
urine yellow, glistening like a jewel. Tavalisk dropped it upon his tongue,
where it came as close to melting as any vegetable ever could. "I think
you'd better go ahead and speak, Gamil," he said, picking a second artichoke
from the platter, "for holding your peace ill suits you. You look like a
Marls sausage-badly stuffed and lacking in meat." In truth, Tavalisk was
rather eager to hear the news, but it wouldn't do to betray that fact to his
aide.

"Our
four-city force intercepted a messenger heading to Valdis. He was carrying a
note addressed to Tyren himself."

"Who was it
from? The duke of Bren? Baralis?"

"It was
neither signed nor sealed, Your Eminence, but the messenger spoke with a
kingdoms' accent and his livery was crested in gold."

"Give me the
letter." In his excitement, Tavalisk actually wiped his hands on his own
robe.

Gamil pulled a
roll of parchment from his scribing bag and handed it to the archbishop.

After several
moments of study, Tavalisk put it down on his desk. "You realize that this
letter is from Kylock?"

"I thought as
much, Your Eminence."

"From what I
can gather, he has entered into an agreement with Valdis. Tyren is sending
knights to Halcus to fight on his behalf, and in return Kylock is promising the
knighthood exclusive rights to northeastern trade and a cut in the spoils of
war."