Beautiful Blood (15 page)

Come morning, showered and, for the first time in weeks, clean shaven, armed with a hunting rifle, General Aldo’s notebook and a pair of binoculars, he set forth on horseback, riding a bay gelding belonging to the House. He skirted Griaule’s fearsome mouth and passed onto the plain, keeping his distance from the dark green cliff of the dragon’s side, its true contours obscured at the base by mounded earth and grass, and higher up by vines and moss and epiphytes, most of the blooms pale lavender in color, but some few a lurid reddish orange that stood out from their surround like points of flame. His expectations of locating Cerruti were not high, yet as he rode his mood grew less oppressive. Though it was not yet nine o’clock, the sun was a dynamited white glare that cooked a strong scent from the stands of palmetto and broke a sweat on his back and shoulders. He went slowly, stopping now and again to scan the plain with his binoculars. When he drew near the haunch, he searched the landscape more carefully, but saw no house. Oddboy had likely moved on, but Rosacher wanted to be thorough and it was good to be out in the air after such a lengthy sequestration—he decided to continue searching. By mid-day he had traveled the length of the dragon, arriving at a place where the tail was completely buried beneath earth and grass, and there he tethered the bay and made a lunch of cold pork and grapes. It had been years since he’d ventured out on the plain and he had forgotten how extensive it was. Due to the clarity of the air, the low hills that encircled the valley appeared close at hand, yet he doubted he could reach them before nightfall. A fitful breeze stirred the tall yellow grasses, occasionally blowing with sufficient force to lift a palmetto frond, but otherwise everything was still—but it was an ominous stillness. The air seemed to hold a rapid vibration, the sum of the thousand heartbeats of the predators, great and small, that watched him from hiding. While digesting his lunch, he peered through the binoculars, tracking across thorn trees, acacias, more palmettos, shrimp plants, and then was brought up short by the sight of a pair of legs clad in coarse, dirty cloth. Dropping the binoculars, he scrambled to his feet. A man stood barely ten yards away—he was tanned, lean, with brown hair falling to his shoulders, and was shirtless, wearing sandals and a pair of ill-used canvas trousers. In one hand was a game sack figured by reddish-brown stains, and in the other a long-bladed knife. Before Rosacher could react, the man closed the distance between them. He was not so young as Rosacher had thought. Gray threaded his hair and deep lines scored his face, which had not been a pretty sight to begin with—long and horsey, with a hooked nose and squinty blue eyes, the schlera displaying a faint yellowish tinge. The nose had been broken more than once, and a ridged scar ran from the corner of his left eye and down onto his neck. His mouth worked as if he were trying to rid himself of a bad taste, and when he spoke it was in a nasal twang that was pitched an octave higher than Rosacher had anticipated.

“Man could get himself killed out here,” he said. “You after getting killed?”

“No, I’m…I’m looking for someone.”

“Must be someone real important, because you’re taking one hell of a risk.” The man’s mouth worked again. “You’re that Rosacher, ain’t you?”

“You know me?”

“Seen you around. How’d you get your face fixed? Once a man gets burnt by flakes, he generally stays burnt.”

“I’m not sure,” Rosacher said. “It may be…it’s difficult to explain.”

The man grunted. “I suppose it is.” He waved at the plain with his knife. “I was you, I wouldn’t stay out here much longer. Something’s liable to bite you in half.”

He started to walk away, but Rosacher said, “Wait! I need to speak to Bruno Cerruti.”

The man turned. “What for?”

“Are you Cerruti?”

“Ain’t much point denying it. What you want?”

“Did a man named Aldo visit you recently.”

“Man was out here a few weeks ago with some soldiers. Don’t recall his name, but those soldiers scared the hell out of Frederick. It was a chore holding him back.”

Rosacher didn’t understand the reference to Frederick, but let it pass, sensing from Cerruti’s truculent manner and clipped speech that he had a limited amount of time in which to make his inquiries and state his business. “What did Aldo want with you?”

“That’s between me and him.”

Sweat rolled down Rosacher’s back, beaded on his forehead. “That’s no longer the case. Aldo’s dead.”

“Huh. Too bad. Seemed like a nice little fellow.” Cerruti spat out a brown wad of, Rosacher assumed, tobacco. “He was right took by Frederick. Said he had somebody needed killing. But the soldiers got Frederick excited and I advised him to leave. He said he’d come back later and we’d finish discussing the matter.”

Rosacher wiped sweat from his eyes. “Is there someplace out of this heat where we can talk?”

Cerruti hesitated. “Guess we can head over to the house, but you best leave your animal here. Frederick loves horse meat.”

Cerruti’s house was several hundred yards out onto the plain—it was almost impossible to see until you were close upon it, because its walls were woven of yellow grass, hardened (Cerruti said) by a paste derived from animal fat, and the roof was fabricated of palmetto fronds. The interior of the place held a rank odor and consisted of two large, windowless rooms separated by a canvas cloth; a second structure lay behind the house, nearly twice as high and missing a fourth wall—a storeroom, Rosacher supposed, yet he could see nothing within it, only blackness. It was not significantly cooler inside the house, but it was out of the direct sun. In the air was the sickly sweetish odor of a body that had gone unwashed for many days. Crudely carpentered chairs and a table of unfinished planking centered the room. Light came through chinks in the grass that had been made opaque by the paste and cast an irregular diamond pattern over the dirt floor.

“I was told you lived near the haunch.” Rosacher took a chair and mopped his brow.

“Moved,” Cerruti said.

He placed a jug and a platter bearing a dubious-looking chunk of fatty meat and a half-loaf of bread on the table and joined Rosacher. He nudged the plate toward Rosacher and nodded, indicating that he should help himself.

“I’ve already eaten.” Rosacher shifted his chair forward. “What more can you tell me about your meeting with Aldo?”

“Wasn’t much to it.” Cerruti ripped a hunk of bread from the loaf. “He said he had somebody needed killing. Some high muckety-muck. Asked if me and Frederick would be interested in handling the job. I told him I didn’t see no reason for it, so unless he told me more, he might as well head on back where he come from. That’s when the soldiers started getting on Frederick’s nerves.”

“Where is Frederick?”

“Sleeping. He hates the sun, he does. Don’t hardly ever come out until evening.”

Cerruti tore off some of the meat with his teeth and chewed.

“Did he mention who this person was?” Rosacher asked.

“No. Just said he was a bigwig.”

While Cerruti ate Rosacher studied Aldo’s notebook, the page on which Cerruti’s name had been written, along with “the hunt” and “Carlos.” He remained baffled, unable to make a connection between Cerruti and those two entries.

Cerruti wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “One thing I forgot. He said we’d have to travel a week and a day more to get to the place where the killing would be done.”

Another useless fact—that was Rosacher’s immediate response to this revelation; but as he tried to plot how far in every direction “a week and a day more” would take him (assuming the trip was made on horseback), he realized if he were to travel north and east that would put him within the Temalaguan border, on the edge of the rain forest, the area where Carlos VII, Temalagua’s current ruler, famously pursued his passion for the hunt.

“Was the man he wanted killed named Carlos?” Rosacher asked.

Cerruti answered with his mouth full, shreds of meat falling onto the table. “Didn’t say.”

Had Aldo planned to assassinate the Temalaguan king? Was this his idea of a distraction that would delay an attack by the combined forces of Mospiel and Temalagua? It still made no sense to Rosacher. An ordinary death might cause the day-to-day routines of government to be pushed aside, giving way to the extensive planning and traditional pomp that attended Temalaguan state funerals, and the subsequent period of national mourning; but a political assassination would have the opposite effect, acting to spur on the new king in seeking vengeance. To have the desired effect, the assassination would have to be disguised as something else and, since Carlos would be protected by a sizeable armed guard, Rosacher was unable to fathom how this could be achieved.

He inquired further of Cerruti, but learned nothing more of value and, in order to prolong the conversation, he began asking irrelevant questions, hoping that stalling would give him time to think of something pertinent. Accordingly, one of the questions he asked was, “What happened to your menagerie of pets? I was told you had quite a collection.”

“They didn’t take to Frederick being around,” said Cerruti. “Most of them run off.”

This led Rosacher to think that he at least ought to wait for Frederick to wake up before returning to the House—he might have some intelligence to impart—and asked Cerruti how much longer Frederick could be expected to sleep.

“He’ll be up and about by twilight,” Cerruti said. “He enjoys hunting when it’s cool.”

Rosacher looked to the canvas curtain, behind which he presumed Frederick was sleeping, and was tempted to raise a clatter, a noise of some kind, sufficient to rouse him; but he decided that course of action would not be politic and asked Cerruti if he could wait there until Frederick awoke.

“You’d be putting your horse at risk.” Cerruti chewed, swallowed. “I reckon leaving him out there until night, you’re not going to find nothing but bones and the head. But if you’re willing, it’s all right with me.”

Thankfully, because of Cerruti’s laconic style, Rosacher did not feel it necessary to make conversation and, while his host busied himself with household chores, he tried to work on a plan of attack against Mospiel, given that Temalagua’s involvement could be circumvented. The heat, however, overwhelmed him and he nodded off, drowsing through the long afternoon. He woke late in the day, about five o’clock judging by the rich golden light, and was clearing away the cobwebs, considering how to pass the hours before dusk, when he heard, from near at hand, a vast animal rumbling that raised the hair on the back of his neck. He jumped up from the chair, fumbled for his rifle, and said, “What in God’s name is that?”

Cerruti sat opposite him, sharpening his knife on a whetstone—in the dim light, his hair half-obscuring his face, he seemed for the moment a wildly romantic figure and not an uneducated yokel. “Don’t get all lathered up,” he said. “That’s just Frederick having a dream.”

Rosacher let this sink in. “I thought Frederick was a man.”

“He is. ’Least he says he is. You can make up your own mind.”

Warily, Rosacher took his seat, but did not fall back asleep, his mind racing, alert to every noise. At twilight there came a renewed rumbling from without, louder and more extensive than before, and the sound of something big moving through the grass. Once again Rosacher shot to his feet and caught up his rifle.

“Easy, man!” Cerruti put a hand on his arm to restrain him. “Frederick don’t care for rifles much, so you’d do well to leave it here.”

Full of trepidation, Rosacher followed him out onto the plain, but saw nothing of Frederick. After the staleness of the house, the air felt fresh and cool. The sun was down behind Griaule’s mountainous body and, except for a faint redness in the west, the plain was immersed in a purplish gloom, resembling in that crepuscular light pictures of the African veldt in books that Rosacher had thought exotic as a child, yet now seemed, in conjunction with the scene before him, to prefigure some occult menace.

He scanned the plain, searching for any object or movement that might signal Frederick’s presence and saw in the distance a great dark shape flowing through the high grass, going very fast, much faster than a creature of its apparent size should be capable. It was speed without apparent purpose—the thing ran back and forth, and then in loops and circles, describing a variety of patterns that remained visible thanks to the flattened grass in its wake. Rosacher recognized that there was something playful about its exercise, like the running of a young dog that has been pent up for a while.

“You’re a lucky man,” Cerruti said. “Frederick’s in a good mood. There’s times he’s right intolerant of strangers.”

“That’s Frederick?” said Rosacher, pointing at the dark shape, hoping for a negative response.

“In the flesh.” Cerruti made a choking noise that might have been a laugh. “So to speak.”

Rosacher wondered at the cause of Cerruti’s amusement, but was so mesmerized by Frederick’s to-and-fro dashes across the plain that he failed to inquire further. “I’ll bring him over,” Cerruti said. He did not call out or whistle or wave, yet Frederick abruptly changed course and came toward them at a good clip, growing in the space of three or four seconds from a dark shape a hundred yards away to a black featureless mound half the size of a full-grown elephant that settled in the grass a mere twenty feet away. Rosacher stumbled backward, terrified by the thing, by the chuffing of its breath, loud as a steam engine, and by its size and unstable surface—its substance, the stuff of its body, appeared to be in constant flux, a glossy black like polished onyx flowing across who-knows-what sort of structure, be it only more of the same blackness or a skeleton of sorts or something else, something completely implausible. It put Rosacher in mind of those oddments occasionally thrown up by the sea, a glob of protoplasm, a relic of some obscure life unknown and perhaps unknowable to man, a shapeless fragment broken or bitten off from a greater shapelessness…and yet as its breathing subsided, reduced to the level of a smithy’s bellows, it seemed to flirt with a shape, to verge upon the animal, to assume for a fleeting instant the curves and musculature of an enormous sloth, or a bear with an elongated head and snout, and acquiring, too, a gamey odor that waxed and waned in accordance with the degree to which that shape was realized. Rosacher trembled before this monster, understanding death was near, but Cerruti, calm as ever, said, “Frederick wanted to know if that’s your horse out there by the tail. I told him not to eat it.”