Exiles of Forlorn (23 page)

The vulture woman barely batted an eye at the corpses when presented them by Ferun. While we’d gone to collect Hratoe, Ferun and Sharkhart had dragged them out into the street and covered them with bloody sheets from Reiwyn’s yurt. She set to work immediately, crouching next to the first one. The oldest of the three, he was the least damaged from Reiwyn’s dagger. Slowly, she ran her hands over his face, as though feeling an invisible barrier that covered his head. Then she took his hand in hers, closed her eyes, and furrowed her brow.

Ferun shook his head. “This is ridiculous—”

“Quiet!” snapped Arn.

A few tense moments passed as the morning sun began to peek over the mountains, painting the sky in dim shades of orange. People had already started emerging from their homes. The few guards Arn had roused were unable to usher them all back into their homes. We were just starting to draw a crowd when Hratoe opened her eyes and looked up at us.

“What is it? Does she have something?” asked Arn.

Gargath gave him a frustrated look and turned to Hratoe, gesturing to her in their way. She nodded quickly and gestured back. Gargath didn’t look away from her as he said, “She doesn’t have a name. She has a description.”

Arn leaned forward, close to her face and spoke slowly, as though that would help. “Tell us, dear. Who let them in?”

She raised her hand to her mouth and gestured to her teeth. Then she made sharp angles with them. We all stared at her until it suddenly occurred to me what she was getting at. “Crooked teeth. He has crooked teeth!”

“That could be over a dozen different men in the colony,” moaned Uller.

Then she raised her hand to her face and pointed at one of her eyes. She made a ring with her finger and thumb and placed it over her eye, covering it completely. “One eye . . .” She nodded. I looked at the others. “Stree!”

Arn’s eyes narrowed as he looked over his shoulder at Ferun. “Was he on the wall last night?”

“I believe he was,” replied Ferun, quietly contemptuous.

Arn looked at Sharkhart. “Get him.”

20.

S
tree hit the floorboards with a scream. “Ow! I ain’t done nothin’!”

Gargath had taken Reiwyn to the infirmary, leaving the rest of us to deal with Stree. We circled him in Arn’s yurt, cutting off all hope of escape. Sharkhart punched him across the jaw. He gasped and spun to the floor. Blood trickled out of his mouth as he shuddered. The Tallfolk savage grabbed him by the hair and lifted him, kicking and screaming.

“How long have you been working with them?” asked Arn, markedly calm despite the obvious tension in his eyes.

“Workin’ wit’ who?”      

Sharkhart drove his knee into his spine. Uller and I exchanged winces. Blackfoot laughed and punched the air. He seemed creepily at ease with this. I suppose that was to be expected considering the life he’d lived.

Stree moaned as Sharkhart dropped him. He kicked him again, this time in the kidney, eliciting a cry muffled by his own arms, followed by a laugh. The savage brought his foot back to kick him again, but Arn stopped him.

Ferun drew his dagger. “We know he’s done it. Let me kill him.”

Arn stared down at the whimpering form at his feet. “I generally oppose death sentences, but I’m willing to make an exception in your case. Because the disappearances were going on well before you arrived, that means you have to know who else is working with the Scumdogs. Tell me who, and I won’t let Ferun kill you.”

He slowly raised his head, sobbing from his one eye with bloody spittle around his lips. “To the hells with the lot of ye!”

“You’re going to die if you don’t tell,” said Ferun.

“Slowly.” Sharkhart put his hand on the shark-tooth studded whip at his belt. Stree laughed painfully, rubbing his side. He looked at Arn. “You ain’t gots the nerve ta kill me, Sand King!”

“I do.” Sharkhart kicked him in the spine to underscore his point. Uller and I winced again. Blackfoot chuckled and jumped in the air. Stree rolled onto his side, coughing in pain, but only for a moment before he returned to laughing.

Arn tilted his head and stroked his stringy beard. “Maybe we won’t kill you. Maybe we’ll just tie you to a tree and leave you for the gluttons.”

“Oh, Daevas, no!” he cried, mockingly. He struggled to get onto his knees and fake begging for a few seconds before laughing. “You ain’t gonna do nothin’ to me, and we all knows it! Just send me up the White Road, ye bleedin’ heart woozie!”

Arn stared at him in silence. Then, taking a deep breath, he looked at Sharkhart. “Tie him up.” Sharkhart and I tied him to a support beam. He laughed at us, especially me. We joined the others at the far end of the yurt.

“He’s a hard one,” said Ferun, glancing over his shoulder at Stree. “He won’t talk to save his life.”

Arn cupped his mouth and sighed. “What options do we have?”

“Torture,” said Ferun.

“Absolutely not.”

Ferun faced off against him. “He will not betray his conspirators just to save his life. You cannot send him up the White Road; he would gladly accept life among the Scumdogs with whom he has already cast his fate. You must make continued life more unbearable than death.”

Arn looked down as Ferun stepped away. He raised his eyes and looked at Sharkhart. The Tallfolk savage put his big hand on Arn’s shoulder and said, “Leave me with him.”

“Or me,” said Blackfoot.

“No. I’ll do it,” said Ferun.

The Sand King looked sick. He rubbed his eyes and looked at Stree, who was leaning against the wall. He broke into an off key rendition of some Brontish bar song. That was when Arn surprised me by looking directly at me and asking, “What do you think?”

“I . . .” I looked around, shocked at how everyone’s eyes were now on me. “I don’t know. Why are you asking me?”

“Because you’re a leader. You understand.”

“Me? I’m not a leader!” He was right. Like it or not, I was a leader. Only leaders understand each other. I took a deep breath and looked at everyone else in the group. Even Ferun, who really looked like he wanted to torture this guy. As much as I hated the idea of letting him exercise his sickness on anyone, even someone as treacherous as Stree, he was right. And this time, the Scumdogs had gone after Reiwyn. Imagining her in their hands made the skin of my face heat. But I couldn’t be guided by rage. Arn wouldn’t want that kind of decision from me. I had to look at this critically, and that meant there was only one course of action . . . 

“I think you should do whatever you have to do.”

Arn stood in silence, not looking at anyone. After a few tense seconds, he walked from us to Stree, grabbing a handful of his hair and jerking his head up to him to look him in the eye. “Tell me who you’re working with. Last chance.”

Stree spat a bloody wad in his face. He laughed as it trickled down Arn’s cheek. Arn released him and stepped back, pointing at him. “Damn you for forcing me to do this.” He turned and walked back toward us. Ferun chuckled and drew his dagger, but Arn stopped him halfway. “No.” He looked at Sharkhart. The savage nodded in understanding. Stree kept laughing.

“Fair,” said Ferun, sheathing his dagger. He patted Sharkhart’s shoulder and smiled at him. “I’ll go talk to the rest of the night watch and see if any of them remember anything suspicious.”

We left Arn’s yurt to the sounds of Stree’s laughter. Arn stopped on his deck and grabbed the rail until his knuckles turned white under his sun-bronzed hands. I wanted to say something to him, but I had no idea what I could that would make a difference. He wouldn’t look at us. He wouldn’t look at anyone, not even the crowd that had gathered around the entrance to his yurt, listening to Stree’s cackling laughter. We heard a whip crack, and the laughter turned to screams. Arn didn’t flinch, only closed his eyes and looked down.

We went to check on Reiwyn. She was fair, but she might have known that for certain sooner if she’d complied with Nol’s examination. “They barely touched me,” she protested, tightening her breeches as we entered the infirmary.

“Better to be sure,” said Nol with his lilting voice. He stepped away and set about cleaning his instruments.

“I was glad for some company,” said Antioc, now sitting on his cot.

Gargath passed without looking at me. I sighed. He was right to be angry at me. I’d shared something he’d plainly told me in confidence. That I felt I had no choice was only minor mitigation. Hopefully in time, when he saw that the colonists here would bear no ill will toward Hratoe for her morbid gift, he would forgive me. Though, I was a little surprised that I cared. I tried to rationalize it by saying Gargath was useful to me in some way, but I couldn’t quite place how. I suppose I just liked having him as a friend.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” said Blackfoot. Reiwyn smiled at him and tapped his nose.

It was an hour before we returned to Arn’s yurt. The crowd had dissipated—apparently, the screams of a fellow colonist, even a traitor, was more than they could stomach. Arn remained much as we’d left him, face bleached with beads of sweat running down his forehead. I stepped next to him and took a place on the rail. It was wet with Arn’s sweat. “You didn’t have a choice,” I said quietly.

“That does not make it easier.” His words were dry.

The screaming stopped, filling the air with a somber silence. From within we heard sobbing, and Sharkhart emerged, blood dripping whip coiled at his side. His tanned flesh was speckled with red. He didn’t look at any of us but Arn when he said, “He’s ready to talk.”

I didn’t really want to go back in, but I felt it obligatory. I wish I had stayed outside. Stree was barely recognizable. Sharkhart’s whip had torn his flesh to strips, dripping with blood that pooled around him in such quantities that it wasn’t until he weakly lifted his head that I knew he was alive. He gazed at us with eyes that begged for death. Given a few more minutes without succor and he would have it.

“Get Nol,” said Arn to no one in particular. Uller, clearly not having the stomach for this, decided it was implored upon him and left. Reiwyn looked away and covered her nose. Even Blackfoot, the most tolerant of us toward this kind of treatment, could barely stand the sight, averting his eyes and muttering curses of shock under his breath. For my part, I simply stared. That a man could do such things to another was equal parts fascinating and traumatic. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to look at Sharkhart the same way again.

Nol arrived and bound the wounds, cleaning them with boiled water and wrapping them with brown bandages soaked with healing balms he made from the extracts of local herbs. When he took out one of the swollen pink fruits, Sharkhart put his hand between them and shook his head. Nol cast his red eyes down and backed away, tucking the fruit back into a pouch and wiping blood from his hands with an old rag.

Arn knelt beside him. “I didn’t want to do this. Tell me, and we’ll see that you suffer as little as possible. All will be forgiven. Just give me a name.”

Stree nodded slowly and gestured for him to come closer. Sharkhart put his hand on Arn’s shoulder, but Arn gave him a reassuring look and leaned forward, putting his ear next to the wounded Brontishman’s mouth. His parched lips uttered a word too soft for any but the Sand King to hear. Whatever he said, it made Arn bolt upright.

“Unbelievable! After all this, he taunts us still!”

Sharkhart stepped closer. Stree squirmed as though his shadow were poison.

“What did he say?” I pleaded.

“He lied,” said Arn. “I should have known this was wrong. We’ve accomplished nothing but debasing ourselves to the level of those we presume to oppose.”

I pointed at the trembling, bandaged mess before us. “Look at him; he’s barely even alive! There’s no way he’s lying. What did he say?”

Arn gave me a cold look. “He said it was Ferun.”

As much as I wanted to believe the worst about him, that was pretty ridiculous. Ferun was captain of the guard. Or general, or whatever. Most importantly, Arn trusted him. Still, there were some things that leant to his guilt. He was a mad wolf; I’d seen it in his eyes. A man like that didn’t care about anything. It was that crazed indifference to the feelings of others that had made him so attractive to Reiwyn in the first place . . . 

“Reiwyn!” I said, quite abruptly.

“What?” she asked, looking at me equally abruptly.

“No . . .” I shook my head. “They came after Reiwyn. Specifically Reiwyn. They knew exactly where she slept. They wanted her.”

Arn winced at me. “So?”

“It was revenge. She’d humiliated him. He told Stree to let the Scumdogs in and sent them directly to her yurt.”

Arn covered his mouth and cast his eyes to the side, pensive. After a few seconds, he shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. He wanted us to torture Stree.”

“He wanted you to let
him
torture Stree, but you made Sharkhart do it. I’ll wager if you allowed him to do it, Stree would’ve died in the process.”

“It makes sense,” said Uller, nodding. He looked at Reiwyn. “This wasn’t a random raid. This was personal.”

Reiwyn gritted her teeth. “I’ll chop off his─!”

“It doesn’t make sense.” Arn raised his hands. “Ferun has been here almost as long as me. I’ve known him for years.”

I looked at him. “Then you know what kind of man he is. Is he capable of something like this?”

Arn was speechless. He looked over his shoulder at Sharkhart. The Tallfolk was silent.

“Why don’t we just ask him?” suggested Uller.

“Ask him what?” I looked at Uller. “Did you let three Scumdogs past the wall to kidnap your ex-lover for revenge? What do you think he’ll say?”

“Well of course I don’t expect him to tell the truth!”

Stree rasped, catching our attention. He slowly raised his hands, pained from the exertion, spreading his fingers and thumb out from a bandaged palm. His other hand came up with equally strained effort. On that one, he only raised a single, crooked finger.

Arn stepped over to him. “What’s that mean?”

My eyes widened when realization came over me. “Six. He’s showing us six . . . there were six Scumdogs?” Stree nodded and collapsed against the wall, panting heavily.