Feast of Souls (20 page)

Two were just beginning to gather their things, while another smothered the fire that must have recently served to heat food or drink for them. He watched them closely and decided they were more brutes than professionals: men who had learned that a pack of four working in unison could take down the strongest prey with no need for complex planning. That was good; such a group was unlikely to be prepared for a stealthy assault.

Andovan’s head throbbed hotly for a moment, reminding him of his own weakened condition, but he was too focused upon his prey to let it bother him. With care he lay down the rope he had brought as he had planned, taking care to move quietly, freezing when there was not enough noise in the camp to cover his own movements. But the thieves were not watching for trouble. They were joking now about some woman they’d shared in a distant town, which apparently was the reason they were not anxious to stay in the vicinity. An-dovan’s jaw clenched tightly as he crouched down in the brush to watch them, waiting for the moment that must surely come, if they had just broken their fast.

And soon it did. Laughing, the tallest of the men made some crude comment about female sexual habits and then moved into the brush surrounding the camp, one hand reaching under his shirt to loosen his clothing. Andovan knew the thief would be but a moment at his business and must be taken swiftly. Fortunately for him the man had eaten well the night before, and had something more substantial than piss to offer to the gods of the woods; Andovan came up behind him like a cat while he crouched, and had his arm around his neck before the man even knew he was there. It was a less effective move than crushing his head with an iron bar would have been, but it was quieter; Andovan’s muscular arm choked the man’s windpipe before he could utter a sound, bending him upward and backward so that he had no purchase on the ground. He had choked a mountain lion that way once, though the claws had raked him dearly in the process; at least this time he could grab his quarry’s wrist and keep him from getting hold of any kind of weapon.

The man was enough of a fighter that he did not struggle wildly, but tried to strike at his attacker. But Andovan’s grip was uncompromising, and the kicks and blows that were offered were but weak things, with no power to dislodge him. After a few minutes the struggles ceased. Andovan held on, still, until he felt that special, eerie limpness which meant that life had left the flesh. Then he let the body down, slowly, lowering it to the ground with care so that it made as little noise as possible.

All was quiet, if not utterly silent. He braved a glance back through the brush, parting the leaves until he could catch a glimpse of the clearing. The men were too busy chattering among themselves to have heard him. That meant he had a few moments to prepare himself. He searched the body quickly, cursing under his breath when he saw the man was unarmed. He’d have given much for a knife right now. Hefting the iron bar he’d borrowed, Andovan slipped back to the spot he had prepared nearby, and then waited, listening carefully.

Finally a man’s voice called, “Tomas?”

There was a pause, then another came to his ears. “…should be back by now.”

“Tomas?”

Only silence.

“Damn it all, has he gone off somewhere?”

“Could be an animal got him—”

“Well then we’d have heard it, wouldn’t we?”

“Like you ever stop chattering long enough to hear anything.”

“Like you ever shut up long enough to listen.”

“Tomas!”

Andovan let out a groan then. It was hopefully that kind of groan which any man might utter, devoid of the kind of tone or detail that would identify its owner.

“Ah, damn!”

“Tomas, you hurt?” Andovan said nothing. “Shit, man, I told you to watch where you walked. Probably another damned snake.”

“Probably bit him on the prick this time.”

Cursing under his breath, one of the men began to head into the brush, near where Andovan was waiting, calling for his lost friend. The fugitive prince could not have asked for better. He fell back behind the bulk of a tree trunk, letting the man pass by him before he swung the iron bar at the back of his head. The sound of the impact cracked through the forest, silencing whatever discussion was going on in the camp. As he had meant it to.

“Fuck a whore!” one of the men swore, then both grabbed their weapons and started to run toward where the sound had come from.

Andovan moved, and this time moved noisily. They heard him first and then they saw him, and quickly turned their steps in his direction. That was fine with him. He dodged an obstacle and then came to an open place where combat would be easy; then he turned and feigned fear as his enemies came running toward him—

And neither of them looked down. Andovan’s hemp rope caught the first at the calf and brought him crashing to the ground. The second caught on just in time to dodge the rope, but tripped over the legs of his fallen comrade and went down right on top of him.

It was no fight at all, really. Not with the iron bar giving Andovan the advantage of superior reach, its heft cold and hard enough to steal a man’s consciousness in a single blow. It felt good to exert himself, to lose himself in battle, however brief, and feel the blood rushing through his veins at full strength, like it had in the old days. The Wasting might have weakened him, but he was not yet helpless.

When they lay there before him, bloody and still, he raised the iron bar yet again. And hesitated. One good blow to each would put them out of their misery forever, if he had not done that already. Doubtless there were men and women who would thank him for removing such beasts from the realm of human affairs.

But.

Killing a man in cold blood was not the same as killing him in the heat of battle. Cutting the throat of a man was not the same as slicing that of a deer, where the latter might serve for meat and clothing. Andovan had never shied away from killing before, but never before had he had a man’s body lying blood splattered and helpless at his feet like this.

They
should
die. They deserved to die. They had hurt enough people that their deaths should be applauded.

He gazed down at the two bodies for a long time.

I am not a judge
, he thought at last, lowering the iron bar.

He tied them with strips of cloth torn from their clothing, so that if they did awaken while he was busy with their camp they would make enough noise to warn him. Otherwise he would leave them to the mercy of the woods… which meant to the mercy of the gods. Of course, if the deities of these woods were anything like the deities of the northern woods, they would be dead soon enough. Already he thought he could hear small animals stirring in the underbrush, drawn by the smell of fresh blood. Soon other creatures would arrive, bigger and meaner creatures, and the thieves would have bigger things than him to worry about.

He gathered up their supplies, searched out the few treasures they had hidden among their things, broke what weapons he did not care to take with him, and rode his horse back to the road, where soon the muddled track obscured all signs of his passage, making for a trail no man could follow.

One of the brothers was at the log cabin when Andovan returned, and the girl as well. Now that the sunlight fell lull upon the structure he could see that it had once been well made, but time and inexpert repair had allowed it to fall from grace. This family had neither built it nor purchased it, he guessed, but simply moved in when opportunity afforded. Perhaps they had even killed the family that owned it in order to take possession.

He looked into the eyes of Dea’s brother and saw in them that same spark which, under the right circumstances, might have him toasting the rape of women alongside thieves and brigands in the woods. For a moment his hand tightened on the handle of his knife, and the line of muscle along the line of his jaw clenched tight. Then he forced both to relax.

“I am Talesin,” he said. “I understand I owe you much.”

The others’ eyes glittered greedily. Andovan saw him glance at Dea, who turned her face away from him shyly. No, not shyly. Hiding something. Andovan felt a knot tighten in the pit of his gut. Had one of them struck the girl? Perhaps over the items he had borrowed, believing them simply stolen, blaming her for their loss? Was she hiding a fresh bruise from him?

He felt sick inside. And angry. He wanted to kill them all.

“Here.” He pulled a heavy purse from his belt: ill-gotten gain from the thieves, a bag of coins and bits of jewelry and even some lady’s embroidered fan. It was not enough to make the brothers rich men, but it would keep them comfortable for a long while. “Accept my thanks.”

He handed the bag to one of the brothers, who hefted its weight and marked the clinking of small metal bits within, and grinned. “Always pleased to serve your lordship,” he said.

Andovan tried to meet the girl’s eyes, but she would not oblige him. Still her far cheek was turned so that he could not see it.

You cannot strike a man who just saved your life
, he told himself.
No matter how much he deserves it
.

He reached into his jerkin, into the smaller purse that was hidden there, and pulled out a handful of his own coins. It was a goodly fraction of what he had brought with him and its loss would make his journey that much harder, but that could not be helped.

He held up the coins in the sunlight, letting both of them see their golden luster, the finely minted impressions of Danton’s own face on one side, Gwynofar’s on the other. He wondered if they would notice the resemblance.

“The girl’s maidenhead is mine,” he announced. “I am paying for it now. I will relinquish my rights if she marries honorably, but if she does not, her virginity is mine to take, or not to take, at my whim.” He handed the coins to her brother and thought he saw the man flinch as he did so. Good. He had slipped unconsciously into what his father called an imperial tone, and even if these people did not know his true rank, they could sense his innate authority… and his utter conviction backing it. “If you dishonor my rights, if you sell her to another, or allow her to be taken against her will, I will come back and hunt you down. All of you. Like I hunted those men. Like I hunt animals.”

He pulled out the iron bar from the straps of his pack and cast it to the ground by the side of the doorway; it stuck upright in the soil like a spear, quivering. The rope followed afterward, its coils marked with spatters of blood.

“Do not forget,” he warned.

He would have liked a private moment with the girl, one last minute for a gentle and tender farewell, but he sensed that the brother was not about to leave them alone and let that happen. So he had to settle for one last glance into her blue eyes—filled with such doubt, such wonder, such painful gratitude—and a nod that bade her make the most she could of his gift, for he could not return to help her again.

The world is a harsh place
, he thought,
and men are like animals, who will devour their own
.

His heart heavy, his head pounding in pain again, he mounted his horse and turned its nose to the west, and began to ride once more.

The High Queen Gwynofar was dressed in black. It was not the black of the Magisters, pristine and perfect, the stuff of shadows magicked into cloth, but a simpler fabric, like that a commoner would wear. There were many layers of it and each one was torn, as the custom was in the Protectorates, garments ripped each time a mourning cry was uttered until all that was left was a ragged fringe. Her fingers played with the tattered edges as she walked, and she whispered prayers to the gods of her homeland, wondering if they could even hear her in this place. Sometimes the Protectorates and their gods seemed so far off they might have been in a different world entirely… or perhaps they were just a dream from which she had not yet awakened, and she would soon discover that her memories had no real substance at all.

She was a delicate woman of northern stock, with skin so fine and white that slender blue veins could be glimpsed coursing beneath it, and gently curling hair of a soft yellow that stirred in the slightest breeze. In her own homeland she had been considered beautiful, in an ethereal sort of way, but it was no secret that Danton Aurelius preferred more substantive stock for his bed, and most of his local bastards reflected the earthy whores that mothered them. Even her own sons, born out of royal duty, looked more like Danton than like her, and she could well imagine his coarse, hook-nosed seed laying down the law in her womb, terrorizing each fledgling infant into accepting his features
or else
. If so, only one son had defied him. Only one child had taken after her instead, defying his father to manifest his mother’s pale essence.

And now he was gone.

In Andovan she had seen the windswept snowfields of the far north, the deep fjords and pine-crested mountains of her birthplace, the glimmering Veils of the Gods as they swept across the evening sky, a sight of such terrible beauty that they drove one to one’s knees in prayer. Andovan. His eyes were as blue as the northern skies in summer and she had wept to see them, missing her homeland so terribly she could hardly bear it. He was
her
child, the only thing here that had been truly hers, the one thing the ancient gods had given her to make this terrible banishment tolerable.