Lady Of Regret (Book 2) (11 page)

Without answering, or appearing to hear the question, Horge flitted across the rough camp, began rooting through a wicker pannier.

There was no question in Rathe’s mind he was hiding something. Loro shot him a questioning look. Rathe made a soothing gesture, in case Loro got it into his skull to wallop Horge again. Horge might be hiding something, but Rathe could hardly fault him for secrecy amongst newly met men, even if they had saved him from getting roasted on a spit.

“
Samba the yak
,” Loro said musingly. “Save for that shaggy coat and long tail, your beast looks like a cow. How do they taste?”

Horge spun, scandalized. “Yaks are too valuable for eating! Why, their milk makes perfect cheese, their fur can be woven into fine coats, they pack in places a goat cannot walk, and.…” He trailed off with a sheepish look. Rathe nodded for him to go on. “Well, as we are being honest, they make excellent traveling companions. Better than most men, I assure you.”

“Men, mayhap, but not better than a woman or two, I trust,” Loro said with a lewd wink and braying laughter.

Horge’s long nose wriggled and one eye twitched, as if he were having a fit. “I’ve never traveled with a woman, other than kin.”

“If the day comes when you must choose between a smelly yak and a buxom wench, best pick the wench,” Loro advised.

Horge looked to Rathe for a way out of the conversation, and Rathe spread his hands in helplessness. Turning Loro’s mind from women was nearly as hard as turning it from food.

“Truth is, women shy from me,” Horge said sadly, coming back to the fire with an iron skillet, and what were indeed the biggest trout Rathe had ever seen. “Always have.”

“Nothing a bath and some proper clothes can’t fix,” Loro said, slapping his knee and laughing boisterously. “Should that fail, there are plenty who will give you more than you know what to do with for a silver piece, no matter how you smell!” He laughed all the harder, until he saw that neither Rathe nor Horge shared his amusement. He went still, took a hasty pull at his flask.

Horge made several more trips between the fire and his panniers. In short order, he had assembled an iron rack over the blaze, atop which he placed the skillet. As a huge dollop of lard skidded and popped over the blackened surface, he added the trout, seasoned them with coarse salt pinched from a small wooden box. With his nervousness focused on a task, his movements became efficient and nimble.

“So what can you tell us of these lands?” Rathe asked.

“What would you know?” Horge asked, stuffing small onions and deep green leaves into the trout bellies.

“The mountains, for instance. Is there a way out of them, or do they go on forever?”

Horge snorted. “Mountains? Hah! These are no mountains, only foothills. If you had ventured into the mountains, those to the north, which gnaw at the stars of night like demon teeth, you would have long since died for want of breath, but not before the frost had blackened your skin.”

“Seem like mountains to me,” Loro said.

Horge looked between Rathe and Loro. “There are some who go so high, seeking things better left to the gods, but they are not those you would want to meet. Do not fret over them, as they would not suffer an audience with you. Or so you should hope.”

“Priests?”

Horge shook his head absently, lost in his cooking. “Monks. Better to carve out your own eyes with a dull stick, or drink molten iron, than to mingle with those who walk the Way of Knowing.”

“I have heard of these men,” Rathe said, doing his best to ignore the rumbling in his belly brought by the scent of cooking trout. “In Trem, along the Sea of Grelar, they are known as healers and mystics—standoffish, but scarcely dangerous.”

“The Way of Knowing leads different men to different paths,” Horge offered. “Perhaps the monks you speak of seek after the nature of peace, or healing, or, for all I know, how to better cultivate seaweed. The monks hereabouts, those of the Iron Marches, are of another breed entire.”

“You’ve had dealings with them?” Rathe asked.

Horge flinched. “Aye, but ours is a bond no man should want. If not for need, I would have looked elsewhere to … earn a living.” His falter at the end made Rathe sure the man was hiding something.

“Why is that, friend?” Loro asked.

Horge gave the skillet a shake, turned the trout with a wooden spatula. In a grim tone belying his easy manner, he said, “Dark roads lead to dark ends. The monks of the Iron Marches are masters of both.”

“Yet you have earned your way with them,” Loro said. “If these monks are so treacherous, you must be a man of many hidden talents, to have come out ahead.”

Horge crowed laughter. “Talents? If not for you two, Tulfa and his shadowkin would even now be picking their teeth with my bones.”

“So, these monks pay?” Rathe asked. At some point, he and Loro would need coin.

Horge flinched. “If you survive their errands, then you are rewarded. Most times, those who seek for the monks perish.”

“I see,” Rathe said, calculating. His was a life defined by surviving where others could not. Loro praised the life of a thief, and Rathe had allowed him to, but that was not a road he wished to travel, unless forced to it.

Horge stood up with a toothy grin. “Supper, my new and dear friends, is ready!”

Among his goods, Horge also carried a set of oblong plates carved from wood. He served the simple meal upon these, handed one each to Rathe and Loro, then took his own. Rathe could scarcely keep himself from scarfing the meal. Loro did not bother to try. Horge separated bones from tender white meat with twitchy fussiness that Rathe did not find the least bit surprising.

After a second serving, Horge took their plates, scrubbed them with snow, and returned them to the panniers. Rathe opened his mouth to ask more about the local monks, but a furtive noise drew his eye to the darkness down the ravine.

“Ho the camp!” came an old man’s wheezy voice.

“Tulfa?” Loro blurted, looking doubtful.

“Didn’t sound like him.” Rathe stood. While he did not draw his sword, he rested his hand on the hilt.

“Do you have a place at your fire for a weary traveler?” the stranger called. They could not see him yet, but he sounded much closer.

A rustle of movement turned Rathe and Loro. Where Horge had been, now his gear sat unattended. Loro cast about. “Where did he get off to?”

Rathe was more concerned with
why
he had fled. Before he could say a word, the stranger glided into view. Hovering between darkness and light, the man’s slitted eyes burned like the sun.

Chapter 14

“No need for swords,” the stranger admonished, tottering forward. Proximity to the campfire put to rest the illusion his eyes were ablaze, or that he was in any way threatening. He wore a head-cloth held in place with a gold circlet, a fine woolen cloak, robes of deep blue embroidered with sweeping designs done in crimson and gold. Stooped though he was, the man stood a head taller than Rathe.

“If you had seen the things we have since coming into these foul mountains,” Loro said, “you would have your own steel bared.”

The old man tugged his long beard, the tips of which fell to a wide leather belt hung with ivory-and-gold scroll cases, and pouches of rich fabric. “I expect you mean Tulfa and his shadowkin?”

“How do you know about him?” Rathe asked suspiciously.

“Anyone who has traveled this particular road knows the horrors of Deepreach.” The old man leaned on a finely wrought blackwood staff. Enough golden inlays decorated its length to tempt the wealthiest highborn to thievery. “A wise traveler knows to take other paths.”

“If you had been our guide,” Loro said, “then our dreams would be the sweeter for it.”

The old man seemed more interested in Horge’s yak, than anything Loro was saying. He offered a kind grin. “I am called Durogg.” After Loro gave his and Rathe’s name, Durogg turned to the latter.

“I’ve heard tales of you—or, should I say, tales of a man bearing that name. A great warrior of the southlands, these tales say, who also goes by the name
Scorpion
.”

“That’s him!” Loro piped, unaware of Rathe’s startled look.

Durogg grew speculative. “’Tis said the newly crowned Cerrikothian king has pledged a lordship and generous holdings for the one who brings him the Scorpion’s head. I expect legions of bounty hunters must be after you, for you to stray so far from your homelands?”

“Those stories are exaggerated,” Rathe said, hand tightening on his sword hilt. “As for men hunting me, I’ve yet to notice.” He did not expect trouble from Durogg, but after crossing paths with Tulfa, his trust in gentle old men had diminished.

“As you say. Most such stories are overwrought,” Durogg agreed, voice skeptical. “I recognize that beast of burden, yonder. Is its owner, perchance, hereabout?”

“You know Horge?” Loro asked.

“As it happens, he and I share a recent, and rather unfortunate, history. I would very much appreciate if you give him over to me.”

“As we spared him from Tulfa’s cook pot,” Rathe said, “he’s in our care. If Horge has done anything against you, maybe we can help sort out your troubles.”

“The manner in which I choose to rectify my trouble is none of your concern,” Durogg said, friendliness evaporating. “It will go better between us if you put him into my hands.
At once
.”

“I would know the reason you want Horge.” Rathe disliked the man’s threatening tone. He held no great love for Horge, but neither had the man given any reason to turn him over to a stranger.

Durogg stood straighter, firmer, shedding his guise of frailty. “’Tis enough I ask.” He swept back his cloak with a flourish, slammed the butt of his staff against the frozen ground. The mountains around them rung like a struck bell, and a burst of flame lit the head of the staff.

“Gods and demons,” Loro cursed, taking a step back. “Look at his eyes!”

“I see,” Rathe said, sword clearing the scabbard.

Durogg’s eyes had become orbs of fire. Flames leaped behind his teeth when he said, “Give me that thieving wretch, on the instant, or suffer the consequences of denying me.”

“Seems we’re at an impasse,” Rathe said. Here was a foe of flesh, which suited him better than facing one of shadow.

Durogg’s burning eyes narrowed. Instead of speaking again, he stabbed his staff toward Rathe. A hissing gout of fire shot through the camp, struck the spot where Rathe had been a second before.

Rathe had expected some kind of attack, but nothing like that. Stunned, he rolled to his feet, only to leap again when another column of fire burst from Durogg’s staff. This time he landed behind a boulder, and pressed his face against the crust of snow. Loro had disappeared into the dense brush above camp. The horses tugged at their ropes, and Horge’s yak was grunting and lashing out with its back hooves.

“Give me what I want, Scorpion,” Durogg warned, “or I will burn these mountains to cinders, and you with them!”

Before Rathe could respond, a blast of fire exploded round the boulder. He shut his eyes against heat so intense that it shattered the boulder. As the fire died, Rathe was up and away.

“There is nowhere you can escape!” Durogg shouted.

Rathe shut his mind to that, bulled his way deeper into the brush. Another roar of fire charred the foliage closer to camp, but dwindled a few paces beyond. He had no idea what manner of man he faced, but he had learned as a green soldier to seek high ground against all enemies. He did so now. Behind him, Loro scampered up the opposite side of the ravine.

After losing himself in deep darkness, Rathe made a sharp turn, and began clawing his way up the mountainside, using outcrops and the rare spruce to hide his progress. He went on until his breath burned in his chest and his legs quivered. He halted to peer around a boulder.

Durogg now stood in the middle of camp, feet planted in the cookfire. Flames licked around the hem of his robes, but did not burn them. He focused on a bush wiggling nearby, and blasted it with fire from his staff. After a brief flare, only smoking branches remained. Higher up the slope, across the ravine from Rathe, Loro darted from one boulder to another.

Rathe called a warning at the instant Durogg unleashed another stream of fire. It fell short, and Loro threw himself behind a pile of snow-covered rocks. Durogg seared a few more random spots, then moved to Horge’s gear, and began rifling through the panniers.

It crossed Rathe’s mind to let Durogg take whatever he was after. The problem with the plan was that he would never know if Durogg might be waiting somewhere up ahead, or sneaking up from behind. Either way, a man who could brandish fire as a weapon was not a man Rathe wanted hunting him.

While he studied his options, he shifted his footing, and the boulder rocked under his weight. He eased back and sat down. Bladed weapons of any sort were out of the question. Durogg’s fires seemed to lose potency after a few paces, but were deadly within the reach of sword and dagger. Rathe guessed his bow would work, but it lay in its case, alongside his saddle and bedroll.

Across the ravine, Loro popped up, cast about, then scurried back under cover. Horge never made an appearance. Rathe swore an oath to himself that if they got out of this mess, he would have words with the ratty little bastard.