Read The Black Prince: Part II Online

Authors: P. J. Fox

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Horror, #Dark Fantasy, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Historical, #Sword & Sorcery

The Black Prince: Part II (6 page)

BOOK: The Black Prince: Part II
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Water elf disease
, came the whispers. He hadn’t, as it turned out, been bitten; his body was examined, revealing nothing but the vestiges of a rash. His things had been burned, for fear of contagion.

Hart had watched that, too.

And then, despite having never touched the man, he’d gotten sick.

That was the really terrifying thing about the disease: a man passed it most easily before he even knew himself to be sick. Hart had developed a runny nose, too. And then a sore throat made worse by a deep, hacking cough. His neck had swelled. His eyes had watered. And then the rash had appeared. He’d been nauseous, and then weak, and then delirious.

His nurse had feared that, if he did recover, he’d be deaf. Or demented. About a quarter of the children who did recover suffered some sort of lasting defect. From the high fever, it was believed. Such raging fires could leave even a grown man, hale and hearty, a shadow of his former self.

But Hart had recovered, his faculties intact. His things had been burned just the same and he’d watched the servants loading that bier, too, rags wrapped around their faces. Like a burial, he remembered thinking. His bedding. His toys. Anything that could be taken, had been.

He’d been upset, of course, but he’d tried to face the loss stoically. His little sister was still little more than a baby, and babies rarely survived. But she’d toddled over to him, her feet hidden in the bottom of that stupid sack she’d worn, that all babies seemed to wear, and stood next to him. She hadn’t said a word; she couldn’t speak yet. But after a minute, she’d reached up and grasped a single finger in her chubby hand. And that had been the true beginning of their friendship.

Knowing Isla had given him a deep respect for women. For what they suffered, and for how unfair their lives sometimes were. Isla was just as smart as any man—smarter than most men, in truth—but she was limited by, not her actual sex but the perception of it. As though women were meant to be weak and those women who weren’t, rather than suggesting that a culture’s shared belief about the nature of womanhood might be wrong, were rejected as pariahs. Deformed, somehow, for demonstrating that they could think and feel about things other than sashes and slippers and strewing rushes.

He thought about that now, as he stood in the rain with his arms crossed and surveyed the camp. Strange, what came to one’s mind in times of stress. He’d thought they might lose Isla over the winter, when she’d been so weak. Strong in mind she might be, but she’d never been strong in constitution. Always too thin, and too pale.

Rowena, on the other hand, had always been strong. And wasn’t that always the way of it: the best died early while the worst kept on. And on. Hart would have gladly traded Rowena’s life for Bjorn’s. Or for that of any of the men he’d known, who’d passed on to whatever lay beyond this world. Save maybe for that of his father. Who, he supposed, must be dead by now too. Or if not dead, then close. He wouldn’t discover the earl’s fate until he next returned to Caer Addanc.

The roads, always dangerous, had grown terrifying and he couldn’t risk sending a scout, who might be captured and tortured for information, home on purely personal business.

He’d have to imagine that Isla was well, and Lissa, and concentrate on other matters.

Like how to navigate this canyon.

They’d camped above it, giving the men time to sleep and the scouts time to form, together, some guess at its size.

“Never,” Arvid marveled, “have I imagined such a place. Truly this is the stuff of dreams.”

“Then dream of a way to cross it.”

The canyon was beautiful. But treacherous. Like a great gash that had been cut into the earth, the edges ragged. Only water flowed through it instead of blood, so clear as to be invisible as it passed over a bed laid with innumerable rounded stones. The water wasn’t deep; even Rudolph could wade through it without much of a problem.

The problem was reaching it.

The walls had been carved by some divine hand from black stone that was already greening with a thousand different lichens. Spring was coming upon them, as they moved further south and nearer the coast. Come summer, there would truly be beauty beyond measure here.

“We can’t scale it. It’s a sheer drop.” And even if they could, their horses couldn’t. And they needed their horses. They’d lost another one the day before, a spare owned by a surly Southron who’d already begun demanding compensation. Which he’d get, if he lived long enough to collect it.

Hart wouldn’t kill him. He’d point him at House Salm and tell him its inhabitants held the purse strings. An hour of his pointless yelling and they’d surrender, just to have it stop.

“We might be able to build a bridge across.”

“We’d spend longer hewing these trees into something usable than we would just going around.” And they’d get sick, spending so long in one place. This place was wet, even without the rain. Which beat down on Hart’s head, flattening his short hair into a sort of helmet that dripped endlessly into his eyes. Arvid, beside him, looked like a bear that had lost a battle with a lake.

Arvid grunted. “That remains to be seen.” He coughed, wiped his mouth, and then spit. “These fine walls might have inspired the halls of Bragi, high above, but I’d trade them this night for a bed.”

Hart blinked more water from his eyes.

“I hope this isn’t another fool’s errand.”

Hart hoped the same. “The loyal servant learns to love the lash,” was all he said.

“Oh, spare me your Ymir-loving bullshit.” Arvid spat again. Ymir was his people’s name for the Dark One, and was thought by them to have taken the form of a frost giant. His both character and intentions were of the purest evil, formed even from the venom that dripped down into the abyss between the worlds. When he was finally slain, his bones became the mountains of the North.

Further proof, if such was needed, that all good derived from evil.

Hart glanced at his friend, then went back to studying the canyon. “Not counting those lost in the Great Flood, the Gods of my father’s church are recorded as having killed several million. Whereas the Dark One is recorded as having killed ten. The stories of the scriptures are all of exclusion: men and women being driven for their homes for failing in some fashion, and thus failing to win the prize of the Gods’ supposedly unconditional love. Women being killed for surviving rape; men being killed for loving other men. In one story, an entire town is wiped from the map simply because one man who lives there,
one
, worships another God.

“Sinners are burned to death, as are their children. For being the children of sinners. Babes in arms, how could they have grieved the Gods? Whereas the Dark One, He understands human nature. He accepts those of Gods’ children unconditionally that the Gods, and their followers, have cast out. And still He’s hated. And still He lets himself be hated. And why? Because he’s not our hero.”

He was a guardian. A protector. A champion in a battle in which there were no other champions. At least not within the ranks of those who praised themselves as embodiments of all that was noble and true. Self-important men like Father Justin and, indeed, his own father. Good men had gotten them into this war. Good men had decided that a man couldn’t marry a whore and be an earl.

That a place like Chilperic was better falling into ruin, as Enzie had done, than be claimed by a man without the blessing of convention.

Marriage. Inheritance. What was a man’s intelligence, or drive to succeed, compared to the power of the church’s blessing on his having bedded a particular woman?

But Arvid was unmoved. He took a drink from his flask. “Your father’s religion is stupid.”

And then the first of the scouts returned.

There was a shout from below and a horn blast, but no second and third horn blast to indicate that enemies had infiltrated the camp. Indeed there hadn’t been any even threat of an enemy since leaving Hardland. Which both surprised and concerned Hart. They were now well into Beaufort and there should have been some sign of Maeve’s supporters. There was always the possibility that they were that disorganized, but Hart could hardly risk his life and the lives of his men on it.

War was a funny thing. Battles started late, or never started at all, because the opposing armies literally couldn’t find each other. Being out in the middle of nowhere wasn’t like being in Barghast, or even in Ewesdale. There, there were roads. That actually led to specific things, as opposed to merely cut a certain section of woods. There were signs.

Whereas a man might wander through a place like this for days, even weeks, without finding another soul. Even if he was being hunted. There might be a main road, at least of sorts, and there might be a village, but it would be a mistake to assume that the main road connected to the village. Because of course why would it; the villagers might not use that road. They might use an entirely different road, that only circled around through those neighboring villages with which they were friendly. Why would they waste time cutting a road to somewhere they didn’t want to go?

He walked down the rolling slope, his boots squelching in the wet. Arvid followed behind, like a shadow. Not that there were any shadows, under these lowering skies.

Another gust of rain hit him square in the face.

The scout was waiting next to a fire. Both were protected from the rain by a piece of wax canvas that had been stretched at an angle between the trees. His arms were crossed, and he was shivering. He looked, if anything, worse than Hart felt. He was young, too. A year or so younger than Isla, Hart thought; although to his jaded eyes the miserable man-child before him looked barely older than Asher. Had Hart ever been so young, and so afraid?

“Well?”

The scout swallowed. Was he afraid of his job, of the weather, or of Hart? Twilight was upon them, and would soon bring a night filled with hostile eyes. Some of which, Hart was certain, must report to Maeve. That no one had come across the slightest sign of their presence, as tempting as it was to believe otherwise, didn’t mean they weren’t there.

They couldn’t have come this far with no one noticing.

“We’re there.”

“What? What do you mean?” Hart was exasperated at this reticence. “Out with it, man.”

“We must have crossed the border into Chilperic some time this morning. Because House Salm is right over that rise. North along the gorge, and perhaps another league.”

“Perhaps?”

The scout swallowed again. “Another league.”

It had better be.

He turned on his heel and stalked toward his tent. Arvid, behind him, motioned the scout to follow. Hart’s mood, bad before, was now black.

He pushed open flap. Inside was just as wet as outside. He began examining his maps, which were strewn over his desk, without bothering to sit down. Arvid and the scout joined him. He looked up, his finger on where they were supposed to be. “Show me.”

The scout took a hesitant step forward.

The map in question was already covered with Hart’s annotations. Gods be damned useless piece of sheep hide. The only use in having them along was ever taking these kinds of notes, so the mapmakers could fix them later on. Or, rather, point fingers and argue and ultimately do nothing.

But the maps weren’t usually quite
this
wrong. “That, uh….” The scout pointed. He was just as hesitant to touch the map as he’d been, at first, to address Hart. “That piece of land, um, it isn’t there.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t exist. We’re not days out from House Salm. We’re there.” As he spoke, he seemed to gain confidence. “We just can’t see it now, because we’re below the rise. But once we crest it, House Salm is in the valley. On the other side of this river well, in the river. There’s a moat.”

Fuck. Positions like that were easy enough to defend, but hard to take. The river meant that House Salm, like Caer Addanc, had a ready source of water. He looked up, his eyes meeting the scout’s. “How wide is the moat?”

“Uh…not wide. About six paces. Maybe ten.”

Six or ten. Fantastic. “More than ten?”

The scout shook his head. “No.”

A moat meant no scaling, and no sapping. If he’d all the men in the world to spare then he might consider mounting some full scale assault, knowing he’d lose half of them—or more—just in reaching the top of the wall. Prone as he swam, a man was an easy target. Clinging to a wall, he was an easier one. A single cauldron of boiling oil could dispatch a dozen men or more, as those who hadn’t been hit directly fell on their fellows and knocked them into the drink.

But Hart didn’t have unlimited men. Even so, the kernel of an idea was forming. Finally.

The scout sneezed. He really did look well and truly miserable. And might, Hart thought, weigh even less than Isla.

“How,” he asked, “did you become a scout?”

“Uh.” There was silence. Had the question been too hard? And then, “at Goffstown.”

The battle before Ullswater Ford, which had caused that catastrophe.

Hart waited.

“I uh…I pulled a spear from myself to defend my lord. He’d been knocked from the saddle and set upon.” He sneezed again. “My lord died anyway. And then there was nowhere else to go.”

“Show me your scar.”

The scout lifted his shirt and vest to show a deep gouge that resembled the canyon outside. That was a wound from which he should have died. He was telling the truth. About something, at least.

Arvid grunted in approval.

But a scar proved only a result; not a cause. There were a thousand different stories that a man might tell, to explain any of the events in his life. And Hart might command these Southrons, but he did not trust them. Nor their motives. They claimed to want the same as him, but they bowed and scraped to a pair of vicious gods and a church that saw his life as forfeit.

“Go. Get something to eat.”

The scout left.

Arvid sat down and, pulling out a knife, began to sharpen it. He carried his whetstone and oil and other supplies with him wherever he went, in a small pouch that he tucked inside his vest. “A suspicious mind is a healthy mind,” he commented.

BOOK: The Black Prince: Part II
6.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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