The Briar King (8 page)

“My apologies. No offense intended. What I meant to say was thank you, thank you very much, and could you untie my hands, as well?”

Aspar glanced at the knot. It wasn't complicated. “Probably,” he said.

“Well? Aren't you going to?”

“Why did they have you tied up?”

“So I wouldn't run away. They robbed me and took me prisoner. You probably saved my life.”

“Probably.”

“For which, as I said, I'm grateful.”

“Why?”

The fellow blinked. “Well—ah—because I feel I have much left to do in my life, much of value—”

“No,” Aspar said, talking slowly as if to a child. “Why did they take you prisoner after they robbed you?”

“I suppose they thought to ransom me.”

“Why would they suppose that was worthwhile?”

“Because, I—” The boy stopped, suspicious. “You're like them, aren't you? You're just another bandit. That's why you won't cut me loose. You think you can get something from me, too.”

“Boy,” Aspar said, “don't you recognize by my colors and badges that I'm the king's holter? Yah, well, that's one sort of stupid. But insulting an armed man when you're tied up, that's another.”

“You're the holter?”

“I'm not given to lying.”

“But I don't
know
you. How do I know that? You could have killed the real holter and taken his things.”

Aspar felt a smile try to quirk his lips. He resisted it. “Well, that's a point,” he allowed. “But I'm the kingsman, and I'm not planning to sell you for your pelt or anything else. Who are you?”

The boy pulled himself straighter. “I'm Stephen Darige. Of the Cape Chavel Dariges.”

“Indeed? I hayt Aspar White of the Aspar White Whites. What business have you in the King's Forest, Cape Chavel Darige? Lost your carriage?”

“Oh, very good,” the lad said sarcastically. “A very clever rhyme. I'm traveling the King's Road, of course, which is free to all.”

“Not if you're a merchant, it isn't. There's a toll.”

“My father is a merchant, but I'm not. I'm on the way to the monastery d'Ef, or was when these ruffians took me. I'm to be a novice there.”

Aspar regarded him for a moment, then pulled his dirk and cut the young man's bonds.

“Thank you,” Stephen said, rubbing his wrists. “What changed your mind? Are you a devout man?”

“No.” He gestured at the fallen men. “Priest, eh? You know any leeching?”

“I've been at the college in Ralegh. I can bind wounds and set bones.”

“Show me, then. Get the arrows out of those two and make it so at least one of 'em doesn't bleed to death. I need to talk to 'em.” He swept his hand around. “Are there any more of these fellows, or is this the whole gang-along?”

“That's all I ever saw.”

“Good. I'll be back.”

“Where are you going?” Darige asked.

“King's business. I'll be back.”

Aspar scouted back down the road half a league, just to make certain there were no trailing bandits. Returning, he rode back up Edwin's Brooh, looking for more signs of whatever had made the print, but couldn't find anything. He suspected the creature must have walked in the stream itself. Given time, he could probably pick up the trail, but right now he didn't have the time. The boy seemed truthful enough, but you could never be certain. And he was starting to feel that it was very urgent indeed that he see exactly what sort of massacre had happened at Taff Creek.

When he rode back up, he found Stephen rising unsteadily; he'd been kneeling over what looked very much like a pool of vomit.

“Well, Cape Chavel Darige, how has it been?”

Stephen gestured at Gangly. “He's
dead
,” he said weakly.

Aspar couldn't help it; a laugh burst entirely unbidden from his lips.

“What—what's so funny?”

“You. Of course he's dead. Grim's eye, look at him!”

“See here—” Stephen's eyes bulged and watered, and he spasmed, as if about to vomit again, but then he straightened. “I've never seen a dead man before. Not like that.”

“Well, there's plenty more men dead than alive, you know,” Aspar said. Then, remembering his first dead man, he softened his tone. “Never mind him. The other two? Did you leech them?”

“I—I started one …” Stephen looked sheepish.

“I shouldn't have left them to you. My mistake.”

“I'm trying! It's just, well, the blood—”

“Like I said,” Aspar said gruffly. “My fault. I should have reckoned you'd never actually done it before. I'm not blaming you.”

“Oh,” Stephen said. “Do you think they're dead, too?”

“I doubt it much. I shot 'em in muscle, see? Not in the organs.”

“Why? You don't seem to care much about killing.”

“I told you. I need to question 'em.”

“Oh.”

“Let's start again. Can you cut bandages? Can you do that?”

“I already did.”

“Good. Let me see if I can't save these fellows from Mother Death, then, so as you can keep your next meal down, yah?”

“Yes,” Stephen replied weakly.

Aspar knelt beside Redhead, who was dead to the world but still breathing. The arrow was lodged in his shoulder bone, so it would take a little cutting to get it out. Aspar started to it, and Redhead moaned.

“What did you want to question them about?” Stephen managed.

“I want to know where they were a few days ago,” Aspar grunted, grasping the arrow shaft and working it back and forth.

“Kidnapping me.”

“Where?”

“Two days back.”

“Not when—
where
.” The shaft came out, clean with the head. Aspar pressed the rag Stephen had cut into the wound. “Hold this here,” he commanded.

Stephen made a gagging noise but did as he was told. As-par found another bandage and began wrapping it.

“Where?” he repeated. “Press hard.”

“Two days back along the King's Road,” Stephen replied.

“That being where? Nearer Wexdal or Forst?”

“I don't really know.”

“Well, had you crossed the Owl Tomb before they took you up?”

“That's a river? I'm not sure.”

“
Yes,
the Owl Tomb is a
river
. You couldn't have missed it. It had an old stone causey over it. You can let go now.”

Stephen lifted his hands, staring at the blood on them, his eyes a little unfocused. “
Oh.
You mean the
Pontro Oltiumo
.”

“I mean what I say. What's that gibberish?”

“Old Vitellian,” Stephen said. “The language of the Hegemony, who built that causeway a thousand years ago. They made this road, too.
Owl
must be a corruption of
Oltiumo
.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I looked at maps before I came. Hegemony maps.”

“How is it you thought that maps made a thousand years ago would do you any good at all?”

“The Hegemony made better maps than we do. More accurate. I have copies of them, if you want to see.”

Aspar just stared at him for a second, then shook his head. “Priests,” he muttered, making certain it sounded like a swear word. “Let's do this other.”

Big Nose was easier. The shaft had gone straight through the muscle of the thigh without even grazing the bone.

If Gangly and his bunch had taken Darige east of the Owl, it was impossible for them to have been anywhere near Taff Creek. There went that possibility. So it was on to the Taff, after he figured out what to do with this bunch.

Whatever he decided, it would take him at least a day out of his way.

That couldn't be helped, he supposed, not unless he wanted to kill them all and set the priest a-wandering. It was a tempting thought.

“Help me get these men up on their horses,” he grunted, when they were finished.

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see.”

“I mean, I'll be late getting to the monastery.”

“Will you? I'll try to hold my tears.”

“Why—what are you so angry with
me
for, holter? I didn't do anything to you. It's not my fault!”

“Fault? What does that mean, or matter? You set out from Virgenya alone, didn't you? Just you and your maps, isn't that right?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What book put that in your head?”

“Presson Manteo did it, almost a hundred years ago, when he wrote the
Amvionnom
. He said—”

“Doesn't matter what he said, does it? It didn't do you a damned bit of good.”

“Well, I know it was stupid
now
,” Stephen said. “It still doesn't explain why you're mad at me.”

It didn't, did it? Aspar took a deep breath. The boy didn't seem a bad sort, actually; he was just a burden Aspar didn't need at the moment. And that superior tone and low-country accent didn't help make him more endearing.

“I see a few of your sort every year,” he explained. “Little noblings off for a romp in the wild. Usually what I see are their corpses.”

“You're saying I'm a burden to you?”

Aspar shrugged. “Come on. I'll take you someplace safe.”

“Tell me the way. I'll go alone. You've saved my life. I don't want to trouble you anymore.”

“I have to take the prisoners anyway,” Aspar said. “Ride along with me.”

He started to mount.

“Aren't we going to bury him?” Stephen asked, pointing at Gangly.

Aspar considered that, then walked over to the deceased bandit. He dragged the corpse about ten feet off the side of the trail, folded its arms across his breast.

“There we go,” he said, with mock cheer. “A holter's funeral. Care to say any words?”

“Yes. There is a proper liturgy—”

“Say it as we travel, then. We have someplace to be before dark.”

Like most priests—and boys—Darige couldn't seem to stop talking. Within a bell, he had quit moping from being chastised and begun chattering constantly about the most inane subjects—the relation of Almannish to Hanzish, the dialects of Virgenya, the virtues of certain stars. He gave trees and birds and hills names that were long, unpronounceable, and entirely wrong and thought himself clever. And he kept wanting to stop to look at things.

“There's another,” he said, for the fifth time in two bells. “Can you wait just a moment?”

“No,” Aspar told him.

“Really! Just a moment.” Stephen dismounted, and from his refurbished pack drew a roll of paper and separated a leaf from it. From a pouch at his belt, he produced a chunk of charcoal. Then he hurried to a waist-high stone standing by the side of the road. There were many such, along Old King's way, all like this, squared columns two hands on a side. Most had been pushed out of the ground by roots growing up beneath them, expelled like infected teeth.

“This one still has writing on it!”

“So?”

Stephen pressed his sheet of paper against the stone and began blackening it with his charcoal.

“What in Grim's eye are you doing?”

“Taking a rubbing—I can study it later. See? The writing comes through.” He held the sheet up, and Aspar saw, indeed, that in addition to the grain of the stone itself and the impressions of lichens, he could make out a number of angular marks.

“Ancient Vitellian,” Stephen said triumphantly. “This marks the boundary of two meddixships, and tells the distance to the next and last guardtower.” He squinted. “But here they call this road the Bloody Trace. I wonder what that means? The maps all mark it as the
Vio Caldatum
.”

“Why is your head full of this?” Aspar asked.

“It's my calling—ancient languages, history.”

“Sounds useful.”

“If we have no past, we have no future,” Stephen replied cheerfully.

“The past is dead, and the Bloody Trace is an old superstition.”

“Aha! So you've heard the name. Local folklore? How does it go?”

“You wouldn't be interested.”

“I just said I was.”

“Then you shouldn't be. It's old pig-wife talk.”

“Maybe. But sometimes the folk preserve a primitive sort of wisdom that scholarship has forgotten. Real bits of history, packaged up in simple conventions, made entertaining so common people can understand it, distorted here and there by misunderstandings, but still keeping some truth for those with the wits and education to riddle it out.”

Aspar laughed. “Makes me proud to be ‘folk,’ ” he said.

“I didn't mean to imply you were simple. Please, can't you tell me? About the Bloody Trace?”

“If you get back on your damned horse and start riding again.”

“Oh—certainly, of course.” He carefully rolled up his paper, placed it in a canvas sack, and remounted.

“Not much to tell, really,” the holter said, as they started along once more. “It's spelt that long ago, when the demon Scaosen ruled the world, they used to keep humans like hounds, and race 'em up and down this road till their feet wore to the bone. They'd gamble on the outcome, keep 'em going until they all dropped dead. They say the road was ruddy from one end to the other, from the blood of their torn feet.”

“Scaosen? You mean the Skasloi?”

“I'm just telling a story.”

“Yes, but you see, with a bit of truth! You call them the Scaosen, while in the Lierish tongue they are known as
Echesl
. In Hornladh,
Shasl
. The ancient term was
Skasloi
, and they were quite real. History doesn't doubt them in the slightest. It was the first Virgenyans who led the slaughter of them, with the aid of the saints.”