The Charnel Prince (63 page)

“Are you a knight?” the man asked.

“I am not,” Cazio replied. “But I am Cazio Pachiomadio da Chiovattio, ennobled by birth. What father raised you, who will not fight when he is challenged?”

“My name is Euric Wardhilmson, and my father was Wardhilm Gauthson af Flozubaurg,” the man answered, “knight and lord. And no son of his need favor any ragtag ruffian like you with an honorable duel.” He pushed Cazio’s head back farther, and then released it. “In any event, my men and I have been forbidden from dueling.”

“That’s very convenient,” Cazio said.

“No more convenient than noticing
hundscheit
in time to step over it,” the knight replied with a nasty smile. “Anyway, it hardly looks like you defeated Sir Alharyi in a duel. It looked more as if someone dropped stones on him from above, then cut his head off while he was down.”

“That would be the gentleman in the gilded armor, back near the coven Saint Cer? The one covered with the murder-blood of the holy sisters? The one who attacked me in the company of another and with the aid of the Lords of Darkness?”

“He was a holy man,” Euric said. “Do not speak ill of him. And if you must know, I am not ansu-blessed as he was. Only one of us at a time is given that honor, and Hrothwulf was the chosen.” He nodded toward another of his captors, a man with hair as black as coal but with skin so fair his cheeks were pink, like a baby’s.

“Well, send him over. I’ll fight him—again, I mean. I’ll sit him down on his ass a second time.”

“I’m starting to like the old man’s suggestion of a gag,” Euric said.

“You haven’t gagged me since I’ve been your captive,” Cazio said. “I don’t imagine you will now.”

Euric smiled. “True. It’s much more satisfying to show you how completely your words don’t bother me.”

“Which is why you struck me, I suppose,” Cazio said.

“No, that was just for the pleasure of it,” Euric countered.

“Don’t make a fool of yourself, lad,” z’Acatto said. “You let him talk because you’re hoping he’ll get you mad enough to untie him. You want to fight him as much as he wants to fight you.”

“Well,” Euric allowed, “I would like to see how he thinks he could beat me with that little sewing-needle of his, yes,” Euric said. “But I’m on a holy mission. I can’t think of myself when my task comes first.”

“There’s nothing holy about chasing two young girls all over creation,” z’Acatto grunted.

“That’s done with,” Euric said, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. “Didn’t you know? We found them just after we caught you. In fact, Hrothwulf thinks
you
killed them.”

“Killed them?” Cazio blurted. “What are you talking about?”

“They had their throats slit, both of them, just over the hill from where we caught you. There were already ravens pecking at their carcasses. That’s how Auland got hurt.”

Cazio stared at him. “What, the fellow who lost his eyes? The one that died of blood poisoning before the day was even up? You really think a raven did that to him?”

“I saw it myself,” Euric said. But he looked strange, as if somehow he doubted what he was saying.

“Although—” He broke off. “No. I saw them. Their heads were nearly off.”

“You’re lying,” Cazio said. The girls had just gone over the hill to answer nature’s call. He’d only taken his eyes off them for a few minutes. Still, he pictured the girls, brigand’s grins cut in their throats, and suddenly felt a wave of nausea.

“You sons of whores,” he swore. “You get of distempered dogs. I’ll kill every last one of you.”

“No,” Euric said. “You’d be dead already, if we didn’t need a swordsman. But the old man will do, I think, if you’re so very impatient to meet Ansu Halja. Rest assured, you will die, and it won’t be pleasant, so take this time to pray to the ansu you pray to.”

He put a loop of rope around Cazio’s neck and jerked him to his feet. Then he threw the rope over a low-hanging branch and tied it off, so he couldn’t sit down without choking himself.

He left Cazio trying to think of new curses.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

That afternoon, more men rode in, most dressed like men-at-arms, but more than a few like clergy. That brought a brief hope, but it didn’t take long to see that they were friendly with the knights.

Cazio had little to do other than watch them work, and try not to fall asleep.

The camp was near a rough mound of earth and stone, the land that in Vitellio were called
persi
or
sedoi
, and often had fanes built on them. Those taking holy orders were said to walk such stations in a proscribed order to be blessed by the lords. But whatever was going on here seemed decidedly unholy. The newcomers had captives with them, as well, women and children, and they set about planting a ring of seven posts around the mound then clearing back the vegetation. Others began constructing a stone fane upon its summit.

“Have you any idea what they’re about, z’Acatto?” Cazio asked, studying his enemies as they went about their antlike business.

“Not really,” the old man said. “It’s hard to think without wine.”

“It’s hard for you to stand without wine,” Cazio replied.

“So it should be,” the old man replied. “A man should never be denied wine, especially one who’s soon to die.”

He was interrupted by a commotion of some sort. There was a good bit of distant shouting, and the knights mounted and rode out from the clearing, followed quickly by the five men dressed like monks. They returned perhaps a bell later, leading more captives. These were all men, one of middle years and three younger, the youngest looking barely thirteen. All of them were wounded, though none seemed seriously so.

The older man they tied as Cazio was tied, just a perechi away from him. Then they went back about their business.

When none of the enemy was near, the new captive glanced over at Cazio.

“You’d be the Vitellians, then,” he said in Cazio’s native tongue. “Cazio and z’Acatto.”

“You know us, sir?” Cazio asked.

“Yes, we’ve a couple of friends in common, friends of the fair sort.”

“Anne and—”

“Hush,” the man said. “Pitch your voice very low. I think those are all Mamres monks, but some may be of Decmanis. If so, they can hear a butterfly’s wings.”

“But they’re alive, and well?”

“So far as I know. My name is Artore, and I was helping them to find you. It looks as if I’ve done at least part of my job, though I would prefer that the circumstances were different.”

“But they escaped? The knights didn’t see them?”

Artore shrugged. “I can’t say for certain. My sons and I held them off as long as we could, but the monks are deadly shots. They wanted us alive, or we wouldn’t be.”

“How can the Church be part of this?” Cazio whispered. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“All men are corruptible,” Artore said, “and the more easily if they can tell themselves they are doing holy work. But in fact, I don’t know much more about this than you do. My wife would be the one to ask.” He looked glum. “I would have liked to see her one last time.”

“Well escape somehow,” Cazio promised. “Just watch. I’ll find some way.”

But as he pulled at his intractable bonds, he still couldn’t imagine how.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

Neil sat his horse, his hands crossed on the pommel, thinking he didn’t like the looks of the forest that lay before him. He didn’t know much about forests to start with—there weren’t any on Skern, and besides the pretty thin ones he’d passed through on his way to Vitellia, he hadn’t seen much of them on the mainland, either. But once, when he was about fifteen, he’d gone north with Sir Fail de Liery to Herilanz. The trip had started as an embassy, but they’d been set upon by Weihand raiders. It had come to a sea fight which they’d won, but not without damage, and so they had put ashore for repairs. Beyond the narrow, rocky strand there had been nothing
but
forest, a holt of fir and pine and black cheichete that seemed to Neil like one vast cave. Facing your enemies on the open heath or the great wide sea was one thing, but fighting where concealment was everywhere was quite another. They’d gone in to find a good mast, and come out with half their number, pursued by a tribe of tattooed howlers that recognized no king or crown.

This forest had that look, only worse, for while the one in Herilanz had been of straight, clean-boled trees, these twisted and wove together like a gigantic bramble-bush.

It hadn’t been hard to follow the Hansan knights. The land between Paldh and Teremene was a rural one, the kind of place where people noticed strange things. A group of foreign armored knights and men-at-arms traveling hard and asking after two girls was a bit out of the ordinary. Even though he was a stranger himself, it wasn’t hard to start people talking if he was polite and bought something.

Near Teremene he’d met the knights at a bend in the road, headed back toward Paldh. By the time he realized who they were, it was too late to try and hide. Instead he could only ride forward, reckoning that they wouldn’t recognize him. They didn’t, and the girls weren’t with them.

There wasn’t much he could do then but keep going. Either they had found Anne and Austra and killed them, or they had given up the chase. The last seemed unlikely, and so it was with a heavy heart that he entered Teremene. It was there, with a few well-placed questions and paying three times what he ought for a beer, he’d discovered that a few of the knights, “the really unpleasant ones,” had gone off north, and some even said they had captives with them, a couple of Vitellian men.

And now, a few days later, Neil paused in front of a dark forest on a horse he’d named Prospect, wondering how deep it was.

“Well, Prospect,” he sighed, “let’s see what sort of nightkinders haunt this place, eh?”

He switched the horse’s reins and started in, but hadn’t gone more than a few yards before something ahead caught his eye, a flash of gold, and then something running into the trees. It stopped behind one of the big oaks.

Grimly, he dismounted, pulling his blade, wincing at the balance in his hand. The horse wasn’t a warhorse—he wasn’t sure what would happen if he tried to fight mounted, especially in these woods.

A head peeped around the tree and he caught a flash of a familiar face. Then the head jerked behind the trunk. He heard a muffled shriek, and he heard footsteps crashing off through the forest.

Austra.

Sheathing the sword, he ran after her, puzzled, certain she had recognized him.

She wasn’t trying to hide anymore, but was instead running as if all the demons of the sea were coming after.

“Austra!” he called, trying not to shout it too loudly, but it only seemed to spur her to redouble her efforts. Still, he was the faster runner, and here where the trees were big there wasn’t much undergrowth.

She was perhaps ten yards ahead of him when a man on a horse suddenly cut across her trail. She shrieked and dropped to her knees.

The man had on armor but no helm. He’d swung one leg over the black mare he rode, the start of a dismount, when he saw Neil.

The armored man didn’t have time to cry out. Neil launched himself like a javelin, hitting him at the waist. Still on the horse but not well balanced, he pitched over the other side and landed with a thud and a clank. The impact canceled Neil’s forward flight and dropped him on his side of the horse, so he rolled beneath its belly, drawing his sword. The other fellow managed to get his mail-covered arm up in time to stop his first cut, but Neil heard bone snap. He was sure now that it was one of the Hansan men-at-arms, if not one of the knights. He knew he ought to fight by the code of honor, but so far these men had proved only that they disdained the code.

He cocked back to cleave the man’s naked head off, and suddenly realized he’d forgotten the horse. He dropped and rolled as hooves pawed the air and stamped where he’d just been standing. He backed away from the raging beast and that gave the knight time to regain his feet. He opened his mouth, and Neil suddenly understood that he was about to call for help.

So he did the only thing he could—he threw the sword. It tumbled and struck the man across the chest and face. His shout came out as a yelp, and blood spurted from a crushed nose. Neil charged, ducking under the man’s wild head cut, and punched him in the throat, feeling cartilage crunch. The knight flopped to earth like a scarecrow cut from its pole.

Unwilling to take any chances, Neil picked up the man’s sword and decapitated him. It took two chops.

He turned, panting, to find Austra still whimpering, curled up on the ground.

“Austra? Are you all right?” he asked.

“Stay back,” she gasped. “You’re one of them. You must be.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw you die!” she wailed.

“Oh,” he said, suddenly understanding. “No, Austra. The cut wasn’t that bad, and a lady had her men fish me from the water. I almost died, yes, but I’m not a nauschalk.”

“I don’t know that name,” she replied. “But Cazio cut one’s head off, and it was still moving.” She was looking up at him now, her eyes flooded with tears.