The Jack of Souls (32 page)

The priest’s camp bristled with nervous glances and whispers. There had never been a greater foe to the free peasants of Arkendia and their priests than the immortal Sir Bannus. They set their camp far from the road, well behind the other camps, which had cursed them bitterly and pulled stakes to move farther upriver, afraid to be near them. A wide berth surrounded them. A killing field, Kogan thought grimly. He instructed his folk to keep the fires small and close. Boys stood watch in the darkness beyond, and along the road. Those in camp kept their backs to the fires, baggage at hand, ready to flee to the forest. Already there’d been strange things moving on the road that night. Herds of horses. A Phyros, sure, judging by the action of the oxen when it passed.

None in the camp slept.

“Finally got acrosst the river,” the widow muttered, “and you throw it all away. What’re you gonna do if Bannus come for you?”

“What we always done. Run and hide.” The priest sighed. “Trouble always follows Will.”

“Oh,
fie
on Will! And fie on all his troubles, you great ox!”

She stabbed the coals with a stick, sending swarms of sparks in the air. “Never thought of the others around you. Had to pay some fool debt from your fool years as a brother.”

The priest grew abruptly gruff. “You know I done right. I done right and I stand by it.”

She turned to him, defiant, but said nothing, only searched his face as if for a courage she lacked.

His tone gentled. “Be brave, sweet. It ain’t always safest to do what’s right, but we do it.”

“Even if this gets us killed? What’s so right about it then?”

“Well, then it ain’t about us at all. It’s about Will.”

The widow struggled to fight back tears. “It’s always the plain folk what pay for them in wars, and in peace, too. Why can’t he pay his own way and leave us be?”

“Will’s troubles are our troubles. If he falls, we fall.”

“I just wish it were different, Kogan. We’ve come so far, and now we stand to lose it.”

A low cheer drifted through the trees from the south road. Kogan frowned, and eased the widow to the ground. He’d heard such noise too many times to mistake it for carousing. He stood to his full height above the fire, the smothercoat unfolding stiffly before and behind. Another cheer, this time closer. A shimmer of torches appeared through the trees where the road emerged from the south slope of the valley. Fifty, maybe one hundred hands, he estimated.

“It’s a mob, sweet.”

She stood, eyes hard, hands balled in fists. “Oh, Kogan. What’ll we do?”

He glanced around their caravan—two-score tents, two hundreds of men, women, and children—and saw there was no need to warn a soul; every one of them sat ready at their fires. With one hand he threw fresh wood on the fire.

“No, you fool!” the widow hissed, kicking the wood out again. “You call attention to us. We have light enough if it comes to that.”

Kogan cursed and hefted the ancient Phyros ax.

“Father Kogan! Father Kogan!” A small voice rang from the darkness, followed by a young boy with nose bloodied and eyes as wide and white as hen’s eggs. “Father, they’re coming. Twenty swords and spitfires and rope. They want to
burn
you! They say you burned the stables. You have to run.” He sobbed. “They hung Rich and Bailer.”

“Hung?” the priest roared. “Where’s the justice o’ the peace? The constable—damn them!”

“There ain’t none this side the river.”

The widow scrambled to the priest’s side. “Run and save yerself, Kogan. Head ’em away from camp, and find us later when it cools off.”

“By the laws, I won’t. Stay here, and I’ll meet ’em myself, I will.” He strode toward the road, seething. The widow clung to his arm, dragging her feet ineffectually in the dust.

“Think what you’re doing, you big ox! What’ll you do? Pound ’em all like nails, one two three? If you do, every boy in the camp’ll join with you, and they’ll have a
real
reason to hang ’em. Listen to me. You run and lead the mob away—that’s the only way to save the rest of us. Run. And tell them boys to stay low and give the mob no reasons. Say you will.”

The priest hesitated, grinding his teeth and panting like a chained bull.

The widow laid a soft hand on the fist clutching the ax. Her voice became tender. “Save your fire for a better time, Kogan.” She lifted her chin, but it quivered a little in spite of her. “I’ll see you again right soon. Sure I will. Listen to me now. I got more in my head than you got in yours, and you knows it. It’s the only way.”

Tears welled in his eyes. “They won’t let us be,” he growled. “And what o’ the caravan? I can’t leave it now. Who’ll lead?”

“
I
will, ye great ox! Ain’t I been a help so far? And ain’t I got more sense than you? I’ll do it, and you find us when the trouble’s past.”

“You have my store o’ coin?” The widow nodded. “So be it. But don’t you wait for me. I’ll find you.” He kissed her on the forehead, and grinned. “You’re one fine woman, Widow Larkin.”

“And you’re a great bull of a father,” she said, beaming. “One who best stay quick if he knows what’s best for him.”

“Untie Geraldine,” Kogan said to the boy with the bloodied nose. “Lead her to the forest where I can find her, and be quick. Go on!”

The boy untied the huge white cow, whose udders were heavy with milk, and whipped her toward the wood.

“All of you stay here,” Kogan said to his worried flock. “Widow Larkin is your leader now till I come back.”

“Father, they come apace!” someone cried. “The torches!”

A murmuring gang of shadows and firelight filled the road, a long bowshot away. Father Kogan trotted into the darkness to meet them.

When the mob saw him, it roared and surged forward.

The priest held his giant ax aloft, like a god, and roared back. “You goat-headed fools! I ain’t done nothing wrong! Go choke yourselfs!”

Spitfires popped. A pair of white-hot charges sizzled past in wavering arcs to skip harmlessly on the road beyond. Another splattered on the smothercoat and burned there ineffectually.

The mob rushed, and Kogan fled barefoot toward the forest.

—Popular anecdote printed by illegal gossip press, Kingsport, late reign of Chasia

Flushed & Hunted

H
arric woke from
a dream-tortured sleep. The moon cat crouched on his chest, purring, watching him through green-slitted eyes.
Green.
They’d been milk the night before. Some trick of the moonlight, perhaps, had made them so. When he was young his mother had allowed him to keep a moon cat kitten with green eyes. She’d let him keep it long enough to love it, then made him drown it to prove he was beyond sentiment, as a courtiste must be. He’d refused, but she withheld his food for five days, and finally he succumbed. The memory made him sick to his stomach. And it was just such memories that tortured his dreams. It seemed the worst of them had been dragged out of their tombs to terrorize his soul. And unlike ordinary dreams, these had been vivid and true in every forgotten detail.

…Harric, role-playing seductions with his mother.

…Harric, on “missions” to seduce other boys and girls.

All done unquestioningly, with the eagerness of a doting only son.

The shame of it scoured him anew.
It wasn’t my fault. I was just a kid.

He turned and retched. Nothing came up, but the action provoked lancing pains through his injured ribs, and his headache pounced with a vengeance. Mercilessly, the dry heaves persisted as his body sought to expel a pollution in his soul.

When it finally stopped, he wiped the perspiration from his brow and lay back again. Above him, the willow branches arched protectively. Clouds moved high and bright beyond gaps in the upper branches, lit by the rising sun, though it had yet to climb high enough over the eastern ridges to warm the valley. The scent of porridge and wood smoke drew his attention to a cook fire, where an orange-haired figure with the arms and chest of a giant and the legs of a dwarf tended a steaming pot.

Brolli
, he recalled, as if it were a memory from another life.

The Kwendi turned to look at him with huge, bulging black eyes, and flashed his feral grin. Caris joined Brolli at the fire, brow furrowed in curiosity.

The Kwendi grinned. “You no recognize? It is the eyes.”

“And your hair,” she said. “It’s orange.”

“Ah. You are blind for colors at night. I forget.” Brolli gathered the mane of orange hair and tied it in a tail behind his head. The same bronze hair fuzzed his long arms and stubbled his face. “I am just as blind in day without these,” he said, tapping the black coverings over his eyes. It was clear now the bulging “eyes” were cup-shaped lenses held in place with a strap behind his head.

Harric rolled gingerly to his stomach, careful not to alarm his injured body. He crawled to his knees, then climbed to his feet and limped out of camp to relieve himself. Spook followed, mewing hungrily. When Harric returned to the fire, Brolli had removed the black eye covers and held them up against the light so they could see it shine through like the glass of a bottle.

“We wear them to make day less bright,” said Brolli, returning them to his eyes. “The lenses are like your brewer glass, but much stronger, and lighter.”

“Stronger than glass?” The tooler in every Arkendian awoke in Harric. “Are they a gemstone of some kind?”

The ambassador grinned. “Can you believe they are dragon eyes?”

“
Dragon
eyes?”

“Well, not
eyes
so much as the
lid
of the eyes of a
terroc
—what you call spear dragons.”

“Spear dragons!” Caris said. “So they really exist.”

“Do you have to slay a spear dragon to make those…eyes?” Harric said.

Brolli grinned as if this were a very good joke. “That would be very difficult. Lucky for us, they drop eye covers every year like the deer drop antlers. If you find one from young male, it is too scratched from fighting. We collect lids from yearling females and dye them dark, so we can wear them when we stay up late.”

Harric raised an eyebrow. “So, this is late?”

“It is dinnertime.” Brolli lifted the lid off the pot, and peered in with a curl of displeasure to his lip. “This is oats, for Willard, when he finally rise. I eat real food already.” He illustrated by producing a charred stick from beside him on which an impaled and roasted eel glared up with dulled eyes. “You call it ‘smoking eel,’ I think. Would you like?”

Harric swallowed. “I’m not hungry.”

“Wake up, slumber-guts,” said Brolli. “You can eat oats while I report of my scouting.”

“No need to wake me, you great chimpey,” said Willard, behind Harric.

The Kwendi barked his peculiar laugh.

Willard had sat up in his blankets. “Used to eat whatever the Black Moon I wanted. Now it’s oats, or look out.” The old knight climbed from his blankets to his feet, grunting and grimacing. When he finally gained them, his face was gray and perspiring.

“I see you recover from your wounds quite nice,” Brolli said ominously.

“I see your mouth’s still wagging.” Willard limped to the fire. He studied Harric with something like concern in his sleep-bleared eyes. “You look worse than I feel, boy.” He held a fat roll of ragleaf to Harric. “Get this going for me. You need it as much as I.”

Harric received it gratefully, and lowered himself gingerly to the fire, where he puffed it alight against a brand.

Brolli looked at Willard’s blood-crusted armor. “Let’s have a look, then.” He motioned for Willard to let him unbuckle the breastplate.

Willard scowled, but held his arms to the sides as the Kwendi attempted the buckles under one arm. Caris unfastened the others. Brolli’s eyes grew no less grim when he pulled away the armor and quilting. Blood had soaked through the bandage and thoroughly blackened the wrap.

“What did you see in your scouting?” Willard asked.

Brolli paused as if considering whether he’d allow the old knight to change the subject so easily. Then he sighed. “You want good news first, or bad?”

“Bad.”

Brolli unwound the wrapping around Willard’s waist, while Caris held aside the blood-stiff quilting. Harric watched, inhaling as much ragleaf as he could before the knight demanded it back.

“Bad news is that knights ride and waking up homesteads in this valley,” said Brolli, not looking up from his work. “Good news is that they do not have our trail. Not once do they follow our stream.”

“Gods leave us if they pick up our trail. Boy, is that roll ready?”

Harric handed the ragleaf to Willard, who sucked it so hungrily its crackling coal seemed loud beneath the willow.

Brolli set aside the wrap and teased the clotted linen from the wound, exposing a swollen, red-smeared wound like a harlot’s mouth, complete with yellow teeth in the form of fat beneath the skin.