The Marechal Chronicles: Volume V, The Tower of the Alchemist (23 page)

Might encounter
, he reminded himself.

He hoped they would not.

Goblins.

It was like some kind of joke, an old woman's story to settle children down and not an actual military objective.

But reports had come down.  And now they were going up.

To fight goblins if they found them.

Of course the company had no inkling of the kinds of rumors running among the officer class.  If they did, then discipline might have suffered.

Some of the oldest veterans might have flat out refused.

Lauze shuddered again.

He and the captain both had heard that it would mean war if the beastly things were organizing.

No one had ever heard of such a thing.  Practically no one had ever even seen a goblin, and the idea that their clans would stop killing each other on sight and form up instead was ludicrous.

Lauze had to admit, though, that there was nothing ludicrous about the fact that they had been ordered north to see if there were any truth to the scattered reports coming in.

They were supposed to go in fast and go in quiet.  Then they were supposed to get out of there and send word as quickly as they could.

And that would require the company’s medic.

Their stitcher was a gangly soldier, not much good in a fight, but once the dust settled he waded in, calm as night waters, and did what needed to be done.

The corporal supposed he had sewed up every single member of the company at some point or another.  Lauze had once seen him push a soldier's squirming intestines back in his gut after a barbarian's scimitar had opened him up wide.  Crane never flinched.  In one smooth motion, the skinny man popped up with a ridiculously small blade in hand and tapped it right below the barbarian's ear while the brute was still pulling back his great curved sword.

That took the fight out of him as blood sprayed and Crane knelt down to his comrade in arms.

He just stuffed the man's guts back inside him like so many wiggling sausages, then set to sewing him up as fast as lightning without paying any mind to the barbarian who stumbled and went down not two paces away.

But for this job, Lauze hoped a stitcher would not be necessary.  Get in fast, get out fast.

Instead, they needed Crane for his other talent.  The man knew a few Words to stave off most infections when he was done putting soldiers back together, but better still, he knew how to speak into a cupped hand, then toss his words up into the air so that the wind would carry them to ears that could hear.

Those ears were back at headquarters.

Lauze hoped like hell there would not be any messages about goblins figuring out how to act like they did–soldiers, disciplined and ready to take their enemies out.

'Cause that'd be bad ... real bad.

Because that would mean war.

The horses walked a leisurely pace while the company kept up with ease.

They rounded a bend in the road and, sure enough, a man lay there, sprawled in the dirt.

“Thay h'iss, Cap'n,” whispered Sprunk, although the corporal had no damned idea as to why the man whispered.

The company came to a rustling halt without a word from the captain or the corporal.  Stranger still, there was no low rumble of murmuring among the ranks.

It was as if what they saw merited respect, and Lauze knew without looking that every head behind him was craning to see the body lying on the road.

And then, like a revenant under a blood-ridden sky, the body stirred.

“Whoa there, Maggie,” Lauze said to his horse.  Unlike the soldiers in the company, she was coming up skittish all of a sudden.

“Well, I could’a sworn he wuss a goner and all,” Sprunk stammered, but the captain made no comment.

Instead, he dismounted, and with a quick nod to Lauze, the corporal slipped off Maggie’s back and the two officers went to the man struggling to get to his feet.

“Pintuk thought so, too.” 

But no one was paying the scout any more attention.

The captain strode up and took the fellow under one arm and Lauze followed suit on the other side as they steadied the man and helped him up.

Then Lauze loosed his grip like a snake had bitten him.  He took a step backward for good measure.

“Holy mother of gods,” he said.

Captain Tarn frowned at Lauze, and the corporal did what he could to rein in the heart pounding in his chest.  Except he could not take his eyes off the hellish scar running down the man’s body.

His shirt was dirty.  It might have even been white at one time.

Whatever color it had started out to be, it was torn to little more than shreds that hung from the man’s shoulders and left that horrid lesion plain to see.

It was pink with some red in places and the thing tracked down the man’s body like a curse from the heavens.  If the scarred man found his voice and said he had been struck with a lance made of lightning, Lauze would not have been surprised.

The only real surprise was that the fellow had somehow survived such a wound.

“Easy there,” the captain said to him, just like Lauze had done to reassure his horse.

“Get your feet under you.  Take your time.”

This time, it was the corporal’s turn to frown at his captain.

What’s with the nicey-nice, Cap’n?  And for a stranger to boot ...

The man tried to say something, then coughed.  Lauze did not need to be told to hand over his waterskin and watched the company’s captain, who watched the unsteady man drink deeply from it.

“That’s it,” Captain Tarn said, “In a minute, I’m sure you’ll notice that you have the affair of a company of soldiers before you.  If you’ve been waylaid by brigands and their paths cross our own, I promise they’ll not see another day.”

The man coughed again then shook his head.

“No,” he said, and Lauze realized that the man was younger than he had taken him for, maybe even his own age.  So much dust clung to him and what looked like outright misery that he had taken him for someone far older.

“No ... thieves,” he said, “I mean, I don’t think so.”

Captain Tarn nodded.

“As you say, but I can’t help but notice that you carry nothing about you.  No pack or provisions that I can see.  My thought was that someone had lightened your load and then dealt you a blow for their troubles.”

The scarred man shook his head.

“No ... nothing like that.”

Captain Tarn shrugged, then said, “Then what was it, man?  You can't mean to say that you were lying there for the pleasure of it.”

“I don't know,” he said in return, and Corporal Lauze remarked how the man's grey eyes grew more focused, steadier as he looked around himself.

“Where are you from?” Lauze asked.  In view of the circumstances, he supposed the captain would not mind his interjecting a word or two.

The focus in those eyes grew hesitant.

“I don't know.”

The response was immediate, without reflection.  Not at all like some confabulator or a huckster about to launch into his pitch.

What Lauze saw in the man's cool, grey gaze was the unvarnished truth.

“Ok.  Never mind that.  Start by telling us your name,” Lauze said while Captain Tarn looked on.

The man went still, then looked down at himself.  He held up his hands and curled them into fists, then opened them again.

Grey eyes locked onto Lauze's own.

“I have no idea.”

And in those grey eyes, the corporal saw more clearly than he would have liked that the scarred man was completely, entirely lost on all accounts.

And that he spoke the truth.

There was a rustling at the two officers' backs, and Corporal Lauze turned to see their stitcher, Crane, making his way through the ranks.

He did so with some difficulty as the Bargeau twins kept trying to pull him back, obliging the medic to twist and turn among his fellow soldiers to keep free of their enormous hands.

There were rumors that the twins had giantish blood running in their veins, but Lauze doubted it.  The brother and sister were not much bigger than the rest of the Breakers and had refused to be separated when the company had been pared down for this mission.

Normally, the company numbered close to one hundred men and women, and the Breakers made up about one third of that.

However, the men and women so efficient at locking shields at the forefront of the company, making of themselves veritable rocks through which the waves of the enemy could not breach, most of those big folk were deemed too slow for the trip north.

Still, Lauze thought, the warhammers each of the Breakers wore upon their backs might come in handy if the company should run across a band of ruffians upon the road.

Crane dipped and weaved, avoiding his protectors handily, proving himself to be more squirrely than Lauze had imagined him to be despite his sobriquet.

Tiny Berry made a grab for the medic and missed him, her thick arms jiggling as she flailed.  The corporal might have sniggered, but he knew beyond any doubt that the female half of the Bargeau twins could swing a hammer just as hard as her brother, Little Will.

Captain Tarn frowned.

The only reason that any of the Breakers had come along on this mission was that they were to keep Crane safe.  In case of the least mishap, they were charged with forming a knot around the man and protecting his life with their own.

They would have done it anyway, as Crane was almost useless in a fight and no one could recollect the last time he had been seen to draw the sword scabbarded at his side.

Lauze thought back to the barbarian with the scimitar and the way blood had sprayed from his neck.

Of course, that skinny surgeon's blade he keeps on him is a whole other story.

Little Will seemed to think he had Crane in reach and jumped for him.

The only problem was that the male half of the Bargeau twins was just as massive as his sister, which was to say that when Little Will jumped a mighty leap, the result was mostly a modest hop.

Crane slipped past, then drew up short before Captain Tarn.

“This place is bad.  It's going to get us if we don't go.”

No salute, no anything.

The captain might have dressed the medic down for such behavior, but both he and Corporal Lauze could see the panic in his face.

“What are you talking about, Crane?” the captain snapped.

Crane shuddered like a leaf, then lifted his hand to point beyond them, to the forest on all sides of them.

“There,” he said, his voice grown meek and quiet, as if that one word said all that was needed.

Lauze squinted and did not see anything amiss.  There was nothing other than a narrow wagon track, mostly overgrown in weeds, that came out of the forest and met up with the road where they stood.

Where they had found the scarred man.

Unlike the captain and the corporal, the strange man did not look where Crane pointed.  As lost as he appeared to be, it was if the danger Crane feared was of no surprise to him.

“Did you come from back there?” Lauze asked the man, who simply shook his head.

“No,” he said harshly, then, “I don’t know, but I don't think so.”

Then, as if he had suddenly forgot to be afraid, Crane dropped his arm and took a step toward the forest and that lonely wagon track leading who-knew-where.  He appeared to be listening and when he turned to back to them, his eyes had gone round and shiny.

Lauze recognized what was going on.

A Windspoken man like Crane was far from being an outright wizard, but they had all got used to him making strange pronouncements from time to time.  The kind of things that came true most of the time, sooner or later.

“Alexandre.  Etienne,” Crane said, his eyes rolled back in his head and his beaklike nose bobbed just like that of his namesake.

“Her voice still rides upon the breath of that deathly place.”

Then the company's medic shook all over before his eyes rolled back around to look at the men standing perfectly still before him.

“Captain, I'm begging you.  We have to get out of here ... now.”

A quick nod from his superior officer and Lauze called out, “Attention!”

Soldiers snapped to and tried to not stumble as Tiny Berry and Little Will shouldered past them to make it to the officers and Crane, at last.

The pair of Breakers kept their mouths shut.

And as they should
, thought Lauze.  Of course he also thought that none of them had known just how slippery Crane could be when he set his mind to it.

“I'm inclined to set a few more leagues behind us this day, Corporal.”

It was the captain's way of listening to Crane without seeming to.  After all, their stitcher was almost always insubordinate, and they only put up with it because he was so important once the fighting started and the bleeding inevitably followed.

“Move the company out, Corporal.  But before you do, see to it that this man is given what provisions we can spare.”

“Sir!” Lauze saluted, then turned on his heel.

A couple soldiers broke rank without being told.  One of them undid his pack and held out a shirt to the corporal.

“'Think he's about my size,” the soldier said while the other one wrapped some bread and cheese in a cloth bundle.  He passed it over along with a waterskin.

“That there bread is hard tack type.  You'll want to dip it in water before you try eating it,” the soldier said and smiled as if to warn against doing otherwise.

He was missing more than a few teeth.  But Lauze knew it was his idea of a joke since those teeth had been knocked out due to an unfortunate combination of drinking and gambling ... or it might have been gambling and losing.  The truth was he did not remember and it did not matter.

The scarred man continued to look at them without speaking.

“What about a weapon, Corporal?” one of the soldiers asked. “So's he can keep hisself from getting knocked on the head again.”

Lauze nodded.

“What do you have in mind, soldier?”

The man held up an old blade, rusty and notched from one end to the other.

“I was keepin' it for a souvenir since I got issued my new one.”