Good Company

by Dale Lucas

  Rem stood at attention, as though Ondego or Hirk had just come into his presence. Torval turned himself toward the lady as well and squared his shoulders. Strange how conditioned they were to look disciplined and presentable when a well-heeled female came into their presence.

  Rem stole a sidelong glance at the Raven. The outlaw stared at the Lady Tzimena, then lowered his eyes. It was a strange gesture, indicative to Rem not of indifference, but of an attempt to appear indifferent. It was as if the Raven was struggling not to stare at the lady, not to drink in the sight of her and let her beauty bring a smile to his face.

  She stepped into the barn. A small bundle wrapped in a scrap of linen was clutched in her hand. “Am I interrupting something, good sirs?”

  “Nothing,” Rem said. “Just having a conversation with our prisoner, milady.”

  “Understood,” she said, moving closer. She made right for the cage, not toward Rem or Torval off to one side.

  “I wouldn’t,” Torval said, stepping in front of her. Rem had to remind himself that Torval hadn’t seen what Rem had seen the night before—the lady stealing away in the dark to deliver some food to the caged Raven. So far as the dwarf knew, this was the first time the two would interact. “He’s dangerous, milady.”

  The Lady Tzimena paused before speaking, as though weighing her words carefully. When she spoke, she smiled girlishly, but Rem instantly recognized a feint when he saw one. She was trying to make them think that, whatever she intended to do, she was doing it as an afterthought—a whim—not a deliberate action.

  And she was lying.

  “You would know better than I,” she said to Torval. She then held out her bundle. “I brought him a heel of bread, a bit of cheese, and an apple.” She stepped forward and spoke to Torval in a whisper; trusting, conspiratorial. “I know the lord marshal said to starve him, but that’s unnecessarily cruel, don’t you think? And these scraps, they’re not so much, really . . .”

  Torval took the bundle, nodded, then turned to Rem. When Rem saw the dwarf’s face, he could see the puzzlement on it. Torval sensed the lady’s subterfuge, as well. He was no fool, and often a better reader of silent markers and tells than Rem himself. Torval’s expression seemed to silently impart a judgment and ask a question all at once.

  Do we trust her? Should we feed him?

  Rem shrugged. What could it hurt, really?

  Torval gave the little piece of bread a couple hard squeezes, just to make sure there was nothing useful hiding in it, like a lockpick or a blade, then handed it through the bars to the Raven, followed by the palm-size morsel of cheese that had been brought with it. The Raven took the food, threw a thankful glance at the lady, nodded, and set to eating, tearing off one bit of bread at a time and chewing it completely before swallowing and tearing off another.

  The lady stood, watching the man, gaining some silent satisfaction. Rem was uncomfortable with the lady’s presence here—there was no telling what the lord marshal would think if he found her out here, near the prisoner and the two of them. He could tell by Torval’s frowning mouth that he was equally uneasy about it.

  “Was there something else, milady?” Rem asked.

  Tzimena raised her eyes, as though his words had just reminded her of his presence. “What’s that?”

  “Something else?” Rem asked. “I’m guessing you’re out here secretly—”

  She smiled and nodded. “Indeed. Slipped away to make water, or so I told them. My nurse won’t worry about me too soon.”

  “But there’s the lord marshal,” Torval said.

  Tzimena frowned and all but shuddered. “Ugh. That man.”

  Rem smiled in spite of himself. “Between us, milady, we have no love for him, either. But he is the leader of this little expedition, and if he finds us here, with you—”

  “Or you near him,” Torval said, suggesting the Raven in his cage.

  “Just so,” Rem continued. “Be it the prisoner or the two of us, he might find us all less than suitable company for a lady of good birth.”

  “And what business is the company I keep to him?” Tzimena asked, raising her chin a little. “Besides, if I’m to be married to his master, he should probably get used to taking orders from me, don’t you think?”

  Rem instantly admired the spirit in the small gesture and the timbre of her voice. She didn’t strike him as naïve or a petulant child. Instead she struck him as more like Indilen: intelligent, willful, more than familiar with her own mind and desires. No doubt that if the lord marshal found her here and tried to make something of it, she’d readily fight about it.

  And though Rem thought her equal to butting heads with the lord marshal, he seriously doubted their stiff-backed expedition leader would back down for anyone or anything, even a noble lady betrothed to his master.

  “That’s a fair question,” Rem said, “but despite what we may think of the man, I gather we can all agree he’s not to be trifled with?”

  “Aye, that,” Torval added. He spoke softly, as though to his own daughter, Ammi. “And consider, lady, he may not be capable of punishing or challenging you—but the two of us? We’re just humble tagalongs. He would have no qualms taking his ire out on us, if it came to that.”

  Tzimena looked from Torval to Rem, then back to Torval. Gods help him, Rem instantly admired her. She’d barely spoken twenty words with him, but her good heart and keen wits were clear as a day without fog. She impressed Rem, wealth and entitlement notwithstanding, as a good soul.

  “Very well, then,” she finally said. “I won’t have anyone suffering for my indiscretions. I’ll be off. I trust my visit will remain in confidence between us all?”

  “Of course,” Rem said.

  “Pledged,” Torval added.

  “As always,” the Raven answered.

  Rem looked to the prisoner. The Raven was smiling at her. It wasn’t his normal smug grin, nor even the sly half smile that he so often defaulted to. Instead his smile was warm and loving, indicative of great and sincere affection.

  To Rem’s great dismay, the Lady Tzimena wore a similar smile and held the prisoner’s gaze. Gods, what had they stumbled into?

  “Quiet, you,” the lady said, then turned and hurried out into the rainy night again, drawing up her cowl as she went. Long after she’d gone, Torval finally turned and stared at Rem again. He wore a worried expression that told Rem he’d sensed what had just passed between the lady and their prisoner, and he didn’t like it one bit.

  The Raven kept eating. After his bread was gone, he reached for the stoppered gourd that hung from the bars of his cage. He displayed it for Rem.

  “Could you fill this, please?” he asked. “I’m guessing there’s a rain barrel outside?”

  “I’ll do it,” Torval said, taking up his own canteen and stalking away toward the barn door. “If we get in hot water for this,” he called back over his shoulder, “I’ll crack that skull of yours myself! Reward or no reward!”

  “Thank you, master dwarf!” the Raven sang as Torval slunk out into the rain.

  “He only suspects,” Rem said to the man in the cage, “but I know. I saw you with the Lady Tzimena last night.”

  “I know,” the Raven said. “You didn’t think I heard you, tromping through the high grass and trying to hold your breath when you came upon us?”

  Rem stepped closer to the cage. “What are you playing at? Are you using that girl?”

  The Raven shook his head. He looked genuinely hurt by that accusation. “You know nothing of what we share. Of who she is to me or I to her.”

  “You’re right,” Rem said. “And I don’t want to know.”

  “Then don’t ask,” the Raven said, and Rem thought he saw a genuine plea in the man’s eyes—a deep and abiding dread of revealing any more of himself. “I am a cunning man, but I prefer truth to lies. If I’m asked an honest question one too many times, I’ll tell the truth. And when you know the truth—”

  “I know,” Rem said. “Or so you’v
e said. Just . . . please. Let’s keep our mouths mutually shut and not take this association any further than we must.”

  “As you wish,” the Raven said, his eyes still down but his mouth starting to turn up into that half smile again. “You strike me as a man who can keep a secret well—even from his own brave partner.”

  Rem felt something coil in him. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what the outlaw meant—but Torval then returned, carrying his full canteen.

  The dwarf grabbed the Raven’s drinking gourd, filled it from the canteen, and thrust it back between the bars. “Take it,” he said.

  The Red Raven accepted the offered gourd and drank in short, shallow sips, savoring the water.

  Rem withdrew from the cage. Torval followed him.

  “I don’t like this,” the dwarf said.

  “Nor should you,” Rem said quietly.

  “You know something you’re not telling me,” Torval said, staring at his partner.

  Rem nodded. “When next we’re alone, I’ll tell you everything.”

  Everything, Rem assured himself. Every single thing that I’ve been holding inside for so long. Secrets are dangerous, after all . . .

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was in the waning light of their fifth day on the road that the company finally arrived at a wall of shadowy pines marking the entrance to the Ethkeraldi Forest. They had crossed the Kaarten River via an ancient stone bridge early on that same day and were now on its north bank. From their vantage point, two by two along the road, stalled before the forbidding barrier of trees and darkness ahead, Rem noted that even the river’s curling line was obscured. After a single bend in the river, about five hundred yards on, the forest alone held sway. Even the mighty Kaarten was just one more piece of the landscape that the vast woodland dominated.

  The party halted while both scouts, Croften and Galen, rode ahead in search of dangerous road conditions or possible ambush sites. As everyone waited, all atop their horses save Wirren the wain driver on his bench and the Red Raven in his cage trailing the main wagon, the dark wilderness ahead all but beckoned them to enter. To Rem, it looked placid enough: close ranks of spruce and redwood, alder and hemlock, every space among the great trees crammed with bright-green ferns, big-leafed rhododendrons, and leather-leafed salal bushes heavy with dark-blue berries, the silence and stillness broken only by the insistent tap of woodpeckers and the trill of wrens. Behind it all lay the sluicing rush of the river—now tumbling over rockier, more uneven ground than it had back west—underscored by the winds whispering in the gently swaying trees.

  It was peaceful. Unspoiled.

  And yet Rem could not deny that something about it filled him with a deep and primal fear. The closest thing he could compare it to was the feeling of being a child, alone in his bedchamber at night after the one candle left burning at his bedside had gone out, sure that something—something hungry and unnatural—waited in the dark beneath his bed, or just over the sill of the open window . . .

  Torval leaned in his saddle. “What are we waiting on?” he whispered.

  “They’re trying to understand it,” the Raven said from his cage, a stone’s throw ahead of them. “It’s a common reaction. Submit to it.”

  “Hardly,” Rem said, attempting to dispel the Raven’s mind games as quickly as possible. “They’re scouting the road. They’ll be back any minute.”

  “What’s to understand?” Torval barked back at the Raven. “It’s a forest, isn’t it? Trees, rushing water, a bunch of sly beasts and insects—”

  “Oh, but the Ethkeraldi’s so much more than that,” the Raven said, moving forward and grasping the bars of his cage. He was truly relishing this. “The Ethkeraldi’s the oldest forest near the coast, and it’s hosted fugitives and rebels and bandits since time immemorial. When all of its sister woods to the north, south, and east were being hacked down to build the free cities or the great castles of the kings and queens of Keramia, or to feed winter fires or shore up mine shafts, this great lady’s remote location in her long, meandering valley kept her safe—kept her mysterious. The Horunic Empire, which quelled this part of the world more than a thousand years ago, refused to venture in there after a whole legion was lost and never heard from again. That bridge we crossed earlier is the only thing the Horunii left behind. In later days, when this area was part of the Kingdom of Keramia, those who managed to escape Mad King Merrick’s persecution and imprisonment usually made their homes here, alone or in small bands, knowing the likelihood of anyone following them was low. After the kingdom’s collapse, the worst of her soldiers haunted these roads as brigands and thieves, ranging not just through the valley but over the mountains, as well. And then, of course, there’s Hobb’s Folly . . .”

  Rem felt a shudder in spite of himself. Hobb’s Folly: their sundown destination, where they would make camp and wait, through the long, dark woodland night, for the sunrise. He’d heard the stories and he thought himself a reasonable chap—not prone to excess superstition or unreasonable fear—and yet there was something about the thought of passing a night in that fell place that did not sit well with him.

  The sound of hooves preceded the sight of Croften and Galen emerging from the wood on their mounts. The big male scout hove up beside the lord marshal and gave his report while his female counterpart rode back along the line to give her own impressions to Captain Tuvera and the Lady Tzimena.

  “Looks like we might be moving,” Rem said.

  Up ahead, the lord marshal gave a curt order. Their train trundled on, slowly but surely, ever closer to the looming redwoods and glowering pines. The Red Raven’s cage creaked and jostled along before them over the stone-strewn, unkempt forest road. At the fore of the company, Galen spurred her horse and went riding back into the woods, apparently now playing forward scout. In a similar change of duties, Croften galloped from the train’s head to its rear, carrying on into their wake until he disappeared along the river’s muddy bank. Clearly the two scouts had decided to exchange places for a bit.

  “What’s Hobb’s Folly?” Torval asked after a moment’s silence.

  Rem answered before the Raven could. “An abandoned trade post just a league or so ahead of us, well inside the wood. Legend has it that about five hundred years ago, an impious merchant named Remus Hobb decided what the Ethkeraldi needed to escape its long-darkened reputation was a permanent settlement—a way station of sorts. He laid claim to a large clearing by the river and funded a building project at fantastic expense, bleeding coin for years in order to get workers and materials up here and make his little trade post a reality.”

  “You know the stories,” the Red Raven said with an admiring smile. “You’re not even bad at telling them, I’ll bet.”

  “Would you prefer to take over?” Rem asked.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” the Raven answered.

  “Will someone tell the rest of it?” Torval snapped. “I’m waiting!”

  “As the story goes,” Rem said, “Hobb got his wish. He built the beginnings of a small town: a lovely inn, a big barn and stables, a few small satellite taverns, a trade post, and some storehouses. For a year or two, everything went just as he’d hoped: travelers did not simply pass through, but were actually drawn there, to see what he’d built out of pure grit and determination. He made back most of his investment, built himself a reputation, and the town grew to a permanent population of about three hundred. There were even children and a school administered by an Aemonic priestess. And the town got a name: Sanctuary.”

  Rem stopped and drew a deep breath. The smell of the cedar and pine and rank, moist forest loam was intoxicating. They were passing under the canopy now, the world darkening around them.

  “And then?” Torval asked, clearly anticipating a coming disaster.

  “And then,” Rem continued, “a fierce winter came—the worst in a hundred years by all accounts. The snows in these mountains are, according to most, mild by comparison with those farther inland, in the Iro
nwalls, or farther north, in my homeland—but that winter, snowdrifts choked the passes in this area more than a month before the winter solstice, cutting off the valley for months. It wasn’t until well after the spring thaw that anyone made it to Sanctuary to check in on those trapped through the winter.”

  Torval stared. Clearly he was engrossed. Rem let his dramatic pause hang in the quiet air. The world around them was close and dark now, a strange, muffled deadness enveloping all they heard, including the dim clop-clop of their horses’ hooves. As they passed, he heard small, furry bodies rattling stands of globe sedge and saw clearly the wink of tiny dark eyes peering from the shadows under knots of sorrel and sword ferns. Rem told himself that the world around them was simply wild—alive with rodents and songbirds and scuttling insects and ground fowl—but telling himself that, again and again, did nothing to assuage the feeling that they were being watched.

  He carried on, eager to crush his growing paranoia. “Some fur traders stopped in the town and thought it deserted. Eventually they located a great many of the settlement’s grown residents—or what was left of them. All that remained were bones, stripped and bearing the marks of gnawing teeth, all piled into a mass grave just fifty paces from Remus Hobb’s own house. While the bones were all in a jumble and specific numbers couldn’t be identified, they estimated a couple hundred, at least.”

  He stole a glance at Torval. The dwarf was staring, nose crinkling the slightest bit in disgust, mouth agape in childlike wonder. Rem fought the urge to smile and continued.

  “What they found in Hobb’s cabin was far worse. Clearly the winter had been terrible, and the people of the town had been forced to start eating one another to survive. Not so unusual, no matter how grim, but it was the scale of the carnage that impressed the trappers. Every man, woman, and child in the village had been murdered and devoured, most of their bones deposited in that grave, but many more built up as grim trophies in the darker corners of Hobb’s cabin.

  “Hobb himself hadn’t made it. They found his desiccated head, still bearing flesh and wisps of hair, laid upon a grim altar as a sort of totem or object of worship. The only survivor of that winter, it appeared, was a single girl child. When they found her, she was sucking the marrow out of the tiny bones of an infant. Some say she even offered the marrow to the newcomers, as though she was completely unaware of what an abominable act she was engaged in.