“That is one question to which I would like to find the answer. I think that my quest has gone beyond the old Night of Spears.”
“You think there is more to this than just a coincidence?” Asked Raoul, who had gone to stand by the window, and looked out as he spoke.
“I am sure of it now, old friend.” Keldron replied. “There is too much coincidence. First off, we set out to find the Merdonese, just to get knowledge. We almost get trapped in a lake of evil, and end up in a different reality in the chamber of what may well be one of the Gods. Then we get chased over countless leagues, as somebody just happens to destroy a greater focus that has stood over the forest for generations. Once we do gain a measure of relative safety in the mountains, we find ourselves pursued by horsemen. Then we happen to find a village where everybody has been slaughtered in a poor imitation of the original massacre. Coincidence?” Keldron asked of his friends. “I think not. Something is going on here, something sinister.” He pointed out of the window. “Why is it that we have not seen a single Merdonese tribesman aside from those that accompanied us on our quest? Where are they? There were surely enough that escaped the forest and I am worried about them.”
“Keldron, calm down.” Spoke Joleen's soothing voice. “I am sure that our tribe would find many ways to exist peacefully out of the forest, and hide also if the situation requires of it. Besides, this is a big land, and they could have gone in any direction once they came down out of the pass.”
“You be confidant, Jo. I will worry.” Keldron frowned, and clamped his mouth shut. Joleen and Yerdu exchanged a look that was a cross between exasperation at the fact that a man didn't know his place in the scheme of things, and a concern that maybe he was not quite as recovered as they had previously thought. To take the frosty atmosphere away from the room, Yerdu busied herself with bustling Keldron to the opposite side of the room, far from the windows, and checking on his bandages. Everybody was now clearly subdued.
Raoul left the drapes and went to the doorway. “I am going to find a vantage point from which to view these horsemen as well as hear them.” Shortly they could hear the creak of the stairs betraying his progress to the upper level of the house.
“Could be a good idea,” Keldron said thoughtfully, his sense of futility somewhat mollified by the urgent need of his burnt arm. Looking around to see if anybody was going to follow him, he left the study and climbed to the top of the house. The stairs creaked for him as they had for Raoul, and he found his friend in one of two bedrooms situated at the front. Keldron nodded a silent greeting, and went to the other room. It was cosy, some might say small, but the pallet inside was close to the window, and packed full enough for him to sit and still have a good view of the track out the front. Opening a window, he winced as the hinges shrieked in protest. The cold chill swept through the room, probing, as if it had to touch everything. Keldron shivered; his arm was particularly sensitive in its raw and burned state, even under the bandages and ointment he had been given. Trembling slightly from both the cold and the expectancy of the situation, he waited for the horsemen to show. A noise interrupted his concentration. It was not the horsemen, but the door opening behind him. Expecting Joleen, Keldron was surprised when Yerdu popped her head around the door. She came and sat next to him on the bed, peering out of the window.
“You wizards always find levity in situations, I have seen it in your faces often since we left the forest many moons ago. Things have changed, no?”
Keldron smiled, regretting the actions that had led from them searching for simple answers to questions to hiding in a village full of people murdered in the most heinous of ways. “Things have changed. Would that it were all simpler, and the answers I sought were available to anybody.”
“Are the answers you seek so special that you alone can find them? Is that not arrogance and presumption showing in your argument?”
Keldron missed her jest, caught up in the moment. “Yerdu, nobody else knows what we know. Nobody else has seen what we have seen. How many times have we escaped with our very lives, and we have travelled the merest fraction of our journey.” He sighed, too caught up in his own emotional turmoil to think completely rationally. “I just hate not being in control of my life.”
“Welcome to the world we live in, brother Keldron.” The sarcasm brought him back to his senses. “Stop wallowing in self-pity. There is more out there than your quest, and this experience should teach you that. What happened here was terrible, and what happened to you was but a fraction of that. Do you not think that the amount of suffering that came out of this village was for you alone? We all feel it, every one of us. I can tell you that no other member of my tribe would have even dared to come near here. This much evil was felt ten leagues off, but we came here with you three because we believe it is in the best interests of our tribe to do so. We did not even stop to consider the emotional anguish it would cause us should we actually come to the middle of this evil nest of snakes, we just followed you because you represent the chance to save our splintered tribe from extinction.” Yerdu gestured out of the window. “This is exactly what will happen to our tribe should we fail. This, or something like this.”
Keldron expanded his senses, trying to pick up a vibe from the surrounding walls. “How do you sense evil?” he asked.
“How do you not? Our elders always taught us to sense the air around us. As children we learned to sense the merest imperfection in the flows of the forest. Such flows exist everywhere, and we feel them all the time.”
Less than satisfied with this evasive answer, Keldron leaned back. What Yerdu said made sense in a twisted way. He had had an experience that had chilled his very soul, but there was more out there than his self-pity. “You are right, Yerdu. I have been so self-absorbed because of what happened to me that I did not see that the answers are still out there and I need to be the one to find them.”
Yerdu smiled gently. “Well, you are only a man, and you do need someone around to do the thinking for you.”
“Will you two please hush?” Whispered Raoul from the passageway. “If you look out of the window you will see that we are about to have company.” Instantly, their conversation ceased. Along the track through the main part of the village came a band of five horsemen. The horses were in a wretched condition, from what could be seen. They were lathered and gasping, driven to their limit.
“Thank the Gods Malcolm can't see this. He would be out there in an instant.”
The men were heavily armed, although they did not look like the band that the wizards and tribesmen had met on the route down from the pass out of the mountains. They were similarly attired though, and their weapons brought that familiar gleam from the flashes of sunlight. These men were not merchants or tinkers. They were out to perform a much more grizzly task. Keldron leaned towards the window, as he was sure that his friends were all doing at that moment. The voices were quiet but as the men rode through the village and closer to the mill where everybody was secreted, their chatter became more distinct.
“I told you, Bob. This place is a ghost town. It has already been cleared.”
“And I told you Seth to mind your own. We have been given orders by his mighty lordship that we are to double and triple check the villages that have been cleared. I am sure that I heard something from far off.”
A deeper voice interrupted the two. “If you two idiots would just shut it fer a second, we would be right able to 'ear if there's anybody about.”
“Oh roight, yer hoigh and moightyness,” mocked the first voice they had heard. This was followed shortly by a thump, and a louder crash to the ground as somebody was taught a painful lesson. A raucous cackle followed, as the rest of them enjoyed the moment.
“That'll learn ya,” said a fourth voice. “Now shut it, so we can hear what there is to hear.” The horsemen stopped outside of the mill, within touching distance of the porch, and the windows behind which three men and two women were trying hard to not even breathe, lest they giv
e themselves away. The moments passed, and Keldron found that as he held his breath, his heart pumped steadily stronger to compensate. He closed his eyes and willed himself to breathe, calmly, slowly. He moved through the exceptional skills of concentration he possessed to relax. It worked, and as he opened his eyes, one of the men outside grunted in disgust.
“Bah, nuffin,” came the voice of the fifth and until now only unheard horseman. “If there's a soul alive in this village they are either exceptionally quiet, or a damned fool.”
“Why don't you go ask one of the corpses if they are harbouring anybody, Daercy?” the horseman who had been called Seth asked sarcastically. “Perhaps they would give you a clearer answer than you have already got.”
“You would probably look better with a stake through you, just like all those backward followers of the Old Law,” Daercy replied. “Now go do a sweep of the outer village, and take Bob with you. Perhaps with your exceptional skills in tracking you might actually find something to prove the usefulness of your continued existence.” Silence followed as Seth glared at the man in charge, and then with kicks to the flanks of their already beleaguered horses, two of the horsemen went charging off into the distance.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” The voice they had heard fourth said quietly.
“Apparently so, Daan.” Daercy replied. “We were told that they would be loyal and follow orders without question. They have done that.”
“Couldn't that wizard have done a little trick to shut them up?” said the voice that had spoken last of all.
“The way I hear it, Jaerger, that was not part of the deal,” Daercy replied. “You have to remember, that these volunteers are not part of our trained force, but are mostly these very people. Villagers, like these saps. They are expendable, and in the end we are expected to lose them one way or another. They are fodder, and they are to be given every chance to expend their miserable lives. In the end, it doesn't even matter how hard they try. If they make it through this, they will be taken anyway.”
Jaerger cackled, an evil sound. “Don't let that on to them though, eh. It will be all the richer for us at the end when we are there and this land is empty of this type.”
“Where are they?” said the voice that belonged to Daan. “They should have been back by now. This is a village, not a Gods be damned city.”
“We were told that they were loyal,.” replied Daercy. “We were not told if they would be of any use to us. They probably couldn't track a fire through a forest. They serve their purpose though. They are the manpower we need to fulfil this grand plan that those in charge seem hell bent upon seeing through to fruition. We just need to hit the right villages to keep those miscreants from across the mountains heading the right way. There is no need for a tribe of beggars and whores to come here and infest our land with their presence. Let them be dealt with the way the master sees fit. We will herd them on like cattle and then rape these villages for what they are worth. They might say that they do not make a profit, but I bet you that all of these houses are loaded down with gold, hidden away in some secret place.”
Inwardly, Keldron groaned. He had heard enough to know that even those in charge of fooling the others were being fooled. The promise of gold, taken from those who had little. He could not believe that people were being killed for that purpose alone.
“What about the ghosts?” asked Daan.
“Don't be a fool, Daan. There are no such things. This village is completely dead. All you have to worry about is falling over a corpse with a great big stake sticking out of it.”
Presently, the sound of horses straining to a gallop echoed through the village.
“Here comes the fodder,” announced Jaerger.
“Shut it. Don't be more of an idiot than you already are.” Daercy growled, authority strong in his voice. “Anything?” he yelled at the returning Bob and Seth.
“Nothing,” Seth yelled back. “Nobody has been here in days. There are no tracks on any of the surrounding paths. Now where do we go?” The two of them dismounted, and Keldron saw from the edge of the window that they were near the bushes that Raoul had been near when he had entered the house. He ducked back through the doorway and looked into the next room. Raoul was frozen in place, stricken as he watched the two men standing mere footsteps away from where he had thrown up. Keldron edged up behind his friend to see that he was trembling. He placed a gentle hand on Raoul's shoulder, making the wizard jump, but not enough to give them away to the horsemen.
“They are going to find it, and us.” Raoul looked around, his blue eyes flashing in recognition and disphoria all at once. He blinked slowly, evidence that he knew he was perilously close to having given them away. “All it would take was one stray glance, one sniff of the air in the right place.”
“Stay quiet, my friend. We may get out of this yet.”
Outside, the jibes and banter had degenerated into an argument over where they were to go next. The smell that should have made things fairly evident that someone had recently been here was obviously not as rancid as it had been. Maybe the wind was just blowing in the right direction, or maybe these men were as inattentive to the more obvious signs as they were to the fact that this village reeked of evil. These men were obviously not chosen for their intelligence. The argument seemed to centre on two choices; going West to where the action had evidently been more recent, or going East to another village nearer the mountains where they might plunder.
Daercy ended it with a thumping blow to the side of Jaerger's head. The horseman fell out of his saddle, and slumped to the ground. Daercy dismounted and stood over him. “You will go where I tell you, unless you want to make an enemy of the wizard, and just about everybody else with the sense to see how incompetent you would be as a commander of even a troupe as small as this. Now mount up. We will head North and West to the next settlement, and check on that.”
Daercy mounted, and led the other three out of the opposite end of the village to which they had entered.
Jaerger mounted quickly, grumbling. “You see who comes out of this better, you son of a motherless whore.” He snarled at his rapidly disappearing commander's back, and then followed as fast as his horse would allow him.
Raoul's shoulders slumped as he sighed in relief at the fact that his weakness had almost given them away. “A close one.” He said quietly to Keldron, who was watching as the dust from the last rider settled back to the ground.
“It would never have been your fault if they had seen that Raoul.” He answered, sympathy strong for his friend's guilt. “Nor would any of us have blamed you.” Keldron looked out on the village, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. “None of us knew how we would react to seeing so much bloody carnage. It took guts for anybody to enter this village, let alone take a look in the houses. I myself know the consequences of that, and I am glad that Belyn did not have to burn any more of us.” Keldron absently touched his arm, feeling the tender burn beneath the bandages and ointment.
“You aren't the only one, my friend.” Raoul chuckled. “I think we should go back to the others, see what we can make of that commotion.” They left the room, joining a silent Yerdu on the stairs.
Joleen and Belyn were already in the parlour, and not long after they had all gathered there, Malcolm, Aynel, Arden, Seren and Handel joined them shortly.
“The horses are eating,” Handel Broadbough spoke in a whisper, as was his way.
“They did get a bit jittery when those other horses were near. They wanted to neigh out a greeting, but we managed to keep them quiet. Good horses those,” added Malcolm in his high-pitched voice, “so did you learn anything?”
The two women kept silent during the recital of the facts that had been unwittingly revealed by the horsemen. They had been stunned by the callous lack of regard for the lives of innocents in this land, and even the normally forthright Yerdu had been shocked into silence. The three wizards combined their opinions with the facts to relate a macabre tale to the tri
besmen. The normally reserved men came as close to losing their calm exterior as Raoul had ever seen them. As he watched and as they listened to Belyn, he swore that he could see the colour drain out of their faces. It was as if someone had broached a metaphorical keg in their faces with a tap, and had turned it on. The change of colour was visible. The story of the fate of these and so many other innocent people left them helpless with frustration for the first time that they could remember.
When they had finished relating the facts, Malcolm was the first to respond, as the other members of the tribe were beside themselves with emotions that they were frankly unused to. “You were right. If I had heard what that scum had had to say, I would have been right out there and to hell with the consequences.” Malcolm frowned, bursting at the seams with repressed rage. “I would have ensured that there would be five less maniacs out there dealing blows to innocents.”
“That would have made no difference, except it may have been detrimental to you, my friend,” Belyn answered. “It looks like there is more to this than just a bunch of killings. They made repeated references to higher authorities, and especially at least one wizard.” Belyn stood, and paced the room. “Now I shudder to think who would involve themselves in such a dire scheme, but I cannot think beyond the Witch Finder. He is reputed to be a wizard of great power. Someone of his stature and reputation would be the sort of person that would be able to inflict damage on the scale we have been seeing. The fact that it is so far from Raessa, his stronghold, is no never mind to him. The question is what can ten of us do here and now to prevent this going any further?”
“Kel, what can we do when he has stretched out his arm and taken our mentor?” This fact hurt Belyn, it was clear from his words. “If I could I would tear down the walls to set him free.”
The Path of Dreams (The Tome of Law Book 2) Page 6
