TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  Braggen watched only the felled men. One sprawled still in a stain of spreading crimson, determinedly playing dead. The other, moaning through clenched teeth, made no effort to shout and bring help; as sure a sign as a raider would get that no allies lay within earshot. These had not been outriders, but routine scouts, with no company marching at hand.

  Braggen lowered his bow. He bundled his last arrows back into his quiver, then soothed his unsettled geldings, a difficulty: reaction to his late round of butchery left his hands badly unsteady. Lilting soft nonsense, he untied equine blindfolds and stowed the nose bags to let the animals breathe unimpaired. Then, in no hurry, but without wasted motion, he picked his way from the thicket. His thick, stag-hide leathers let him plow through the thorns with small penalty beyond a few scratches. An ugly but unavoidable cruelty, he adhered to his plan by strict order of priority.

  Both the wounded were disarmed. The man with the arrow through his thigh cursed him steadily, until faintness rendered him speechless. Braggen stood by, wretched and clammy with his own distressed sweat, until blood loss finally drove the man senseless. Then he snapped off the arrow shaft and bound up the wound. The other man did not quiet until he was forcibly gagged. He was left where he lay, while Braggen attended the loose horses, catching the one which had entangled its bridle, then mounting to herd in the others. He secured all five, then tied three to a scrub tree, while the one he sat and another in hand were wheeled and trotted this way and that. Before long, the torn snow in the gulch wore a mishmash of overlaid tracks. Braggen reined up satisfied when he judged the site wore the appearance of a hard-fought skirmish.

  Shaking now, chilled to the bone as the ripping winds robbed the warmth from the lowering sun, the clansman dismounted. He had little time, and no chance at all, if another patrol happened by and flushed him before his grisly round of artifice was finished. The dead he stripped to the skin, rings and clothing. He ripped out the shafts that had killed the first two, leaving a reiver's toll of cut throats and sword wounds. As though the officer's corpse had been clanborn, hacked down by headhunters, he drew his knife. Retching, he forced himself to follow through. He bludgeoned the face and hacked off the scalp.

  The hair he jammed under a sizable boulder, and the clothes left too blood-soaked to disguise. He saved one blotched shirt, used the linen to bind up the head and face of the gagged man. The wretch slowed his progress with useless struggle, until a kick in the belly dropped him limp. While he choked through an unnerving interval of recovery, Braggen lashed him, wrist and ankle, and secured him across his own horse. The stout companion received the same treatment. Limp from his draining wound, that one draped like a sack, stertorously breathing and pale. His less-damaged comrade thrashed and moaned, while the chestnut mare under him stamped and sidled, jibbing against the lead rein looped around her high-set neck.

  Braggen barred his heart against mercy. Their lives against Arithon's, his choice was clear-cut. He left them. Bearing an armload of filched clothing, he burrowed back into the thicket. A handful of minutes, and he reemerged, clad in the weapons and clothing of an Alliance man-at-arms. He had done the unthinkable and cut off his clan braid. His stout leathers and furred cloak were stuffed as additional booty in the saddle pack borne by one of the Etarran horses. The officer's sunwheel mantle now covered Arithon, the bearskin beneath kept for warmth. A last touch, the royal feet dangling from the hemline no longer wore soft-soled boots. Those, too, had been shoved in the supply pack and replaced with square-toed black ones, too large, and buckled with an engraved set of roweled spurs.

  His Grace had been splashed with blood. Since he was not bearded or gray, a stained dressing swathed his mouth and jaw, and all of his raven hair. The few strands which spiked through were gore-soaked, and whitened, a piece of invention done with a filched lock clipped from one of the clan trophy braids.

  'A more honorable end,' Braggen snapped to himself, a bit breathless. Strung-up nerves and the effort of swallowing back nausea were turning him faintly dizzy. Numb in the feet since the largest man's boots were too tight for his muscular calf, he banded the horses together and set off. He rode up the ridge line, to every appearance an Alliance survivor whose patrol had been set upon, with himself left to bear up the wounded and drive in their salvaged mounts.

  Just past sundown, he was challenged at the first checkpoint. The cleared air by then had brought in vicious cold. Each stinging breath feathered tendrils of hoarfrost on beard and hood. A northerly wind sang over the hills, stamped calcine white under flooding moonlight. The men at the posts were permitted no fire. Every miserable one of them huddled on watch, faces cowled in wool, and backs turned to the punishing chill.

  The halberdiers who barred Braggen's way were loath to stand out in the wind, or brandish their steel-studded weapons.

  'Password!' snapped the sergeant as the disorganized cavalcade shambled toward him. He wore a blanket under his cloak that covered the oiled links of his hauberk. His gauntlets were left off for comfort. On a night too cruel to sustain suspicion, he tucked his gloved hands beneath his crossed arms and held back, keeping his numbed feet well clear of maceration as the horses with emptied saddles shoved and stamped, barging against the ones burdened.

  Braggen wrangled with the reins, engrossed by the trials of keeping the three mounts bearing bodies clear of the jostling press. 'I'm sorry,' he apologized, his phrasing slurred to sound townborn. 'I don't know the watchword.' The deception enhanced by the loosely wrapped cloth of his muffler, he affected a show of self-conscious embarrassment. 'I was griped from bad meat, had the runs in the ditch. Wasn't listening up at the time we rode out, for the worry I'd brown my own breeches.'

  As one of the halberdiers masked a snigger, he tipped his head toward the motionless form sheeted under the sunwheel mantle. 'Dorik knew.' Helped by the grace of Etarran vanity, Braggen had found the fallen officer's name stamped in gold on his saddle.

  'The eighth patrol's Dorik?' A tall man shoved from the press of his fellows, his gloved hand clenched to his sword grip. 'He's dead, then?'

  'Probably will be,' Braggen answered, resigned. 'He wasn't good when I pulled him out of the snow. We were ambushed,' he added in redundant afterthought. As though stupid with shock, or chilled witless by cold, he hunkered against the vicious barrage of the wind. 'I was going for a healer.' Eyes shut in forbearance, though every nerve crawled, he forced himself still as someone else shoved his way into the packed mass of horses. Enemy hands pulled back the cloak hood. Arithon's wrapped head was examined in the darkness, with no chance of reprieve if the ruse with stained bandages roused the watch officer's suspicion.

  'Head wound,' someone murmured. 'It appears to be Dorik, and yes, he's breathing, just barely.'

  Braggen let his horse feel the kiss of a spur, then reined its startled bound short with impatience. 'I've said Dorik's hurt badly. Hold me up, and you'll throw away his last chance if he can't hang on.'

  'Where did this happen?' the sergeant demanded, cutting through the distressed clamor as other men crowded around.

  'His pulse is too sluggish,' the observer reported. 'Won't see the morning, most likely.'

  Braggen jabbed another rude heel to his horse, on the far side, where no one would see. Obliging, it sidled. The speaker was driven back before any further examination unmasked his desperate subterfuge.

  But the sergeant was not so easily discouraged. 'Where did this happen?'

  The milling horses lent Braggen the excuse to be terse. 'Back there, a touch over three leagues, in a gully. You can't miss the bodies.'

  That moment, the other prisoner gagged under the splashed bandage aroused and started a round of muffled screaming.

  'Light's grace! Let me ride, he's in pain,' Braggen begged.

  Another man with a bristle of blond beard elbowed the onlookers back in sharp pity. 'Let the man pass! If that's Hadge, Dorik's tracker, he's got a pretty wife who's going to be grieving.'

  'Can we leave?' Braggen snapped
. 'Else I'll be hauling three stiffs for my pains. Where's the main camp? Someone point me toward a warm tent and the hands of a competent healer.'

  The gruff sergeant relented. 'We'll do better. I'll dispatch an escort to take you.'

  'The barbarian dogs had crack bowmen,' Braggen cautioned. 'Might need your men here, in case I was followed. I'd feel better if you used your damned escort to run down the murdering bastards.'

  'The more reason not to send you on alone,' the sergeant insisted.

  A nerve-wracking delay, while Braggen was offered a drink from a flask, and the man to ride with him was chosen. To save time, the Etarran-bred horse with the least bloodstained saddle was cut from the bunch for his use.

  'Hurry on, man. Catch up as soon as you're mounted.' Before the scout who came forward could settle astride, or adjust the length of his stirrups, the disguised clansman spurred away at a canter.

  Beyond the next range of hills Braggen sharply reined up. 'Here,' he called, while his escort fell in, breathless with annoyance alongside. 'Come and take charge of some of these lead reins.'

  'Well, didn't I just try?' The fellow edged his gelding into the press, leaned out and extended his arm to shoulder his share of the burden.

  He received no gift of reins, but Braggen's mailed hand on his wrist, and a yank that dragged him half out of his saddle. While his horse plunged and jostled at the sharp shift in weight, he sucked in a gasped breath.

  The knife took him before he could yell, a punching stab through the neck. He struggled, gagging, while the blade's point sawed deep and sliced through the artery under his jaw.

  Rushing dizziness followed the hot jet of his blood. The jolt of pure panic raced his heart and sped the ebb of his dying strength. He bled out his life, choking through a hacked windpipe, helpless to vent the undignified rage of being tied like killed game to the neck of his distressed horse.

  'Ath's mercy, let you be the last of them,' Braggen pleaded when the victim he strapped down had ceased breathing. Now informed where the camp was, he made swift disposition and cut loose the bay laden down with the corpse. The two others with their burden of wounded, he freed also. A sharp smack with the flat of a sword drove them off at a violent gallop. Let them lay down confused trails for the trackers. With luck the needy wretches they carried would preoccupy the patrol who finally chased down the strays.

  Bone chilled, and wretchedly trembling, Braggen wiped clean his sticky knife. He sheathed the weapon, then dragged at the lead reins, towing his remaining band of horses north and west. He risked precious time, keeping the animals' pace to a prudent trot. A few he let loose at intervals when he pulled back to a resting walk. These obliged by seeding meandering loops and a jagged chain of back tracks. On short notice, this was the best could be done to suggest the whole band made their aimless way without riders.

  Once he judged he had passed well beyond the Alliance encampment without drawing the perimeter scouts, he changed horses and veered due north.

  The cold settled in. A crystalline clear sky lidded the downs like a jar of rare indigo glass. Braggen hunched against the buffeting gusts, chilled to relentless discomfort. The spilled blood of the killed man on his forearm and shoulder froze the cloth to crackling stiffness. The damp sleeve beneath did not dry, but let the remorseless cold burn straight through to the skin. He understood he would need to get dry, or else suffer crippling frostbite.

  He drew rein under an outcrop, dogged by the hagridden certainty that each passing second of delay would later come to cost dearly.

  Yet if his right hand became too numbed to grasp weapons, no lead he could wrest would be enough to draw his prince clear of armed enemies. Without pause to dismount, Braggen did as he must: unstrapped the silk-wrapped sword from his shoulder. Clutched in an agony of strung tension, he peeled off the sodden Alliance cloak, then the tunic and shirt with its gold ribbon and sunwheel badges. Eyes roving the horizon, each sense primed and listening for the patrol that could trap him in this moment of vulnerability, he crumpled the fine cloth, blotted sweat from his horse's neck and rubbed down his gore-stained skin.

  The wind lashed his bare flesh. The cruel stinging was recorded by each exposed nerve. The risk as he dressed half unhinged him with fear. His hands, uncooperative, had long since lost the dexterity to contend with bone buttons and laces. Wrapped shuddering at last in the reclaimed comfort of his original garments, Braggen caught the sword back. Spurred by desperate haste, he slung its silk-clad hilt once again close to hand's reach. Then he ducked his head before the ceaseless, sharp wind, and swung his mount northward again, driving the remounts ahead.

  The gelding entrusted with its sun wheel-wrapped burden he, kept strapped in tandem with his own.

  Setting moon rimmed the hills to the west in cobwebs of ghostly light. The brush and scrub trees had long since rattled clean of the past night's tracery of snow. The curved backs of the drifts wore a sheen of faint silver. Under the ongoing hooves of the horses, the bite and crunch of packed ice punched through the risen scream of each gust. Smashed fragments of crust skittered downwind like thrown cullet. Braggen pressed on with his head turned, face shielded behind the furred rim of his hood. His feet were feelingless lumps in the stirrups. His hands fared no better buried wrist deep in his gelding's tangled mane. If danger arose, and he needed Alithiel unsheathed, he would be forced to cut through the silk wrappings to draw her. The slipknotted bindings Jieret had tied were beyond his fumbling cold grip.

  The threat at his back seemed an abstract dream, but for the caked stains on the sunwheel mantle cast over Arithon's body.

  Braggen moved by brute will. He prodded his tired horse onward, guided by the yellowed, setting moon until its wan lamp extinguished behind by the fretted hills to the west. The sky overhead was black enamel and chipped diamond, the rock-clad gullies smoothed over by night, treacherous as deadfalls underfoot.

  Not long past moonset, Braggen had to cut loose the roan mare. A stumble had lamed her. Despite the pain of a severely wrenched fetlock, she refused to be left, breasting the deepest footing three-legged. Shredded by pity, Braggen found her a sheltered gulch. There, he paused to let the other mounts drink from the black current of an open streamlet. He could do no more. The surcease from the wind offered the mare blandishment to stay, and trailing willow fronds provided her browsing.

  He dismounted to blazing pain in both hips from too many hours astride. Limping and stiff, he performed the chore of changing mounts, while the gusts roared over the lip of the ravine and hurled slivered ice through the rattling branches. He stamped circulation back into his feet and dug out a meal of dried meat and biscuit. While he chewed, he checked Arithon. The slow breathing masked under the gore-crusted dressings remained reassuringly warm and regular.

  Braggen transferred his prince's slack weight onto the back of a fresh horse. The bandaged hand was still dry, though the bindings keeping his Grace in the saddle had chafed a sore in one wrist. Braggen eased the raw patch with salve, then wound a torn strip from a dead man's shirt around the cord to make padding.

  By the time he set foot in the stirrup and remounted, his pulse raced. Fear and tension had filmed him in clammy sweat that was going to chill bitterly, later. Worse, the horses stopped short in refusal to leave the protected ravine. Shrinking himself, crying curses for the necessity, Braggen lashed their balked rumps with the ends of his reins and drove them to forsake their sound instincts.

  For now the cold posed an enemy more deadly than any two-legged tracker the Etarrans might set on his back trail. Weariness compounded the incessant chill, hazing the mind toward dozing sleep and leaching away better judgment. Braggen bludgeoned his thick wits, agonized between choices: whether to stop and seek shelter, or press onward into the terrible wind, at the risk of fatal exposure.

  Overhead, the stately turn of the stars told him three hours remained before sunrise.

  Braggen scraped the frost rime from his beard, his breath a white plume in the darkness. A gla
nce backward showed the rumpled swath of his passage. The scarred prints stitched over the pristine hills left a beacon for enemies to follow.

  He made his decision in grim understanding that Daon Ramon's bitter cold at least posed an element of uncertainty. The threat at his heels held no sweet ambiguity. If a company of Etarrans came on in pursuit, and caught him dismounted to rest, he and the prince he was charged to safeguard would be dead in a matter of minutes.

  * * *

  In the end, the torments of unremitting winter lent the gift that spared the s'Ffalenn lineage from extinction. For when the past night's bloody ruse was unraveled, and the slaughtered patrol left unhorsed in the gulch had been tracked down and accounted, only one party of Etarran men-at-arms was dispatched to ride out and retaliate. The accounts matched the evidence with inarguable impeccability: the task force was assured they pursued a lone killer, burdened down with a wounded henchman. Because their presumed quarry was likely no more than a scout strayed from Jieret's war band, they avoided the savage discomfort of mounting the chase until dawn broke.

  Under the knives of pallid new sunlight, the patrol of ten lancers saddled up and turned windward. They broke ground, pushing hard, inside a few hours covering the same ground that Braggen had passed through the night. They recognized the lamed mare they found in the ravine, and also, to an outbreak of curses and threats, the stained cloak jammed in her saddle pack.

  Enraged, primed for vengeance, they thundered ahead, plowing the barbarian's insolent trail into ripped gouts of torn snow.

  The prints they were following yielded no fugitive, but diabolically converged with the chopped slurry of the Mathorn Road.

  The patrol pulled up, milling. Amid frozen ruts, the trampled mishmash of cart tracks, and the ice-rimmed hoof marks of galloping couriers riding post from the inland cities to Narms, they could not decipher which way, east or west, their benighted quarry had turned.