Chased By War

by Michael Wolff

  “Yes. The next day I find a mob at my door. They would have hung me if the Samaritan hadn’t convinced them otherwise.” She snorted. “That’s the second time that bastard saved me.”

  Stromgald frowned. The same disease decimated one village while another was saved. “Which direction did he enter the town?”

  “I already thought of that. He entered the village from the southern gate. There’s no way he crossed into Aiagel before coming here.”

  “There has to be a connection.” Stromgald cupped his chin and stared at the farthest wall. “Did anyone come through the northern gates?”

  “No. We have a festival of sorts when the pilgrims arrive, though of course the war hampered that a bit. Wait. We had a volunteer unit of the Vicar militia a few weeks ago. They came because Lord Jekai wanted to acknowledge our loyalty during the war effort. They gave us food and went their way.”

  Stromgald twitched. “Food?”

  “The crops were frozen, our animals killed. We were starving.”

  “How many people ate the food?” He didn’t realize he was holding Ferrers’ forearms until she cried out. “Kristin, this is important. How many people ate the food?”

  “Everyone. Well almost everyone. I grow my own food in a garden.” She shrugged. “I like gardening. My mother taught me when I was five.”

  “And how long since was it that you heard about Aiagel?”

  “Five days...Oh my God. That’s how long it took for Quinn to collapse.” Stromgald could almost hear the pieces clicking into place. “Poison? Robert Jekai would never do that.”

  “Robert Jekai no longer runs the Solvicar army. And the Alix family lives not five leagues to the east. The Alix are barons in the Jekai fiefs. They’ve been under Jekai protection for years.”

  “But why? Why would Ronald intentionally kill two towns?”

  “To blame the deaths on the Coicro. Use you as an example of Coicro brutality. Having a lone Samaritan cure the town would bolster Solvicar loyalty.”

  “It’s hard to imagine little Ronald Jekai doing this.”

  “It was for me, too. Until he tried to kill me. Trust me. The boy we thought we knew is gone. Or perhaps he never existed to begin with.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We? We do nothing. I’m going to Craydon to find some answers. You stay here.”

  “If you think I’m just going to sit here and do nothing, knowing that little bastard is playing with people’s lives, then you are sorely mistaken.”

  “It could be dangerous.”

  “No more dangerous than an entire town wanting me out. At this rate, they might forget the asking and do me away quickly.”

  As if on cue, there came a rap on the door. A wary check at the window revealed a cluster of villagers in fur-lined leathers. They had not the torches or the pitchforks of the usual mob, but there was the twitching of hands as though eager for steel, and their eyes contained enough malice to kill with a blink. Gibbons waved Stromgald into hiding, then opened the door. “Hello, Lord Samaritan.”

  “You flatter me, Kristin. I am just one man doing what he can in these trying times.” For a moment Stromgald wished to break the man’s jaw just to destroy that too-smug smile of his. “I have just received word that S’sorc has contracted the disease. I cannot be there, for there is still work to be done. But your expertise can aid those towns at risk. I ask you humbly, will you go to S’sorc in my stead?”

  Smart man. Now Ferrers had no choice. Refusal would make her the villain; as a doctor, she could not deny the suffering of people, even during a conspiracy. “Just let me pack provisions.”

  “Thank you, Kristin. Take all the time you need.”

  “Charmer,” said Stromgald when the door closed. “Just as dangerous as you said.”

  “The bastard knows I couldn’t refuse. It’s only been a week. Why has the world gone mad?”

  If you only knew how little it takes. “Kristin. Describe him.”

  “What?”

  “Lord Samaritan. Humor me. Describe him.”

  “Well his face is...” A curious frown came to her. “His eyes are...” She shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs. “I just talked to the man! How could I forget what he looks like?”

  “He’s an enshou. Master of the mirage. People don’t know what he looks like because they are compelled not to remember.” Even I didn’t recognize him. It must be a very powerful shiisaa.

  Kristin seemed ready to boil. “I cannot ignore the people at S’sorc. Even if it is a ploy.”

  “I would not ask that of you. It is best that we separate for now. Once your business is done, can you ride for Craydon?”

  “Of course.” She seemed ready to run the roads if need be. “It’s best we leave separately in order to avoid the mob. The less attention we receive the better.”

  Stromgald was about to say the same thing. A mind like a steel trap. In that way she reminded him of Sylver. He helped her pack a horse – the least he could do; he was a guest in her home – and minutes later watched her disappear into the horizon.

  Goodbye Kristen. May you know peace in all your days. Then Stromgald turned and continued his own path through the land.

  In a space that was neither here or there, the Lord Samaritan watched him go.

  LIV

  Be a ranger, they said. Adventure and women abound, they said. Orson snorted. Boredom and old hags, more like. If only that damn bastard Martin hadn’t charmed him into recruitment, then Orson would be drinking mead with a wench on his knee. It was only a small comfort that the old ranger died three years earlier.

  A crack of ice underfoot snapped Orson back to his senses. This was no time for distraction. Only a day after parting ways, the ranger was jumped by some footpads and left for dead. They paid dearly for that offense. One souvenir for each coward, blood for blood, flesh for flesh. It was a rite almost forgotten in the sifting tales of Northborn heroes, but if the rites were good for his ancestors, it was good enough for Orson.

  A boat seemed a good idea at the time. Quick get-away, and ambushes were low in number due to the bitter winter cold. A ticket was bought, and the Northborn settled into the ride thinking he was safe. Stromgald’s words echoed. Whatever we do to stop Ronald will only hinder the cause of the Vicar. We cannot let the Coicro gain the advantage in this internal squabble. That’s why I’m sending you Orson. I want you to destroy them all. The first step was to halt conscription, which meant sabotage and other, darker methods. My kind of fun.

  The boat dropped Orson off at the rickety port of Ossum...and directly into a war zone. Horses thundered from every direction, mingling with the war cries of their riders. From out of the carnage the Northborn spotted a small child, clothed in silken white and shaking with silent sobbing. Orson charged into the writhing chaos of battle. Horses reared before him with bloodthirsty howls, only to scream all the louder when his blades sliced through their legs. Some Coicro thrust black-tipped lances and gasped when the warrior pulled them from the saddle and spiked his swords into their eyes. One by one the Coicro breasted about him like a river parting before a boulder. The child. Nothing mattered but the child.

  “It’s all right boy. I’ll get you somewhere safe...” The words trailed off when he saw the pumping hand, and the bloody dagger within it. Flat, empty eyes regarded Orson, with a face almost twin to the corpse he was attacking. Father and son. The son killed the father. The white silk Orson had mistaken for snow gleamed bright silver, its shoulders bright with the red insignia of the Coicro. Child soldiers. A knotted hand easily stopped the child’s dagger, then knotted further to break the boy’s grip. His eyes were the same in death as they had be
en in life: dull. I can’t change him. I can’t save him. Slowly he rose, and discovered he was amidst a field of endless sobbing. The Coicro had done their damage and were gone.

  “Murderer!” A lithe form filled his vision. Instinct shot out an arm to pluck her in mid-air. She writhed helplessly as Orson flatly analyzed her. Bloody rags, a chipped-bladed dagger, and the fire of the berserker in her eyes. Orson almost smiled. Anger was better than despair any day.

  Orson found himself the center of a weary crowd. Gratitude mingled with fear. Not afraid of me, he realized. He watched them retrieve the dead and wounded, retreating to the safety of their houses. The slamming of doors was the only fire they exuded, harsh as a funeral dirge. They would do nothing, for they could do nothing. What chance did farmers and fishermen have against trained killers? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  There’s something I can do. And it had to be done quickly, before the snowfall filled in the footsteps. Orson followed the trail without as much as a look back.

  The snowfall did pose a slight challenge, but only slight. The Coicro might have been skilled in slaughter, but they had not a brain among them in the tracker’s trade. They did not even bother to glance up at the rocky shore surrounding their escape. In the distance was a pitifully small island. It won’t protect you.

  Orson dived into the water. The water rushed in on all sides, cold even to a Northborn. With powerful strokes Orson made his way to a pitiful little island that slouched with the burden of years without number. Breathing techniques learned at his father’s knee allowed Orson to survive underwater until the boat was but a mere speck on the horizon.

  An echo stiffened Orson’s hair. It didn’t look like the island was capable of housing people. A clandestine crossroad, perhaps? Orson shook his head. He was not in the market for a mystery. Getting involved would only expose him to further vulnerabilities. It was not wise...and yet Orson found himself following the echo through crystalline chambers. Every step was pushed with increasing haste, for the echo quickly resolved into the wailing of a child. Finally, when the wail had grown into a cataclysmic howl of torture, Orson entered the deepest chamber and quivered with the need for violence.

  The source of the screaming was indeed a child. Set in a makeshift crib in the room’s center, the child was wrapped within a solid gray curtain that was at one time both too heavy for prying eyes and fluttered like gossamer. Suspicion lured Orson closer.

  That was only the first of many odd details. Scattered across the frozen chamber was a band of habit-wearing nurses, shuffling with the numbing aches of old age. Orson screamed at them, to no avail. Fingers fluttered in task, quills danced across aged parchment. The ranger had to practically step on their toes to get their attention. The shirk of pain that was supposed to barrel through their lips was replaced with a hollow moan. A glance showed Orson the absence of a tongue. Suspicion realigned his attention to the nurses’ hands. The fluttering of fingers he had mistaken for menial tasks was in truth the shuffling of sign language. They were both deaf and mute. Every single one of them. No wonder no one was looking after the child.

  The loud crunch of footsteps launched the Northborn to the safety of an errant stalactite. Daring so much as a peep, Orson watched a series of men clop into the chamber. Six of them, with the slouched frame and glass spectacles of the scholar. LeKym. It was a maddening thought. Orson wrestled it back into the depths of the mind. Focus, ranger. Just focus.

  The scholars talked to the nurses with flashing fingers, who in turn smiled and eagerly returned the volley. It dawned on Orson that perhaps the nurses knew not their purpose in this little enterprise. The Northborn had yet to meet a mother cold to her own young. Had they been armed with the truth the child would safely be smuggled away from danger. The problem was that Orson was also ignorant of this travesty’s purpose.

  Moments later a final figure emerged from the cavern’s arching mouth. He was even more spindly than LeKym, with spectacles big enough to wrap around the head. Brown hair stood out in patches here and there, obviously greased upon the head to mimic a man in his prime. Instead of talking to the nurses he stood at the egress and shouted demands like a general to his soldiers. The scholars responded in kind all too obediently. Do any of them have a brain of their own?

  “Doctor Fredrick. The child still hasn’t spoken.”

  “Give it time, greenling. One cannot expect a miracle in a day.” Fredrick didn’t even bother to look up. He was too busy burying his nose in yellow parchment. The alternating rhythm of shuffling paper and chicken-scratch scribbling was worse than a dagger scrapped across marble. It was driving Orson crazy.

  “Do the usual, people. Half of you distract the nurses while the other half prepare the child. Be discreet. I would not have this experiment ruined by a common fumble.”

  Experiment? Experiment? Leaving a child in the winter cold, naked in more ways than one, for the sake of knowledge? What was that greenling talking about? Spoken? The child wasn’t speaking? Of course the child isn’t speaking. He’s surrounded by deaf and mute nurses! How do they expect him to start speaking? Fairy dust?

  Sabotaging the farce was all too easy. Simply direct the nurses’ attention to the curtains. Pull them free and watch their faces grow long in horror. Witness the chorus of tongue-less grunts and moans, which led to an anger-crazed stampede. Enjoy the irony as the physician’s apprentices met their end to the hellish fury of women scorned. Step by step did the physician retreat, until he found himself out of room to scurry. The plague of insane mothers was seconds away from tearing the idiot buffoon limb from limb when Orson stopped them.

  “I’ve got a better idea.” Somehow the nursemaids understood, for the matronly band retreated to the island proper. They stood on the edge of the tide, black and white sentinels, glaring with enough rage to level the sun. The spindly scholar shuddered; half at the wrath of the mute nuns and the way he dangled with Orson’s fist at his collar. Not to mention the proximity to the tide lapping inches from the fool’s boots. That was the scariest thing of all.

  “You’re in a difficult position, my friend. You see, I have this funny thing against needless sacrifices. Probably got that from watching all my friends die in a stupid ritual. So, you would understand how your abuse of children would piss me off.”

  Fredrick shriveled into a pathetic albino in the course of three seconds. “Please understand. It was for a good cause. It was solving a riddle of the ages.”

  “A riddle, eh? Okay. I’ll take the bait. Explain this riddle to me.”

  “Well...you know how children of different countries speak different languages. The question is how they come to speak the languages. Is it a common trait from their blood? Is language bred into the bloodline?”

  “Children of different countries speak different languages because they are exposed to the tongue common to their homelands, you fucking moron. Didn’t that ever occur to you?” The gleam in the good doctor’s eye told Orson that yes, he had been aware of the possibility, and further, he didn’t care.

  “This is an outrage. My studies have been sanctioned by the highest officials. There’s an army of physicians conducting tests of my design. You have no right to haul me about like a charlatan.”

  “There are more monsters like you?”

  “We are not monsters! We are scholars hoping to further the knowledge of the human condition!”

  “Does it look like I give a damn about the human condition?” Orson let his grip slacken a hair and smiled as a howl was wrung from the good doctor; his boots were suddenly immersed in the winter water. “You are going to tell me where your scholars are and what they are doing. You’re going to tell me right now. And if you don’t talk, I’m going to put you in their hands.” A glance over the shoulder indicated the gang of matronly nurses. “There i
s no better irony to face a mother’s wrath, don’t you agree?”

  The words spilled from the spindly little man like a torrent from a shattered dam. Everything from the experiments to the locations of secret bases to the scholars heading the research. By the end Orson had great difficulty maintaining his restraint against the feeble scholars.

  “So that’s it. I’ve told you what you wanted to know. Now let me go.”

  “I never promised you’d be spared.” Fredrick’s reaction was hollowing horror and then shock as suddenly a length of steel erupted three feet from the back of the neck. Orson was amused at how the physician’s eyes rolled up into the head before dropping him into the island’s winter depths. Through crude mimicry Orson managed to convince the nurses to take the infant to a place where he would be protected, before following a poorly hidden corridor.

  Whatever the Northborn ranger expected to find, this was not it: a chamber of tiled marble. Instinct pulled the swords free of the scabbards. The sounds were ugly, somehow. Then, as if on cue, a whisper pealed across the room. Orson found a shadow to squeeze into and kept his fingers close to the sword-hilts.

  “What’s the status of the longheads?”

  “Seven students have passed the written tests as well as the verbal.”

  “Seven?” A pause, brimming with cold analysis. “What was the average score?”

  “A few of them have received promising results, and I think there are one or two genius-level potentials –”

  “Caesar. What was the average score?”

  The silence before a storm, the answer dragged out with hooks of reluctance. “Seventy percent.”

  “You said seven. There are thirty students in that study. What about the other twenty-three?”

  “Fifty-five percent. Fifty-five was the highest score amidst that group. The others failed further.” The next words were clumsy in its unneeded haste. “The failing students had longer elongations of the skull –”