“Make it…count…” she wheezed, turning away as the man stirred to new life. Too hard to breathe, much less talk. She rolled away, started to run, not bothering to see if he followed. She had split the chains; from there, the choice was his own. She would tell Ivon it came to death and duty or defiance and salvation. She thought she could guess which way his own inclinations would swing.
Ivon was no kinslayer.
Beyond memories of that family, in the world where blood and choking smoke and dancing flames ruled, a hand grabbed for her. It was hot in the rumbling red, but it seized her, would not let go, moved with her own strength to pull her onward. Ensil would not take his eyes off her. They were tiger-bright, she saw then. As they had been in a cave, when decency, not duty, had bid him brain a man. Then, as now, she had prayed for light.
They ran. Far, fast—there was no other way. They abandoned the camp and joined others fleeing the destruction with whatever they could carry. A body sprawled on the side of the road. She did not think it one of theirs, could not know for certain. A backward glance—no sign of the last Matair. She could not muster the energy for surprise. Sparks rose as a swarm of bees behind them, and in the breaks of the trees, when she could stare further out, east and west and north she saw other sparks, other swarms, burning what they could not possess.
The Bastard’s enemies fought in shadow. So he thought to purge the very silhouettes to which they clung. Which was not, she thought, so unlike the Inquisition that was his bane. What was the love between mad men and flames?
* *
A different man would have run. A sane man, or a guilty one. He was guilty of many things, the hunter was, but there was a difference between being guilty and acting guilty. Men did not know what to do with those that shed no trace of shame.
A different man would have followed his savior like a dutiful dog. It made him think, briefly, of the baker, to the wonder of whether that boy-child still breathed. Unlikely, he decided. Dedication without purpose merely got one killed. Care was to be taken. Thought, without the appearance of thought. It was a delicate game—one his brother and the ranger also played. They had their path and he had his own. Intersection would occur, he was sure of that—would conspire to make it so—but he and they struck at the same purpose from different angles.
Which was why he wandered in the opposite direction. Though the chains had been stricken at their roots, he kept the shackles close about his wrists, a badge to be worn against the bloodied tangle of his skin. He ducked low, kept moving parallel to the sparks, not away nor through them. Collision came at a point of his choosing, where the forest lightened and the thicket of men was waiting, moving, then crying at the sight of him.
He had to be a different man and so the hunter became the prisoner. On spotting them he threw up his hands, cried out such entreaties as to make the boldest voice rasp—even if smoke hadn’t been there to gag him. He wretched, stumbled, looked as pathetic a figure as he might. Yet still he brandished those manacles high, and the soot upon his skin.
These bands of men, in turn, trained arrows on him. “What’s the name, boy?” one called. Another started forward with a dagger but the first ordered him off. “I claim his boots,” that one said sullenly, though more than one man looked ready to fight him for that claim.
Quick assessment: broken men. Weary men. The most dangerous of men.
Men like that respected just two types. “By God, by God you got ‘em running,” Isaak wheezed. He tried to channel enough of the baker to be convincingly terrified. “Lorne—I’s, I’s a scout. They snatched me after the river but I—damn, I’ve never seen them run like that. But did you have to burn the whole forest down to do it?”
“Careful,” one of the other men warned.
He cowered, raised his hands still higher. “See the chains? They killed the others. Just me…just me…”
“Who is they?” the first man returned.
Puzzlement seeped into the droop of his arms, summoned from a memory of the brother he had hunted. “Lord Ivon, ‘coursin. Tail twixt his legs. First time I’ve seen it since…” He spat, twisted back. “Take that you bastard! Traitorkin! Noble twit!”
The silence that followed was palpable, dangerous.
“The traitor’s here, say you?”
“Say it? I saw it! They had me tied and beaten not a dozen feet from him!”
For some reason, men had the tendency to paint presence as virtue. If he had seen a man, he had by nature weathered him. Scars spoke volumes, but it was the imagination which so willingly filled in the blanks between those scars.
“Round up Burl’s and Evard’s men. Squeeze them, damn it. I won’t have them get away,” the captain sputtered, suddenly animated.
“Take him,” someone else said.
There were odds and there were odds. For the moment, he channeled the baker and did not resist. His reward was new bonds—rope this time—and three men hauling him off his feet and away, mercifully, from the hellscape they had stoked. Throughout the eve, they moved, and while it did not take all of his concentration to stay on his feet—Isaac had been long accustomed to nights under starlight—he made it seem as such. The men about him attempted a military pace and he did his best to seem like that was what he wanted, too, but merely stood unable. It was the little details that built or lost a man’s identity in others’ eyes.
The captain of the troop moved at the head of this little procession, occasionally barking orders, but the prisoner walked behind, in the midst of his guards. Those guards did not even talk amongst themselves in his presence, so he had not even camp gossip for rumors.
The whole way, he noted the signs of their passing. Moss on the trees. Direction of the sun, when the smoke was far enough behind them. Which direction the branches rustled, even if he did not feel the wind himself.
Little things filtered through. How Cathal’s ears would perk and twitch with the rustle of such breezes. How Kana’s little laugh would carry through those very branches as she watched the wolfhound twitch.
He took all those thoughts and he compartmentalized them, for another reckoning in another time. The prisoner knew none of these things, could be served by none of them.
It was morning, barely scratching the edges of dawn. This he knew. When a man casually asked whom he had followed, he just as casually replied, “Gorjes, for all the good it did me.” Gorjes, because he knew folk would not question a sellsword’s flight. Gorjes, because he knew that they had stayed, that they hated Rurik. Gorjes, because Voren had spoken of them, and he knew what pains had befallen them. It was doubtful enough remained to expose his lie.
The man nodded, kept moving as though it didn’t matter. But of course it had mattered. These were not idle men and there was nothing idle in their inquiry. He had invoked Ivon.
It was a game, all of it. Everyone played a different version of it, from the Bastard and Ivon, gathering men and poisoning wells between them, to the common soul, sniffing out other common souls and killing what needed to be killed. It was simpler at the bottom, more intrinsic at the top, but everything had its place. Schemes upon schemes, as his old master Mariel was fond of saying. Cat and mouse, was the more common turn of phrase.
It excited something inside of him, something he had not expected to find in the wake of his father’s demise. Younger days had been for complexity, but confinement and execution had abridged things, in its way. No more power to grab. No more strings to pull. Just one simplicity: kill or be killed. He aimed to make Cullick the one he killed, eventually. There was nothing in his plans that intended for it to be quick, either.
Admitting there was something more than that vendetta was infuriatingly difficult. He was neither stupid, nor blind. He could see, needed but look around him at the motley colored men, or the multitude of steel entrenched around his former home, to know that other events turned. One at a time, he told himself. Nothing just in this world moved so quick.
Even if he killed Rurik—an impossibi
lity, he reckoned now—that would not remove him from Cullick’s threat. He was castrated; he could and would do nothing so long as that man held Kana, and he would always, had he some sense, hold that little girl close. Had he killed Rurik, maybe…Unlikely. Now Rurik was Assal-knows-where regardless, with his merry little band most like, and he was still here. He had to trust—which he hated to do—that Cullick would not harm Kana until he knew something was wrong. It was the only hope he had.
Even if. What if. Maybe.
He hated uncertainty. His life had become dramatically full of it.
Even if he had plugged that one uncertainty, Kana and he, and Nesse too—they would have had nowhere to run. The court had stripped his family’s lands. The Bastard now sat atop them, with sworn vendetta against two of his brothers. Civil war wracked everything else. Most of these things he was powerless to correct. But there was one thing. He was close enough for that, and so help him, he owed his family that much.
Ivon might have killed him, if he were a lesser man. But Ivon was not like Isaak; he did not have it in him to be a kinslayer.
He lifted his head and regarded the signs. Others merged with their troop, as time passed—an entity retracting into itself. The camp that gradually took shape was a haphazard, hastily erected thing; it was obviously not intended to last for long. Wagons had been pulled up in the shelter of the trees. Several guards stood around groups of men sitting on the ground with their hands bound behind them. These looked despondent, distant—their eyes did not even try to meet his own.
Inevitably, they marched him to a broad tent pitched in the lee of some large-leaved lindens. Therein, he was shoved to his knees on hard dirt, one man’s hand holding his shoulder as the officer announced, “This one says he saw the Matair, ser. Claims he’s one of us. We set the fires, but didn’t see no sign of him. Just some rabble running.”
A large-framed man awaited them at the other end of the tent. He was engaged with another when they entered; he dismissed that one as the officer made his announcement. Beneath curled, shoulder-length hair, Isaak first noted the assessing eyes of a soldier. The fine hilt at his side, however, either marked a seasoned killer, or something noble—that he remained with the Bastard probably meant he wasn’t landed, though. Men with wealth to lose didn’t tend to stick with hordes of men with none of it to their name.
The rangy figure touched a hand to his close-cropped chin, softly asked, “Ser Ivon—” This phrase, more than anything, solidified the man’s nobility in Isaak’s mind. “—has shown himself exceedingly good at killing. So why should he now start taking prisoners?” Though his eyes were kindly disposed, Isaak saw, at his question the man also did his best to hide it.
“The same reason you do,” Isaak grunted. “Information.”
The man tapped his chin, his expression bland. Then his finger waggled at his prisoner and he nodded at those holding him. They stepped back without question—a respectful thing. Lowborn men respecting highborn men in an army dedicated to killing them. That told him a great deal.
“Cut him loose and then, you—report properly. And start from the beginning.”
Lies upon lies. Schemes upon schemes.
* *
Kasimir had once said that many innocent men took to writing as though they knew the nature of war. Among these were vast disagreements as to strategy and tactics, but they came to one conclusion: there were many elements. Not the most profound thing Roswitte had ever heard, but Kasimir had also noted that the vast hordes of men were idiots with little concept of the toys they enjoyed. One could plan and plan, but it was often the little things that decided.
Numbers were good, and weaponry. Terrain and surprise—both had been on display at the battle by Verdan. Both were on display still; Ivon’s little army existed for one purpose and one purpose only: Hit them in the forests where they cannot see, fade into the trees before they can regroup, and bleed them every step of the way through the trees. Make them fear the shadows. Make them feed our trees.
In turn, the Bastard played toward the mind. He had the numbers, but neither Ivon nor Witold would let him use them. Thus, he let fear work what numbers could not. It was as if he had already ceded the hearts he sought to win—so he let fire do what words and steel could not.
Fear was a killer as sure as any sword.
Her fear, baseless but absolute, was that somewhere in the ashes of those flames, a lord lay dead. Were that true, it would undo all that they had worked for, and all that they hoped to achieve, for Ivon, mortal as he was, was the focal point of wrath. Without him to funnel the Bastard’s attention, he could behave as any general should: a man possessed of plans, of pointed steps and purposeful annihilation.
She lost two men to the flames, and still she never saw Ivon.
Initially, to run was enough. The fire was a piece away from them and the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. Suddenly, the fire made a jump in the trees overhead. One moment they were running away from it, the next they were running straight into it. It was as simple as that. They pirouetted, scattered. Men dropped whatever they did not need as they broke in their panic. Ashes peppered her. Burning sticks stung at her feet.
Even Ensil fell away, his armor—true, plated maille—too heavy and too scorching to be borne. Were it not for that, she might have kept running.
It was one thing to panic for oneself; in protecting others, the mind hones, logic intercedes. She was a ranger. She knew what she needed to do, even if another part of her screamed for just the opposite. She yelled to the others—Ensil’s men were loyal, and though fearful, they came back for him. They could not, she reckoned, outrun the blaze. No water remained to them, however; not even the river that had so long been her home’s lifeblood.
“Canteens, bottles, anything—if you’ve water, give it up. If you’ve blankets still from camp, throw them down, now!”
They did not question. Only Ensil, panting in the dust, looked at her with something passing scrutiny, but he was too far gone to object. Men stripped their satchels, their saddlebags. In the distance, a horse whinnied, though she could not see it. Flight had brought them to a depressed area, hemmed in by but not peppered with trees—no water, but little in the way of vegetation either. Those who scuttled at the edges of the trees she pulled in, and became a great mass hunkering in the middle of a field.
“Dig, idiots!” she snapped when the fear took that mass of eyes. “And if you can’t dig, turn that fear to piss and that piss to those blankets.”
More than one man thought she was joking. She would have torn their britches herself, if she weren’t too busy with the rest.
There was no air left to breathe. She forced them down, to a man, down into that clearing with nothing but soiled clothes, damp rags, and hope, as the world around them was swallowed by fire. She draped her blanket over Ensil, held the fool close, lest he try to do something noble.
“Should have…run…” he wheezed.
She drew the blanket tighter about them, until they were as caterpillars, cocooned against the world. “What…miss a chance to wrap you up in piss?”
Ensil laughed, against everything else he laughed, even as the world roared and the trees sundered and the air crackled with a mad man’s vengeance. Somewhere in the thick of it, she thought she could hear the screams of a thousand ghosts, the spirits of this place, suddenly reliving that ungracious end.
And there they lay, this mass of men, until the earth grew still.
If it could burn, the Bastard’s men had burned it. When they dared to rise again, nothing remained but the blackened husks of trees, hollowed and snapped. Here and there wisps of smoke still rose from ashes. It looked at once more desolate than the plains in war-struck winter. She did not know what to make of that.
By then, whoever had been responsible was also long gone. Roswitte called to those she knew and those who lived called back. A trio did not. She might have winced; their deaths were more notches in a tally. She was not that person. One
did not live by taking others’ deaths upon them, and she already had too many ghosts besides.
Part of her wondered if Isaak would be among those screaming banshees now. He was a survivor, that one. She only hoped he put his life to better use this time around, if he had.
No use worrying. What was, was. What would be, would be.
The air was full of crows. They flapped above the broken canopies, little black flies from afar, their wheeling threat a part now of a sky that seemed too blue to be true. It was a slower trek this time through. Muck and cinders bogged them down, and now more than ever they shunned the roads—if even roads remained to this place. For the first time in a long time she felt dirty, trapped in the cragginess of her own skin.
Roswitte said nothing to anyone, she just kept moving—and these were none of them men to be shown up by a woman. By the morning they came to the remnants of a village as full of the carrion birds as the forest around. Thatched roofs had been reduced to desolate cinders scattered amongst stained stones. They waited at the outskirts for a time, until the sun had crossed far enough in the sky that they were certain nothing stirred in this graveyard.
Houses were shells of lives, and in some, the lives themselves remained, as brittle now as a breath on the wind. They dug no holes for these, lit no more fires—this earth would forever be their graves. Roswitte was alive and she was hard as stone. At least, this is what she told herself.
It had been nothing in life, this little town. A few families, lumberjacks most like, gathered together for some semblance of purpose. Maybe some had escaped. Maybe—the same word she had used with Isaak. She found she did not care for it.
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