The man chuckled some more, gazing back through the years. It was clear he’d told this story often. Dante guessed this pause was part of the telling.
“Well, for however clear my thinking, however swift my sword, I was still about half a mug short of stinking, and my blade just went through a lung and a few other parts that will kill you but not exactly clean like a good whack through the ticker. I kicked the oaf off my sword and he fell down and gave me a look like I’d cheated him at cards. ‘You’re no cripple!’ he gasped. ‘And you’re no swordsman!’ I roared back.
“The crowd cheered and rolled him out in the street to die somewhere else. They bought me so many rounds I don’t remember much else. Just when I woke up the next afternoon and slouched back in all scared for the watch the crowd cheered again and hailed out ‘Robert Hobble!’”
Dante joined their laughter. Robert hadn’t meant what he’d said about Cally, he’d decided. He’d just been talking.
“Tried that trick a few times after that,” Robert added after they’d settled down. “Every time I realized I’d caused some serious trouble, which wasn’t half so often as when I’d actually gotten in the stew. Then I’d catch that look in their eyes and I’d start limping around like a man without a foot. Men are like dogs when they see a man’s got something wrong. They’ll tear him apart just for being broken. If you can get them to come at you thinking you’re somehow less of a man, you’ll live a very long time.”
“Didn’t they catch on after a while?” Dante said.
“Sure did,” Robert said. He winked at Dante. “Every man in every pub in Whetton knows my name now. These days when I insult them, they just laugh it off. Imagine that, I have to leave my home town just to get in a fight!”
“It’s a cruel world,” Dante said.
It wasn’t hard going, but it was slow going. The horses were used to clear fields and plowed dirt and hadn’t yet loosened up to the disorderly rubble of a forest floor. Dante kept his eyes sharp for sign of the road. Once they reached it they would be nearly 2% done with their trip. Fifty times as long as that and they’d be in Narashtovik. They’d hardly been in the saddle for any time at all. Fifty times nothing was still nothing, wasn’t it?
Robert stopped them for lunch a little after noon. They tore at strips of salted rabbit, gnawed on lumps of bread that still had some give to them. Dante wandered off a ways to urinate. On the way back he saw a gleam of white within the grass. He knelt beside it. Bones. Sharp teeth. Something small, a cat or a ferret. Just a little dirty black fur sticking to the delicate sweep of ribs. He reached down and brushed away the fur. It was dry as old hay.
He could see one of the horses nibbling a tuft of grass back where they’d stopped but couldn’t see Blays or Robert. He got out his knife, wondered what he was doing, and dimpled his left thumb until a tiny blot of blood sprung up on its end. He wiped it along that knobbly white spine. Black flecks leached from the earth and onto the skeleton. The bones shifted as if in a stiff wind and then the thing was on its feet, narrow skull pointing its sockets at his. He grasped it under the ribs (tendonless, fleshless, how did the legs and paws stay stuck to the body?) and stuffed it in the deepest pocket of his cloak. It hung against his body with a cold weight. Dante brushed off his knees and rejoined the others. They were waiting for him, already mounted.
“Find anything interesting?” Blays called down from his horse.
“That’s gross.” Dante pulled himself up, careful not to crush the slender construct against his body. He ducked the low claws of branches. The trees were getting shorter, he thought. Younger. Within a mile they could see the road. A hundred yards out, a grassy gap in the midst of the woods.
“You boys see anything odd down there?” Robert murmured, lowering his head to peer through the skein of branches.
“Yeah,” Blays said. “Traffic.”
“It’s a road,” Dante said.
“It’s ten, fifteen miles from Whetton,” Robert said, tracing the road as it arcked to the south. “How many people you seen pass in the last thirty seconds?”
“I don’t know. Ten?”
“Where were they going?”
Dante inhaled. What did that mean? Was he supposed to be able to read their thoughts? What had Blays been telling them? He was right about to say something nasty about the nature of roads when he saw it.
“North,” he said. “They’re all going north.”
“Funny, isn’t it?”
They watched a while longer. The traffic didn’t slow. Dante stopped counting after fifty. Robert raised his eyebrows at them and nudged his horse forward. They cleared the last line of trees and angled their horses down the shallow bank leading to the wide, well-packed road. A few of the people looked up with dirty, sooty faces. Dante glanced north. They speckled the road like rabbit droppings, going on until the path curved and was swallowed by forest.
“Maybe we should keep overland,” he said. “There were an awful lot of witnesses at the hanging.” He gave Blays a look. “They might even know our names.”
“I think they’ve got worse worries than fugitives,” Robert said. He nodded south toward Whetton. Great gray columns of smoke billowed into the air, forming a hazy cloud in the clear skies.
“Perhaps the chimneysweeps are getting a late start,” Blays said.
Dante nudged his horse forward and flagged down one of the men on foot.
“What’s going on down there?”
“A party,” the man said without looking up. “The kind with fire and burning instead of wine and gifts.” He continued right on by.
“It seems,” Dante said, glancing significantly between the other two, “the city is on fire.”
“Hey!” Blays called, moving his horse to block the path of an angry-looking man with a sword. “What happened?”
“Oh, that?” the man said, turning to the mountains of smoke as if he’d just noticed. “Someone smoking a pipe in bed again.”
“Have I gone insane?” Dante said.
Blays bit his tongue. “Let’s pretend it’s them for now.”
“We’re on horses, you dummies,” Robert said. “That makes us look rich.” He hopped out of the saddle and waved at a pair of men coughing and leaning on each other’s shoulders. “Damn city torched up, did it? Viceroy catch someone squeezing his daughter’s ass and go on the rampage?”
“That would have been worth it,” one of the men grinned. The pair stopped and swayed in the road, wiping grime from their faces.
“Some riders showed up at dawn, way I heard it,” the second man said. “They couldn’t have done all that, though.”
“Are you forgetting that enormous mob?” the first said. “I haven’t seen one like that since the False Succession.”
“Hear what they were up in arms about?” Robert said.
“I’ve heard plenty of things.”
“Anything you believe?”
“No,” the second put in. “Just the trumpets of swift-wing’d rumor—they’re upset about the viceroy’s cut of the grain, or all the Colleners been moving in, or their wives’ ankles are too fat. Maybe the end is finally nigh and it’s time for the guilty to pay for their crimes.”
“Can’t be that,” Robert said. “We’re still running free, aren’t we?”
“Taim kind of dropped the stick on that one, huh?” the first man said.
“Well, nobody’s perfect,” the second shrugged. The three men chuckled.
“I’ll tell you what I saw,” the first one said, squaring his shoulders. “I was walking down Balshag Street when all these people started boiling out of the temples. I can understand coming out of church angry, but they had weapons, right? Swords and torches and flails. There was no one sect, it was all of them. It looked like they were fighting each other—a priest of Gashen was punching another man in a red robe, anyway. That’s when I started running. I don’t know what’s going on, but it started in the temples.”
“What’s new,” Robert muttered. They
exchanged agreements and spent a silent moment gazing at the smoke hovering above the southern forest. “Well, we’d best be on our way.”
“Say, what’s your name, friend?” the first man asked.
Robert leaned in. “Robert Hobble,” he said from behind his hand.
“And I’m Lyle’s no-account brother,” the first said.
“The one who still lived with their mom while Lyle was out talking to the gods,” the second added.
Robert began to walk in a stiff-legged circle, mumbling curses like a confused drunk. He stumbled, waving his arms.
“I thought they’d hanged you,” the first man said, folding his arms.
“Never underestimate the power of bureaucratic incompetence,” Robert said. He reached into a pocket of his cloak and shook out a couple time-tarnished chucks. “Here, friends. Don’t let that trouble catch up with you.”
They doffed their caps. The second bit his lip and grinned.
“You off to clear it all up, then?”
“Naw,” Robert said, raising a doubting brow. “Too much anarchy that way lies. People with no respect for the law scare me.”
They laughed again, then clasped Robert’s hand and started back down the road. Robert grinned and pulled himself up on his horse.
“Well, as usual, it’s the clergy’s fault,” he said.
“That’s what we’re going to stop,” Dante said. “We’re 2% of the way there.”
“Sounds horrible when you put it like that.” Robert sighed, then brushed off the mood like dirt on his sleeve. “I suppose that means we ought to hurry.”
“Indeed,” Dante said, looking north on the hundreds of miles of mountains and rivers and snowfields between them and the dead city. “Let’s haul ass.”
* * *
Night came quickly. They’d made another twenty miles along the road, then spent the twilight penetrating far enough into the woods to where they could light a fire without drawing the attention of the bedraggled masses that kept coming out of Whetton. The sun disappeared behind the trees and hills of the west and they brought in the kindling and roasted some of the uncured meat they’d taken along. Considering all they’d done was ride, Dante was shockingly tired, saddle-raw aching. More than a month of this to go. Whetton was already burning. He had no idea whether the local militias would be enough to quash this thing, whatever it was. This unrest and whatever they were trying to accomplish with it had roots as long as a river. They’d hidden for years, keeping their memory alive in the minds of the people, and finally, for reasons he couldn’t guess, they’d taken this thing back to the open. They were ready. Dante had no delusions they’d ride into Narashtovik in a few weeks to find Samarand and all her people had fled to exile or been executed for their perfidy against the southlands. The fight would only get bloodier before order showed its sheepish face.
Dante hadn’t told the others the full nature of their mission, that they were traveling a thousand miles to kill some old woman. He’d just said they had to get to Narashtovik and go from there. Neither Blays nor Robert were the kind to get too worried for details or complicate things with their own plans; he had the impression they thought of life as something like the act of riding backwards on a pell-mell horse—they could guess where they were likely to head next by the things they saw whipping past their heads, but who could say for sure, and in any event they’d certainly be there soon, so what was the point of turning around and taking up the reins? The horse had done well enough so far. Why mess with a good thing?
They made low talk around the fire. Robert thought they’d made good time despite the slower trek through the woods and the careful path they’d had to weave around the foot traffic on the road. He looked up to the flat sheet of clouds that had rolled in during the evening and grunted.
“Daylight’s a little scarce this time of year,” he said. “So long as we’ve got a road to follow, we ought to get our start before dawn.”
Dante watched the subdued fire burn against the darkness. “If you think it’s safe.”
“What? Marching before dawn?” Blays crooked the corner of his mouth. “Growing boys need rest. If not for me, think of the horses.”
“Sun sets by six,” Robert said. “There’s no reason to stay up past eight. That should give you plenty of time to rest your weary bones.”
“Eight o’clock? Even Cally burned the candle later than that. And he’d make a dead log look spry.”
“Every second you spend yapping’s one more second you don’t spent sleeping,” Robert said. He wiggled down next to the fire and pulled his cloak over his face. “Goodnight.”
Dante followed suit, settling down upon the dirt and rocks. Hard to believe he’d been in a bed the night before.
“What a terrible thing, when what’s right is overruled by what’s popular,” Blays said.
“I said goodnight. Third time comes stamped on my knuckles.”
He heard Blays mumble something impolite, then the scratch of leaves and the fwoop of cloth being thrown over his head. Six weeks of this, Dante thought. Nothing to it.
He woke to something nibbling on the ends of his fingers. He brushed at it feebly, three-quarters asleep. It ceased for a blessed second, then bit down hard. Dante drew his hand to his chest, inhaling sharply. Before his eyes snapped open he thought he could see his own face. He gasped and bolted upright and pulled the cloak off his head. By the faint moonlight escaping the net of clouds and the fire’s red embers he saw the skeleton of the small predator reared on its hind legs, front paws bent at the wrist. Its pale head bobbed. He rubbed his eyes, caught another glimpse of himself, this time from the perspective of something looking up at the puzzled oval of his face. He thought he heard two separate winds whispering back and forth. Again he closed his eyes and again he saw through something else’s.
The Cycle had not mentioned that.
The thing scampered off a couple feet, then turned and ducked its head. It spun away and disappeared into the undergrowth. If Dante was meant to follow it, the thing didn’t have a brain in its skull. Instead he closed his eyes, planting his palms firm against the intense vertigo of what the little beast saw as it rushed along six inches above the dirt. It parted the grass and scrabbled over roots and rocks, fast as a man at a run and quiet as a bird on the breeze. He could hear no more than the most minor rustles of its claws—and through its own ears, he realized, though it didn’t have any. For just a second he opened his eyes and heard nothing at all.
It streaked along through the brush. After no more than a minute it stopped short, creeping forward until the fuzzy impression Dante received from its eyeless sockets fell upon a circle of six men in hushed conversation. It was too dark to make out faces or even tell one from another.
“Are you sure it’s him?” he heard through the predator’s ears.
“I can feel it. Can’t be anyone else.”
“There’s three sets of tracks.”
“What, are you scared? They’re asleep.”
“We were told there’d be two. The Unlocking must have driven ten thousand men into these woods. It might not be them.”
“And if it’s not, what’s three more bodies? We need that book. The book is the key. We can’t let them slip away. Larrimore would kill us. I’m not joking. If we come back without it he’ll rip out our guts and laugh. He won’t even bind our hands because he thinks it’s funny when you try to stuff them back in.”
“Weeping Lyle.”
“You said it, man. Get yourselves together. Not a word until they’re dead.”
Dante heard steel rasp from leather. He popped open his eyes, breaking the contact, and shook the shoulders of the others.
“Go’way,” Blays mumbled.
“Shut up!” Dante whispered. Robert awoke soundlessly, sword appearing in his hand. “Six men,” Dante said. “They’re coming for us. They think we’re asleep.”
“Then let’s not burst their illusion,” Robert whispered. “Don’t make a move till
it’s too late for them to fall back.”
“But there’s six of them.”
“What are we going to do, run? Only hope now’s to surprise them instead.”
Dante nodded, throat dry as sand. He eased out the old, no-frills sword Cally’d given him and pulled his cloak up to his eyes. The fire was nothing but glowing embers. He waited in the darkness, eyes slitted, ears straining. What if he’d been wrong? He dropped his left palm to his blade and slid it along its edge, cheek twitching against the sharp bite of cold steel. Blood seeped into his closed fist, warm and wet, and with it came the shadows.
Leaves crunched softly as the men filtered into the camp. From between his eyelashes Dante saw their swords glinting in the emberlight. They fanned out, splitting between the three prone forms, two on each. How close could he let them get? Fifteen feet, then ten, boots ruffling the dirt, eyes bright in the shadows of their faces. His throat tensed against a scream. They were standing over him then, looking down on him, processing how they’d turn him into a lump of lifeless meat. One of them raised his blade and Robert’s voice roared up then and Dante leapt to his feet. Robert rolled away from the downward slice of a sword and in the same motion lashed his own across the calf of the attacker. The man dropped with a shout of shock and pain.
The two men on Dante cried out, then pressed forward. Dante leveled his sword in front of him and flicked the blood pooled in his left hand at the nearer of the two. Where it landed the shadows followed, sizzling against the man’s skin and sinking to his innards. The man sunk without a word. The remaining attacker made a quick thrust and Dante fell back, offering a weak counter. The man deflected it, eyes grim in the starlight.
From the corner of his eye he saw Blays retreat to Robert’s side as Robert curled past a thrust and laid open the man’s back. A flicker from Dante’s front and he jerked up his sword to prevent his head from being struck from his shoulders. Someone screamed and a gorge of fire opened up at the spot he’d last seen Blays and Robert. Steel clashed in a staccato smack of swings and backswings. Dante dropped to a knee to dodge another blow. His attacker hefted his blade, then grimaced and screamed as the skeletal predator sank its razor teeth into his hamstring. Dante gripped his hilt with both hands and slashed out as short and fast as he could manage. The first hit cut open the man’s forearm and he dropped his sword. The next three put him down.
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