“Who walks there?”
Aedan hopped over the low door of the nearest stable. It was dark, but he sensed movement near him. Without waiting to discover what it was, he darted to the partition between stables, sprang over it, and dropped into the straw on the other side. The light grew brighter and then filled the stable he had just left. A door creaked open, heavy steps advanced.
A sharp thud was followed by a grunt of pain and something collapsed onto the ground.
This was proving to be a lot more activity than he had hoped to find down here. He started planning a retreat when he heard a girl’s voice.
“Aedan?”
It was Liru. He rose and looked across the dividing wall to see her poised over the fallen soldier, shovel held like an axe.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked.
“I do not trust a door lock when there are drunk soldiers around, especially soldiers like these. I hoped the captain would stop them drinking, but he drank more than any of them, getting them to huddle round while he told jokes that made them laugh the way vile men laugh at vile jokes. I came here to sleep. I did not think they would set a guard. I have been standing behind the door in case I had to defend myself. I almost crushed your head when you jumped in. What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“Why not?”
“You might try to stop me.”
She looked at him without expression for a moment. “I think I spoke from bitterness earlier,” she said. “Tell me what you have planned and I will hear you. If I do not agree I promise not to stand in your way.”
Aedan climbed the wall back into the first stable, checked that the soldier was asleep, and tied him up properly. Then he moved to a stable further away where they would not be overheard, though the heavy rain really made the precaution unnecessary. Aedan told the whole story – from the overheard conversation under the academy to his encounter with Malik. He then explained what Osric had planned and how they needed to slow the progress. With embarrassment he recalled how he’d forgotten the frogweed under his bed.
“Do you think Malik really has that much influence, and that much hate?” Liru asked.
“Influence – I think he might have managed to get Culver not to teach us, but I don’t think he arranged for me to be here. I was going already. I’m not sure about you either. Maybe he was just trying to claim those as his own victories. And I don’t think he knows about the plot either. Why would he bother about making us fail if he knew we’d be murdered? As to hate – he’s a lying, bullying, self-absorbed snob, and he hates deeper than most people love. In spite of that, I don’t think he’s a murderer … but … remember that Orunean proverb, Carrun nos, darrim brak.
“This year a cub, next year a tiger,” Liru translated.
“Hadley once called him a rat. I thought that was a good description back then, but I’m beginning to think he could turn out more dangerous.”
“To me he is still a rat, no matter how big he gets. But there is something else I must ask you. General Osric – I know him only by name, everyone does, even in Mardraél. Will he extend his protection to me and my family when we get back? All the rumours of him reveal a very frightening man.”
“Osric is just as frightening as his reputation says,” Aedan replied with a hint of a smile. “I think he even dwarfs his reputation. He is a fierce man but never cruel. If anything, it’s cruel people that need to fear him. The one thing that really brings out the lion in him is injustice. He’ll take care of you, trust me.”
Liru nodded. “I will trust you.”
Then Aedan explained what Fergal had said and Liru immediately translated the word and guessed the meaning.
“So he doesn’t want us to look like we are suspicious or making plans?” she said.
“I suppose so.”
“But we need to be concerned. We covered a great distance today, a very great distance for these conditions.”
“That’s why I’m here,” said Aedan. “It’s time to steal some horses.”
Liru nodded. “The rain will cover sounds and tracks. Where do you plan to take them?”
“On the way here I saw a wood to the south. If we tie them up there, they won’t be found quickly. The whole party would have to search for them before going on. It should win us a day or two. The only problem will be finding the way. It’s no fun getting lost on a night like this.”
“I’ll join you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am always sure, even when I am wrong. Mardrae heritage. Now let’s go. Two horses each?”
The rain blanketed the sounds of hooves when they left the stables and walked slowly down the road, feeling rather than seeing the way. After they had gone what felt like a mile, Aedan turned up the bank and faced south as he remembered it. He felt the wind hard on his right side. That would help. If he kept it there, he might be able to stay on a southerly course.
They travelled a long way through the grass. He was growing certain that they were off target when the wind began to dip and the whistling of branches grew ahead of them. The weather was robbed of its fierceness by the trees, but this sheltering created a different problem, for the gloomy hint of light was reduced to nothing. They had to walk with an arm outstretched and ears alert, tugging the unwilling horses behind them. It made for very slow progress. After a few hundred paces Aedan decided it was far enough. He was starting to worry about getting back before morning. If their rooms were found empty, there would be trouble.
The return trip was aided by a few lights that glimmered through sheets of rain from time to time.
It was on the way back that things went wrong. Morren was one of the least fortified towns. Aedan had not expected there to be watchmen who patrolled at night. He and Liru were sloshing their way up the road when the downpour thinned, exposing the buildings – and a sentry. The man’s slouching posture went rigid; he peered under a raised hand and shouted a challenge. Aedan grabbed Liru’s arm and ran up the road, past the inn.
“Intruders!” they heard. “Intruders!” The sentry was keeping up, hollering like a madman.
They slipped behind an empty wagon on the side of the road. Aedan felt around for a stone. He found one just in time, aimed up the road, and threw. The sentry approached the wagon, but when he heard the splash, he raced on, continuing his pursuit.
Aedan tried to draw Liru in the other direction, but she was kneeling and apparently plucking weeds – strong smelling ones too.
“Liru!” he hissed, “What are you doing? We must go now!”
She pocketed what she had dug up, and they ran back to the inn, but now lights were appearing in some of the windows. They darted around to the side, narrowly missing the yellow glare that spilled out as the front door opened.
“We mustn’t be seen coming in,” Aedan whispered. “Can you climb? My room is on the third floor. The one with the open window.”
Liru answered by gripping the beams and pulling herself up. With her dark hair and dark coat she was nearly invisible, a patch of shadow edging its way up. The drenched surfaces made for slow going, but the beams were rough-hewn and still provided reasonable purchase. Aedan stood below. Catching her from a third story fall would injure them both, but might save her life, so he waited until she was in.
He sprang off the ground and clambered with lizard-like haste – voices were growing louder. Someone with a lantern was approaching from around the corner, betrayed by the swinging shadow of the wall and the swelling brightness. Aedan clapped his arms over the sill and almost fell as his foot popped off a smooth beam. He felt hands under his shoulders and it was enough to help him, none too elegantly, through the window.
“Close it!” he gasped, hitting the floor in a panting heap.
Liru grabbed the shutter and swung it closed as boots splashed around the corner below them.
“You stay here,” Aedan said, “I’ll take your room. That way if anyone tries to bother
you I’ll know first, and I’ll make a noise.”
They were awoken early. Horse thieves had visited them during the night. Senbert was livid. He ate his breakfast with a frown while giving orders to find the missing horses quickly. Aedan and Liru were instructed to accompany two of the soldiers and search the northern farmsteads. Aedan breathed a sigh of relief. A scattered hunt like the one being organised would mean that the day would be lost, even if one of the search parties found the horses early.
It had worked, and he and Liru had not been discovered.
During the night, he had squeezed every last drop of water from his clothes before hanging them just inside the window, then he had gone for an early walk with Liru in the drizzle. Soldiers had seen them at the well. Anyone noticing the dampness of their clothes would have no suspicions. They had considered everything.
A voice interrupted his thoughts. “Where did you get that red mud on your boots? I don’t remember seeing red mud hereabouts.”
Aedan gulped under Senbert’s inspection.
“Must have been from one of the stops yesterday.”
“It looks fresh.”
Aedan wasn’t sure what to say. Senbert narrowed his eyes and was about to speak again when a young farmer galloped up and hailed them.
“You men lost some horses?” he asked.
“What do you know of it?” asked the captain, transferring his suspicious look to the farmer.
“I went to check on my snares this morning. Heard a horse in the woods and discovered four of them tied to trees less than a half mile in. I’ll show you the way if you can leave now.”
Within an hour, the horses were recovered and the party was on its way again. The captain set a pace that did not accord with a long journey. Aedan’s fears were growing into certainty.
Travelling like this, they would be leaving the outlying hamlets by the end of the fourth day, and if that happened, he doubted he would see the fifth. Osric would arrive in time to avenge him, but that was no comfort. Liru had a fixed calmness about her, but it was not like her earlier resignation. He wondered if she had some plan.
That day Aedan was sure they must have covered more than fifty miles. By the time it grew dark, there was only a small homestead in sight. The farmer, more likely out of fear than generosity, offered his hay barn for lodging. Aedan and Liru were watched closely this time. When they tried to step away from the barn to talk, Senbert called them back. It was hopeless.
The following day they moved out early, the horses striding as swiftly as before and eating up the miles at a frightening rate. Aedan was beginning to realise he would not get another convenient opportunity. The next attempt to slow the pace would have to happen soon, no matter how big the risk.
The hamlet of Eastridge was a scattered arrangement. Two dozen houses were spread across a broad glen, reaching all the way up a gentle slope to the prominent ridge. One of the homes was near the road. Its crooked walls were capped with a mossy thatch that was dark with age and rot and hung almost to the ground. It made the house seem like a suspicious old man drawn up under his drooping hat, protective of his solitude, hostile to strangers. Within the building, Aedan thought, there was quite possibly just such an old man.
The only indication of life in the whole settlement was the gabbling from the goose house around the back and the smoke that billowed out of a chimney a little ways ahead. The chimney, he thought with relief, appeared to belong to a small inn.
He noticed some of the soldiers pointing in the direction of the goose house and muttering. They would pay it a visit before leaving here. He was not surprised. The coarse morals of these men had begun to speak more loudly than their uniforms. They were not soldiers, at least not at heart. They would only serve and show discipline that was personally convenient.
As he rode, this preoccupation with the soldiers took the edge off his observations, and he did not pay enough attention to the stillness of the hamlet – its eerie lifelessness.
The inn had once had a sign declaring it to be the Never Hasty, an apt name for a place so far removed from the main thoroughfares, but whether by mischief or chance, a good portion of the sign had been broken off, and all that remained was the word “sty”.
The sty, then, was a small inn, and might have been called neat if clean.
But it was not.
The burly innkeeper, whose scalp was thinly decorated with dark, oily strands of hair, and whose mouth was just as thinly decorated with dark teeth, did not appear to have bathed for most of his adult life. A glance around the parlour suggested that he treated his inn with the same philosophy. Spilled and dropped food lay unmolested on the floor, and tables hid under generous coats of greasy smears.
Even the soldiers looked uncomfortable. The captain glanced out at the darkening drizzle, and when he turned back, he was scowling.
“Lodging and meals for one night,” he said. “Party of eighteen.”
The innkeeper was clearly unaccustomed to visitors. His unfriendly eyes grew white with surprise and he shook his head. “Closed,” he said. Aedan was amused to see that his hands were shaking. These rural folk would seldom have seen such a large detachment of soldiers.
“Your establishment is empty and we are here on the prince’s business,” Senbert returned, “so you are now open.”
The innkeeper’s worry mounted. “No staff. No food,” he said in clipped, almost foreign tones – clearly he was a reticent sort – and held up his hands, but the captain was not to be turned.
“You two,” Senbert said to Aedan and Liru. “Get into the kitchen and make sure there is something to eat tonight.”
The kitchen was everything Aedan had feared. Most pots still contained the grimy, mouldy leftovers of whatever they had last cooked. All had a coating of ashy remains at the bottom that required the attentions of hammer and chisel. Aedan, after all his cooking for Osric, knew what to do. He set about cleaning, and chopping potatoes, carrots and cabbage, while the innkeeper, who had not bothered to give his name or ask theirs, was out back catching chickens.
Aedan was sure they were alone, but he remembered Fergal’s warning, so he suggested that they practice some Sulese. Liru caught his meaning and agreed. His use of the language was halting. It translated to:
“We very trouble. Tomorrow we ride. No more people around.”
Liru’s was only slightly better: “I do plan. Tomorrow we rest, not ride.”
“Plan?” Aedan asked.
“Better you forgetful – no – ignorant.”
“Rest? Why – uh – boss soldier agree rest?”
“Nice place,” she said with a smile, indicating the inn. She would tell him no more.
The chicken broth was not the best meal he had ever prepared, but for cold, tired travellers, the smells were irresistible. In spite of Liru’s odd taste in herbs, they eventually reached an agreement. There were no thanks offered from the soldiers, but neither were there any complaints.
Culver and Fergal hurried through their meals and retired directly. Aedan wondered about the look Fergal had given him when his bowl had been set on the table. It was as if the twinkling eyes were saying something from within the dark forest of hair and beard, but he had no idea what. Liru, strangely enough, was not worried tonight about the soldiers. She retired early too.
Aedan struggled to fall asleep. Something was going dreadfully wrong with his innards. At first he thought it might be a fever from the day spent in the cold, but then, as his stomach rebelled and muscles began to seize, he recognised the symptoms of poisoning. In spite of his cleaning, something in one of those pots had managed to ruin the meal. There would be no sleep for him.
He groaned and rolled and emptied his belly into the chamber pot several times. By morning he was a wreck. It was light when his door crashed open. Senbert stood wobbling in the frame, clutching his midriff, head slick from sweat. He opened his mouth to speak, but his eyes took in the chamber pot and Aedan’s shattered state.
“So it w
asn’t you then,” he said. “Should never have trusted the kitchen in this filthy …” A groan of pain interrupted his words and he staggered away, leaving the door open.
Aedan remained in his bed for the rest of the day. He heard some raised voices but they were almost watery, like they belonged to a kind of half-suspended dream. The sun travelled across the room and warmed him when it reached the old, smelly hay of his pallet. Slowly the poison worked its way from his body and he felt clarity returning to his thoughts. Rest, he told himself.
He wondered how Liru was coping. Then something that had puzzled him came back to mind – the awful herb she had added, a herb she said she had picked. That sour milk smell – it was the weed she had found the previous night.
Liru had poisoned the broth!
Then he remembered Fergal’s look of recognition and his quick retreat. He and Culver had probably gone to purge themselves as soon as the show of eating was over. Liru too. Why had he been left to suffer? Then he recalled Senbert at his door and understood. After that confrontation over the muddy boots, suspicion would naturally have fallen on him.
By evening he was on his feet, but shaky. He went down to the kitchen. There was no more cooking being done. Sorry-looking soldiers appeared briefly in the common room but nothing was taken from the food stores, not even wine. They nibbled on bread from their packs and retired early. Aedan ventured down again later, but finding nobody around, puffed his way up the stairs that shook as much as his limbs, and dug out some hard biscuits from his saddlebags. It was a poor meal, but perhaps all his stomach could endure. That night he slept soundly, and come the next morning, most of his discomfort was gone. He was woken by the sergeant banging on his door and telling him to be ready within the hour.
At the stables there was a commotion around Fergal. Despite Culver’s annoyance and shouted injunctions – so intimidating that even the soldiers stood back – the heavy assistant was unable to stay on top of the horse. Apparently he had been poisoned and had not yet recovered from the effects. As soon as he was hoisted up the one side he began to flow down the other until the soldiers gave up and let him slide and drop on the ground like a discarded bag of sand.
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 52
