by Bill McCurry
That was aggravating. I opened my mouth, but he cut in. “I can see you’re about to tell me to go straight to perdition, and I wish you wouldn’t say that. I do think you’ll want to see this.”
I preferred to make my own judgments about what was so important I should trot miles down a forest road at night. I could have dragged him off that nag and made him tell me, but it sounded like a lot of work. “Let me get a torch.”
I didn’t own a horse, so Desh and I jogged alongside Vin. He didn’t try to converse, and I didn’t talk to him. If he wasn’t going to tell me what was going on, he could go eat a bug.
At last, Vin reined in and pointed at some voluptuous brush beside the road. “That’s the place I was talking about. I wonder about the captain some days. I could have just told you. You won’t tell him I said that, right?”
I walked over to the brush, and it came to look less like foliage and more like a person. The torchlight showed me the little girl I had paid to be a lookout, sitting with her back against a tree, her legs apart, and her severed head propped between her knees. One of the Denzmen’s spears stood plunged into the ground beside her. Some of those damned-by-all-thirteen-gods Denzmen must have sneaked back and snatched her while nobody was looking. Nobody missed her with all the kids running around playing “army.”
I spent a minute squatting beside her, looking at ghost-hung trees and imagining the murder of several thousand Denzmen, each in a different grotesque way. I knew a lot of ways to kill—maybe not a thousand, but a lot. I silently damned the entire race of Denzmen to every god and to a sizable number of the gods’ body parts. That was me trying to fool myself. I had set her to the task, I hadn’t protected her, and I’d allowed her to get taken and killed.
Vin said, “I have to catch up to Captain. Sorry I can’t help you carry her home. I really am.”
I waved at him without looking, and the hoofbeats faded into the south. I picked up the body of the girl, whose name I didn’t even know, and it felt light, like the wind might drift it away. Desh hesitated, and it seemed he was smart enough to stay quiet. He picked up her head, and we began walking back to Crossoak. I hummed the song I’d sung to my daughter, which didn’t help her one damn bit, and it didn’t help me, either.
“Bib. Something fell out of her mouth.”
“What was it?”
Desh handed me a folded sheet of parchment. In the torchlight, I saw words on it.
“Bib, look!”
I saw the red glow in the sky to the north. “Harik’s hairy guts!” I handed the girl to Desh and sprinted toward town. When I at last topped the shallow rise on the trail back, at least four buildings were shooting flames out the doors and windows. The stones weren’t burning of course, but the generations-old seasoned wood burned like hell. The townspeople were just wandering around between the buildings. No one was trying to fight the fires.
I charged past a building that wasn’t burning, and I stopped so fast I slipped on the grass. Onni had been nailed to the door upside down, a rope around his ankles and three nails through each foot. Blood ran down the bottom of the door from his slit throat. I ran on throughout the town and found six more people nailed to doors. I couldn’t find Denzmen anywhere. That heartened me because they had probably gone and wouldn’t kill anybody else. It also infuriated me because I couldn’t pile a dozen of their heads on that little girl’s grave.
In the end, my protection hadn’t helped these people one damned sliver. Vintan had outsmarted me all the way around.
I grabbed some wandering people, dragged them to a well, and put buckets in a couple of hands. Once I began filling buckets, most people recovered enough to start passing them down the line. At some point, Desh asked me what I wanted him to do, so I told him to get a line going from the other well. We fought fires throughout the night. We saved all the buildings but four, and the wet weather helped us save at least the shells of those four.
When sunrise squeezed up through the trees, I was sitting on the damp grass against the big oak, head down on my knees, pondering my next move. I felt tired and angry and guilty and heartsick, which is the ideal time to make a fatally stupid decision. I forced myself to think deliberately, assuming that everything I thought I knew was wrong until I found evidence that said differently. If I underestimated Vintan again, he’d likely take my head home and put it on his mantle so all his friends could come around and exclaim over me.
I heard Sunflower walking toward me—I sure knew the sound of her feet by now. I didn’t look up as she knelt beside me and slipped one root-gnarled old hand around my shoulders. She squeezed once, pecked me on the side of the head, and whispered, “You’re a terrible man. But not this terrible.”
She glided back to her still-standing tavern, as graceful as any girl.
Five
I am not much given to gloomy introspection. I’ve known people who were, and all it gained them was hours of moping in dark rooms while I was out drinking and flirting with women. Instead of hanging my head and moaning, I sat against that big tree in Crossoak until I concluded I didn’t know a single damned thing, and then I got up to address the situation.
I’m not the best tracker I’ve ever known, and I hate to recognize that. I admit I possess a speck of vanity. It makes my mouth pucker a little to admit I was bested at tracking by a gaunt, sweaty cowherd I knew in Cliffmeet, who coveted feathers like they were diamonds.
He wove them into his hair, and I asked him once whether they were magic that helped him track, but he said he just thought they were pretty.
He wasn’t here now, so if any tracking was to be done, I’d have to do it.
The sun was well up, and I walked a circle around the town. Daylight made the attack’s aftermath grislier than it had seemed in the dark. A huge patch of torn-up grass and scattered sod suggested a multitude of horses had come in from the southeast, enough for Vintan’s whole herd of Denzmen. The same kind of trail led out of town going southwest. I knelt and poked through the hoofprints.
Desh trudged up beside me, soot-smudged and sagging. His eyelids looked like flags of surrender.
“You dropped this out on the trail.” He held out the parchment that had been crammed into the little dead girl’s mouth.
It read:
My good Bib,
I extend my most profound apologies for failing to pay proper attention to this child, her family, her neighbors, and particularly you. If you rush back to that awkward, charming village right now, you may arrive before I have finished burning a nice portion of it and effecting some sadly trivial killings.
The exigencies of war do not allow me to tarry and visit complete destruction upon that place. One should never leave a task poorly finished, and lack of time is a petty excuse. Therefore, please do hurry in your pursuit, as capturing you may redeem my reputation and allow me to torture you every night on the journey south to my king.
Should you arrive at the village too late, please do extend my regrets to the survivors and ask them to be so kind as to imagine they have experienced the most agonizing, humiliating, and soul-befouling death their regrettably limited minds can produce.
I hope we rendezvous in the future so I may perform in a more professional and discriminating manner.
—Vintan Reth
I handed the note back to Desh, who said, “I’d pretend to read it now and be disgusted, but I already have, and I am. Let’s catch that evil murderer. I’m ready. Right now.”
“What will you do when you catch him? Tie a nail to his ankle and trap him in a jug?”
“You’re a sorcerer, and I’m fairly clever. We’ll think of something. Those are their tracks, right there.”
I had found an unobtrusive clue right before Desh interrupted me, so subtle that I was kind of amazed I had caught it. “Vintan is sly. See here, it looks like dozens of horses galloped through, tearing out of town like rabbits on fire.”
“I know! That’s what I’m saying! A huge trail, right there. I can follow them
if you can’t.”
“Go right ahead and do that. They’ll lead you all around the countryside until winter. You see how the hoofprints are muddled up in places, like they don’t all go the same way? Most of these tracks head out of town, but some come back in. It’s as if the sneaky vermin galloped the same ten horses out of town, came back single file, and galloped back out again four or five times. They wrecked enough countryside for fifty horses.”
Desh knelt and prodded the dirt with two fingers. “Vintan’s not sly enough to fool you, I guess.”
“We’ll see which one of us is alive next week. That note sounds like it was written by a truly evil man. I’ve met people who were that evil. Vintan is terrible, but I don’t think he’s that kind of evil. He wrote that hoping we’d either get so mad we’d charge off after these tracks, or be too terrified to follow him at all. Desh, if you owned anything that was worth a damn, I’d bet you he sent a few of his murderers here to mislead us. He and his hostage are still on the main trail headed south.”
“So, can we chase them down the trail? Even without nails and jugs?” Desh grinned.
“We’ll chase them, and we’ll kill a bunch of them—one or two stragglers at a time. I don’t own a horse, so we’ll have to run. I hope you’re fit, otherwise your pure heart and pretty face will have to carry the day.”
Desh shook his head and started walking up the hill where a few townsfolk were digging seven big graves and one little grave.
“Go on and help,” I said. “I won’t leave without yelling at you a time or two.”
I trotted toward the mason’s house, where my cot had been set in a back room. On the way, I cornered a few shaky citizens, but only one would say what he’d seen the previous night. The way he told it, there were hundreds of horses galloping everywhere, trampling everybody, and the riders speared folks right in the street, especially the children and old people. I thanked him for that incisive, detailed report on which all our lives might depend. It was cruel of me to engage in sarcasm with him. I almost felt bad.
I kept my chattels loaded up in a good leather pack, in case a quick escape became necessary. Since I’d be chasing Vintan on foot, I decided to toss away every item I could do without. Upon evaluating my possessions, I realized the leather pack was worth more than everything I had stuffed in it. I upended the thing and left all I owned on the cot, except for my traveling clothes, sword, knife, coins, Desh’s cloak, and the pack, which I slung over my shoulder as I stepped outside.
I suppose I had drawn a good bit of attention to myself and roused some energetic interest among the townspeople. Stopping men in the street for interrogation can cause that. Seven men waited for me outside the mason’s house, blocking my way. They toted an assortment of clubs and knives, as well as some lengthy pronged and bladed farming implements.
I had failed them, which blunted my appetite for murdering them. If I apologized and scraped and ate enough dirt, maybe I wouldn’t have to kill any of them. “I’m sorry, fellows. I admit I did not serve you well, and I regret your grief. I’m leaving shortly to kill the bastards who did this to you.”
“How do we know you didn’t bring them here?” asked my host, the mason.
“You been here for months, and then you leave a few hours, and they come to kill us just when you were gone,” another said.
“He’s worse than a plague!” the mason said.
“A plague that stares at our wives.”
“He raped my daughter!”
That was the nastiest prevarication I’d heard since I’d come south. Early on, I had in fact deflected a few curious propositions from the local women. Even though the memory of female company scratched at me like a burr, sweaty frolics with local girls weren’t worth the uproar.
Six more men and a woman came around the corner, walking fast. One hefted a scythe big enough to decapitate a bear. The woman carried a mop over her shoulder, which was such a bemusing sight that I almost forgot to speak. “My friends, I am not your enemy. As you see, I’m leaving now so we’ll have no temptation to nasty behavior. I hope you understand that I am still your friend.” I almost said friend and protector, which might have sounded awkward with the smell of smoke and blood still heavy around us. But by then, the smooth anticipation of killing these people had arisen and made me grin. It sickened me a little at the same time. Just a little.
“He’s a demon sent to murder us!” the woman shouted, as loud as a stevedore. A few more people were joining the back of the mob, which was edging closer.
The mason took a step, and that was enough. I wasn’t going to stand there and let them turn me into a pile of broken bones inside a sack of skin. The mason was the leader, so I pulled my sword and stabbed him in the heart. I stepped back as he fell.
If the rest of them had kept coming, I would have killed a good number before they stomped me to death like a bug. But they only thought they were ready for murder. Once it happened in front of them, to their neighbor who was close enough to touch, murder seemed less desirable. I sure as hell desired some more of it, but I held still. Without the mason to spur them on, they edged away from me, murmuring, and they drifted off. They left their friend’s body there on the grass.
The mason hadn’t been a bad host. His wife had baked me pies, and I’d played with his kids, up until they started to be scared of me. I dropped a gold coin on my cot, enough to keep his family fed for a year. Maybe more, if they didn’t eat pie.
As a young man, I had possessed magnificent hearing and eyesight. My eyes were now forty or so years old and remained hearty, but my hearing had faded some. I didn’t hear the hoofbeats until they were close, probably a quarter mile from town. They were coming up the south trail at a fast trot. I saw them just a moment after I heard them, seven of Dolf’s men. I looked harder and saw it was actually the governess and six men.
I guess all the Crossoak citizens had run like hell at the sound of horses. With no townspeople to receive them, the soldiers rode right up to me. Two appeared wounded, bandaged with ripped-up shirts, and another one looked like he was dying in the saddle. Varying amounts of brown dried blood spattered them and their horses. It showed stark on Ella’s blue chemise, with gore up her right arm to the shoulder.
A stubby soldier with droopy eyes shifted in the saddle and sighed. “Well… we caught ’em.”
Another soldier, skinny with bad teeth and wispy blond hair, said, “Not saying anything bad about the captain, but it was like he rode in there backward with his head up his ass. Respectfully speaking.”
Vin nodded along with the man but didn’t say anything.
“Nail your face shut, Stan,” the first one said. “Bad luck to talk that way about the dead.”
Stan threw his helmet at the first one, who grunted when it smacked his shoulder.
“Both of you be still,” Ella said. She inclined her head toward me. “You. Have any others arrived before us?”
“No ma’am.”
She pointed a blood-crusted hand at the mason’s corpse. “Did you kill that man?”
“Not really. His wicked nature broke his heart. I just finished the job.”
“Was he armed? Did you slaughter a man with no weapon?”
I rolled the body over with my boot, showing the mason’s big knife lying under him.
“That is hardly a threat. . .” She glared around. I presumed she was looking for babies and kittens I might have drowned.
I said, “Ella!” which got her attention. “I may be the least perfect man in the southlands, but you can’t use my failings to put off talking about whatever happened.”
She frowned at me and slumped a bit. “As Corporal Ralt said, we overtook them. Unfortunately, they saw us first and fell on us from at least two sides. I’m not sure how many of us survived. Dolf perished in a most gruesome fashion. These men and I escaped only after vigorous fighting.”
The soldiers had dismounted while she was talking, and a couple helped the one who was just about dead.
“Well, you can rest here now,” I said. “These aren’t bad people. They’ve just suffered more than most recently, so allow them some fearful behavior.”
“I shall not stay here! I will gather what survivors I may, and then I’ll pursue those villains. I will either retrieve the prince or be torn to bits in the effort.” She dismounted and stretched her back.
That was almost too fortunate to believe. I sure as the grinding ice wasn’t about to argue her out of her intentions. I planned to pursue the Denzmen anyway, and maybe a Denzman who intended to kill me would slay one of Ella’s men instead. Or slay her. “I’ll come along with you and kill a few of those villains, if that’s not too forward of me.”
“Why?”
“My grudge against them may not be as big as yours, but it’s big enough.”
She stared hard at me. “No, why are you so very keen to kill people?” She nodded at the mason’s body. “You leave them behind as if they were discarded sacks from which you’ve emptied everything you want.”
“Sharp words from a woman whose sword arm looks like you slaughtered—”
“Be still!”
I didn’t entertain any notions of disobeying her. The conversation was amusing, if a little unnerving.
“You don’t appear to be excessively dim-witted. There are many productive endeavors you could undertake in which murder is absent, or at least minimal. So why are you so anxious to kill?”
“Because I like it.”
She paused, maybe expecting me to say more. “That’s awfully sad. Well, come along with me, and we shall see whether anything is to be done about it.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was a pleasant feeling, since no one had stumped me in conversation for at least a year. I nodded.
Ella shouted, “Water your horses and rest yourselves! We depart at midday.”
Except for the one who was dying, the soldiers stepped quickly and undertook those tasks. They must not have entertained any notions of disobeying the governess, either.
