01 - Honour of the Grave

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  “I want no part of their filthy money!” Franziskus said.

  “That’s generous. Now move aside.”

  Lukas’ knees hit the dirt. He clasped his hands together and shook them at Angelika. “Please, you can’t mean to leave me in the hands of these murderers!”

  “It’s me and Franziskus they want to kill, not you.” She seized his outstretched hands and looped the cord around his wrists. “So you’ll excuse me if we give ourselves the head start we need.” She cupped a hand to her mouth, to shout at Elennath. “Be still, and toss down the purse, or I’ll untie him and take him with us!”

  The three stopped moving. The net gently swung.

  “Now lie down,” she told Lukas.

  “Please don’t leave me.”

  “You despise me, remember? Now lie down!”

  He stretched supinely in the dirt. As she was trussing his ankles, she heard a metallic clink. She sprang over to the spot beneath the net, seized up a small leather bag, and opened it. It contained Imperial crowns. A brief look confirmed that there were probably eighty of them. She pulled the drawstring tight without investigating further, and shoved it into her belt.

  Franziskus was at Lukas’ side, murmuring; Angelika knelt beside him, too, and told him that he had no reason to worry. Later, she assured him, he would look back on this and conclude that she’d done him the greatest of favours. Before he could reply, she was up and had gathered the contents of her pack. She ran along the trail, towards the north. Close behind her, she heard Franziskus’ footsteps.

  They ducked off the trail after a short run, into a gully obscured by foliage. They took their bedrolls from their packs, laid them out and rested on them. They could hear the sound of crickets and, in the distance, chirruping frogs. Above them came the momentary flutter of bat wings. Perhaps an hour later, there was a commotion on the trail: the piercing, nasal tones of Lukas’ voice, mixed in with Plenty’s grunts, as well as various leers and snorts from Toby. The trail was too far off to make out words, but the boy was still clearly alive—they could hear him complaining.

  Franziskus waited until they’d passed to say: “You did not grab your knife and charge after them.”

  Angelika settled down into her bedroll. She’d found a particularly lush patch of vine leaves to spread it out on, and she meant to enjoy it. “Why, in the name of sanity and reason, would I do that?”

  “I thought you might have another sudden change of heart.”

  “That was a once-only mistake. This time it’s on my terms.”

  “Just when I think I understand you at last, you spin my head again, Angelika.”

  “Beware predictable people; they’re either stupid or fanatically dangerous.”

  “Now you find fault in consistency of character? Is there no virtue you don’t decry?”

  “I’m too tired to argue. All I know is he’s better off in Prince Davio’s dungeon than the von Kopf family crypt. Now I hope you don’t find my desire for sleep somehow unusual.”

  She woke in the morning to a grey sky and a softly snoring Franziskus. He’d dozed off without shaking her awake for her watch. She decided to let him sleep, and not to scold him for his lapse. Nothing had come in the night to carry them off or chew on their limbs, and that was all that mattered. She slunk into the bushes to relieve herself. When she got back, Franziskus had clearly been looking around for her. She sat down next to him, and worked the tension from her cramped shoulders. Then she opened her pack to hunt for the last of the field salami. She cut it in two and handed the noticeably smaller half to Franziskus. He drank from his waterskin.

  Angelika remembered the money. She took out the purse and clanked it in her palm. It wasn’t four hundred crowns, or even a hundred and twenty-five, but it was still her biggest haul in a long time. Certainly since Franziskus had attached himself to her.

  “So what will you do with your reward?” he asked, slathering the final word of his sentence with a thick layer of irony.

  “Hmp,” Angelika replied.

  “That’s enough to buy yourself a cottage, in some small town up north. A good one, sealed from drips and drafts. Moreover, with a touch of frugality, you could live off it the rest of your days.”

  “Pah!” she said.

  “Many a peasant makes do with less.”

  “I’m impressed by your knowledge of the rustic life.”

  “Just think: no more sorting through rotting corpses for buttons and beads. No need to cross blades with cutthroats, or wander through this awful wilderness, with its orcs and Chaos beasts. Now you can retire to an existence more properly fitting to your sex.”

  “Franziskus, no one is more obnoxious than a person who enjoys giving advice.”

  “But ever since we met, nearly all I’ve heard from you is your craving for gold. Now that you have it, I’m merely curious to see what comes next.”

  “Your curiosity will have to go unsatisfied, my friend. Or whatever you are.” She rose, to get her bearings.

  “I’ve offended you.”

  “Of course you have. You should be able to get back to the Castello before nightfall. I’ll meet you there in a day or two.”

  “But where are you going?”

  “For reasons that currently escape me, I’ve trusted you with my life. But I won’t trust you to know where my gold is.”

  “I care not a whit for gold.”

  “Exactly—you value it too lightly. You don’t understand what it means.” She hefted her pack onto her back. “If I turn back and see you following me, I’ll treat you as I would any other enemy. Understand?”

  She could not read the look on Franziskus’ face as she tramped off.

  Miles away, and many hours later, she stood over a patch of sod, surveying it for hints of disturbance, and differences from the neighbouring ground. For the hundredth time, she looked all around her to make sure that no one observed her. Her mouth was dry; she’d used up nearly all her water. She was tired and wanted to rest, but would not do it here, in case someone noted her presence in this spot. Angelika walked until she came to a stream, where she’d sat before, on similar occasions. There was a flat rock she liked, and she kept going until she found it. She sat down, pulled her boots off, and dangled her throbbing feet in the chill, clear water. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sensation of rushing water on her legs.

  She was glad that Franziskus hadn’t followed her. It would have been unpleasant to have had to insert a knife between his ribs. She had no doubt that she could do it—easily, if the truth be told. She’d seen enough of his fighting to know his weaknesses well. His swordsmanship was all training and no instinct. He repeated the same moves with clockwork regularity. In particular, there was a moment during his forward feint, when it would take just a single sidestep for a person to shove a dagger into him all the way to the hilt. On occasion, she’d been tempted to point this out to him, but had decided to keep the fact in reserve, in case she needed it later.

  A cottage! Frugal living for the rest of her life! Pursuits proper to a woman! What rot! But if there were a way she could use her money to ensure that she could spend the rest of her life here, with her feet in this water, with warm sunlight on her face, knowing that she would never grow hungry or get bored—or suffer attacks from enemies, or have to listen to the stupid prattling of other people—well, then, that would be a retirement worth considering! Barring that, she would just have to keep all her crowns safely buried until she found a good reason to do otherwise.

  She could be free of Franziskus now. She’d promised to meet up with him again, but that meant nothing. All she had to do was go further south, perhaps to some other settlement run by a different border prince. It was more dangerous down there, but it was also where all the good battles were. He might try to find her—no, he would without question try to find her—but it could be years before he caught up with her. And surely even he was capable of coming to his senses eventually?

  She threw her head back an
d closed her eyes tighter.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw Lukas. His eyes were pleading to her.

  Her guts rolled over. Her skin grew cold. She shuddered. She jerked her feet from the icy water.

  What she had done had been wrong. Oh, he’d certainly proved himself to be a cossetted, bleating, feckless twit. But no matter who he was, she had no right to steal his freedom from him. All the others around him, from his father to his brothers to the prince of the Castello, had been ready to do it without a qualm. Angelika considered herself different from such men. She stood apart from the world, with its manifold lies and villainies. Or so she’d always told herself. Yet, because she’d allowed the boy to annoy her, she’d sold him, like she would a dog or a mule. Even though she knew he didn’t know better.

  She could only admit it. She’d made herself a hypocrite. No better than Gelfrat, or Toby.

  Mournfully, she let the last drops of water dry on her feet, and then she put her boots back on. She refilled her water-skin and returned to the patch of ground where the gold lay buried. Standing above it, she considered whether she ought to dig it up, and refund Elennath his blood money. It would be consistent; she’d left Benno’s purse behind, when she’d decided to reclaim Lukas the first time.

  She left the coins in their place of hibernation. Righteousness, she decided, was a thing best doled out in small doses.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As Angelika walked north through the pass toward the Castello, a hubbub of shouting voices and anxious cries arose. Rounding the foot of a hill, she saw a throng of men, women and children issuing from the rock cut that led to the Castello. Their distressed and dirty clothing identified them as townspeople. Wives sobbed in the arms of husbands; men pushed and elbowed at one another, as if to discharge their anger. Angelika noted that no one seemed to carry a pack on his back, or to lead a horse or mule.

  She ran to reach the fringes of the mob. She seized the sleeve of the nearest man, a plump old fellow with a sandy-coloured, triangular beard, to ask what had happened.

  “Siege!” he cried, widening reddened eyes. “They marched in through the hills!” He spoke these words peevishly, as if all of the armies of the Old World had signed agreements not to march in through the hills. He made to stagger off; Angelika yanked again on the cuff of his ratty coat.

  “Who? Who besieges you?” she demanded.

  “The black and yellows!” he said, pulling himself free of her and melting into the crowd.

  Arms crooked outward, she threw herself into the mob, surging against it, pushing her way toward the rock cut and the Castello. The cut was choked with people. A boy fell onto the rocky trail; a flabby arm pulled him up before he could be trampled. Angelika clambered up on the rocks surrounding the cut and began to climb from one outcropping to the next. Beside the pounding of blood in her ears, she could hear the sounds of a besieging regiment: the rolling cracks of drumsticks on kettledrums; the groaning of wagon wheels against their axles; whips cracking as auxiliary crews urged their lowing oxen onward, creaking artillery pieces after them. Above it all there was the low, flat buzz of excited male voices, readying themselves for the kill, and praying not to die.

  After several minutes of sweat and strain, she reached a lookout point above the basin, from which she could see the Castello and its besiegers. The Castello itself had not yet been affected; its main gate was open just enough for a stream of people to squeeze out of the town. Its weathered, uneven plank walls still stood; the heads of guardsmen bobbed in its towers and on its rickety battlements.

  As for the besiegers, they hadn’t yet assumed formation: soldiers either ran about like heedless insects, or milled about at ease, waiting for their orders to ring out above the uproar. They were indeed Averlanders: black and yellow banners, their colours matching the soldier’s uniforms, snapped in the wind, held aloft on poles of filigreed brass.

  Angelika saw halberdiers, leaning against the long hafts of their huge weapons with elaborate blades. Legs spread staunchly apart, they struck haughty poses for the benefit of their minions—the common foot soldiers. Their helmets gleamed; their green plumes trembled fiercely in the wind. Plumeless, their inferiors skulked around them, pretending to take no notice, as they polished swords and fumbled with the buckles of their breastplates. Handgunners stood at a remove from both classes of fellow soldier, checking their flintlocks for defects.

  Old men and young boys, wearing the green armbands of the auxiliary, helped artillerists unload mortars from a great wagon of oak planks which was held together by a frame of riveted steel. The gunners shouted and waved their arms as the knees of young and old alike buckled under the weight of cast-iron mortar barrels. Angelika watched others unload the brass-shod wooden bases from which the mortars would fire their deadly shells.

  She counted three cannons, each with its own complement of oxen and anxious, milling drovers. The weapons rested on carriages of copper-bound oak, and were cast in iron. If Angelika remembered her artillery correctly, the barrels would each bear the insignia of Mad Count Marius: a sun wearing a bored expression, surrounded by flaring solar petals, alternating between large and small.

  Angelika reckoned there were perhaps five or six hundred Averlandish soldiers and officers present in the basin’s confines. That was not counting auxiliaries and other noncombatants. She did not place absolute store in her estimations, because she was better at counting the dead. Though it was not the smallest force she’d ever seen fielded by an Imperial state, it wasn’t particularly large either. And she saw no sign of battle wizards. But this regiment could certainly do the trick, if it were massed here for the reason she surmised.

  Angelika’s attention returned to the fleeing townsfolk. A procession of civilians streamed out and around the small army, in carts, on the backs of mules, and on foot. Teams of foot soldiers manned checkpoints to interrupt the exodus. They searched the refugees and their belongings, confiscating swords, bows and even scythes. Angelika watched the soldiers extract departure taxes from the fleeing residents: they removed rings and necklaces, and laid claim to wheels of cheese and links of sausage. Horses and mules were taken from the refugees and led to a makeshift corral. Angelika saw a fat sergeant seize a chicken, wring its neck, and drop it to his feet—no doubt for later roasting.

  The line of refugees collided with an opposing mass of civilians, some with carts, who circled around in search of favourable positions. Where these two groups met, an ever expanding, barely moving knot of the annoyed and frightened was created. The new arrivals were camp followers of various sorts, come down from Averland in hopes of wringing profit from a lengthy siege. They must have arrived before the exodus began; there would be no getting carts in now. Butchers had brought sheep and cattle to slaughter and skewer; some had already staked out places for firepits, and were spading them out, as sacks of charcoal waited to fill them. A family of entertainers, stringy as yellow beans and wearing belled, floppy caps, pounded nails into a stage. Peddlers erected canvas stalls to exchange looted goods for coin—some of the checkpoint men had lined up already, to pawn the items they’d stolen from the departing border rats. In front of one such stall, Angelika detected the threat of a brawl, as fist-shaking refugees gathered to reclaim the goods they’d just been stripped of.

  Her eyes lighted on a high-walled cart, painted violet and flying a windsock in the shape of a toothy pike fish. She moved toward it, entering the crush of soldiers, evacuees and opportunists, and elbowed her way through. It took nearly half an hour to get to the cart, her toes ached from being trodden on, and her legs were splattered with mud and the dung of livestock.

  The purple cart’s doors were shuttered tight; its owner was too cautious to open for business until the refugees had gone, and the possibility of a riot. Angelika banged on it with her sharp, knuckled fist.

  “We’re not open yet!” came a voice from inside.

  Angelika identified herself and backed up for the door to open. A fat and familiar face be
amed at her; it was her best customer, Max Beckman. Ringlets of dark hair laid flat against his large, round skull, cemented by a grease of Max’s own formulation that was scented with lilacs. He wore a sheepskin coat, dyed deep blue and embroidered with diamonds and moons. Gold rings encircled each of his stubby fingers; they were inlaid with gems which, to Angelika’s experienced eye, were obviously made of glass. He reached his hand out for her and helped her up into the cart.

  Franziskus was perched inside on a leather bench. Shelves and drawers cramped the interior of Max’s cart; its roof was not high, and they were forced to stoop.

  “I was going to ask if he’d seen you,” Angelika said, to Franziskus.

  “I recognised the cart and thought it as likely a meeting place as any,” he said. He’d met Max twice before. Angelika knew he disapproved of the merchant and his business, but was mannerly enough to keep this opinion to himself.

  “You’ll have many competitors, I’m afraid, when it comes to plucking this battlefield,” Max said, tossing small blocks of wood into a tiny iron stove. “Care for a toddy? Chill has gripped my bones all morning.”

  She sat beside Franziskus. He squeezed over, but there was little room on the bench, so her right leg pressed tightly against his left. He cleared his throat and patted his chest.

  She asked him what he’d learned.

  “Did you see the Black Sabres’ banner flying out there?”

  “I saw banners, but not that one.”

  “Benno commands this disorder, with Gelfrat as his number two.”

  “All of this, just to retrieve Lukas? Their father is as mad as the count he serves.”

  “What are you talking about?” Max asked, wrapping his hand in a towel, to insulate it from the heat of the stove. “Jurgen dispatched these detachments to make an example of Davio. They intend to show the other border princes the price of defiance.” He shut the oven door and held his hands out, smiling as the warmth entered his muscles. “When this is over, they’ll fear the Empire more than they fear the orcs. Or so the theory goes.”