The Wars of Light and Shadow (9) - INITIATE'S TRIAL: First book of Sword of the Canon

by Wurts, Janny

  ‘Clear those horses off! Turn the oxcart around and retreat at least one hundred paces. We’ve got fiends!’ Harried as his frantic horse crab-stepped, the dedicate captain vented a gush of relief for the nuisance. ‘No surprise we’re beset, given this lug-headed rash of hysterical upset.’

  The volatile mix of flames and raw tempers attracted such bothersome plagues: the energy sprites, known as iyats, irresistibly fed on emotional frenzy. No rank outbreak of Shadow, this inconvenience would scarcely balk temple justice. The lancers’ mounts all wore banes on their bridles, tin disks stamped with ciphers of ward to repel the mettlesome influence. But the shabby paint on the croft’s borrowed wagon suggested that the worn talixman affixed to its shafts might have discharged from neglect. If its virtue had waned, the vehicle with its distressed felon aboard posed a fresh magnet for trouble.

  ‘Does one of those carters carry a shovel?’ the lance officer called, spun about in the tussle to quell his crow-hopping mount. ‘Requisition the tool, then! Move smart, and smother that fire straightaway. Those fiends won’t disperse until they’re starved out, with no ready source to replenish themselves!’

  Tarens endured, teeth clamped through the jostle as men goaded the balky ox backwards, then shouldered it into a clumsy turn. When the vehicle slewed at the rim of the ditch, more lancers were obliged to vacate their saddles and brace lest the wheels slide farther and mire hub-deep. Splashed muck stained their surcoats. Stung pride shortened tempers as they bent their backs to brute work beneath their lofty station. Jolted and bashed by the slide of the poultry crates as the muscled cart jerked and tilted, Tarens snatched only a fitful view through the side slats as the fire suddenly exploded. The busy dedicates who manoeuvred the ox had no other warning when the shouts down the roadway changed pitch to alarm.

  Already, the fiends sowed their vehement havoc. Gouts of flame and pin-wheeling logs whistled air-borne. Mule-teams bolted. Incensed carters screamed as their startled teams scrambled, entangled, and crashed into their neighbours. The lancers caught amid the irrupted blaze flung their borrowed shovels and scattered, while the berserk draught beasts shied hither and yon, and bashed their handlers aside like thrown rag dolls. The rampage of panic set off the ox, which plunged and jarred Tarens to further torment. Pelted by rolled baskets, and winded half-senseless, he cried out in the turmoil, voice drowned out by the racketing thunder of the other stampeded harness teams. Crazed livestock and smashed wagons caromed down the roadway, chased mad by fiends irresistibly baited to feed on the effervescence of chaos.

  The few lancers assigned to the prisoner’s oxcart sweated and swore, hard-pressed to curb their bucking mounts. If they missed getting trampled, that triumph lasted only until the iyats streamed within range of the talismans sewn to their horses’ head-stalls. Temple-wrought, the banes did their exemplary work: the sprites in possession of the fiery debris became forcibly stripped from their air-borne loads. The result hurled down a storm of scalding ash, flaming bark, and burning sticks over them and their milling bunch of riderless horses. Swept into the vortex of screams and confusion, gadded and singed by the maelstrom of embers, the escort for the prisoner collapsed. Silk surcoats ignited. Routed men dropped and rolled on the ground to snuff out the errant blazes, or else found themselves mown down in the melee.

  The cart jockeyed clear of the ditch fared no better. A dropped log whooshed earthward and struck the yoked ox. It whuffed, plunged, and bolted. Eyes rolled white, tail curled over its bristled, humped back, it rampaged through the held knot of horses and ripped them free. Swept along as they galloped, the bucketing oxcart swayed and careened like a storm-tossed shallop. The jounced corpse fetched up against Tarens’s strapped frame. Flaming twigs pelted into the overset crates and spilled straw, and flurried sparks lit the wrack incandescent.

  The devout driver, who bravely wrestled the reins, abandoned his post, before roasting. He dived for the ditch, beating flames from his beard, while the untended ox and its bucketing wagon hurtled off with the chained prisoner and the slaughtered diviner, streaming a comet-trail wake of torched basketry.

  Trounced helpless, Tarens laboured to breathe. Scorched, coughing smoke, he reeled from the knifing pain of his broken ribs. The stout rope that lashed his chains became singed, while the heat transferred through the metal shackles blistered his fastened wrists. He could not thrash off the smouldering tarp or escape the threat of immolation as the burning crates bounced against the spread mantle that shrouded the corpse.

  Suffocation and fear rendered him nearly senseless when someone’s urgent presence tore away the blazing fabric. A living hand bare of gauntlets snatched the pearl-handled eating knife sheathed at the dead diviner’s belt and sawed through the knots that secured Tarens’s ankles. A tug parted the charred ties that restrained his arms and yanked him clear of disaster. Then a sharp whistle pierced the crackle of fire that raced in red-gold sheets across the wagon-bed. The fluted note shocked a resonant vibration through Tarens’s chains, reached crescendo, then snicked open the locks on his manacles.

  The release came too late. His traumatized limbs failed to move. Tarens whimpered, curled up in wracked pain, undone despite the continuous prods that insistently bullied him upright. When his stupor persisted, the forceful grasp rolled him up like dead meat in the singed tarp. Another heave pitched him belly down, with his head dangled over the side of the cart.

  Through blurred confusion, all shuddering flame-light and wheeling shadows, he captured the brief impression of spoked wheels churning through rutted mud. Then the tumultuous hooves of a runaway mule-team obscured his view and pelted his broken face with flung clods. He flinched from the sting. Too traumatized to hike his weight backwards, he flopped like a draped rag as the adjacent dray overtook the clumsier oxcart. Swerved together, the vehicles swayed side by side in the maelstrom. Sparks snicked from the bash of their iron-capped wheel hubs. Only the fist entwined into the tarp secured Tarens from maceration. Whooping for air, paralyzed by torment as the wooden slat gouged into his damaged ribs, he battled raw terror and dizziness. Then a sharp push upended his ankles. He pitched out of the oxcart and tumbled, not under the wheels, but into a saving pile of hay as the mule-drawn wain rumbled past.

  His agile keeper dived in alongside him and burrowed under the thatch. Strangled on dust and poked by the tickle of straw, Tarens moaned. The sneeze he failed to contain ripped his chest. A callused palm swiftly muffled his scream, as his bashed ribs erupted to agony. The relentless hold gagged his noise, then let go as his abused stomach revolted. Limbs strapped in the tarp and torqued double by nausea, Tarens retched. The harsh spasms savaged him past all reprieve as the mule-cart jounced and clattered down the rutted road, with its team harried senseless by iyats. The haystack that cushioned him failed to stave off the sucking plunge towards unconsciousness.

  Through dimmed awareness, dazed by the pain as the gushed blood from his fractured nose became blotted up with a twist of rough cloth, Tarens realized that no temple guard would have granted the kindness. Reassured that he lay in the hands of a friend, he let go and allowed the merciful darkness to swallow him.

  Tarens surfaced again through a bright scald of agony, as if whole patches of skin had been flayed and exposed every quivering nerve end. A strip torn from the tarp crudely bound his bashed ribs. If the jacket and shirt overtop remained clammy, nestled hay and the warmth of the body beside him at least eased his desperate shivering. His crushed nose ached, stuffed tight with swelling. Both eyes had puffed to throbbing slits, and he breathed in shuddered gulps through split lips. Matted hair crusted his brutalized scalp, and everything else the Light’s faithful had kicked felt bludgeoned to grape pulp.

  Through ringing ears, he overheard a brisk conversation, conducted in masculine voices. The words stitched together the alarming discovery the mule-cart had stopped for inspection. Tarens froze. Before his frightened gasp made him choke on loose chaff, a friendly clasp squeezed his wrist. The assurance did nothing to que
ll his dread. He would be retaken: a thin cover of hay would never thwart searchers commanded by a temple mandate. Worse, the fugitive talent who bade for his rescue would share his trial as a murderer’s accomplice. The brave ploy that had unfastened locked chains must condemn them both to a sorcerer’s death. Boots scraped, close by. A shadow raked across the chinks of filtered daylight, and the clipped phrases acquired coherency.

  ‘No bribes today, scoundrel!’ An authority’s tread took pause by the stack in the wagon-bed. ‘We’re placed on tight watch. Can’t risk an exception. A chained heretic’s escaped. Oh yes! Priests claim he’s got a minion of Darkness as a collaborator. The pair’s on the run somewhere in the district. Dawn this morning, we’re told. Uncanny for sure, if they’ve outfoxed the best of the league trackers. Three temple diviners are combing the country-side to flush them out while we’re saddled with manning this road block.’

  The mule-driver lodged a fretful complaint.

  Another official dismissed him, annoyed. ‘Just a stray storm of iyats, you say? Well maybe that’s true. High on a fresh charge, a fiend storm might spring a steel lock by chance. But a full set of manacles amid a live fire? That’s much more than random mischief.’

  Another protest, then, ‘Well, yes! We’d rather be settled inside over mulled wine and breakfast. Except that some pious lance captain’s pegged us to salvage his blunder.’

  The mule’s driver argued, hotly incredulous. ‘If a felon dodged justice through a sorcerer’s havoc, you wouldn’t be likely to find such as them holed up in a wain-load of hay.’

  ‘All goods get examined. No use crying foul.’ A sheared ring bespoke steel withdrawn from a scabbard. ‘One mewling yap from a True Sect dedicate, and it’s hop, skip, and jump for us field-troops. They’ve rousted the garrison out in the cold, too, poking pig crates and tossing through farm-carts!’

  A rustle of cloth, then a metallic whine as the weapon stabbed into the haystack behind the tail-gate. The point sank a span deep and thunked hollow wood, to a tell-tale gurgle of fluid. ‘Contraband, is it? Grain whiskey, perhaps?’ The foot-soldier laughed, while his fellows closed in and burrowed to expose the illicit cache.

  ‘He’s got barrels, sir. Ones without tax brands or seals on the bungs.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said the officer, unsympathetic. ‘Looks like you’re faced with detainment for smuggling.’

  The mule-driver scarcely bemoaned his bad luck, but offered a bribe to evade the penalty.

  ‘One barrel? Kiss my rosy arse! You’ll donate thrice that number and grin. Count on it, my captain insists on his share. Not to mention the filthy provost’s men skim. That’s only sound business, to gag their stickler’s consciences.’

  The brazen bout of dickering finished with the busy slide of raised pins, then the creak as the tail-gate was lowered. A dog growled, caught up by the scruff and tossed into the haystack to satisfy duty. Its honest nose snuffled for fugitives, while the men collected their sweetening share with unrestrained greed.

  Tarens cowered, too injured to stir, and petrified to bated breath. He recalled the knife stolen from the diviner and braced for the futility of desperate action. But the vagabond hidden beside him did not spring into tensioned sweat. His stilled clasp on the crofter’s wrist stayed collected, even as the diligent hound whined and rooted. When the crofter finally inhaled, he nearly choked, membranes singed by the sharp sting of wintergreen. A genius stroke, as the industrious hound sucked the astringent herb into its snout the next moment.

  Its explosive sneeze flurried the hay. Then it yelped and shot backwards onto its haunches, where it shivered and licked its nose, whimpering. No one took notice. The last unloaded cask thunked into the ground to someone’s snap of impatience. The dog was seized by routine and dragged off the wagon to speed the smug rush to sequester the dunned casks. The mule-driver slammed closed his tail-gate and secured the pins. Released on his way, he clambered back onto the buckboard and shook up his mules.

  Tarens lay trembling under the tarp. Limp with relief, he placed no innocent faith in coincidence: surely his clever friend had not fallen into a corrupt drayman’s wagon at random. Neither was the skilled penchant for skulking the habit of an upright man. Yet the puzzle could not be pondered under the misery of black-out faintness. Too shaken to think, Tarens let the rattletrap wain bear him southbound through the chill morning.

  Noon came. More mounted lancers swept past, first one troop, then another, noisy with the martial jingle of steel and the snap of streamed pennons. A third, larger company of dedicates followed. The horn blasts of their advance guard warned other traffic clear of the roadway, and drove the lumbering dray to stop at the verge. Hay stalks whispered and winnowed to the backwash of breeze as the cavalcade clattered past at a canter. The muleteer and his load stayed at the side, unmolested. Whether the temple’s elite lancers disdained to sully their snow-white surcoats to conduct a search, or if their officious captain avoided the bother of the delay, no rider dismounted to trifle with a farm vehicle passed through the earlier check-point.

  The next batch at their heels reined in, but apparently only to breathe their hot mounts. The multiplied clop of shod destriers woke Tarens. Through febrile pain, he overheard the excitable gossip exchanged in response to a bystander’s query. ‘The hunt’s out for the renegade sorcerer, yes. A practitioner in league with Darkness who unkeyed the locks on cold iron with spells. He’s absconded with the confirmed murderer the Lord Examiner arrested just before dawn.’

  ‘Oh, he left no prints to clue the league’s trackers! There’s truth,’ a second speaker chimed in. ‘Head-hunters’ hounds so far have drawn a blank field, as if there’s no scent to nose out.’

  ‘Maybe he flew like a bird in the night. Shapechanged to a beast? Never saw such, myself. But that’s what the priesthood is saying.’

  ‘Claptrap!’ another man added, and laughed. ‘If yon skulker’s that powerful, we’re wasting our time. Such a paragon wouldn’t stoop to a runaway’s game, chased off like a thief through the country-side.

  ‘They’ll run him down through the use of diviners,’ a fellow in the rear-guard assured. ‘A wee knife was stolen from one of their own. If the object’s still in the creature’s possession, their blessed talent will use that to find him. If not, the next crafted spell he attempts will alert the temple’s trained sensitives. Once they have him placed, we’ll close in for the capture. If the twisted criminal isn’t killed outright, rest easy. He’ll be dragged to Erdane and put to ritual death by the sword and the fire.’

  To that end, lance troops had been deployed from all points of the compass, with each dedicate captain primed for his chance to seize glory.

  ‘We’ll have eighty companies deployed before nightfall. No way the Dark’s minion is going to slip through. Sleep soundly tonight, man, and thank the Light for the grace of the temple’s protection.’

  The mule drover mumbled an unctuous blessing, his gratitude more likely due to the contraband he slipped under the troop’s righteous noses.

  Then the horn blast sounded to signal the trot. Bits chinked as the lancers gave on their reins and spurred on their way. ‘I do suggest that you roll straight through,’ the last man in the column called over his shoulder. ‘A curfew’s been imposed after nightfall for safety’s sake. Don’t pause until you’re snugged down inside the stone walls of an inn.’

  The mule-cart ground onwards through late afternoon, with Tarens sunk deeper in misery. For each black-out moment he catnapped, the rude jolts of the hay-cart awoke him, gasping in pain from the grate of his damaged ribs. His untended gashes swelled into a throbbing crescendo of aches. Terror stifled his moans. He bit his split lip and endured without respite until the cold, clouded sunset brought the hay-wagon to its scheduled delivery. The heavy wheels rumbled to a stop on the cobbles behind the stable at a traveller’s inn.

  A changeable wind blew in from the north, salted with early snow. The hostler’s boys who caught the team’s bridles carped and bl
ew on numb fingers. The driver flung them two coppers to unhitch his mules, then chased them off with the laconic assurance he would fork the hay into the loft in due time. The boys pocketed the coins, content to scarper without asking bothersome questions. The inclement weather defrayed any suspicion since a carter hunched at his reins with cold feet might well crave whiskey and a hot meal before he tended his load.

  The cart stayed unobtrusively parked, removed from the torch-lit bustle that ebbed and flowed through the crowded front inn-yard. The dusk shadows rapidly deepened to felt. By night, someone was bound to come on the sly to collect the black-market kegs. Before then, the stowed fugitives must make themselves scarce, a pressing urgency that Tarens grasped even while beset by relentless discomfort. His companion helped free him from the wrapped tarp. The crofter forced his battered body to move, shoved off through the loose hay, blundered over the casks, and clumsily crashed against the fastened tail-gate. He struggled to hoist his stiff frame overtop. The effort went badly. He dropped, his feet jolted into the ground, and crashed heavily to his knees. Light-headed dizziness crumpled him there, shuddering with his forehead pressed against the frigid cobbles.

  ‘You may have to leave me,’ he groaned in despair.