Fifth Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  “They’re out there now, looking for me. They’ll find me.”

  He didn’t know who they were but he wasn’t going to lose his heart again.

  * * * *

  “Why are we going up here? This is a way station …” Otavas swallowed hard. A way station meant soldiers. Young ones or old ones at a station so far from a Great Road—but soldiers. If he could catch their attention. If he could just make one of them see him.

  The cart rolled out of the mud onto the slightly higher ground of the way station’s yard, and the old man ordered the dead to stop pushing.

  The prince started toward the building and found the old man in his way.

  “Wait here, my heart. There are things in this place that we need.”

  Otavas glanced at Iban and Hestia who were bracing the shafts. “Like what?” he demanded, then he flushed as his stomach growled loudly.

  “Like food.” The old man smiled indulgently.

  An elderly soldier came out of the station house, and peered toward the road. The three sunbursts on her uniform tunic matched the three on the flag hanging limply overhead. “Who’s there?” she called, one hand on the hilt of her short sword, the other shading her eyes.

  “Help me!” She was so close, Otavas could see the corporal’s stripe circling the hem of her kilt. “You’ve got to help me! Please!” He leaped forward and was dragged back by cold fingers gripping his arms. When he froze, the dead hands lifted away, but he knew they’d be on him again if he moved.

  The corporal frowned. “Ash! Get out here!”

  “Corporal?” A chestnut-haired boy, old enough to wear a uniform, young enough for this to be his first posting appeared in the doorway.

  “Did you hear anything a minute ago?”

  “Ah heard you.”

  The old soldier sighed. “Did you hear anything besides me?”

  “No, Corporal.”

  “You don’t see anything over there by the road?”

  For a heartbeat, Otavas was sure the boy saw him.

  “No, Corporal.”

  “It’s too slaughtering hot. That’s the problem.” She scanned the area again, terror touching her gaze for an instant as it slid over the dead. “I wonder what’s gotten into the horses. Look at them, all grouped over by the far side of the corral.”

  “My ma calls this weatha mad dahg weatha.”

  “Weath-er, Ash. Mad dog weath-er.” The corporal turned and pushed the boy soldier back inside. “I’ll never get used to the way you people talk up here.”

  “Don’t look so sad, my heart.” The old man patted his shoulder; still feeling the grip of dead hands, Otavas wasn’t able to move away. “I won’t be gone long. Come, Kait.”

  Shaking with frustration and despair, the prince watched the old man and the dead girl walk across to the building. To his surprise, just before they reached the door, the old man started to sing. It was a pretty song, a comforting song; Otavas stopped shaking and yawned. His eyes closed and he slowly sank to the ground.

  He heard the dead move closer but, wrapped in the song, it didn’t seem to matter. Pillowing his head on his arm, he sighed and fell asleep.

  * * * *

  The corporal sprawled in the room’s only wood and leather chair, mouth open, snoring softly. Ash lay stretched out on a narrow bench, tunic off, bare chest rising and falling to the slow rhythm of the Song. Another soldier, gray-haired but younger than the corporal, was curled up on the hearth, clutching the wooden handle of a cleaver loosely in one hand.

  While he continued to Sing, Kait took the corporal’s short sword and used it as he’d taught her. She found the fourth soldier, a woman in her thirties with a patch over one eye and a peg where her right leg should have been, asleep on a pile of hay in the attached stable.

  As Kait dragged the fourth body into the main room, he stopped Singing and sank down onto the end of Ash’s bench to conserve his strength. A pewter tankard by the boy’s limp hand held two inches of tepid ale. He drained it, the warm liquid soothing his throat, as the four kigh buzzed about him; confused, unwilling to be dead.

  “Kait, please gather up all the food you can find, there’s a good girl.” His head ached and he hoped he’d be strong enough for what he had to do. His heart needed to be protected.

  * * * *

  Otavas woke to see the old man smiling wearily down at him. “Wake up, my heart. It’s time to move on.”

  Rubbing his eyes, the prince pushed himself up into a sitting position, unable to understand how he’d fallen asleep laying in the damp and the mud. He stretched and frowned at the smell of his own unwashed body. The rain had helped, but he hated not being clean; it made him feel less than himself. Hot water, scented soaps, and attendants to shave him seemed part of someone else’s life.

  Someone else’s life … Perhaps they were. Perhaps he’d never had anything but this cart and the old man and the dead.

  One hand around a spoke, he used the wheel to pull himself to his feet. Shaking off the torpor that threatened to push him back into sleep, Otavas’ brows drew in as he focused on the old man’s face. The ancient eyes were sunk deep in violet shadows and the skin hung so loosely off his skull that the gray wisps of his beard appeared to drag it from his chin. “Are you … sick?”

  “I am tired, my heart.” Both his hands clutched at his staff, which seemed to be supporting most of his weight. “But, more importantly, you are safe.”

  “Safe?” Then he looked beyond the old man—at the corporal, at the boy, at the two other soldiers. They all wore full infantry armor; steel helm, breast and back, boiled leather greaves and vambraces, round shield and short sword. Two of them were old, one was very young, and the other had lost a leg and an eye. Blood had turned the blue of each kilt purple-black in places and had drawn scarlet lines down bare arms and legs. The prince’s breath caught in his throat as he was forced to acknowledge one final similarity among them. They were all dead.

  “Why?” he whimpered, his back pressed against the cart.

  “I did it for you, my heart.”

  “For me?”

  “They will protect you.” The old man shuffled toward the open end of the cart. “I did it for you.”

  “No.” He wouldn’t take that responsibility. They didn’t die for him. He shook his head, found himself in the sudden rush of anger and used it to hold his terror tightly in check. “I am Prince Otavas Irenka, son of His Most Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Otavan.”

  The four soldiers came sluggishly to attention.

  Otavas stepped forward—unable to look the corporal in the eye, he glared at the end of her nose. “I order you to escort me safely back to the Capital!”

  The corporal slowly shook her head.

  “I order you!” His voice grew shrill. “You have to obey the order of an Imperial prince! You have to!”

  “Nooo, High … nesss.”

  “No?” He hugged himself to try to stop the trembling. “Why no?”

  Her gesture was almost an apology. “Weee … arrre … dead.”

  “Oh, yes.” Hysteria lurked just below the surface. “I forgot.”

  “Come, my heart.” The prince jerked around as the old man leaned out of the cart and touched the top of his head. “We must go.”

  Otavas flushed as, in spite of the day’s new horror, his body made its needs known. “I have to relieve myself.”

  The old man nodded. “Go with him, Iban.”

  Ears burning, the prince hurried over to a thornbush growing at the edge of the station yard, the dead man walking by his side, stopping when he stopped. As the prince fumbled with his trousers, an idea fought its way through the fear. Struggling to hold himself free of the returning numbed lethargy, he worked one of the thin gold rings off his right hand. When he turned to go back to the cart and his body hid the movement of his hand, he quickly slipped it over a thorn.

  He could see a small cluster of buildings just up the road and a field of grain behind—a farmer taking advantage
of the army’s proximity to buy land out of the crowded Imperial core. In time, surely they’d check the station. If not, the army would. If the sun was shining that day, perhaps someone would see the ring.

  And if someone saw the ring…

  Back in the cart, the circle of death closed around him and licked at his thoughts like dark flames.

  * * * *

  The weather had not improved as the day went on. Neither had tempers. On edge without the kigh, Karlene kept her eyes locked on the distance they still had to cover, her heart beating like a kettle drum every time the road swooped around a blind corner that could hide the prince.

  In mid-afternoon, they came on tracks cut into the mud—cut after the rain had stopped.

  “A two-wheeled cart, two people pulling, two people pushing, two people walking along beside.” Still squatting, Vree pointed back along the tracks. “I’d say they spent the night there, where the mud’s all churned up. The rain came down hard enough to pound yesterday’s tracks away.”

  Karlene felt sick. “The kigh said it was a man and a woman killed in the fishing village. If there’re six sets of footprints, Kars must have left the Capital with more than just the two young men.”

  “Must have,” Vree agreed, straightening. She rubbed her palms together as she gazed at the road. “They’re not going very fast. These prints are almost one on top of the other.”

  “Do you think we can catch them by dark?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean ‘no’, just like that?” Karlene grabbed her elbow. “We still have lots of light left.”

  Vree twisted her arm free and stepped away from the bard. “I mean no,” she said. “We aren’t gong to catch them by dark.”

  “But we can close up the gap.” Gyhard swung into the saddle as he spoke.

  By the time they approached the way station, they were on foot again—the heat and humidity combined with the soft footing had caused the horses to tire quickly. Still some distance away, Vree moved her gelding to the far side of the road and fell back until she was screened by his head. Gyhard, having been made violently aware that the body he wore was as much at risk of being identified as hers, did the same. The way stations along the Great Roads were set back behind palisades, but on the lesser roads, nothing blocked the possibility of discovery.

  Directly opposite the station, Vree stopped walking. The horse took another two steps, then stopped as well. Brows drawn in, her blood beginning to sing, Vree stared across the road over the horse’s back. “Something’s wrong. It’s too quiet.”

  Gyhard snorted. “Isn’t that one of your lines,” he asked Karlene. “The heroes approach their destination, tension rises, and one of them says, ‘It’s too quiet.’ No one ever says it in the real world.”

  “Who asked you?” Bannon snapped and Vree repeated, “Something’s wrong.” The angle of the sun backlit the station, throwing everything between the road and the long, low building into shadow. Nothing stirred in the area of scuffed dirt nor could she see movement through the open doors and shutters that led to the living quarters and the stables. She smelled neither cooking fires nor cooking.

  *And given the way the army uses onions,* Bannon muttered, *that’s saying something.*

  The only sound came from the two horses who paced round and round the corral—tails whipping at the air. As Vree studied the area, searching for danger, a pair of crows took off from the ridgepole, their calls like cruel laughter. The hair lifted off the back of her neck. “A bad omen …”

  “They’re birds, Vree. Nothing more.” Gyhard continued moving slowly up the road. He walked backward, taking small steps, unwilling to stop, unwilling to be a stationary target.

  *Who asked you?* Bannon growled again, but this time Vree caught the words behind her teeth.

  She stared at the three sunbursts hanging limp in the sultry air. She stared at the horses. She narrowed her eyes and stared into the shadows. “The cart went off the road here,” she said at last and dragged her horse’s head around. “Vree, where are you going?”

  “I have to know what happened.”

  “Vree!”

  Karlene’s voice stopped her in her tracks, but she didn’t turn.

  “We’re so close. We have to keep going.”

  Vree nodded. “You go on. I’ll catch up.”

  Gyhard threw up his hands and started back toward her. “That’s one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard. We chase Kars, you chase us …”

  *I hate to agree with the carrion eater, sister-mine, but he’s right. We have to stay together.*

  *Fine. He can stay with me.*

  Karlene stood in the center of the road, torn between two directions. They were close to the prince, less than a day’s walk away. If they kept moving, kept moving quickly, they might catch him before dark regardless of what Vree thought. But the cart had gone off the road and there were no kigh to tell her if Kars had left behind any of his walking dead. She took one last, longing look in the direction of the prince and turned her horse toward the station.

  “Vree, why are you doing this? Don’t you realize the risk you’re running?” Gyhard knew better than to grab her arm but his hand hovered in the air beside her.

  “You don’t have to run it with me.”

  *Yes, he does, Vree. He’s in my slaughtering body!*

  “As for why …” She paused, searching for the words. “The army is the only family an assassin has. I have to know. I have to …”

  *Vree!*

  *I see it.*

  Gyhard recognized the source of the interruption. “What does he want?”

  In answer, Vree pointed to the cart tracks cutting up into the station yard and the tracks cutting back to the road. “He had at least three more people with him when he left.”

  The blood inside the building filled in the details.

  “Why does he want more?” Karlene demanded, pacing back and forth, savagely twisting a new braid into her hair.

  “I told you, he’s insane. He doesn’t have reasons for what he does.” Gyhard stuffed a half-dozen onions into a bag with a canvas sack of rice. The station’s food had been disturbed but so inefficiently he suspected that Kars had ordered one of the dead to do it. “Maybe he thought His Highness needed more company.”

  “No.” Vree straightened and let the lid of the trunk she’d been searching fall. “Not company. Defense. Weapons and armor are missing. That cart left with an armed escort. A dead escort,” she added through clenched teeth.

  Karlene stared at her. “You’re angry.” Actually, the tone of her voice had been closer to blind fury. “You were never this angry about the prince.”

  “I never knew the prince.”

  “You never knew these people either,” Gyhard pointed out. “You spent your life in the other end of the Empire.”

  “I knew them.” Vree picked up a tin tinderbox stamped with three sunbursts from the plank table and closed her fingers tightly around it. Three sunbursts, not six, but that was the only difference. The sudden sense of loss nearly overwhelmed her and as she struggled under its weight, Bannon usurped control. “I’m going to rip that slaughtering carrion eater limb from limb! I’m going to cut out his living heart and slaughtering feed it to him!”

  “Kars is mine.” It wasn’t a tone that could be argued with for all its quiet. Gyhard set the bag of food on the table and met Vree’s eyes. “Stay away from him, Bannon.”

  “Or you’ll what? What can you do to me that’s worse than this?” He spread his sister’s arms wide. “Go ahead. Take your best shot.”

  “If I could throw you out of there, I would.”

  “Throw me out so you can climb in yourself? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” The peal of laughter had a maniacal ring. “Well, you’re not going to ever get the chance.”

  All at once, Gyhard found Vree’s hands locked around his throat, Vree’s eyes staring into his, Bannon’s kigh trying to force his way back into Bannon’s body. He staggered, almo
st fell, and then contemptuously flicked Bannon away.

  Vree’s hands fell away and she dropped to her knees, head thrown back and mouth open in a silent scream.

  “He’s in there too tightly to push out,” Gyhard murmured, unable to look away from the vulnerable arc of Vree’s throat. “He just snapped back.”

  “She wouldn’t have thanked you for killing him,” Karlene snarled, moving up behind him. She wanted to help but had no idea of what she could do. “Vree?”

  The tendons in Vree’s neck stood out like rope. Muscles twisted under her skin. Her throwing daggers slipped out of their wrist sheaths and clattered on the flagstone floor.

  “We can’t just leave her like that.” Karlene pushed forward and took a deep, calming breath. “Vireyda Magaly!”

  Gyhard glared at her suspiciously. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s power in a name.” She threw the explanation at him as she stepped closer and used all the Voice she had. “Vireyda Magaly! I’m calling you!”

  Vree jerked, once, twice, then collapsed as every muscle relaxed at the same time.

  Gyhard beat the bard to the floor. Disregarding both the danger and the audience, he scooped her up into his arms and rested his cheek against the top of her head. For a heartbeat, he thought she relaxed into his hold, then there was no mistaking her desire to be released. He let her go before she could reach for a dagger.

  Moving slowly, she stood and half smiled at the bard. “Thank you. Bannon, by the way, says you’re an interfering, slaughtering sow.”

  Karlene returned the smile. “You’re welcome.”

  “Are you all right?” Gyhard’s voice held only mild interest, but he had less control over his expression.

  Vree bent and picked up her daggers. “At least this time I stayed conscious.” Her voice matched his for lack of emotion. “Why aren’t you asking if I’m sane anymore?”

  She was standing so close he could feel the heat of her body. He shrugged. “Because I wouldn’t believe the answer.”

  “Bannon has some names for you, too, but if I repeated them all we’d be here past dark.” She returned the daggers to the sheaths and pulled her sleeves down again. “I’m going out to release the horses. There’s plenty of grazing and they can drink out of the river. The army can round them up when it arrives.”