Wonder where they’re goin’, Spirk thought to himself. Wish I could join ‘em.
Back down at ground level, Spirk gazed into the darkness ahead. Long had recommended that he take “the loneliest way” to Gorivar’s place and Spirk had done it. Though a number of tents and shanties pinwheeled outwards from the cabin, there was one approach from the woods that was too far from the rest of the encampment to draw anyone’s interest. As much as folk disliked or distrusted one another in town, they craved proximity when camping in the wilds. Thus, they’d left one remote stretch of snowy ground unoccupied and unmolested. Spirk had the damnedest impulse to lie down and make snow ghosts, but he feared he’d be caught if he did.
He paused when he came within shouting distance of the cabin, frozen in place by the passage of two guards – the men who’d come by Long’s tent earlier for the rent. One of the men stopped for a moment, as if he’d caught scent of something peculiar and only resumed his trek when his partner hissed at him. As usual, Spirk had not been seen. He thought again about making a snow ghost; again, he dismissed the idea as likely to lead to trouble.
Once the guards rounded the cabin’s nearest corner, Spirk screwed up his courage and crept to the closest wall. Great icicles hung from the eaves – a sure sign of a good and constant fire roaring within. Spirk had always been fascinated by icicles and wondered, for perhaps the millionth time, if they’d make good swords. They had no cutting edge to them, of course, but the pointy end looked nasty, and maybe the cold would add something to their value as weaponry. Experimentally, Spirk reached up and yanked on the nearest one – a great spike that stretched almost from the roof to the ground – but found it would not come loose. He pulled harder with the same result. Now, it was war. No stinkin’ icicle was gonna humilify Spirk! He noticed there was a corridor of sorts between the cabin wall and the frozen curtain of ice. Bracing himself against the cabin, Spirk lifted his foot to about chest-level and placed it on the back of the icicle. Taking a deep breath, he began to push. Immediately, his foot slipped, and he fell forward, smacking his forehead against the ice, in response to which he rebounded and crashed into the wall, causing both a loud thud and a small avalanche of snow from the roof. He was still trying to clear his head when he heard a shout from somewhere and the sound of men approaching his location.
“Dunno,” someone yelled. “Think it came from the backside!”
“Ya,” someone else said, “It’s round here, I think.”
Before Spirk could sort himself out, men were coming towards him from the left and right. To his astonishment, he discovered he’d succeeded in dislodging the icicle, and, not knowing what else to do, he picked it up and held it out in front of himself like the sword he wished it were.
The guards stumbled to a stop in front of him, expressions of hostility and confusion on their brutish faces, and glowered in Spirk’s direction.
“What we got ‘ere?” one of them asked.
“It’s a prowler, innit?”
“Dunno,” the first man replied. “Havin’ trouble makin’ him out.”
“What d’yer mean? They’s a man there!”
If one the guards had recognized him, Spirk reasoned, it wouldn’t be long before he convinced his friend as well. Whatever spell the young Shaper had over Gorivar’s men was fading rapidly. Absent other ideas, Spirk thrust the icicle at the fellow who’d seen him. A peculiar sensation of prickling, itching – burning! – emanated from the center of Spirk’s being and radiated outwards to the very tips of his fingers and toes. In the next instant, a blue light shot from the icicle and into the first guard’s chest, whereupon he yelped and stumbled backwards in the snow, only to trip and land on his ass in the knee-deep powder.
“Alheria’s frozen underbrush!” the man cursed. “I’m sa cold of a sudden.”
The second guard, nonplussed by this turn of events, gaped stupidly at his companion.
“Mauncy! A little help here!” the first man urged through chattering teeth.
By the time Mauncy reached his friend, however, the man was unresponsive. Mauncy let out a startled cry and yelled “Witchery! They’s witchery afoot!”
The last thing Spirk wanted was another, larger rush of guards in his direction. Without thinking, he leapt out from under the eaves and bonked Mauncy on the head with the icicle. Again, Spirk was overcome with a burning sensation, and a blue light flashed from the icicle into Mauncy’s mane of dark, shaggy hair. Mauncy raised his hands to the crown of his head and began to wheel around in order to get a look at his assailant…and never made it. Instead, halfway through his turn, he began to shudder violently and then, like his friend, topple over into the snow, where he lay motionless.
Spirk held his breath, listened. The expected uproar hadn’t developed. He listened harder. Somewhere off in the camp, someone was sneezing uncontrollably. Spirk listened harder still and thought he heard his own heart beating. It was going frightfully fast, and he wondered if it was trying to escape him somehow.
He glanced at the men in the snow, felt a pang of conscience. The icicle in his hand was chilly, certainly, but not unbearably so. What had he done with that icicle? What had he done to those men? Carefully, he knelt down next to the closest of them and studied the man’s face. Spirk saw no evidence that the guard was breathing – no telltale plumes of hot breath into the cold winter air, no movement of lips or flaring of nostrils. Worried now, he reached down and felt the skin of the guard’s neck, which proved as cold as the snow on which he lay. Spirk snatched his hand back in sudden horror. He’d frozen those men! He felt an impulse to throw the icicle off into the trees, and yet…he might need its magic again before the night was over (already, he struggled to distance himself from what he’d done: these deaths were the icicle’s doing, not his own). He retreated from the bodies to the safety of the shadows under the eaves, shivering from a cold within that had nothing to do with winter or magic.
“And that’s when I says, ‘Listen, you bitch…”
More guards, making their rounds. Spirk wasted no time in sneaking off in the opposite direction, which was, fortuitously, the way he’d been going all along. He had no interest in encountering anyone else on this mission.
At the end of the cabin’s back wall, Spirk chanced a quick peek around the corner, where he saw three figures grunting, groaning and otherwise carrying on as they engaged in what could only have been some kind of sexual activity. Time was, Spirk might’ve convinced himself something else was going on, something completely innocent. He knew better, now. And he felt confident that, preoccupied as these sexers were, they’d never catch sight of his always invisible self.
He was correct. He had to strike a wide arc around the threesome, because they were using the wall as leverage in their…activities. But he had no difficulty in getting past them and on to the next corner, which rounded, he knew, to the front of the huntsman’s cabin. There, Long Pete had warned, Spirk was likely to find the greatest number of Gorivar’s men. Stealing a quick look, he found to his surprise that Long was mistaken: there was only one man stationed at the door, albeit a big, ornery looking fellow. Spirk switched the icicle from his right to his left hand, so that he could count the number of guards he’d encountered on his fingers. There were the two he’d frozen. Two others, going the opposite way ‘round the cabin, the three goin’ at it. And the one in front. That didn’t seem like too many to Spirk. He wondered if Long and the rest would agree.
As he had no further instructions and didn’t dare try the guard in front by himself, Spirk considered his options for retreat. He knew the guards at his back would reach him soon. Unless they stopped to examine the bodies he’d left in his wake. Then they’d probably raise an alarm. Well, he couldn’t go back the way he’d come, he reckoned, and forward was out of the question. Spirk took off running, or as close to it as he could manage in the snow, at an angle perpendicular to the wall. He feared discovery with every labored breath; he needn’t have worried: nobody ever saw Spirk Ne
ssno.
*****
Nelby & Esmine, On the Road
Nelby understood suffering, none better. It was bitterly cold in the barn, and she was worried sick for Esmine. Big, the girl might be, but she was still a child. The trauma of being abducted and then seeing her mother die before her had eroded Esmine’s normally buoyant spirit to the point where she seemed to have lost the will to fight. Nelby feared it wouldn’t be long before the cold, malnutrition or lack of restful sleep snuffed the girl’s light forever.
The slavers – for that is what Nelby supposed them to be -- who had stolen the former thrall and her charge devoted just enough attention to their prisoners to keep them alive and little more, doing things like moving them into this drafty old barn, for instance, so they could stretch their legs a bit when not on the road. But they were never truly warm, never had full bellies, never got enough exercise, never had enough privacy to do their business comfortably. She would like to have hated the slavers, but that wanted more energy than she possessed. And anyway, the two she had most cause to despise were dead, or so she’d heard, killed by Esmine’s mother. She only wished she could have seen it.
She pulled the one blanket her captors had given Nelby and Esmine to share tighter around herself and the girl, hoping that somehow the combined warmth of their bodies would defeat the cold’s searching fingers. The girl barely responded to this momentary jostling, giving her guardian even further cause for concern.
What have I got to trade for more blankets or food? Nelby wondered. Sex, she thought and quickly shoved the notion aside, in an effort to convince herself such a thing wasn’t necessary. I can cook! But these slavers didn’t seem to care what they ate or how it was prepared. I can mend things – hose, sweaters, jerkins. I can…Nothing else came to mind, no matter how badly she wished it. She’d been a young housewife before the End. She’d learned and done everything a housewife did. Everything. She exhaled a shuddering sigh. Sex. The bitter truth was, it was better to give in trade than have it violently stolen with nothing offered in return but injury.
She looked down at Esmine again, took in the girl’s hollow cheeks, faintly bluish skin.
It was time to trade.
Hanging her head in resignation and anticipatory shame, she laid Esmine on her side in the straw, covered her in the rest of the blanket, and walked towards the barn door. She knew there was at least one man on guard on the opposite side and possibly more. She’d hope for one.
As she raised her hand to knock, she was struck by how thin her fingers had gotten, how boney her knuckles. She feared they might shatter against the stubborn wood of the door. She knocked, anyway.
“Ya?” a male voice grunted. “Wot?”
“We could use a little more food in here,” Nelby said, “And blankets, too.”
Coarse laughter. “Could ye, now? I reckon you’ll be wantin’ your jewels next, eh?”
There were sizable gaps between the planks in the door; Nelby pressed her mouth to one of them. “I’m willin’ to…to trade,” she breathed.
“Ha!” barked the unseen guard. “And wot ‘ave you got ter trade? Nits? Amusin’ stories o’ life in the country?”
“You know what I’ve got to trade,” Nelby hinted.
The guard cackled so hard at this that he nearly choked on his own tongue. If only, Nelby thought. “Ye think I’d go fer a pale bag o’ bones like you? Might as well wait ‘til yer dead, then at least I won’t ‘ave to listen to ye whinin’.”
“Or p’raps you’re the sort likes little boys,” Nelby countered, letting her anger get the best of her.
“Little boys, is it?”
“Yeah, you know, them as can’t fight back. Maybe you’ll do like your da did to you?”
The guard angrily tore at the door’s makeshift lock.
Nelby stepped backwards, but gained no advantage on the enraged guard as he stormed through the now open doorway and grabbed at her with both hands.
“I’ll show you wot a real man can do!” the guard growled as he slammed Nelby down onto the frozen dirt. She was powerless to resist him, and in seconds, he had forced himself inside her. Mercifully, this “real man” didn’t last more than a minute before he spent himself and then rolled onto his side, heaving like an exhausted bull.
Nelby knew there would be no trade now; not for this. As she lay on her back, contemplating whether or not she should attack the man who lay gasping beside her, he suddenly choked and began wheezing terribly. A crossbow bolt protruded from his throat, just under his jaw, and thick gouts of black blood poured down his neck. Fearing the next would land in her chest, Nelby scuttled backwards like a crab, trying to put as much distance between herself and the door as possible.
“That’s a shame,” an inflectionless voice called out. “I was aiming for his face.”
A new man appeared in the doorway, in silhouette. There was a crossbow in his arms, but he seemed in no hurry to reload it. “What did you say to your friend there to get him so fired up?”
“I asked if I might have more food and blankets for the girl,” Nelby lied, motioning towards the back of the barn with her chin.
The newcomer stepped into the barn. It was difficult to make out his features in the gloom, but he was unquestionably younger and more spry than the man he’d just killed. “Aye,” said he. “I keep tellin’ ‘em your girl won’t fetch as good a price if she’s doin’ poorly. Do they listen? Nah. Things’d be different an’ I was in charge.” With that, the stranger made his way to the still-twitching body on the ground and, loading a new bolt into his crossbow, ensured the guard’s death. “Understand, I’m gonna hafta tell the others this ‘un tried to defile the girl. If I tell ‘em I killed Warny fer goin’ after you, well, it’ll go hard fer me. Most of ‘em don’t give two shits fer you, beggin’ yer pardon.”
Nelby nodded, feeling some sort of response was warranted and unable to think of anything better.
“Truth to tell, I been lookin’ fer a reason to fix this one fer some time,” the young man went on, as he pointed to the corpse with his crossbow.
“Why?” Nelby asked, her voice almost a whisper.
“Why? I didn’t like his teeth. Great, big grey slabs they was. His mouth looked like a graveyard full ‘o tombstones whenever he smiled. And his breath? Gods!”
Nelby couldn’t decide was which worse, her savior’s attitude, or his description of the dead man’s teeth.
“But now I figure, you done me a favor and I done you a favor. We’re bound-like. In a blood pact.”
That said, he took another step closer to Nelby, into a spot where the light was somewhat better. He was the handsomest man she’d ever seen, despite the utter lack of compassion in his expression.
*****
Vykers, In Lunessfor
Vykers hoped the woman had been joking. The passage, she’d said, lay underneath the executioner’s block in Judgment Square, a place the common folk referred to as Camis’ Yard. Once Vykers found the place, he was dismayed at the size of the challenge before him. For one thing, the block itself was gigantic, with enough space across its top for five condemned men to lay their heads side-by-side. The Reaper wondered what sort of an axe could behead five men at a time, or whether the condemned were sent to it one at a time, in full view of their equally doomed neighbors. The other major difficulty was that the yard was surrounded by tall, many-windowed buildings. Even if the block could be moved, he wasn’t at all certain it could be accomplished without witnesses. Assuming those miracles had been achieved and Vykers slipped down the hole, the block then had to be returned to its original position, so as not to attract attention.
He’d once been led out of the castle by means of another secret passage, but upon searching for it, discovered the building which contained it had been reduced to a mountain of rubble. Weighing his choices, the Reaper fumed.
But not for long, as he suddenly recalled a ruse he’d been involved in as a younger man, something to do with his old sergeant, Hobnail
. Worried he’d lose the thread of this memory, he stopped where he was and leaned against a wall until it came back to him in full force. Yes, he had an idea how he might solve this puzzle, and it was a good thing he had so much gold stashed away, because this plan was likely to prove costly. That bothered him less than the amount of time it would take to execute.
Execute. Executioner’s block. Arune would’ve had something witty to say about that.
So: Vykers needed to hire carpenters, several stone masons, blacksmiths or equally burly types, and a fireworks expert. Fortunately, tradesmen were not hard to locate. Oh, a Shaper could’ve solved Vykers’ problem in seconds, but since he was planning to kill one soon, he didn’t think it wise to alert them to his existence. As far as anyone knew, Tarmun Vykers had gone off somewhere (wherever Arune had taken him), and Igraine was just another winsome waif.
The rest of the day flew by whilst Vykers sought out and hired those necessary for the implementation of his plan. In the afternoon, though, he was reminded that his exterior attracted attention in ways and under circumstances altogether different from those that affected the Reaper.
He was walking down a side-street near the barbican in the day’s waning light, searching for a brothel he’d heard about as part of the next stage in his plan, when he became aware of the shuffling of numerous feet behind him. Turning about, he saw four men walking directly towards him. Why not? It seemed Igraine could not go anywhere in Lunessfor without provoking some sort of aggressive reaction. Well, Vykers was tired of running. Drawing his dagger from its sheath, he assumed a defensive stance and called out, “You’ve never seen a young woman before?”
“Not one spends as freely as you do,” the foremost of the men replied, as he continued to approach.
“And here I thought it was my good looks,” Vykers cracked.
“Oh, aye,” another of the men said, “There’s that, too.”
“Well,” the Reaper said, “unless one o’ you is fixin’ to propose, you’d better back the fuck off, ‘cause I ain’t in the mood for dancin’.”
Corpse Cold (Immortal Treachery Book 3) Page 8
