“Oh, um, black.”
“Black it is,” Marlen said, putting the pieces out on the board.
As the game progressed, it was clear to Jonas that Marlen was by far the better player, but also that he was going easy on him. Time passed and the inn filled slowly as the workers finished for the day.
“You seem distracted,” Marlen said.
“Oh?” Jonas said, contemplating his next move.
“You keep looking up at the door. I’m sure your friend will announce his arrival when he gets here.”
“I’m sure he will,” Jonas said. “Check,” he added.
Marlen smiled and took the piece.
There was a commotion by the door and a group of young men barged into the inn.
Jonas tensed.
“I see your friends are here,” Marlen observed. He looked at the gang. “Anything you want help with?” he said calmly to Jonas.
“No, I’ve got this,” he said standing up. “Thanks for the game.” He looked at the gang. “Maybe you should be leaving,” he said.
Marlen looked at him seriously for a moment. “As you wish,” he said, packing the set up quickly.
Jonas turned to face the gang by the door.
“Lump,” said a short, rat-faced man said with a nasty smile. “There you are.”
“Here I am,” Jonas said, putting a hand on the table and noticing the gang start to fan out.
“I think it’s time you came with us,” the little man said. He noticed the well-to-do man sat calmly by Jonas and smiled. “You and your friend, I think.”
Jonas smiled, picked the table up easily and in one swift movement launched it at his boss. Men dived out of the way and there was a tremendous crash as it hit the wall where a couple of them had been a moment earlier.
“Time to go,” Jonas said to Marlen as he twisted the leg off a bar stool.
The inn had turned to chaos. The gang tried to barge their way to Jonas and became embroiled in a full-on brawl.
“Maybe not,” Marlen said, picking up his cane and moving to Jonas’ side.
Two men came at Jonas. The first received the stool leg to the top of his head. He didn’t swing hard, he wasn’t trying to kill anyone. The man still collapsed to the floor senseless. He turned to face the second but saw him writhing on the floor in pain and Marlen’s cane outstretched.
Jonas frowned. Something felt wrong.
A crowd pressed in the chaos and there was a flash of a blade. Marlen moaned and dropped to the floor, clutching his stomach. Jonas looked down at him, feeling very uncomfortable as he fended off men with his club.
Suddenly there was shouting by the door and a group of soldiers pushed into the inn, armed with coshes. Swiftly they set about restoring order, clubbing people and dragging them off. Jonas started to back away to his planned exit. The press gang were here on the outbreak of trouble as he’d expected. He looked at Marlen, laying still on the floor. He ducked down, grabbed him and escaped the inn. Marlen wasn’t moving. Jonas looked at his hands. They were covered in blood. He looked at them, confused. This felt wrong. Someone shook him and said his name.
He woke with a start but it took a moment to orient himself. He was on a bedroll in some woods. Alia was crouched over him, looking concerned.
“I’m alright, girl,” he said quietly, sitting up.
“Bad dream?”
“Yeah. Something like that. What time is it?”
“A couple of hours before dawn I think.”
“What are you doing up?”
“My watch.”
“Oh, of course.”
“You were making noise so I came to check on you.”
“No one on watch?”
“I’m not that irresponsible. Daeholf is up too and is keeping an eye out.”
“Sorry. Look, I’m awake now and not going to sleep anymore tonight. You get yourself down for a couple of hours, I’ll take over.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Fine.”
“Okay. Thanks then,” Alia said, stepping across to her bedroll.
Jonas stood up and shook himself off. He walked over to where Daeholf stood on watch.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll take over.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“Not tonight now.”
Daeholf studied him, dimly lit by the small campfire. “I recognise that look. Sometimes the horrors of our past come back to haunt us,” he said gently.
Jonas inclined his head in agreement.
“Okay, all yours then,” Daeholf added, indicating the woods with his arm before heading back to his spot near the fire.
Jonas looked at him as he went. There was a lot they were not telling each other but his new companions continued to give him a good impression.
He thought back to his dream. He shuddered involuntarily. Though vivid, that wasn’t quite how it had happened. He shrugged, trying to brush it off. With all that had been happening he supposed it was inevitable he’d start dreaming about the old days. He started his patrol.
*****
Marlen looked around whilst he waited for the subjects to be brought in. He was in the main room of a basement complex under an abandoned warehouse. It had been a lucky find, giving him a temporary base to work from and continue his work whilst things elsewhere fell into place. One of the local businessmen had been something of a smuggler on the side and had constructed this hiding place to store the things he wanted to keep away from the authorities.
It had worked — as far as he could tell there were no signs of forced entry and there were still a number of dusty crates, undisturbed for years. The owner had been forced to leave when the village had been abandoned following a raid by bandits many years ago. Whilst the bandits had eventually been captured and killed by the army, the villagers had never returned, leaving something of a ghost town. Or in Marlen’s case, a gold mine.
Still, it paid to be circumspect and though the village was abandoned, Marlen had been careful to leave few signs of his or his men’s presence. It was still far too early to invite attention to his activities. Which is why he found himself in the smuggler’s basement, away from any potential prying eyes.
The room had been swept clear as best as possible and torches put up for light but these were hardly ideal conditions for surgery. The operating theatre at his ultimate destination would be much more appropriate. Oh, it didn’t mean he couldn’t still be effective but he had learnt long ago that surgery and dirt were not happy friends and keeping things clean drastically reduced the amount of magic he had to use to make a procedure a success.
There was a quiet knock at the open door and he nodded at the pair of men there. As they dragged the unconscious man into the room to place him on the makeshift operating table, Marlen considered the operation he was about to perform.
Whilst the two-hearts experiment had been a success (once the blood pressure problems were under control) the extra set of lungs had been a disaster. There just wasn't enough space in the chest cavity and the man had quickly choked and suffocated.
Although he had joked about two brains, it was something he did intend to try, once the problem of where to put it had been solved. He'd cracked open a number of skulls for a look and it seemed that brain size was a poor indicator of intelligence. Something might be possible in the chest perhaps, although it was already a bit crowded in there.
That was for another day though. Improvement by replacement was the current area of study and wolves were an ongoing area of particular interest. Their stamina, hearing and low light eyesight were all desirable traits and he'd now had small successes grafting sensory animal organs into his subjects, but he needed a lot more practice to perfect the technique. Such triumph when it had finally worked. And then such despair from the many failures.
Human grafts were so much easier!
Perhaps a small animal's brain to control the body functions leaving the human brain for higher thought? Hmm. That might warrant further study.
But that was a distraction at present and he brought his attention to the matter in hand.
He looked down at the wolf’s body. A good specimen and fresh. It was a good candidate. He looked at the unconscious man next to it. He sighed. Generally, he had been restricting himself to those that wouldn't be missed but that rarely meant good material to work with and this was no exception. Whilst it had been relatively easy to cure the man's scurvy, it had left his body in bad shape. Although the wolf heart, if it worked, would be good for him, it was unlikely that he would survive the procedure.
His sacrifice was noble.
Even though he wouldn't know it.
*****
“Someone’s coming down the road.”
Jonas was already looking ahead when Daeholf said it, but the older man couldn’t initially see what had been spotted. It took a few moments before his own eyes picked out the three dots on the horizon, evidently walking down the road toward them. Jonas kept his face set, but wondered whether to be impressed with the scout’s vision or worried his own was starting to fade. He’d have seen them at the same time when he was young, he was certain. Still, there were people coming…
“I’ll ride on and ask them about the area,” he said, urging his horse up the road to try and stop the travellers from disappearing into the wood, because they’d already lost sight of one group who’d been walking down the road, evidently spotted something and disappeared into it. Hunters or woodsmen, the guilty tended to flee and the innocent keep walking. This time, however, the three people coming towards them made no effort to disappear, and Jonas was able to close. Bearded, dressed in sensible outdoor clothes and carrying axes, they paused and looked at Jonas with the heavy eyes of people that did not want to talk.
A little conversation established that the woodsmen hadn’t seen the quarry, but they did say lots about the landscape around them, and by the time the others had reached Jonas he was waiting alone.
“Did they say anything interesting?” Trimas asked, so circumspect that Daeholf actuallyraised an eyebrow.
“They haven’t seen our healer, or any strange looking people. But they did outline the paths, the valleys, the farm that’s a few miles down that way and…” Jonas stopped. You didn’t need to be a great reader of faces to know that the way his new companions had just snapped their heads round to share a look meant something bad. “You mentioned a farm before.”
Daeholf replied, “Yes, a farm where someone had taken most of the residents. The arms and the heads.”
“Ah. And you think this farm is in danger…”
“We better take a look.” Daeholf said it like he was going to a funeral, but turned and held out a hand to Zedek, who shook his head and handed over his bow. Then he went to say, “I’ll go scout around,” but it came out exactly the same time from Jonas’ mouth.
Daeholf smiled, nodded, and left Jonas in no doubt which of the three made the decisions in these situations.
“How about you look round the left, I’ll go right, and we’ll meet up,” Jonas offered.
“Agreed.”
“What, I stay here?” Alia asked with mock indignation.
“We’ll try and be interesting,” Trimas jabbed back.
It didn’t take long for Daeholf and Jonas to loop round and meet, and soon they were sharing notes.
“No blood on the road in, no signs of people fleeing through the bushes or fields.”
“No one moving about near the house and barns, animals all secured.”
With the initial pass done, and no one hiding in wait for unwary visitors, the group reunited, spread out, drew their weapons and began an advance on the main buildings. They remained quiet, just the sound of their footfalls on the packed earth, until Daeholf cocked his head.
“No birds singing. Something scared them off.”
“Magic? Weird men monsters? The stink of cow shit?” Trimas offered, but went silent as Zedek held up a hand, pointed, and slowly moved towards the target with his bow ready to fire. Alia almost asked why he was stalking a trough, but decided to play it cool when she noticed Daeholf and Trimas tense up. Zedek made it close enough to peer in, see rough carved stone, green lichen, and the hollow centre filled with … water.
Zedek turned and smiled. “Empty.”
There were sighs of relief, then eyes turned back to the house, a standard wooden structure which matched the local architecture so much you could have dumped it down in any part of the region and not caused any undue wonder.
The group had soon fanned out and searched all but the farmhouse. “Nothing,” had been the word called around the group. No blood, no footprints, animals calm. They were at the point where weapons were being lowered and the nagging sense something had happened was building.
“I’m not sure whether I’m pleased we didn’t find another pile of limbs,” Trimas said as he regarded the closed wooden door of the main building.
“That’s not good?” Alia asked.
“Well, might just mean they’re taking the whole corpse now, not that everyone’s gone off to market or something.”
“Are you waiting for me?” Daeholf said, coming up to the door.
“Yes, I know you love checking for traps.”
“Well, this door looks fine, let’s have a look…”
He pushed the door open and looked inside. No obvious horrors, so he led the way in.
A short while later all five people were stood inside a rustic but well stocked kitchen.
“No arms, no head, no people, no signs of life.” Zedek wasn’t sure this was positive either.
With an absence of evidence, Jonas fell back on a gut reaction. “Something happened here. This place feels wrong.”
“Agreed,” Trimas said, “I think they’ve learned. No more cutting bits off.”
“Could they have been taken alive?” Zedek was now running through the scenarios in his mind.
“Dead might be better,” was Daeholf’s pragmatic answer.
“Cold.”
Daeholf would have sparred with Trimas, but the presence of their two allies and the massaging of their histories made him stay silent on the matter. Instead he suggested, “We better move on. Can’t take the food in case the owners are coming back.”
Jonas gave Alia a look which said they weren’t.
“We could always sleep here?” Zedek suggested.
“As if we would…” Alia paused. “You spent the night at the last farm?”
Trimas laughed at her amazement as he pulled a mock guilty face. “It was wet, we were tired…”
Jonas noted this down in his mind.
*****
The hanging had drawn a large crowd, all wanting to see a noted outlaw strung up, and that meant plenty of people who wanted to eat as they saw the four people, three men and one woman, hung one by one, precious minutes passing between each death to allow the legs to stop bucking and to give the crowd their enjoyment. A large, hungry, bloodthirsty crowd, yes, that always meant a good day for someone like Ward, who had sold out of stock as he’d worked his way through selling spiced nuts, raisins and other items that could be half eaten and then thrown at the gallows as the condemned were brought up. There was regret, of course there was, because he should have anticipated the level of interest and brought more to sell, and there wasn’t going to be a thief as infamous as this unless the Green Road outlaws were caught…
It was growing dark now, an early winter’s night, and Ward was walking back to the city, the crowd long gone, his pockets filled with bronze and silver, a trip to his money chest required before a far longer trip to an inn to drink in celebration. He had enough cash now to tide him over for two months, until he spent some of it on—
The blow had been aimed at the back of his head, but the assailant had slipped and the club had fallen across Ward’s back. Still, while it hadn’t knocked him out it sent him sprawling, and as he hit the muddy ground he automatically raised his arms to shield his head, and felt the blows of the wooden club
striking them. If someone wanted to kill him this was the place to do it, a lonely road at night, and in his panic he could do little more than curl up like a foetus. But this wasn’t what the attacker wanted, as the clubbing stopped and hands started to pull Ward’s cloak, pushing into the curl of his stomach and legs.
“Money,” the voice barked, “where’s your money,” and Ward realised what was happening. He wasn’t being murdered, he was being robbed. And then possibly murdered. As his mind dissolved in fear over whether to hand the money over or stay in a ball, he didn’t see the club being raised once again to force the point. He didn’t see the club being dropped, the attacker’s scared face as the arm began to twitch, and he only heard the man collapse to the ground as every muscle in the assailant’s body started to spasm.
A third man, lean, with eyes suited for taking stock rather than being friendly, towered above the supine men. He decided the muscles needed to do more damage, that this thief was a threat, and with a touch of the staff the attacker’s body now began to course with agony. Smiling, content this had stopped the violence sufficiently, Marlen turned and began to help a shaking and confused Ward to his feet.
Muddy, in pain, Ward looked at the shaking attacker, and back up at the new man.
“Wh… Wh…”
“Take your time.”
Ward made a closer study of his saviour, saw a face that might be kindly in daylight, and nodded, slowly getting his breath back, his fear ebbing. Finally, he was able to say, “What’s happening?”
“This man won’t trouble you anymore.”
“Have you killed him?” Ward couldn’t remember what sort of sword or mace would put a person into that condition. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever seeing someone in that condition. It was worse than the men he’d seen twitching as they hung from the end of the rope.
“No, he’ll recover, the spasming will stop as soon as I want it to, and I will want it to as soon as you’ve put a suitable distance between us.”
“You did that?”
The man’s smile was vulpine.
“Who are you?” Ward was suddenly afraid, but was put at ease when the potential mage held his hands out and said, “Simply a healer.”
Dark Healer (An Empire Falls Book 1) Page 21
