“A taller wall?” Sharzen asked, confused.
“No,” Lupinius clarified. “More extensive, I mean. It isn’t enough to simply wall off the fort and the town. We should build a wall that spans the entire frontier, confining the Picts to their side.”
“But we’ve eliminated the threat from the Picts,” Sharzen said. He still didn’t understand, Lupinius knew. But then, it wasn’t intelligence that had won him his job.
“Just one clan,” Lupinius reminded him. “But there are many others, and they remain a threat to Aquilonians all along the frontier. If we built a wall that hemmed them all in, kept them penned into their specific area, it would make all of us safer.”
He lowered his voice conspiratorially, though he didn’t see anyone else close enough to listen in. “Besides, if we—you and I—are the prime movers behind building the wall, then we become two of the most important men in the region, overnight. We are taking steps to ensure the safety of everyone in the border region. We control the building crews and the finances. We can probably get assistance from Aquilonia for such an ambitious project—especially important now that the Picts have broken the truce here and killed King Conan’s personal ambassador. Has an emissary gone to the king yet, to let him know of Invictus’s tragic demise?”
“He leaves today,” Sharzen said. “Now that the funeral rites are over.”
“Then he can carry two messages.”
Sharzen was beginning to smile, finally catching up with Lupinius’s thought processes. “I think I see your point,” he said. “And I believe your plan has a lot of merit.”
Of course it does, Lupinius thought. He didn’t bother to say it, though. Before long, he would have Sharzen thinking the idea had been his own all along. He didn’t care which one of them got the credit for coming up with it—he would be too busy counting his gold and enjoying the fruits of his new celebrity for that.
Maybe it should even be called Lupinius’s Wall. No, Invictus’s Wall. The irony was too delicious to resist . . .
THERE WASN’T MUCH Kral could do for his people now. Their spirits had gone to the Mountains of the Dead. He could build a huge pyre to cremate all the bodies, but that would just create a new column of smoke, like the one drifting over Koronaka, and reveal to any observers that there was still someone alive in the Bear Clan village. That would not suit his ends at all.
So he mourned privately, camped at the base of the hill, and let the insects and birds do their nasty work in the village. He made periodic trips up to the top to gather supplies he might need, including weapons, and as many dark-colored animal skins as he could find. He was putting together the basics of a plan. He just hadn’t worked out all the details yet.
Thoughts of Alanya kept creeping unbidden into his mind as he worked. She was no warrior, and certainly hadn’t participated in the raid. But if she had known about it, she hadn’t warned him. He couldn’t tell how long before he had seen the smoke the battle had occurred, but there couldn’t have been very much time between his last meeting with Alanya in the forest clearing and the attack itself. Kral didn’t know much about the Aquilonians’ ways of war, but it seemed as if there must have been time needed for preparation, for beating the drums of war and singing the songs that would guide departed souls to their resting place. Could it be that Alanya was ignorant of all that, or did she simply choose not to tell him?
He did not consider her an enemy. But she was an Aquilonian, and the Aquilonian people had become his enemies. He didn’t anticipate that they would be meeting in her clearing in the woods again, and wasn’t sure what he’d do if they met in any other place.
The third day after his return, Kral heard someone moving through the nearby forest. He could tell the difference between animals and humans, and these sounds were definitely human. And there were more than one, though they were trying very hard to be silent.
Grabbing a bow and some arrows from his cache, he moved into a nearby stand of pines. There he stood motionless, waiting and watching. A few minutes passed, then he saw two people emerge from the trees and start up the hill toward the village.
Kral was amazed. He recognized them both—Mang, one of the village’s elders, and Klea, one of its women. Mang had seen nearly fifty years, and while his hair had grayed, he still stood tall and had the musculature of a much younger man. Klea was lean and short, not much over four feet, but she laughed easily and was popular around campfires at night. Kral emerged from his hiding place and shouted their names.
“Kral?” Klea said when she saw him. “What happened here?”
Kral sped up the hill to accompany them to the horrific scene above. “Aquilonians, from Koronaka,” he explained. “I was away on my Spirit Trek, but saw the smoke and returned, only too late to fight. This is what I found. I had thought you both dead with everyone else.”
“I was hunting, far to the north,” Mang explained. “And Klea had gone to bury Eltha, the daughter who died a few days before. We ran into one another yesterday, as we were both returning to the village.”
“There is much more burying to be done,” Kral suggested. “I had decided not to bother—to leave the corpses here as a testament to the battle our people fought. To burn them would only alert the Aquilonians that their effort had failed, that some of us yet lived, and to bury them all would be too much work.”
Tears streamed down Klea’s face as she turned to him. Mang tried hard to keep his emotions in check, but his lips quivered, and his eyes looked sorrowful. “Then . . . all the rest are . . . ?” He left the question unfinished.
“Yes,” Kral told them. “As far as I can tell. There may be others like you and me, who were away from the village. But certainly most, if not all, are dead.”
“Then . . . we are truly without a clan,” Klea said, between sobs.
“Or we are the clan,” Mang observed. “Bad enough they destroy the forests that give us life, now they take away what life we can still claim.”
“The Teeth of the Ice Bear is gone as well,” Kral reported, hesitant to deliver yet more bad news. “They took it.”
Mang’s face blanched even more. “They . . .”
“I will get it back,” Kral said. “I have already vowed to do so. I was working on my plan when I heard you approach.”
“We are not much of a clan,” Klea admitted. “But the Teeth remains our responsibility, and an awesome one it is.”
“Now that it’s gone,” Mang said, “it is no longer just our problem. All the Pict clans must be told. They must work with us to return it to its proper home.”
“Let them know we failed to protect it?” Klea asked.
“Better they learn it from us than from some horrible event,” Mang suggested.
“What horrible event?” Kral wondered. “What magic does the Teeth have sway over?”
Mang and Klea glanced at each other, as if daring the other to answer. Finally, Mang spoke up. “None of us are entirely sure,” he said. “I have heard many guesses, but no one seemed to know exactly what.”
“So we’ve spent generations protecting it, and we don’t even know why?” Kral asked.
“Perhaps the Guardian did,” Klea guessed. “But it is too late to ask him now.”
“Too late to ask anyone,” Kral grouched.
“The Teeth of the Ice Bear is not merely a Bear Clan superstition,” Mang insisted. “Other clans will know of it. All know how important it is to keep safe and protected.”
“But they entrusted the Bear Clan with its care,” Klea pointed out. “If we tell them that we failed, they will kill us as likely as aid us.”
“We have no choice,” Mang said. “We don’t know what might happen with the Teeth gone. We need to warn the other clans. At the same time, we should try to unite them against Aquilonia. This was not just an attack against the Bear Clan, this was an attack against all Picts. It needs to be treated as such, and the proper response made.”
“Unite?” Klea spat on the scorched earth. “The
clans have never united, even against a common enemy. They aren’t likely to start now.”
“Not if we do not try,” Mang countered adamantly. “But the Teeth has never gone missing before. And there’s never been a massacre like this to demonstrate how real the threat is. If we do not unite, the Aquilonians will pick us off, clan by clan. United, we can make them pay, and drive them back across the Thunder River again, out of our territory for good.”
Klea smiled. “I would love to believe you,” she said. “I am not convinced, but I am willing to try.”
Kral was surprised at the turn the conversation was taking. He had believed as Klea did, that nothing could unite the clans. But he had his own ideas about how to get the Teeth back and at the same time exact the appropriate revenge against the Aquilonians, and it didn’t involve having to explain his actions to the others.
“Perhaps the two of you should go to them,” he suggested. “Approach the other clans, tell them what has transpired here, warn them that the Teeth is out of our care for now. We only need a temporary truce of the clans, so they can work together against our common enemies. I will stay here and try to learn what I can from the settlers at Koronaka.”
“Learn how?” Klea inquired.
“I have some ideas,” Kral said simply. That was as much as he wanted to reveal at present.
“Very well,” Mang said. He took a look around the wasted village, the corpses strewn everywhere. “Fix this in your mind, Klea, so we can describe the scene to the others. Every Pict must know the atrocities of which the Aquilonians are capable.”
Kral didn’t think that part would be hard. He would never be able to rid himself of the image of his village after the soldiers had left it, no matter how many years he lived. Some things one couldn’t forget.
Or forgive.
11
KELAN WAS GLAD that Rossun stood watch with him that night.
One regular army soldier and one Ranger on every shift, that was the new rule. Rumor said it was something about making sure that everyone remembered Lupinius’s role in the whole wall project. Kelan paid scant attention to rumors, nor did he much care what the reasoning was. He just didn’t want to be out here alone.
Work on the wall had only been under way for five days. But in those five days, not a single night had gone by without incident. The first night, most of the first day’s work was undone. Stones were toppled over before mortar had set, logs knocked askew, tools stolen. The same had happened the next night, and the next, even though guards had been posted. Obviously, someone didn’t want the wall built. In five days, only two days’ worth of real progress had been made.
So the guards had been doubled. Sharzen and Lupinius were adamant that their wall would be built, and immediately, without waiting for assistance from Tarantia. Again, there were rumors, these suggesting that they wanted to be well along before King Conan heard about the wall, to make it less likely that he would forbid its construction.
So far, the night had been quiet. Kelan was nervous, though; each new wind that rustled tree branches made him start and stare off into the dark. There was almost no moon tonight, and the stars glimmered overhead like cold, faraway chips of ice. The light from the couple of torches they’d jammed into the wall hardly penetrated the night. “You think anything will happen tonight?” he asked Rossun.
“Has every other night,” Rossun said, with a shrug. “Our job to find out who is doing it and stop him.”
“What if it is not a man at all?” Kelan asked. “What if it’s . . . I know not . . .”
“What, some kind of monster?” Rossun returned, with a grin. “Then we kill a monster.”
Which didn’t exactly fill Kelan with confidence. Killing a monster sounded hard, and dangerous. He’d rather it was vandals from the town. Even Picts, though since the destruction of the Bear Clan that was unlikely.
Rossun pointed down the wall to the left, away from the fort. It was waist high so far, three-quarters of a mile long. This first section had been started about a quarter mile from the fort itself, on a clear, level field. While work progressed here, another crew was busily cutting trees to make way for the wall closer to Koronaka. But at night, Kelan couldn’t even see Koronaka’s lights from his post. “Why don’t you walk down to that end?” Rossun suggested. “I’ll go to the other, then we’ll turn around and walk back toward each other, you on this side of the wall and me on the other. When we meet, we’ll continue to the other man’s end and reverse. That way we’ll cover most of the wall every few minutes instead of leaving large parts of it totally unguarded.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kelan said, although it didn’t. He didn’t want to admit to Rossun how anxious he was about being alone. There was something very wrong about the whole thing, and he just couldn’t decide what it was. So he agreed with Rossun and nervously began walking toward his end of the wall, trying to peer through the nearly absolute darkness with every step.
As he walked, he turned every now and again to look back at Rossun, reassuring himself that his comrade was still there. When he was looking forward, the whistle of the wind swept away the sound of Rossun’s footsteps, and he might as well have been completely alone. He loosed his short sword in its scabbard, just in case—though what good it would be against a monster he wasn’t sure.
He heard his own feet crunching against earth packed hard by the weight of men carrying heavy rocks for the wall’s base, snapping the occasional twig that had blown there. He heard the wind. He heard the mournful cry of some hidden night bird.
He was almost to the end of the wall when he heard another sound, so out of place it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It was the steady, rhythmic sound of someone breathing.
And it was right on the other side of the wall.
He looked, but didn’t see anyone there. He glanced back toward Rossun, whose back was to him, almost to his own end of the wall. He could call for him, but didn’t want the Ranger to think he was a coward, crying out at the first odd sound.
Instead, he slipped his sword from its scabbard, took a deep breath, and leaned over the wall.
And squatting there, looking up at him, was a young Pict with a long dagger in his fist, his face and torso painted as blue as the night sky.
Kelan raised his sword to swing and tried to find his voice at the same time. But the Pict was faster, and he drove up with the dagger before Kelan could even bring his sword into position. The point of the Pict’s knife slammed into Kelan’s mail shirt with enough force to knock Kelan over backward. He landed on his back, the sword still clutched in his fist. Before he could push himself upright, the Pict charged over the wall at him.
This time, Kelan was able to react quickly enough, blocking the Pict’s advance with the short sword. The Pict corrected his attack midstride, ducking away from the sword. He moved silently, eyes never leaving Kelan’s face, lips compressed in a tight but unmistakable smile.
“Where is the crown?” the Pict asked quietly, in heavily accented Aquilonian.
“Crown? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You get no second chance,” the Pict whispered.
“Rossun!” Kelan called, no longer worried about being thought a coward.
As he did, however, he glanced toward where the Ranger should be. The Pict took advantage of the momentary lapse in concentration and dodged around the short sword. When Kelan looked back, the Pictish youth was right there in front of his face, the smile now broad and satisfied. He still held the dagger, but his other hand was cupped, as if holding something precious. He blew into his palm, and a fine dark powder blasted Kelan’s face. Kelan felt a burning pain in his eyes, then in his lungs. He dropped his sword. The darkness of the night seemed to wrap around him like a shroud, then it enveloped him completely.
ROSSUN THOUGHT HE heard his name. But the wind snatched sound away almost before it could travel even a few feet, so he wasn’t sure. He turned, just the same. Couldn’t see Kelan anywh
ere.
Just in case, he drew his sword and ran down the wall toward where Kelan should have been. A few moments later, he saw the soldier on the ground, seven or eight feet from the wall. He looked like he was curled up and taking a nap.
But when he reached Kelan he discovered that wasn’t the case at all. His eyes were wide-open, bulging visibly from his skull. His mouth was twisted in a horribly pained expression, blood trickling from both corners of his mouth. Rossun knelt beside him. “Who did this?” he asked. “Kelan, did you see who it was?”
Kelan didn’t answer, and after a couple of minutes he ceased to move at all.
Rossun swallowed hard. Someone—or something—had murdered Kelan, just a short distance away from him. He hadn’t seen any sign of the killer, hadn’t heard the struggle. He’d been facing the wrong way, and the wind didn’t let sound travel far. But still, he should have been aware that something was going on.
He stood up carefully, his sword at the ready. Whoever had killed Kelan couldn’t be far away yet. There was every chance he was still nearby, in the dark, watching Rossun. Maybe getting ready to attack even now.
Nervously, Rossun turned in a slow circle, trying to penetrate the blackness with his gaze. He saw nothing, no one. Whoever had murdered Kelan had faded immediately into the shadows.
No way to track the killer now. It was too dark, and he’d as likely wander off in the wrong direction altogether as actually find the killer’s tracks. The dirt was full of footprints from the workers coming and going.
Instead, he decided he should return to Koronaka to sound the alarm.
There was definitely someone working against the wall project, and that someone had just taken his opposition a step further.
A SHORT WHILE later, Kral hurried through the night woods, back toward the Black River and home. He had killed before, in the frenzy of battle, but he had never killed a man so cold-bloodedly. It was a strange sensation—at the same time easier than he’d expected and more difficult. Easy, because the man had barely put up a fight. He had been terrified, shaking so hard he could barely hold his sword. His voice had been a pained squeak.
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