Ghost of the Wall

by Jeff Mariotte

  It had been a simple matter for Kral to use the powdered calera root that Cuirn had taught him about. On the dead, it was used to help with the process of loosening flesh from skulls, for the souvenirs of war many Picts liked to take. But Cuirn had told him that it was also useful for killing, silently and without visible wounds. He had been right—the soldier had collapsed almost instantly, his face contorting terribly.

  The killing had been easy, also, because Kral was spurred on by his memories of his own home village, of the things the Aquilonians of Koronaka had done to his family and friends.

  And yet, difficult, too, because even though an Aquilonian, the man was still a human being. Thoughts of his friends and neighbors back in the village reminded Kral of the other man’s essential humanity—of the fact that he was somebody’s son, possibly someone else’s father or brother, husband or lover. Kral had no problem thinking of himself as a warrior, and if his clan hadn’t been at peace with the settlers of Koronaka, it was likely he’d have already done much more killing.

  But a warrior and a murderer were two different things.

  He was doing a warrior’s work, to be sure. He was trying to find the Teeth of the Ice Bear, and he had to do whatever that task required. But he was using a murderer’s methods.

  The Aquilonians probably thought him a savage who wouldn’t understand such fine distinctions. The truth was, the distinction was important to Picts, who believed that sending enemies to the lands of the dead in the course of battle was one of the noblest things they could ever hope to do. But killing someone by stealth, without a fair fight—that was the work of an assassin, not a warrior. He was glad that his victim had at least tried to fight back.

  He hoped they all would, because he suspected there would be a lot more killing before he found what he was looking for.

  12

  IN THE MORNING, Lupinius and Sharzen went to the wall to survey the damage. When Rossun had run back to Koronaka to rouse the troops, someone—presumably, whoever had killed Kelan—had knocked over a large section of the wall.

  “He’s like a ghost,” Lupinius complained. “Rossun saw no one. He says he thought he heard Kelan call out for him, but he turned around and could not see Kelan. By the time he found Kelan, the man was dead. Then he couldn’t see the killer, so he came back to Koronaka. At which time, whoever this is, this so-called ghost, did the damage to our wall.”

  “Does it not seem counter to our goal, to have the building of this wall become a losing struggle instead of a victory?” Sharzen asked.

  “We are only just finding that we have an enemy,” Lupinius replied. “We can defeat him, whoever he is. Ghost or man. We will put more guards on the wall. We need to get it done. If we abandoned it now, we would look like fools.”

  “Perhaps it’s a foolish idea,” Sharzen offered.

  “You have never had a foolish idea,” Lupinius insisted. “It’s a fine idea, and we will make it happen. We simply need more guards at night. Whoever killed Kelan will not dare try anything if there are ten soldiers on the wall, instead of two.”

  Sharzen studied the pile of rubble, where the rocks mortared into place had been shoved over before the mortar set. “And as the wall grows longer,” he said. “Then we will need more. Ten guards every mile? Every half mile? What is the magic number, Lupinius?”

  “We need no magic to defeat this ghost, Governor,” Lupinius replied. “I am convinced we are being troubled by a man, not a spirit of any kind. We only need to catch him once and kill him. Then the rest of the project will proceed without incident.”

  Sharzen nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. He put his hands on his hips and glared directly at the other man, in a more confrontational manner than he usually did. Lupinius was proud of the way he had learned to manipulate the governor, and hoped the man wasn’t suddenly growing a backbone after all this time. “If you say so, Lupinius.”

  “Of course I do,” Lupinius said. He was not as confident as he tried to sound. What if it was the Picts, looking for their crown? What if the theft of the bizarre headgear had summoned some sort of demon? But he couldn’t let on to Sharzen, or allow anyone to believe that the crown was more than a simple curiosity. “Look, it cannot be more than one or two of them, or they would have been seen and heard by now. Someone out there does not want this wall built. No good idea ever goes unchallenged. If there were not some opposition to this one, I would be worried. But when we find out who it is and stop him, or them, then everyone else will fall into line. Even the king will see that we are serious about protecting our people and that we will not be easily dissuaded. He’ll be more likely to send pots of gold to get the job done.

  “Worry not, Sharzen,” he went on, intentionally leaving off the governor’s title to demonstrate how little respect he had for it. “This is working out exactly as we want it to.”

  AFTER THAT FIRST killing, Kral left the settlers alone for a night. He knew their immediate response would be to increase the guards on the wall. He wanted to let those guards be on full alert for one night. When nothing happened, they would relax a little the next one.

  The following night, he mixed some more calera root powder. After painting himself again, he swam across a Black River silvered by a crescent moon. When he reached the wall, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the progress the builders had made in two days. They must have had every able-bodied man in Koronaka working on the thing, Kral surmised. The wall snaked along between stands of trees, following the flattest line available even when it wasn’t the straightest. Where there was a slope, the wall was built at its base so that the defenders on the Aquilonian side would have the advantage of elevation. It looked to be at least eight feet thick, and while Kral wasn’t sure if it had reached its final height, in places it towered fifteen feet. Attacking a force secured behind that wall would be a difficult challenge for any Pictish clan.

  But Kral wasn’t a clan unto himself, though he wasn’t far from that. He was a single individual. The bigger the wall grew, the more cover it provided for him.

  He had been right in his guess that the Aquilonians would increase the guards. As he walked the tree line observing the heavy stone construction, he noted a number of guards standing or sitting on the wall itself, and heard the voices of others who he couldn’t see from his side. There was no way to tell just how many there were from here, without getting up onto the wall.

  But he had also had been right that the night with no activity had caused the settlers to let down their guard a bit. He suspected that the night before, all the guards had been on the alert, watching the woods for any sign of an intruder. Tonight, some of them were sitting and chatting, playing with dice, or watching one another instead of the forest. A couple snored loudly at their posts.

  Kral smiled. His task would be difficult, but not impossible.

  He knew he had to choose his approach carefully, though.

  After watching for more than an hour, he was ready to move. Even during that time, the guards had been paying less and less attention to their duties. Many yawned, or sat down to get the weight of armor and weaponry off their feet. The dice games got less serious as the night wore on. Kral wondered if these same guards had been assigned to construction duty during the day. It would account for their exhaustion.

  He waited for a thin cloud to move across the sliver of moon that shone, and when it did, he dashed noiselessly over to the base of the wall at one of its highest points. The nearest guard was a dozen feet away and had settled down on his back, with his feet up and his round helmet under his head. He gazed off down the wall toward distant Koronaka and one of the dice games that still continued. On the other side, at twice that distance, a guard sat on the wall’s edge with his feet dangling down onto the Aquilonian side, talking to a comrade below.

  Kral put his hands against the wall. It was solid. Pushing it down once it had been built to such a height would be no easy task. If he was going to continue to hamper the wall’s progress, he’
d have to be diligent about attacking it every night.

  But that was not his real goal, only an added benefit. He didn’t want the wall to be finished because it would make it that much harder for the Picts to drive the settlers out of the region altogether. For now, however, he wanted the Teeth, and he wanted revenge. Slowing the wall’s construction was secondary.

  The stones were uneven, offering plenty of good hand-and footholds for climbing. Anyway, Kral was a Pict, born in the forests, used to climbing trees and rocks almost before he could walk. Scrambling his way to the top, he waited there in the wall’s own shadow for a moment, watching. The nearer guard’s breathing was starting to slow—he was already drifting off to sleep. The farther one continued talking about women he had known at home in Numalia. Kral grew bored just listening to him for a minute, and couldn’t imagine how his friend could stand to hear him natter on.

  Cautiously, Kral lifted his head over the top edge of the wall and turned it in every direction, looking to see if he was observed. So far, he was not. Satisfied, he drew himself higher, the muscles in his upper arms and chest straining to keep his ascent steady and smooth. Once he had brought himself waist high on the wall he rolled over onto it, bringing his legs up, and flattened himself there.

  From here, Kral could see more of what transpired on the other side, though if anyone was right at the base of the wall, he couldn’t make them out without risking being spotted himself. But he could see small clutches of guards huddled together for companionship, and a few who seemed to take their responsibility seriously walking the lower sections of the wall that hadn’t been built up yet.

  Until the Aquilonians settled into routines, it would be hard for him to make much progress, he decided. Things were too chaotic, too unpredictable. He couldn’t get much accomplished tonight without running the risk of being caught, and there were so many soldiers on duty that he’d have a hard time escaping.

  But that didn’t mean he was helpless.

  He decided to focus on the nearest guard, who by the sound of his breathing had slipped into a gentle slumber.

  A pouch dangled from Kral’s girdle. From it, he drew two objects he had decided to bring after the first killing—a fist-sized stone and a length of stout leather cord. Remaining as flat as he could, and silently thanking the settlers for making the wall so wide, he moved closer to the snoozing soldier. When he judged himself close enough, he hurled the stone far away, on the Aquilonian side of the wall.

  As soon as it hit the ground with a thud, guards reacted, rushing toward the spot and drawing weapons. The guards were noisier than the stone had been. The drumming of their feet and the clink and scrape of blades leaving scabbards and armor jostling drowned out the sounds of Kral’s next action.

  The ruckus woke the lightly sleeping soldier, but Kral was already on him. He looped the length of cord around the man’s throat and yanked it tight, then twisted. The soldier naturally turned himself in the direction that Kral was twisting, trying to ease the pressure on his throat. His hands went to the cord but it bit into his flesh, too tightly for him to get his fingers underneath it. Turning his body was just what Kral had wanted him to do, rendering the guard off-balance and leaning toward the Pictish side of the wall. Kral risked rising to a wide-footed squat and tugged the soldier even more, finally pulling him off the side of the wall.

  Kral dropped gracefully to the dirt at the wall’s base, landing right next to the soldier, who’d had the wind knocked out of him by his fall. The loop was still around the soldier’s neck, though the drop had loosened it. Before the man could recover, Kral grabbed it again and tugged it tight. The man gasped once, then made a gurgling noise as his air was cut off. He tried to buck and fight, but Kral kept the pressure on. In another few moments the man went limp.

  The hardest part came next. Kral couldn’t let the man just lie there at the wall’s base. Soon enough, someone would notice that he was gone. But the soldier was wearing a mail shirt under a leather cuirass, with a reinforced leather skirt and boots, and he was not a small man to begin with.

  Kral slipped his arms underneath the soldier’s and, straining under the weight, succeeded in lifting his upper torso off the ground. He could drag the man this way, but doing so might still be dangerous. If the soldiers came over the wall with torches, they would surely see the drag marks. Instead, he hunched over and hoisted the heavy burden onto his right shoulder, then forced himself upright, staggering under the load. Breathing heavily, he managed to move one foot, then the other, carrying the unconscious soldier beyond the tree line.

  Finally screened from anyone on the wall, he lowered the deadweight to the ground and began to drag him through the thick grass and underbrush. The man’s mail jingled faintly, but Kral could still hear shouts, and the commotion on the other side of the wall, he figured, drowned out any sounds he was making.

  The farther he got from the wall, the quicker he moved. After a few minutes, it sounded like the soldier was beginning to come around, so Kral positioned his back up against a tree and added a second length of leather cord to the one still wrapped about the man’s throat. This, he tied around the tree, leaving it just loose enough that the soldier would be able to breathe. Then he drew his dagger, rested its tip against the man’s neck just under the cord, and waited.

  Shortly, the man choked and opened his eyes. Kral was right there, pressing the dagger’s point into the soft flesh of his neck. “Do not move,” he warned the soldier. “You will only hurt yourself. And stay quiet or die.”

  The soldier’s eyes widened, but he seemed to understand Kral’s warning. Instead of fighting back or trying to run, he sat still, glaring defiantly into the Pict’s eyes.

  “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “Your soldiers raided the Bear Clan village,” Kral answered. “You killed many. Also, you took something that is precious to the Picts but meaningless to you. I must know who took it and where it is.”

  The soldier tried to shake his head, but the pressure of Kral’s dagger dissuaded him. Kral could see the fear in his eyes as he knew he could die at any moment. “I know nothing of what you speak,” he said, his voice raspy from the pressure of the cord. “Some of us took spoils of war—weapons, jewelry, and the like. Nothing else that I saw.”

  “You saw no crown?”

  “Crown?” the man echoed. “Of course not.”

  The man sounded to Kral like he was telling the truth. Kral couldn’t be sure. The man’s eyes were already bulging and wild with fear. Kral’s familiarity with the Aquilonian tongue was not sufficient for him to detect a good liar. But the soldier was afraid for his life, and he hadn’t stopped to consider his answer, instead blurting it out as if it was obvious.

  “Think about it,” Kral urged him. The soldier stared at him as if Kral was a crazy person. Perhaps he was, at that moment.

  “I saw no crown,” the soldier insisted.

  “Very well,” Kral replied. Part of him wanted to let the soldier live. He had told Kral what seemed to be the truth and had cooperated with Kral’s every demand.

  But he knew that the man would go back and tell his fellows that Kral was a single Pict, and a young one at that. The next person Kral tried to question would know that he had let the last one live. It would be harder to get information next time.

  But if they were afraid of him, afraid for their lives, then it would get easier and easier.

  “I wish you could tell your friends you met me,” Kral whispered, “and survived. But you won’t be able to do that.”

  So saying, he poured a handful of powdered calera root from a tiny woven bag and blew it into the man’s face. Reflexively, the soldier inhaled it, and he began to kick and yank at the leather thongs that held him.

  Kral turned away in shame at what he had done. The man was an enemy, but he had been tied to a tree, not a threat at all, not a participant in a battle. Slaying one’s foes in battle was honorable, but killing the helpless was less so.

  Kra
l could only justify it by reminding himself of the broader scale of his mission. He needed revenge for his clan, his family. And more immediately, he needed to find the Teeth of the Ice Bear. Making the fort fear him was the best way to do that.

  When the soldier’s head slumped forward onto his chest, Kral slipped into the shadows and away from him. As he moved hurriedly through the trees, he could hear an alarm raised from the direction of the wall. The guards had finally realized that one of their number was missing.

  By then, Kral was halfway to the Black River, and safety. He hadn’t learned anything from the soldier.

  But he had learned more about the Aquilonians’ intentions, the construction of the wall, the habits of the guards . . . all things that would serve him well, the next time.

  And the next.

  And again, and again.

  As long as it took.

  13

  THERE WERE OTHER families in Koronaka with girls around Alanya’s age, but she had never become close friends with any of them. Partly it was that they were settlers’ children, rough-edged, unsophisticated. She felt like they looked down on her for her city ways, even as she considered theirs rude and lacking in the social graces she had learned at home.

  But now that the wide world outside Koronaka’s walls was closed to her, at least for the time being, she realized that she was going to have to reconsider her choices. She was close to Donial, most of the time, though they were siblings and as such had the same kind of arguments that she was pretty sure brothers and sisters always had. She couldn’t just talk to Donial, however. She would go crazy without someone else in her life. She really missed the friends she had back home, with whom she could talk about anything. She had thought she’d found that again, with Kral. But now he was gone, and he was one of the main things she wanted to talk about.