But two guards . . .
Slipping off the bow that he had carried slung across his back, he fitted an arrow to the string. He was back in more or less the same position he had been when he’d first spotted the gate, just across from it at the tree line. Barely thirty feet separated him from the two guards. He would have to be fast. And accurate.
Arrow for the first one, but what about the second? After considering for a moment, he removed his loincloth and put a rock into it, just about the size of both his fists together. He gave it a couple of practice spins and knew it would work as a makeshift sling.
Satisfied, he aimed the arrow at the guard on the left, and drew back the string. The guard’s helmet had no nose-guard, so he aimed right between the man’s eyes and released the shaft. It flew straight and true, covering the short distance quickly with only the soft rush of wind. Kral saw the point drive into the soldier’s face at almost the same moment the soldier finally spotted it coming. He had no time to duck or call out before it hit him, knocking him back into the wooden gate.
Even before the arrow had found its mark, Kral had dropped the bow and retrieved the sling, the ends of which he had tucked into his girdle. The second soldier was just realizing that something had happened to his companion when Kral swung the sling in a whistling circle and released one end. The stone sailed across the gap and slammed into the helmet of the second guard. The man buckled against the wooden gate and stumbled over the still form of his comrade. He wasn’t unconscious, Kral could tell, just disoriented.
Kral wasted no time.
BY THE TIME Rossun had begun to regain his senses after the blow to his head, there was a naked Pict running across the empty space between the trees and the wall. Rossun shook his head, trying to clear it. The hit had left him dizzy and shaken. He braced his back against the gate and looked up, ready to sound an alarm, only to see that the Pict was airborne. One bare foot, hard as slate, plowed into Rossun’s head, smashing it back into the gate again. Rossun saw a bright flash of light, then nothing at all.
Sometime later, he drifted into consciousness again, as if floating up from the bottom of a deep, dark pool. His stomach churned with nausea. When he opened his eyes he felt as if someone were driving steel spikes into his temples. He was sitting down, someplace dark. He tried to stand, but discovered that his hands were tied behind his back. He was lashed to something that he was pretty sure—considering how they had found Franto’s corpse—was a tree. The foul taste in his mouth was courtesy of a rag or animal skin that had been stuffed into it, tied down with something else. His helmet was gone, his cuirass unlaced, but he still had the protection of the mail shirt beneath it.
And he was alone. The Pict, if he had really seen what he’d thought, was nowhere to be seen. Rossun tried to spit the cloth from his mouth so he could shout, but it wouldn’t budge. Swallowing the wave of agony it caused, he yanked at his arms, trying to break the bonds that held him.
No luck. The Pict had bound him tight.
At least now he knew for certain that it was a man and not a ghost attacking those on the wall.
He continued to struggle, hoping to free himself before the Pict returned. Who knew what he might be up to while Rossun sat here, helpless?
Before long, however, a parting of leaves revealed the tall young Pict—broad-shouldered and well muscled, now wearing a loincloth that he hadn’t had before. At his waist hung a long knife. His skin had been painted a dappled blue that made him almost invisible in the moonlight, and dirt was smeared on his arms, legs, and chest—dirt, and maybe blood. In the dim light of the shadowed grove Rossun couldn’t tell for sure. His hair was loose and shaggy, his eyes seemingly marked by what looked like a deep, abiding sadness, but Rossun couldn’t deny that his features were handsome enough, for a savage.
The young man squatted on the ground near Rossun and lifted something that the Ranger realized was his own broadsword. He held the sword’s point toward Rossun’s chest. “Sorry to have left you alone,” the Pict said. Rossun had no trouble understanding his Aquilonian. “I had other business. But now I would like to talk with you for a brief time.”
Rossun couldn’t answer, could only glare at his captor and make a muffled, deep-throated growl.
“If I take off the gag, will you swear to remain silent?” the Pict asked him.
Rossun had no choice but to agree. If he didn’t, the man would just leave the gag there. At least with it off, he would have some hope of alerting his fellows before the Pict could kill him. He nodded affirmatively.
His captor turned the sword away from him and leaned in just long enough to loosen the strip that held Rossun’s gag in place. When it was gone, Rossun was able to shove the ball of skin out of his mouth with his tongue. If his hands had been free, he’d have killed the Pict on the spot for that. As it was, the best he could do was to spit at the young man.
The Pict just laughed and lifted the sword again. “Do you feel better?”
“Untie me, and I will show you how much better,” Rossun threatened.
The Pict laughed again. “I will untie you when you have told me what I want to know.”
“Then you might as well kill me now.”
The Pict’s smile faded. “You know not what I want.”
“It matters not,” Rossun assured him. “I will tell you nothing.”
“Loyalty is a good thing,” the Pict acknowledged. “But loyalty to the wrong purpose is not.”
“Who’s to say what purpose is right or wrong?” Rossun returned.
“Not I,” the Pict replied. “But my heart tells me that the slaughter of a people with whom you had a truce is no noble purpose.”
Rossun had no argument to make against that. He considered shouting once again, but knew the Pict would run the blade through him if he tried. Better to keep the youth talking, to see if an opportunity for escape presented itself. “You may be right,” he admitted. “I do not pretend to know the reasons for the things our leaders do. I go where I’m sent and fight who I’m told. Are you of the Bear Clan?”
“I am,” the Pict told him.
“And you survived the battle?”
“I was not in the village when it was attacked,” the young man said.
Rossun nodded, things becoming clearer to him now. This young Pict had been away, and came home to find his people obliterated, his home in ruins. No wonder he was angry. No wonder that indelible sadness had taken root in his eyes.
On the other hand, he had killed Kelan, and Franto, and delayed work on the wall for days. He was no wronged innocent but, young as he was, rather a hardened warrior who thought nothing of taking Aquilonian lives. Rossun just had to steel himself against the Pict’s tales of woe.
“Truce or no truce, our peoples are at war,” Rossun said.
“I agree.”
“Then why do you think I—”
The youth interrupted him. “What I seek has nothing to do with the war between Pict and Aquilonian, nothing to do with Aquilonians at all,” he explained. “It is sacred to the Picts, without value to anyone else. It was stolen from our village, during the raid.”
“Spoils of war—” Rossun began, but again the young man cut him off.
“Not of war,” he said. “This is not a weapon, not even treasure. It is of holy significance only. As I said, there is no value in it to Aquilonians, or any other people.”
“And I should believe this just because you tell it to me?”
“If you had seen it, you would know,” the Pict said. “You could see for yourself that it is not jewel-encrusted, not precious in that way.”
“What is this object?” Rossun asked. He couldn’t think of anything that he had seen taken away from the village that might fit the man’s description.
“We call it the Teeth of the Ice Bear,” the Pict replied. “It is a crown, made of bone, decorated with bear’s teeth.”
“The crown?” Rossun asked without thinking. He had not, in fact, seen it. But he had he
ard someone say that Lupinius had something like that. It sounded like a trifle, something he had only picked up as a curiosity. The soldier who had mentioned it said that Lupinius had laughed at himself for even bothering to carry it back to Koronaka.
“Then you have seen it,” the Pict said anxiously. New enthusiasm flashed in his dark eyes.
“I have not,” Rossun corrected. What harm, though, in letting this young savage know that he knew where it might be found? If Lupinius really didn’t care about it, perhaps he would give it up. If that would satisfy the Pict, make him go away and stop attacking the wall, wouldn’t it be worth it? “But I know who has it.”
“Who?” the Pict demanded angrily.
“His name is Lup—never mind that,” Rossun said. “The point is, I believe that I can retrieve it for you. We want peace with you. You have killed enough of us already. If you promise to leave us alone, I can get you that crown.”
The Pict looked like he was considering Rossun’s offer. “If I knew that I could trust you . . .”
“Why do you think you cannot?” Rossun wanted to know.
“As soon as I released you, you could run back behind the protection of the fort,” the youth said. “Raise a war party and return to the Bear Clan village to finish your job, now that you know I yet live.”
“I would not,” Rossun tried to assure him.
The Pict looked sad as he lifted Rossun’s big sword again. “No, you will not.”
The young Pict tossed his weapon aside, drew some powdered substance from a pouch at his belt, and hurled it at him like he was tossing a cloud. Rossun blinked, inhaled, and his senses seemed to shut down. A paroxysm of coughing took him, then he knew no more.
15
GOVERNOR SHARZEN KNEW he was at a crossroads. He also knew that he had ceded control of his own future long ago. He wasn’t even the one who would decide which road he would take. At Lupinius’s urging, he had invested so much of his own political future in the wall that if anything happened to the project he wasn’t sure how he would recover. Unfortunately, although progress was being made, there were still major problems to contend with. Another two bodies had turned up this morning, one soldier and one of Lupinius’s Rangers, who had, like Franto, been taken away from his post and killed. To make things worse, the ghost had used the guards’ own torches to set the soldier’s body on fire, and the wooden gate structure as well.
To make things worse, Traug, the construction supervisor, had just left his office. He had, in his own almost monosyllabic fashion, reported talk of mutiny. He told Sharzen that many of the workers, particularly the ones who were not also soldiers and just doing the job for the few coins promised them, were thinking about not coming back to work because of the ghost’s activities. That was how they were referring to the interloper, just about everyone calling him—or them—the Ghost of the Wall. The name had stuck. That, as much as anything else, was a sign of how much impact his nocturnal raids had made on morale.
Maybe if Sharzen had been stronger—mentally, not physically, as there were few who could match him for sheer brute muscle—he wouldn’t have let Lupinius twist him around until he was essentially doing the other man’s bidding. He was, after all, the governor of the province, and therefore supposed to be the man in charge. But he had fallen under Lupinius’s sway, and now the man walked all over him, virtually ordering him around as if he were some kind of servant. And there was little Sharzen could do about it, at this point. Lupinius could easily expose him for the puppet he had been on so many occasions.
He needed to decide what to do about the wall and how to stem the workers’ complaints. Or else he needed to force Lupinius to figure out what to do.
He sipped sour wine from a heavy brown ceramic mug, winced at the taste, and took a larger swallow. There was a whole barrel of the stuff in his pantry. It didn’t taste good, but it was strong. Maybe seeking oblivion in that was his best bet. He could forget about his problems, if only for a brief time.
He was raising the mug again when he heard the pounding of hoofbeats outside, then the clatter of someone rushing up the stairs and drumming on the front door. Muffled voices, his serving staff letting the rider in. A moment later the aged, bald Quelo opened the door to his office and stared at the floor. “Malthus, back from Tarantia,” he announced.
Sharzen swallowed hard. He hadn’t expected Malthus to return for several days, at the earliest. The man had been sent with a message for King Conan, about the death of his ambassador, the breaking of the truce, and the wall project. Sharzen’s message had blamed the Picts for all three. He had told Malthus to wait for a response. The man must have exhausted half a dozen horses to have gone all the way there and returned so quickly.
Malthus was red-faced and haggard, as if he had ridden day and night without stopping. He stopped just inside the door, out of breath. He still wore a cloak, riding breeches, and boots.
“Did you see the king?” Sharzen asked without prelude.
Malthus took a deep breath and nodded, his long, dark hair, wet with sweat, shaking as he did. “Aye,” he reported. “I saw him.”
“And?”
“And he gave me this,” Malthus replied, drawing a scroll from beneath his cloak.
“Well, don’t just stand there!” Sharzen exclaimed, extending a hand for the scroll. Malthus moved forward and put it in Sharzen’s open hand, and Sharzen unrolled it. The words on it were written in a steady hand.
Sharzen’s hands were considerably less steady as he read them. By the time they reached the bottom, he was shaking so much he could barely hold on to it.
ALANYA WALKED HOME carrying a basket of fruits that she’d had to buy since she was no longer allowed to go beyond the walls to pick her own. The town had been usually quiet recently, and today was no exception. Her own footsteps sounded loud on the cobblestone streets, and on the ones that were just bare dirt there were precious few other footprints around to cover hers. She could see the path that she had taken on her way out.
But up ahead, she saw a couple of young women, maybe her age or a little older, wearing the raw, simple clothing the settlers favored. She’d had several conversations with Koniel over the last few days, and had realized just how much she had been missing having a confidante. Now she saw the girls ahead glance back her way. She wondered if maybe there might be opportunity for more friendships there. She quickened her pace a little, affixed a smile to her face.
Instead of waiting for her, or coming her way, however, the girls sped up and hurried around a corner. Surprised, Alanya quickened her own pace. When she reached the corner behind which the girls had disappeared, she looked in that direction. They hadn’t gone far, but had met up with another one. They were all looking back toward the corner, gesturing and laughing in that direction. When Alanya came into view, they stopped suddenly and turned away.
Alanya froze in place, instantly heartsick. It was no trick to figure out that they had been talking about her, laughing at her. Before, they would have simply ignored her, or perhaps, because of her father’s death, even pitied her. Nothing had changed, that she knew of. Except that she had confided in Koniel.
Which could only mean that Koniel hadn’t been as trustworthy as she had thought. Fighting back tears, Alanya headed for home. So far, her record in choosing friends here on the border had been a sorry one—a Pict, her friendship with whom had reignited a dormant war and gotten her father killed, and a local girl who couldn’t wait to tell all her real friends about the pathetic city girl who had confided in her.
The urge to run away, simply to flee the place welled up in her, as it did more and more frequently. Koronaka was a stifling prison, no kind of home. Not for her. The road to Tarantia was long and dangerous, with bandits and highwaymen and who knew what other perils along the way.
But would facing those perils—would death itself—be worse than staying here, where she was so utterly miserable and alone?
More and more, she thought she knew the answer.<
br />
KRAL HAD TAKEN to sleeping during the day, usually under the shade of one tree or other. He didn’t sleep on the site of his old village, but somewhere down near the base of the hill. He changed spots often in case the Aquilonians sent anyone looking for him. So far he had seen no sign of that.
One day he woke up to the sound of voices speaking Pictish. He moved gracefully and silently between the trees until he came across Klea and Mang. Both looked drawn, weary, as if the journey to other Pict clans had worn heavily upon them. Kral ran to them with open arms, welcoming them back.
A few minutes later they all sat on rocks near the hill’s foot. “How went your journey?” Kral asked them.
Mang sucked in a deep breath, then blew it out, a bitter look on his face. “They agree that the loss of the Teeth is a terrible blow,” he said. “And they agree that recovering the crown is of vital importance. But they do not agree on how to go about getting it back.”
“I have been working on that part,” Kral admitted. “But what about the rest? What about uniting, finally, against these invaders?”
Klea picked up the thread. “Each clan says it is willing to unite to drive the settlers from our lands,” she announced. “But then, each clan also has specific conditions that must be met, old rivalries that must be acknowledged, and so on. This is why you see us not at the head of an army but rather by ourselves again. We can unite the clans, we believe, but it will take time and effort.”
“What of you, Kral?” Mang asked, wiping dust from the road off his face. “How have you occupied yourself? Have you had any success in your search for the Teeth?”
At first, Kral wasn’t sure how much to tell them. He had been intentionally vague before they had left. He didn’t think they would object to his tactics. They understood that the Aquilonians were the enemy, as surely as he did. But still, he hesitated. His whole plan was built around secrecy, around stealthy attacks, and using the fear of the unknown to gain information. He knew that Klea and Mang would never reveal his identity to the Aquilonians. Nonetheless, he felt strange telling anyone else what he had been doing.
Ghost of the Wall Page 12
