“That’s the horn of their baggage train,” Willard said. “Get me a lance.”
Caris jumped from the boulder. Harric finished cinching his bastard belt around what remained of his pants and jogged to the bronze knight’s horse, which had moved down the path to get clear of the burning tree.
“What are you doing, boy?” Willard said. “I said fetch me a lance.”
“Caris has the lance.” Harric pulled a silver horn from the saddlebag and blew it in answer to the one on the ridge.
“Har!” Kogan beamed. “They’ll think their friends won the field! They’ll skip on down as fresh as boys to a spring dance.”
Willard gave Harric a grudging nod. “I expect these riders to be no more than grooms and squires. Short work. Follow when you see it’s clear. Leave the fallen. Bring their horses.”
Harric could see through a gap in the trees to a line of horses starting down the switchbacks. “Looks like at least a half-dozen riders and laden packhorses.”
“Come to your reckoning, boys,” said Kogan.
“Sir Willard,” said Brolli, “we must stop the fire or the fire-cones—”
“Hang the fire-cones!” Willard snapped. “A fire at this point is more friend to us than to our enemies. And if these men escape to report, we’re worse off than before. What do you bet Bannus is riding up this pass this very moment to meet them? Kogan, fetch me a shield!”
Through the smoke, Harric glimpsed the fire-cone trees on the ridge above, their tops drooping with ripe resin cones. The nearest of them was no more than a quarter mile away, and the smoke was already riding the wind right up the valley toward them. That mean the fire would spread in that direction, and once the fire-cones caught fire, the explosion would light up the sky like a beacon. Maybe Willard realized what an ideal distress signal it would make. And depending on the wind, the resulting forest fire might cover their escape and their tracks.
On the other hand, it would absolutely cook Abellia in her tower.
Harric saw the worry in Caris’s eye as she returned with a bronzed lance and handed it up to Willard. Slaughtering squires was probably something she hadn’t anticipated from her mentor. They were all learning that there was little Willard wouldn’t sacrifice for his queen—including his own honor—but surely he wouldn’t be so callous as to view Abellia’s life as an acceptable sacrifice. He must plan to take Abellia with them if the fire got out of hand.
Brolli was sputtering in disbelief. “What can you mean? Is this how Arkendians wage war—win at all costs, even if it make you the monster?” He flipped up his daylids to stare at Willard, shock and accusation in his golden eyes.
“There are no saints in war,” Willard said. “Only winners and losers.”
Brolli’s teeth were bared in preparation for a retort, but at that moment, Molly danced perilously close to his bare feet, and he was forced to skip away. Before he regained his tongue, Kogan bellowed, “Got it, Will!” and presented Willard with the bronze knight’s gleaming shield. “Good West Isle steel. Har!”
Willard girded it to his arm, and Molly groaned her frustration at the delay. Her eyes bled the Phyros war mask in fans across her cheeks, and the scars crisscrossing her coat stood out like livid veins. The moment Willard secured the shield, he turned her and let her run.
“Follow me when it’s clear!” Willard shouted, as Molly exploded from a standstill into a tearing gallop.
Kogan spat a bloody gob. “And let you hog the fun?” He raised a captured skin of wine and rinsed the blood and dirt from his nose and lip. As he lumbered after Willard, beard dribbling wine and gore, he reached grubby fingers in his mouth and yanked out a tooth. Tossing it to Harric, he winked. “Souvenir.”
“Father!” Brolli called. “Willard said stay here.”
“Yea, but he don’t mean it.”
“We need your help with the fire,” said Harric.
A loud crack from the fire above made Harric jump.
“Will don’t care about no fire.” Nevertheless, Kogan came to a slow, swaying stop in the road. A heavy sigh escaped him. It was the sound of a man settling in for a deep, comfortable sleep. Then he collapsed to his knees and vomited in the grass. “Maybe I’ll rest first.”
“Let him go,” said Caris. “He can barely stand.”
Another crack from above, and sparks showered down on them.
“Help me cut these trees before they catch the fire,” Brolli barked.
Since the spoke-limb’s branches spread ten paces in all directions, it dwarfed the young ash and brushlike maples in its shade, but those that grew outside its circle of shade grew tall and mingled branches with the grandfather tree. As the fire moved out the ends of the spoke-limb branches, it threatened to leap into the tops of these neighbors.
“Cut these to fall away from the fire!”
As Brolli pointed out the trees nearest the fire, Harric picked up his wood axe and set upon the largest of them. The ash tree was a daunting six inches across, but he was an experienced woodcutter; he’d cut all Mother Ganner’s firewood in the winter, and he was an enthusiastic better in log-cutting contests in Gallows Ferry, so he set to it with practiced fervor.
Angle cut, flat cut, angle cut, flat cut. Chips flew. His injured shoulder blade ached, but if he drew most of the power from his right arm, he could limit the left arm to merely guiding the blows.
The bright smell of sap rose in sweet counterpoint to the smoke as chips bounced from his cheeks. Caris chopped at a tree beside him, while Brolli, who had only a fallen broadsword to work with, devoted his efforts to downing saplings.
Smoke burned Harric’s eyes and throat, and sweat soon slicked his face. The fire above roared and dropped burning coals, some of which singed the hair on Harric’s arms.
Caris cursed. “Why isn’t it cutting?” She was laying into her tree as if assailing a foe, and her progress in the green wood was less than half of Harric’s. He realized with some amusement that she’d never had to cut wood in her life—that she’d had servants for that.
“Alternate cleaver and turnstile,” Harric said, translating woodcutting technique into classic sword strokes. “Like this.” He demonstrated “Cleaver. Turnstile. Cleaver. Turnstile.”
She grunted as she delivered a mammoth cleaver and sent a huge cantle of wood flying. “Ha!” Before Harric cut enough to topple his tree, she’d more than caught up to him. When she’d cut it more than half through, she dropped her axe and shoved her tree until it cracked and fell slowly away from the burning spoke-limb.
“Mudruffle!” she screamed. “Watch out!”
Harric followed her eyes to find Mudruffle in the fall line. The little golem did not seem to hear her. He appeared to be circling the burning tree, picking his awkward way through the brush with the help of a walking staff in one hand. His other hand he spread before him as if to catch an invisible butterfly.
Caris leapt around the tree in time to get a shoulder under the slowly accelerating trunk, and Harric lent a hand from his side, but the tree had too much start and they had to let it fall in a crash of whipping branches.
“Mudruffle!” Caris screamed.
The fallen tree branches thrashed inches behind, and the little golem paced on, oblivious, with his hand spread before him.
Caris let out a shout of frustration.
“Another!” Brolli instructed them, pointing to another ash on the opposite side of Harric’s tree. “It is spreading!”
To Harric’s horror, the top branches of his tree had already caught fire.
“Let me!” Caris shouldered him aside. Placing her hands against the trunk, she pushed, rocking back and forth. Tiny pops came from the weakened site of Harric’s cutting. Harric dropped his axe and grabbed one of the tree’s branches on the other side to pull as she pushed. When the trunk gave a loud crack, Harric jumped aside and the tree fell with a crash. As soon as he’d stamped out the burning branches of his tree, he ran to the next-nearest tree to be threatened by the fire, and de
spaired. Despite their efforts, the fire now danced in the branches of several adjacent ash trees, and since the ash grew increasingly close together as they moved away from the shade of the spoke-limb, it would now accelerate from tree to tree faster than they could cut them.
Brolli shouted, “Begin!” pointing to the tree before Harric.
Harric tried to say, “It’s hopeless!” but took a lungful of smoke and choked.
A loud, feathery pop! silenced everything. At the same moment, it seemed the flames and smoke sucked back into their sources and closed up shop with a snap. The roar of the fire ceased. Crackling branches fell mute.
Harric looked up and pushed hair from his eyes. The heat was gone. A great billow of smoke rolled up and away on a wave of rising heat, but the clearing had gone cold. Not even a trickle of smoke remained from the smallest smoldering branch. Eyes wide, he let out a laugh of surprise. Even the blackened limbs now appeared as cold and inert as sticks from some previous year’s fire.
Caris gasped. “Mudruffle!” Harric followed her gaze to the base of the spoke-limb, where Mudruffle stood rigid as a fence post. He’d extended a hand against the mighty tree as if to steady himself. His staff crumbled to ash as Harric watched. A dry, white-hot, sizzling sound emerged from Mudruffle; every inch of his strange clay body hissed like a drowned campfire.
Caris dropped her axe and ran toward him. “Mudruffle, are you hurt?”
Mudruffle gave no response. He seemed unnaturally rigid, like a smoking statue of himself. Then he tipped away from the tree and crashed to the dirt.
Brolli was beside the fallen golem before Caris or Harric could reach him. He held out one hand to keep them away. “Don’t touch him. He is hot.” Tiny crackling noises came from his wooden joints.
Caris stopped short, and Harric ran up beside her. Indeed, waves of heat flowed from the tryst servant’s clay body like a pot newly taken from the kiln.
“Mudruffle, can you hear me?” Caris said.
As if in reply, the wooden joints burst into flame.
A severed head delivers no messages.
—Shield motto of House Nors, East Isle
24
Loot & Loyalty
“Put it out!” Caris cried. With her hands, she scooped loam and soil from between roots and cast it on the flames, and Harric and Brolli joined her. The loam sizzled and popped like rice in a pan, but it snuffed the flames. Some of the sticks in the loam caught fire, but Caris kept shoveling. Her eyes had flown wide with panic.
Harric ran to Kogan, and when he returned with the half-full wineskin, Caris had stumbled away down the trail. Harric dribbled wine on the smoking soil and watched as she held her hands to her ears and blundered away, bowing rhythmically. Brolli stared after her, brow wrinkled. At least Willard isn’t here to scowl at her, Harric thought. Brolli could be forgiven for being unfamiliar with her horse-touched episodes, but sometimes Harric wanted to shake the old knight.
Yet as he squirted wine at a flame that had popped up in the loam, he had to scold himself. Maybe the problem is you, Harric. She’s coping fine. She’s probably gone off to collect the scattered horses, which she knows will help calm her. She didn’t need Harric’s protection and could handle the old man in her own way. In fact, she was managing her status with her mentor a lot better than Harric was. Best worry about his own sorry standing.
Mud steamed and bubbled in Mudruffle’s joints.
Brolli lifted his daylids and peered down at the half-buried tryst servant. “He took the fire with him.”
Harric gave him a hard look and glanced after Caris to be sure she didn’t hear. “You think he’s dead?”
Brolli gave him a look of surprise. “I do not know. But he took the fire. To protect the old woman, I think. This is why your queen brings them here, yes?”
“Yes. I’d never seen it before, but they use the Bright Mother’s power to prevent fire.”
Brolli nodded. “At some cost, it seem.”
Harric nodded. He wondered if Abellia had been there too, that her nexus would have made it easier on Mudruffle. Without it, he’d burst into flame, and used up his little constructed body. Harric peered under the brim of Mudruffle’s tricorn hat. The button eyes shone dully in the gray morning light. Inert. Unmoving. Dead? Could a golem die?
A squeeze of loss and worry visited Harric’s chest.
“I think if we are not fighting the fire,” said Brolli, “it is harder for him to stop it. Maybe too much. Maybe then he is bursting like his staff.”
Harric scooped more cooling soil on the golem. He dribbled the last drops of wine over him. He felt like a witch casting a spell to raise the dead. “He saddled Molly, too,” he said, wondering at the little creature’s resourcefulness. “He saved us.”
Brolli climbed to his feet. “Come. We have done what we can. Gather the horses. Then we bring Mudruffle to Abellia. I will find Idgit in the meadow.”
Brolli left, and when Harric stood, he found Caris approaching from the trees, leading two of the spooked horses. A set of reins in each hand, she stared forward, eyes distant, calm. He felt a wave of embarrassment for worrying about her: give her a horse and she’d handle anything.
“I set your sign for Gren in the track,” Caris said.
“Moons, I’d forgotten all about it,” Harric said. “Where’d you find it?”
Her gaze remained distant, attention inward, as she motioned vaguely down the path. She handed Harric the reins of a big black destrier with a look in its eyes so ugly he was certain that without her horse-touched influence, it would have tasted him already.
“Wait one moment,” he said, declining the reins. “We should search these lordlings before we go. Don’t get fussy about honor, now. This is fair loot.”
“We don’t loot, Harric.” She practically snarled the words.
Harric had to suppress his immediate reply, which was Oh, moons yes, we do! Instead, he cursed himself for his thoughtless choice of words.
“This is the kind of thing I told you about,” she said. “Dishonorable—”
“Spoils. I meant spoils. That’s the proper term?”
Her eyes grew steely. “Leave them, Harric.”
Harric held up his hands. “Okay, but you’re making a mistake, Caris. Think about it. If we leave these men with their coin and resources, we leave those things for Bannus.”
“That is fear talking, not honor.”
The slow clop of Idgit’s hooves came to them down the trail from the meadow, and Brolli emerged from the foliage, leading her. Judging by the cock of his head, he was listening intently to the argument.
“I think if Willard were here, he’d say that’s war talking,” said Harric. “This isn’t some summer tournament. These lords wanted to kill us. They tried to. Should we leave their weapons and resources to strengthen their friends who follow? Plus, we have no idea what lies ahead for us. We may need coin to buy passage on a ship to get up through the Giant’s Gap. We may need things to trade. And we certainly need information. Think of what we can learn from signet rings on these knights, or letters in their saddles. Names, families. Plans.”
“Harric, stop it.” Caris’s voice shook. “If Willard saw this, he’d send you packing.”
“What do you think Willard is doing right now, Caris? Do you think he’s speaking honorably with those squires in the baggage train? He’s slaughtering them. Is it a fair fight? Moons, no. But if he doesn’t kill them, they’ll inform others who’ll try to kill us. And a minute ago, our mentor was ready to let the forest burn if it kept the Queen’s quest safe. He’ll be just as practical about this bronzed killer and his murderous mates.”
Harric walked to the bronze knight and paused above the man’s sprawled corpse. Kogan had positioned his dead hands in a lewd position. Brolli joined them and flipped up his daylids to watch. Judging them, Harric thought. Judging Arkendia. Harric felt an uncomfortable and unfamiliar anger toward the Kwendi.
“Willard’s judgment isn’t right today,�
� said Caris. “The Blood has altered him. Before, he never would have brought us down here like this, without Molly and without me donning my armor. He never should have…” She stopped, hand to her mouth.
“Never should have taken the Blood in the first place,” Harric said quietly. “Never should have broken his oath.”
“That is my fault,” said Brolli. “I pressed him.” He frowned. “Perhaps I should not judge him, but I must agree with Caris. A Kwendi would bury them with gear.”
“They’re the ones who called Field Rules,” Harric said, still directing his argument to Caris. “That’s honorable combat language for anything goes, right? I promise you, Blood or no Blood, if we show up at the tower with nothing but our honor, Willard will burst a forehead vein.”
Caris’s jaw muscles pulsed. She looked away from the bronze knight and gave a stiff nod.
“I’ll take that as permission.” Harric stooped to the knight and, when no objection came from Caris, spared a glance at Brolli. The Kwendi flipped his daylids down in a vain attempt to conceal his disapproval, but Harric couldn’t help but feel he’d tried and ruled against Arkendian war code and ethics.
This is to keep you alive, Ambassador Brolli. Trust us to know these enemies better than you.
Pushing the ambassador from his mind, Harric focused on the fallen knight before him. In truth, he could barely suppress his eagerness: what a dream it was for a gentleman jack to have at his disposal a half-dozen fallen lords with purses, jewels, secrets—even an unburned shirt and pants among their gear. But as he stripped the bronzed gauntlets and pulled at the lord’s rings, the putty-like coolness of the dead hand sent a shiver of revulsion through his stomach.
This was not like robbing a sleeping drunk. It reminded him of the dead Iberg—Fink’s former master—whose corpse had tumbled on top of him on the night he left Gallows Ferry with Willard.
He swallowed. Just pretend they’re sleeping, and make it quick. Think of the loot.
Concentrating hard, he didn’t notice Brolli leading Idgit past until the horse nearly stepped on him. As Harric removed the gorget from the bronze lord’s neck, Brolli proceeded to Mudruffle and lifted the golem’s rigid body to lay him behind the saddle.
The Jack of Ruin Page 20
