03 - Liar's Peak

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  Jonas took a moment to unravel this statement, then posed a question to Franziskus: “Are you satisfied by this explanation?”

  “No harm has been done,” said Franziskus.

  Jonas approached his new recruits, his demeanour brightening. “So it was my words that stirred you to follow us?”

  Bodo answered: “One thing we have learned today. The fight will not pass our village by. Let us then take it to our foes.”

  “You move me, halfling friends.” Jonas held out his hand for each of the new arrivals to clasp in turn. “We need every sword, every bow, every spear. I welcome you to our brave and blooded company.”

  “I don’t suppose,” interjected Angelika, “that any of you happens to be a seasoned mountaineer?”

  They shook their heads in sorry unison.

  “We are farmers,” said Bodo. “Not warriors, nor scavengers.”

  Angelika accepted the insult unblinkingly She took note of Emil’s reaction: he crossed his arms, as if unconvinced of the halflings’ usefulness.

  “Though Bodo’s actually a butcher,” said Filch. “Not to undercut your point, you understand, Bodo.”

  Jonas hunched down to speak to him. “Your brother did not choose to come with you?”

  Filch dropped his ratty face downwards. “Curran’s dead. Just like Deely.”

  “How so?”

  “That barbarian general, chieftain, whoever he was—the one you left under the pile of stones. Well, he weren’t dead after all. Hours later he came out from under there and killed three more. Including my brother. At least him and Deely will go together to the world beyond. Protect each other along the way.” Filch sniffled and rubbed at his nose.

  Jonas reached into an inside coat pocket to give the tiny man a handkerchief. “I mourn with you, my friend. And I will see to it you have your chance to avenge them.”

  Filch loudly blew his nose. “Yes. That’s what we want. To make those Chaos scum pay for what they did to us. For no reason. We never attacked them. Well, we’ll show them, won’t we, lieutenant?”

  “That we will, Filch.”

  Angelika surveyed the soldiers. Though they tried to camouflage it, the little man’s grief moved them.

  “Tell me, Filch,” asked Jonas, “which way did the Kurgan chieftain go?”

  “He came this way. To the north.”

  Jonas turned to his men. “He’s headed the same place we are.” Then back to Filch and his companions: “You’ve brought good bedding with you, I hope.”

  Filch nodded.

  “And food?”

  “How could we not?” declared Merwin. The halflings seemed shocked by the suggestion.

  Jonas caught himself before patting Merwin’s tousled head. “Tonight that barn shall be our barracks. Emil will get you squared away.”

  The halflings gathered around the sergeant, who led them to the barn. The other soldiers drifted after them.

  This left Jonas, Angelika and Franziskus.

  Franziskus hiked a thumb toward the barn. “Should I…?”

  Angelika’s hand snaked to Jonas’ shoulder. “Perhaps you should.”

  Franziskus felt a punch to the gut greater than any halfling could deliver. “Yes well then,” he said, remaining in place.

  Angelika turned; Jonas followed. “Goodnight, Franziskus.”

  He watched them stroll back to the hayloft.

  “Are you sure…?” he called after them, but his voice did not carry. Shoulders sagging, he shuffled back along the path to the barn. He kicked at a rock. It turned out to be more firmly lodged in the earth than it looked; pain radiated out from his toes and into his foot. The sensation improved matters, somehow.

  He reached the doorway of the barn. Emil hovered there. He too, looked unhappily at the hayloft doorway. Franziskus turned back to see Jonas hanging his cloak up over it. The sergeant’s glance invited no conversation, so Franziskus scouted for a spot inside the barn. The halflings had installed themselves in a corner, to covertly swig from a pewter flask. For every sip Bodo took, Filch had a gulp and Merwin drank twice that much again. The soldiers ignored them, returning to their dicing and their crude jokes.

  Franziskus made it a point not to hear the men’s jests. He could tell from their sniggering tone that they concerned their commander’s obvious trysting. Surely this was a violation of good discipline, to behave this way in front of one’s men. Franziskus would not have done so, in his place. But then, Franziskus would never be in his place, because he had deserted—to be with Angelika.

  He sat down near the halflings. Filch, at least, seemed happy to see him.

  Jonas finished pinning up his cloak and turned to Angelika. She paced around him like a fencer alert for an opening. “This won’t be a discipline problem?” she asked. His laugh was uncertain. “I don’t follow you.”

  “With the men. You’re taking a bit of license in front of them, aren’t you?”

  He stopped to lean against a timber support beam. “The men and I understand one another.”

  “They mustn’t think I belong to the company, as a prize to be passed around.”

  He came toward her, taking her into his embrace. “Angelika, you are my prize alone.”

  She slipped from his arms. “Oh no. Whatever we do together, it will not make me yours. Understand that, or go no further.” But she said it with a predatory gleam.

  He untied the lace that kept closed the collar of his tunic. “I am accustomed to the opposite. In my circles, a woman demands mutual possession before so much as a kiss is exchanged.”

  “I am not the women you know.”

  He sat on a hay bale and fought to ease his boot off. “None of them would be any use, where we’re going.”

  “You still think I’m going with you.” She sat on the bale, behind him. She kissed his neck. “You’re fetching, not irresistible.”

  He turned to reciprocate but before he could return her kiss, she’d resumed her prowl. “I won’t cage you, Angelika.”

  “So you understand, then.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What do you understand?”

  “Um…”

  She straddled him. “That this means nothing, other than what it is. It is only tonight.”

  He bit her ear. “Yes,” he said. “This means nothing.”

  * * *

  Jonas sat up on his elbows. The lamp still faintly flickered. He’d convinced her to leave it burning. She looked more lovely in its light, and he wanted to look at her, he’d said. It was not untrue: he paused to again admire her captivating surfaces. The perfect paleness of her skin. The sharp and unyielding curve of her shoulder beneath the blanket. If the woman he married was half as alluring as her, he’d count himself a fortunate man.

  It had taken Angelika at least an hour to doze off. To stave off sleep for himself, he’d dug his fingernails into his palms, every time he’d felt himself drifting. He sat and watched her for a good long time. She’d fallen deeply into slumber. He congratulated himself for successfully wearing her out. He, too, was exhausted, but had a mission to complete.

  Slowly he shifted himself into a sitting position. That was one good thing about sleeping in a floorless building: there were no boards to creak when you moved. He crept over to her ball of passionately discarded clothing. There was a leather purse on her belt. As he had expected, it contained nothing.

  From what Franziskus had told him, she’d been scavenging for years, then had decided to retire. She had to have some way of transporting her years of earnings out of the Blackfire. There would obviously be a valuable object on her, small enough to conceal from casual eyes. She would not be so stupid as to keep it in her purse. It wasn’t a jewel she wore on her person; he’d pored over every inch of her. There had to be a secret pocket. He took her leggings in his hands and methodically searched them with his fingers. Nothing. Next, her tunic.

  He found it. A round band and a stone: a ring. He took it from its pocket and held it up to the light. A
ruby. Quickly he stashed it under a bale of straw. Later he’d transfer it to a better hiding spot.

  He laid himself down next to her, but the flush of his success kept sleep away. He huddled in next to her pale, warm body, and breathed as she did.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A familiar, awakening hand lightly pressed itself against Franziskus’ shoulder. Months ago, a touch like this would have jolted him into consciousness. He would have cried out, thrashing his arms and legs. Now Angelika had him well-trained: he snapped silently to alertness, already reaching for his sabre. He saw her looming over him. He remembered where he was, and why: the barn, the Gerolsbruch Swordsmen, the halflings. The capture, the escape, the journey north.

  The light of early morning crept diffusely into the barn: soldiers, scattered across its floor, snored and tossed. The halflings snoozed on either side of him. Filch’s sleeping face was a picture of forgetful contentment.

  Angelika placed a silencing finger across her lips. Franziskus nodded. There would be no goodbyes.

  This morning, he was more than ready to forgive her habitual unsociability. He folded and tied his bedroll, then gathered up his pack. Angelika held out a hand for him; the leather of his boots issued only a few cursory creaks as he rose to his feet. The two of them padded painstakingly to the exit, through a maze of sprawled and sleeping bodies.

  On a stool outside the doorway, a sentry dozed. His insignia identified him as one of the spares, a man separated from another unit.

  They stepped across the threshold and there stood Emil, arms folded.

  The sergeant beckoned Angelika closer. “Leaving?” he asked.

  She nodded. Though she gave no outward sign of it, Franziskus could tell she was poised to run.

  “Good,” Emil said. With a gesture, he bade them to follow him as he trudged toward the perimeter. There, alert guardsmen patrolled. They snapped to attention as Emil came near; under his breath, he told them to stand down.

  “The lieutenant won’t be pleased,” Franziskus said.

  “I’ve received no orders to hold you against your will,” replied the sergeant, his expression closed and neutral.

  Franziskus, who had witnessed the severity of certain officers in the past, wanted greater assurance that Emil was not exposing himself to punishment. Angelika, however, kept moving and was soon a dozen yards ahead of him. Franziskus waved an awkward farewell to the sergeant, and, when the stoic man did not react, flushed with mortification at the stupidity of the gesture. He dashed to catch up with Angelika, who moved gracefully down the well-grazed hillside, bouncing from point to point. Franziskus stumbled over rocks and nearly caught his toe in an exposed root, but reached her side nonetheless. When they reached the bottom of the hill, Angelika scanned for a destination, choosing a forest of straight-trunked pines positioned vaguely to the north-west.

  Franziskus could not restrain himself. “You left the lieutenant to his slumbers?”

  “He needed the rest.” The words coiled with warning.

  They walked to the trees.

  “You’re welcome to stay with him if you like,” she said, as they stepped into the cooler air of the forest. Its bed of dried brown needles was dotted with dew. “I figured you’d want me to fetch you before I left.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Though he is prepared to aid you with your desertion problem. If you go back, and serve with his company as they go about their mad errand, he’ll vouch for you. See to it that any warrants against you are dropped.”

  “I might do that, if I knew you were safe.”

  “I have always been safe.”

  He ducked a low branch. “Is that so?”

  Angelika’s pace increased. “What does that mean?”

  Franziskus shrugged, though he was behind her and she could not see the gesture. “Nothing.”

  “No, no, go ahead. I know what you’re going to say. Say it. You’re scandalised. Aren’t you?”

  “You behave as you desire. What I think is of no relevance.”

  “That’s more than true, but still you’re looking down your nose at me. Aren’t you?”

  “I wish to protect you, that’s all.”

  She turned on him. “I don’t need you to be my chastity belt.”

  Franziskus stepped back. “It’s just—you are untrusting, Angelika, and in your world, in these circumstances, that is—It is good and necessary. Yet when—when…”

  “When what?”

  “When you find a man who—ah…”

  Hands on hips, she let him squirm.

  Franziskus started again. “When a man seems attractive to you, suddenly you toss aside all risk and doubt and… Who knows what he could have done to you?”

  Her knife was in her hand. She twisted it in the air. “Any man who’s ever taken liberties with me has paid a price in blood.”

  Franziskus held his hands up. He was mostly certain she’d drawn the dagger for emphasis only.

  “You are not my father, Franziskus, and not my priest. I’ll take no more of your disapproval.”

  “I did not mean to offend you.”

  “No, you couldn’t help it.”

  “I am sorry.” Franziskus plunged onward into the forest, in the direction she’d been heading.

  She was at his heels. “I’ve disappointed you. You think me some kind of strumpet.”

  Heat welled up in Franziskus’ face and he sped up, not wanting her to see it. “I did not use that word.”

  She pursued him. “What word would you use, Franziskus? Harlot? Tart? Something worse?”

  “Never any of them.”

  “This may startle you, Franziskus, but I am not the first woman who has ever desired a man, and had him, merely for the satisfaction of it.”

  “Please, I am sorry. Let’s speak no more of this.”

  “He struck me as handsome. Compelling. I liked his eyes, and the bones of his face. It has been months since I felt a man’s touch—”

  “Please, Angelika—”

  “—months since I felt a pair of lips against my own. And yesterday I was almost executed. You may not know it from the books you grew up reading, but there’s no aphrodisiac like the nearness of death.” She reached him, clamping her hand onto his shoulder. To keep going, he’d have to fight her. “What of it? What harm does it do you?”

  Franziskus turned to face her. He had an answer, but could not give it. Instead he said, “I find your honesty difficult.”

  “No man judges me,” she said.

  “I am sorry,” he said, yet again.

  Finches trilled in the high branches above them. Franziskus looked up. “Those are the first birds I’ve heard in days that weren’t screaming for carrion.”

  Angelika let the tension fall from her shoulders. She sheathed her knife. “Must be a high wind in here. Your eyes are wet.”

  “Yes. A high wind.”

  “You should give some thought to it,” she said. “Before we go much further. Go back to the lieutenant. He doesn’t think you’re as good as me—”

  “And I’m not.”

  “And you’re not, but you’ll do for what he needs. Go be a soldier, like your family wanted for you. Get your good name back. I am done, Franziskus, with all my wandering. I am out of danger.”

  “Everyone’s in danger, with Chaos running wild in the heart of the Empire.”

  “All the more reason for you to go and fight it, then. We should part now, where it will do you some good. You have been a help to me, Franziskus. Now help yourself.”

  “Not until I know you’re safe.”

  “I’ll make a vow to you, Franziskus. I will be safe. I’ll go find my little farmhouse somewhere, in a corner of the Empire far too boring for any barbarians or Chaos worshippers to bother with. I’ll find a place to sell my ring and—”

  She patted the secret pocket.

  There was nothing there. The ring was gone.

  She doubled over. She broke out in a sweat. She swore, using every obs
cene word in Reikspiel, starting with the worst ones, the compound words, and working her way down to the borderline crudities. She repeated the ripest ones, then dipped into her reserves of Bretonnian and Tilean profanity.

  “It’s gone.” Angelika wheeled, retracing her steps.

  “When was the last time you had it?”

  “I check it every—I don’t know.”

  “Did you check it before you left Jonas?”

  “Yes. No. No, I didn’t. I—I’d—how could I have been so stupid?” She punched a tree and winced in pain. Franziskus winced with her. “For what, one day’s time, it was out of my mind. First we were captured, then the trial, the fight, then I was unconscious, then with Jonas—” She patted the pocket a third time, a fourth: it was, of course, still empty. “How could I have been so incredibly stupid?” Her hands went to her temples. “That’s—that’s everything. All I’ve worked for. Five years. In one little object. A hundred times I’ve risked my life for the gold in that ring. I’ve been punched, kicked, frozen, stabbed, burnt by Chaos magic, interrogated, imprisoned, terrified…”

  Not to mention killed and miraculously brought back to life, thought Franziskus. But she hated to be reminded of that particular incident, and he wouldn’t dare mention it now.

  “I’ve lost it,” she muttered. “I can’t believe… I’ve lost it.” She reversed course, back to the sheep farm. “Got to retrace my…”

  Another question Franziskus dared not ask: could Jonas have it?

  “Five years,” Angelika said. “Five years of my life. My retirement. Everything.”

  “A ring?” asked Jonas. He stroked his chin thoughtfully, like an actor in a stage play. He stood a few feet from his men as they prepared themselves for muster. They’d emerged from the barn to check packs, inspect belts and scabbards, and rub the road from their boots. Archers counted arrows. Swordsmen examined blades for hints of corrosion. The halflings sat on a blanket to nibble cheese curds and a salad of fragrant mosses, in a dressing of pepper and malt. Emil walked among the men, but also observed the colloquy between his commander and the two scavengers.