03 - Liar's Peak

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  “A ruby ring,” said Angelika. She’d already scoured the hayloft.

  “If I’d seen it,” said Jonas, “I’d have noticed it.”

  “What about the men?” asked Franziskus.

  “I’ll have Emil make an announcement. If one of them has found it, he’ll turn it over.”

  “No,” said Angelika. “Not yet.” It was too obviously valuable an item; no infantryman halfway in possession of his faculties would voluntarily give it over. An announcement would get them hunting for it in one another’s packs, clouding the matter completely. If a soldier had the ring, she’d find it by herself.

  “When was the last time you’re sure you had it?” Jonas asked.

  The question already made her teeth grind together. He did not mean to remind her of her own stupidity, but reminded she was. “Before I was captured. Before Hochmoor.”

  “In the fight with the chieftain—you fell onto him.”

  “Yes?”

  Jonas squinted as if in recollection. “Right after that, when the barbarian righted himself. I saw him stoop to pick up some object on the ground. Perhaps I’m imagining it, in retrospect, but I’d swear there was a glint from the sun. In the tumult of battle, I paid no further heed to it—I thought he’d dropped a dagger, perhaps. What if the big Kurgan has your ring?”

  Why, thought Franziskus, that would be extraordinarily convenient for you, wouldn’t it?

  Angelika contemplated the sturdy angles of the lieutenant’s handsome, unyielding face. “You saw the chieftain take my ring.”

  Jonas shook his head. “I cannot swear to that. I know I saw him stoop down. I believe he snatched up some item from the grass—but, bear in mind, I saw it for an instant only. Just as likely, he’d lost his balance, and was only righting himself.”

  “But you think you saw a glint.”

  Jonas nodded. “I think I saw it.”

  “You think you saw the ring, or a glint?”

  “A glint, which might have been a ring.”

  Franziskus cleared his throat but she paid him no heed.

  “I saw it for barely a moment,” said Jonas. “If I told you I was sure, I’d be lying.”

  “And you think the big Kurgan has it?”

  Jonas shrugged. “I suggest it only as a possibility.”

  “You saw a glint in his hand, though? Right after I knocked into him?”

  “I only say perhaps I saw it.”

  Angelika chewed on her lip. “Then I’m coming with you.”

  “Angelika,” Franziskus exclaimed.

  Jonas appeared to be surprised. “Don’t misunderstand me, Angelika. I believe we need you on this mission. But come to save our homeland. Do not do it only to recover your property.”

  “Do you want me or not?”

  “Yes, but, Angelika… Yes, Filch says the chieftain’s headed up to the mountains, too. But that’s a big territory. I don’t fancy our odds of running into him again.”

  “If he’s got my ring, I’ll find him.”

  “But we do not go to seek him. We go to prevent all his kind from invading in a second wave.”

  “Our aims are not incompatible.”

  “If it comes to a choice, Angelika, you must subordinate your goal to the needs of the whole.”

  “If it comes to a choice, you’ll avoid telling me what I must and must not do.” She caressed the side of his face, lingering to cup her hands around his ear. The gesture was not entirely affectionate.

  Jonas reddened and pulled back. Emil, and some of the men, had seen her do it. He straightened his shoulders and backbone, unfolding himself to his full height. “One thing you must not do, Angelika, is diminish me in the eyes of my men.”

  Angelika cocked her head. “Fine by me, so long as you don’t expect any bowing and scraping. We’re partners, Jonas. I am not signing on as one of your men.”

  The flush in his cheeks intensified. “I would never confuse you for such.”

  Franziskus felt a sudden and inappropriate sympathy for the lieutenant. More than once, Angelika had flummoxed him into a similar state. This newfound solidarity did not prevent him from boldly hooking his hand into the crook of Angelika’s elbow and pulling her aside. Perhaps unable to dumbfound more than one young Stirlander at a time, she followed with minimal resistance. He stopped after a quick march of three dozen yards or so.

  “You don’t believe his story, do you?” Franziskus said.

  “Much is possible, but few things are likely.”

  “Which answer is that?”

  “Even if we don’t believe him, he must think we do.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “Maybe that war chieftain did take the ring. If he didn’t, who did?”

  “He did.”

  “I’m not going up into those mountains to get close to that barbarian war chieftain. I could happily live the rest of my days without coming within a mile of that monster again, please and thank you. If I’m to get that ring back, Jonas must think we’ve swallowed his story, bones and all. So we mustn’t be seen in anxious conference.” Adopting a casual stride, she meandered after the marching soldiers. She veered slightly, so she and Franziskus could remain out of earshot.

  “Acting as if we trust his tale will be difficult. Now that I’ve had time to mull it, it seems ridiculous.”

  “Yet you believed it as he said it.”

  “Oddly, yes.”

  “It was the skill of the presentation. Making a suggestion we wished to hear, then making it seem all the more credible by backing away from it when I pressed him.”

  “And he thinks we’ll keep on believing?”

  “A liar is his own best audience.”

  Jonas looked back to see where she was. She waved at him. Franziskus saw her mouth work itself into a peculiar shape, recognising it only belatedly as her version of a friendly smile.

  “I will get that ring back,” she said, out of the side of her falsely grinning mouth.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Gerolsbruch Swordsmen marched to the mountains. Emil estimated that they’d reach the mountains in two days. “Three and a half,” Angelika told Franziskus, under her breath. “And then only the foothills. Almost a week till we’re deep in the mountains proper.”

  As they marched, a pattern formed within the column. At its head rode Jonas. In disciplined formation behind him tromped his swordsmen. Behind them, with a notable dip in spirit, the archers trekked. The column then grew increasingly wayward, as the stragglers inducted from other companies, and then the halflings, brought up the rear. Angelika and Franziskus walked with the halflings, out of sympathy and for lack of a likelier rank to trudge in. Emil spent much of his time at the column’s head, with his lieutenant, but periodically rode back to herd the strays and archers back into line. The craggy sergeant looked through Angelika and Franziskus as if they were sheets of glass.

  Franziskus found himself both offended by Emil’s attitude, and apologetic for it. “We won’t be needed till the mountains,” he said to Angelika, after an especially pointed snubbing.

  “Good,” said Angelika.

  The first morning passed slowly by. Emil’s chosen route avoided roads, taking the company through fallow fields and empty pastures. Patches of forested land grew more frequent, but these were kept at bay, too, to deprive the enemy of cover for ambush. The soldiers passed no settlements, and were therefore spared the sight of burnt-out buildings, or the strewn corpses of slaughtered farmers. That first morning, they saw not a single indication of the war raging throughout the Empire. It was as if they’d marched together into a happy memory of the past.

  The sun shone every so often through gaps in a cloudy sky, sending down sharp beams of golden light to brighten Stirland’s green and rolling ridges. They heard crickets and beetles; they saw no creature larger than a sparrow. Wild flowers bloomed beneath them: regal gentians, trumpeting primroses, and lacy bell-orchids all laid down in meek surrender to the soldiers’ treading boots.
r />   Emil rode up beside Jonas and paced him, in silence.

  “There is something you wish to say to me,” Jonas observed, in a tone both mild and premeditated.

  Emil denied it.

  “Come now,” said Jonas.

  “Nothing a sergeant ought to say to his lieutenant.”

  “That’s a womanly tactic, sergeant. Don’t make me drag it out of you.”

  “It goes against good order, to have the woman with us.”

  “She’ll prove her worth. You’ll see.”

  Emil harrumphed.

  “This will not be a fight of protocols and formations, Emil.”

  “The best officers know how common soldiers think.”

  “We’ll all have to change our thinking before this is through.”

  “I’ll say no more, then.”

  “No, Emil, go ahead. Out with it.”

  “Having her along, it would be unwise even if you hadn’t roistered with her.”

  “A charming choice of words, sergeant.”

  “A footman expects that many privileges denied to him will be claimed by his commanders. But a woman is not a fine brandy or a thicker, drier bunk. Men are men, lieutenant.”

  “The soldiers take their cues from you,” Jonas said. “Show acceptance toward her, and they’ll do the same.”

  A fly buzzed at Emil’s face. He grimaced at it, then swiped it stolidly away.

  An hour later they arrived at a fast and narrow stream. Emil nodded to a drum-corporal who tapped out a blistering roll on his drumhead, calling the column to halt.

  Angelika drew back, balling up her fists. The drumbeat echoed from ridge to hill and beyond. As the men broke from their formation, she loped up to Jonas. He blinked in apparent annoyance at her approach.

  “Better switch to hand signals from now on.”

  “What?” asked Jonas.

  “The drum. You want every frothing Kurg and goat-headed beastman within ten miles to come lumbering down on us?”

  Half a dozen heads turned their way. They belonged to swordsmen, refreshing their canteens in the stream’s icy water.

  Jonas spoke through shuttered teeth. “Speak to me more deferentially,” he said.

  “I defer to no one. Don’t take it personally.” She’d lowered her voice a notch or two.

  “The men are watching.”

  “I don’t care if Sigmar Himself is sitting over there on a silver stool, Jonas. We made quite the opposite arrangement. I’ll treat you with the respect due an equal partner. No less, no more.”

  Jonas painfully smiled, wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and led her several paces from any of his men. “Then we must amend our arrangement, or neither of us will achieve our ends.”

  “Why do you want me here?”

  “To be a good scout.”

  “You want me for my knowledge and advice. Maybe none of the enemy heard us this time, but if your man keeps banging that drum, they certainly will.”

  “All I ask is that you protect my authority as well as my life.”

  “Where we’re going, survival depends on silence and stealthy movement.”

  “An officer’s survival, and that of his men, depends on the preservation of his authority.”

  “I suppose that’s true, but if I do have something to tell you, I may need to say it quickly, without taking half an hour to shuffle my feet and tug at my fringe.”

  “I don’t care if you think of me as your superior. I’m merely asking you to pretend.”

  Angelika shook her head. “I don’t defer, and I won’t lie.”

  “Think of it as merely playing a role, Angelika.”

  “It’s deception. We are partners, and I won’t pretend otherwise.”

  Jonas walked away from her. “Matters such as this—minor matters, to drum or not to drum—take them to Emil. Trouble me only when you have something to tell me, and need to say it quickly.”

  Angelika stalked back to Franziskus, who knelt over the riverbank, filling clay jugs of water for the halflings, who clustered around him. Evidently they were concerned about falling into the stream, and had cajoled the soft-hearted Stirlander into doing their chores. Each had brought with him a pair of heavy clay jugs, suitable for the watering of a stable’s worth of horses. These would prove a hindrance when they reached the mountains, but Angelika had dispensed enough unwanted advice for one rest stop.

  As soon as he saw her, Franziskus asked her what was wrong.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We’re doomed.” She conveyed the general drift of her discussion with the lieutenant.

  “I see,” said Franziskus. “And you did not bring this up with Emil, as he asked?”

  “Our deal is not with the sergeant.”

  Franziskus heaved the last of the halfling jugs up onto the reedy riverbank. Brushing mud from his trousers, he sought out the sergeant. As he approached, Franziskus felt himself impaled on a lance of the veteran’s disfavour. If he had returned from his unit’s debacle in the Blackfire, to accept assignment to a new company, Franziskus would still be an officer, the unquestioned superior of a man like this. Now he was an outlaw, a crawling, worthless creature, fully deserving of a sergeant’s contempt. His heartbeat sped. Emil made him speak first.

  “A question has arisen,” he said.

  “Has it?”

  “The peal of the drum. For all intents and purposes, we now enter enemy territory. We must presume ourselves to be outmanned, and the enemy to lurk behind every tree and rock.”

  “I see. Except when already engaged, orders must be given by hand signal.”

  Franziskus nodded.

  “This was the subject of discussion just now, between my commander and your… confederate?”

  “Ah, yes.” Franziskus fought the urge to adjust his coat collar. He lost. “I think… In future, I believe it will be best if Angelika conveys advice to me, and I, to you. Do you agree?”

  Emil nodded.

  “Well, ah—good, then,” replied Franziskus, moving guardedly away. He skirted a pair of swordsmen, one young and tall, the other older and squat, who were engaged in some great discussion. The young one saw Franziskus and called him over.

  “You can’t see it, Cassel, because you’re old,” he said, continuing his argument with the squat one. “Your heart’s curdled. You don’t think like a young man, like I do.”

  “Pfah!” said Cassel.

  “You are young like me,” the tall one told Franziskus. “You explain to Cassel here how we think. What a young man feels towards a woman.”

  “What?” asked Franziskus.

  “It’s little wonder you confuse others, Rappe,” said Cassel, “as you are very confused yourself.” He turned to Franziskus. “Excuse this poor benighted pup here. I have shared with him a fundamental truth, and he wishes to evade it.”

  “Truth,” scoffed Rappe.

  “Yes, truth. That woman is the natural enemy of man, much more powerful than our poor sex. And that man’s only weapon against her is deception.”

  “He says I must learn to lie to my girl,” Rappe explained.

  “Yes, train yourself now, while she’s young, too, and not yet reached the height of her powers.”

  “But you have not seen her. She is so beautiful. I don’t need to lie to her. With her in my bed, I’ve no need to prowl anywhere else.”

  “You’re a man of the world,” Cassel told Franziskus.

  “You misjudge my character,” Franziskus replied.

  “Yes, tell him,” said Cassel, “how quickly it will change. I’ve six women, a child by each, and there’s not a one of them who isn’t precious respite from the others.”

  “Each child is a girl child, isn’t that so, Cassel?”

  “So what of it, Rappe?”

  “You’ll be telling me next they’re the enemy, too.”

  “I dream at night they find each other, form an implacable band, and hound me through the streets,” said Cassel. “Put up to it by their mothers, I migh
t add. But that is neither here nor there.”

  It took Franziskus nearly an hour to extricate himself from the conversation. Minutes later, Emil gathered the men, telling them that formation orders previously communicated by bugle call would now be given with signals. Corporals would be required to remain on constant alert for new orders from the head of the column. This new protocol established, the marchers reconstituted themselves and continued the journey north.

  Not long afterwards, a heavy clomping resounded from the eastern horizon, which lay only a half mile or so ahead of the company, on a rocky ridgeline. Emil’s hand shot up; down the line, the arms of corporals flagged sharply upwards, repeating his signalled orders. The men ran forward, forming themselves into ranks of ten. Swordsmen crouched down, to allow archers to fire over them. The strays at the rear of the column had to jostle in between the last line of sabres and the first of bow-men; clearly, an error had been made in the relative arrangement of the three forces.

  Angelika hit the dirt, lying flat against a gently grading patch of red and violet flowers. Franziskus hesitated, wondering whether he should join the stragglers in forming a final buffer in front of the archers. Angelika grabbed him by the back of the knee and he fell beside her.

  “Let the soldiers fight,” Angelika said.

  Her comment was not meant to wound, but it did.

  Large brown shapes darted between the ridge rocks. They were mountain antelopes, of the breed called the steinbock, the largest known in the World’s Edge Mountains. Franziskus counted seven of them. Five were large males, each as high as a horse, their heads topped with sharp, curving horns marked by periodic, gnarled rings. The other two beasts were about two thirds their size, so Franziskus reckoned them to be females. His father used to go with his friends to the mountains to hunt them. A set of their ringed antlers decorated the family dining hall.

  It was not usual for these creatures to come down from the mountains. Franziskus could only imagine what dreadful manifestations of Chaos had driven them into unfamiliar territory. They would not long survive here. Even in more prosperous times, such magnificent beasts would be quickly culled by lucky huntsmen.