03 - Liar's Peak

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

There was Mattes’ plan: arrange a convenient demise for Jonas, take over the company, and lead them out of the mountains and back to Stirland, somehow. Now that Franziskus was second-in-command, she could exercise her control through him. No military niceties need be flouted.

  No. Even if Rassau were the worst kind of villain, she couldn’t do it. Angelika had promised herself never to engage in murder. An inconvenient promise was a promise nonetheless. And a promise to oneself was a promise most of all.

  A twig snapped behind her. It was Mattes and Saar. Their depleted packs hung flatly across their backs.

  “Departing?” asked Angelika. It was a rhetorical question.

  “Too bad we never found your ring,” said the leather-faced drumsman.

  Merwin appeared in the tunnel mouth, regarding them apprehensively. He wavered, then slunk out to join them.

  “You’ll want to keep on the other side of the hills, away from the ridge,” she told Mattes. “Remember there’re watchmen up on that sangar.”

  “Aye, Angelika,” he said. “You made a pledge to me, to help me and the men. I’m releasing you from it, now. Time we all shifted for ourselves, and you, too. Futile to do otherwise.”

  “Go quick, then,” said Angelika, and they did. Mattes took the lead and they travelled in a running crouch, disappearing around the other side of Mount Lemon.

  Jonas emerged from the tunnel, stretching and yawning. His exertions pulled up his tunic, exposing his hardened midriff. “Did I hear voices?”

  “From inside the tunnel?”

  Jonas scowled and fumbled for his sabre. “You’re an appalling liar, Angelika.”

  You’re the authority, Angelika thought, as Rassau careened past her, his weapon half out of its scabbard.

  “Who was it? Which way did they go?” The wind ruffled his sleep-tousled hair.

  “You’ll be spotted,” she called.

  “If damned deserters can risk it, so can I.” Jonas spotted the route they must have taken, circling around Mount Lemon. Angelika followed hard after him. She stole a peek at the black shape of the sangar indented up in the rock wall, a quarter of a mile up. There was no telling if they’d been seen.

  Together they cleared the hill. The trail between mounds was empty. Jonas, confused, turned a circuit. Angelika saw where they were: the three deserters had heard him and were scuttling up the hillside. She cast her gaze to the opposite hill, so Jonas would not track it. But he spotted them on his own and was then huffing up the slope, sabre now fully exposed.

  “Don’t you do it,” Angelika warned.

  He charged on heedlessly, herding Mattes, Saar and Merwin around the hill’s rounded circumference.

  Saar cried out, clutching his ankle. Mattes stopped when he realised any further flight would place him in the sangar’s sightline. He sturdied his feet on uneven ground and pulled loose his own sabre. Saar’s thick fingers groped for the holster of his handgun. Merwin gulped and swerved up for the hill’s pointed peak.

  Angelika had seen Jonas fight; even in concert, the three escapees were no match for him. Once again, fate had situated her so that the only choice available to her was the stupid one. She ran up the hill after Rassau.

  Jonas halved the distance between himself and the deserting men. Saar pulled out his tinder, to light the wick of his matchlock, then abandoned the useless effort. He dropped the rare and expensive weapon and it rolled down the hill. When Jonas reached him, Saar held out a palm in pleading surrender, his other hand massaging his twisted ankle. Rassau raised his sabre, ready to lop off Saar’s head. “No man shall desert from my company,” Jonas shouted.

  Angelika tackled him from behind, driving her sharp, slim shoulder into the backs of his knees. He teetered backwards, rolling over her. She swept to the side, snatching her knife from the cuff of her boot. Jonas landed on his back, the wrist of his weapon-hand striking a stone. Angelika dived onto him, pinning the wrist with her knee. Her dagger’s tip hovered over his right eye.

  “I told you you didn’t want to do that,” she said.

  “Get off me, woman.”

  “You make that demand from an exceptionally poor bargaining position.” She sensed that Mattes and Merwin had gathered close around her. Though Mattes had his sword out, ready to back her up, and Merwin clutched an admirably pointy boulder the size of his hand, she would have preferred they not encroach. Even in his current posture, lying flat out facing down the slope, blood rushing to his head, a combatant of Rassau’s deadliness was not to be underestimated.

  “I am still the commander of this company and those men are deserters. If you leave off me this instant, I promise to chalk up this crime against my person as an act of womanly rashness.”

  Angelika’s dagger darted closer to his eye, as if drawn by a magnet.

  Jonas shut up.

  “You speak of promises,” Saar suddenly babbled, “but your word isn’t worth a handful of spit. My life may not be much, but I’ve grown fond of it and I’m done entrusting it to you.”

  “That’s a problem, then,” said Angelika. She adjusted her weight, momentarily placing most of it on Jonas’ wrist, eliciting a groan. “Because we’re all going to have to make promises to one another if we’re to extricate ourselves from this.”

  “I just want us to go home,” said Saar.

  “Well I suspect that Jonas here won’t agree to taking the whole company back, will he?”

  “You’ll be sorry you ever pressured me at knifepoint.”

  “No one likes hearing this, but it’s for your own good, Jonas. Now answer the question.”

  “The Gerolsbruch Swordsmen will remain here and perform their duties.”

  “There we go. The unit will remain. But you, Saar, and Mattes and Merwin would like to go anyway, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Mattes.

  “In that case,” said Angelika, “I’ve formed such a bond of attachment to the lot of you that I’m prepared to do an extraordinary thing. I will lie for you. Jonas, tell us why desertion is never permitted.”

  The lieutenant began with an exasperated sigh. “II one is allowed to desert, all will do the same.”

  “Then we will compromise. Jonas and I will return to camp. Mattes, did you tell anyone else of your intention to scarper off?”

  “I begged Pinkert and Madelung to accompany us, but they would not come.”

  “Inconvenient. Well then. The five of us will return to camp. The three of you did not intend to desert. You heard rustling and thought it might be game. I unthinkingly let you go off in pursuit of it.”

  “Let me up,” Jonas said.

  “You think me a mooncalf? Not till we’ve agreed on a serviceable lie.” As Angelika constructed her proposal, she used her contact with Jonas to subtly frisk him for her ring. With the sides of her thighs and her free arm, she brushed against him in any place that contained a pocket, or might conceal a hiding place. “The three of you went off. Jonas woke and realised the dangers you’d put yourselves in, exposing yourself to barbarian sentries. So he and I came out to collect you. Voila: there has been no desertion.

  “You, Mattes, will assure Madelung and Pinkert and whoever else thinks otherwise. Later, after a seemly interval, Jonas will send the three of you out for another forage. You won’t come back. The Kurgs will have taken you. The company shall mourn your sad demises. Jonas preserves good discipline, and the three of you get to leave. What say you?”

  Jonas had grown increasingly flushed; his head had taken on the colouration of a beetroot. “A fatal flaw blemishes your scheme. As I said not long ago, Angelika, you are an atrocious liar.”

  “The four of you will do all the lying. I’ll simply keep my mouth damped.” She finished her search. She was now certain that her ring was nowhere on him. Either he’d secreted it somewhere nearby, in a hole or cranny, or it, and five years of clammy, fearful labour, were truly and irrevocably lost.

  “I don’t know if I can trust them,” Jonas said.

  Saar goggled. “It
is we who can’t trust you. Once we believed you, but you’ve proven yourself false with us, time and again.”

  Angelika grimaced. “I’ve come up with a perfectly decent, bloodless way out of this. If you won’t join in, Saar, I can step off Jonas’ chest with conscience clear, and let you resume as before.”

  “We agree then,” Saar replied.

  “You there. Halfling,” Angelika said.

  “I don’t think I ever should have left. I snuck away without my friend Filch, who got me into this. That doesn’t make me such a boon companion, does it now?”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “Yes, I’ll take part in this white lie of yours. For a white lie it plainly is, seeing as it’s for the benefit of all and sundry.” He let his rock fall into the dirt. “This wouldn’t have done me so much good. It’s Filch who’s a dab hand with the thrown rocks. Me, I likely would have dropped it on my—”

  “Thank you, Merwin. And now you, Mattes. Will you swear in?”

  “I have one more condition.”

  “What is that?” She felt Jonas reposition himself under her. A little test. She jabbed her knees tighter into his ribs. He bared his teeth, then relaxed.

  Mattes bent down to peer into his commander’s ruddy face. “There’s a second lie required here. Jonas, you got to start doing what Angelika here tells you. No more ignoring her advice. You can pretend to be the commander, and strut and posture as you please. But before giving any orders that might cost the men their lives, you must get her say-so.”

  “I’m no commander,” said Angelika.

  “And you don’t have to act as one. But you’ve got to be it, in secret. You’re the one knows what she’s doing out here.”

  Jonas sneered. “And this vow remains in force till you make your unmanly exodus?”

  “If you swear it, I’ll stay.”

  “How magnanimous.”

  “Not a bit of it. I’ll have to see you keep your word, won’t I?”

  The lieutenant’s muscles knotted. His breathing sped. Angelika thought it possible that he might begin to weep. Finally he said, “Then get off me, for I agree to it.”

  “To all the terms?” Angelika asked.

  “All that you have said,” he replied.

  She leapt free of him. For a long moment, he remained still. Finally he sat up, hanging his head between his knees.

  “You must all agree to lie about this as well: that you’ve seen me betrayed, and brought so low.”

  The sky went blank that afternoon, dropping first slushy rain, then pelting, icy snow. Swordsmen peered mournfully from the tunnel at the whitening hills. Franziskus came to see and his archers gathered around him.

  “This can’t be happening,” said one.

  “That’s the mountains for you,” said Franziskus.

  “Is it enemy magic?” he shivered.

  Angelika strode up to investigate. “No, just ordinary snow,” she said. “If it was Chaos, it’d be the colour of blood or bile, and it would bubble the surface of the skin, or whisper crazy thoughts into your ear, or somesuch.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “Could be a few hours. Could be weeks.”

  “That bodes ill.”

  The soldier was right; they were nearly out of food. Now if they sent a party out to forage, their tracks could easily be read in the snow. The Chaos chieftain would need no baying creature to locate them. “That’s true,” said Angelika.

  “I am glad,” the archer said, “that you did not tell me it heralded a glorious victory, or would light our path and strengthen our spirits.” He pressed his back against the frigid tunnel wall, wrapping his cloak around himself. “I weary of false hope.”

  “It is bad, but we’ll find some true hope yet,” Franziskus said.

  He went with Angelika back into the tunnel, to the blockage, where Jonas had been sitting since the party’s miserly noonday meal. Near his feet a low fire lapped at twigs and branches.

  “Excuse us, will you, Emil?” Jonas requested. The rest of the company had given him a respectful berth.

  The older man stood, subjecting his commander to a circumspect reckoning. “If you say so, lieutenant.”

  Jonas watched him go. “Is that snow out there?”

  “Yes,” said Angelika, seating herself across from him.

  “I’m sorry. It’s a poor time for you to take command, isn’t it?”

  “To lead a troop of soldiers is the last thing I want. I agreed to Mattes’ deal for one reason alone. To gel the lot of you back in this tunnel without any throat cutting.”

  “So you’re a party to my untruths then, hah?”

  “Seems to be contagious.”

  “I thought the soldiers were tired of lies.”

  “Even Mattes expects you to present a good front. So belay your cursed moping and eventually you can win them back. Unless you’ve told some other absurd fairy story that’ll come back to bite you.”

  “Unless, unless…”

  Angelika’s chest tightened. “There isn’t, is there?”

  “What?”

  “If there’s some other lie that will later catch us by surprise…”

  “No, I swear it.”

  “Then lash yourself together, Jonas.”

  “There’s a part of me worth salvaging, is there?”

  She waited for a moment. “Yes. Yes, Jonas, I tell you that there is.”

  “But we’re trapped, aren’t we? A day’s worth of food, if that. Now the creeping cold. Tonight I expect the baying of that ghastly hound to draw closer. Do you think it has six eyes, or merely a set of grasping tentacles? Mattes has set you an insurmountable task, to get us out of this.”

  “To blazes with Mattes,” said Angelika. “I don’t pretend to be a military officer.”

  “Then delegate to Franziskus, as I have been made to devolve power to you. What can we do, good Franziskus Weibe?”

  “Angelika’s right that we can’t give up.”

  His bitter laugh rattled. “But what to do?”

  “We wait?”

  “For what? For that chieftain to lead his army back to Stirland, burning what’s left of it to the ground? Slaying our families, razing our towns? Then we stagger back, starved, and find only pestilence and famine? Yes, that is a fine plan. It is good that my responsibility for it is only decorative.”

  “Something will break our way,” said Franziskus. “When it does, we’ll be ready.”

  Jonas cackled. “Oh yes. I am sure that will work. Shall I announce it, with fanfare and foofarah?”

  “You can tell the men to pack themselves close together, for warmth,” said Angelika. “A bigger fire’s tempting, but too great a risk. The lower the temperature, the more visible the smoke plume. Also it will melt the snow around the entrance. Have them gather snow in their canteens. It’s not far below freezing now, but if it gets much colder, they’ll have to keep the water close to their bodies, to stop it turning to ice. And it goes without saying that whatever food they have left, they should eat in the tiniest of nibbles.”

  “Tiny nibbles. Yes, I shall proclaim that, and in a stirring voice.”

  Revolted, Franziskus turned from him. “If you cared for the men as much as for their opinion of you, you’d be capable of encouraging them now.”

  “And Angelika,” Jonas continued, “when you set out from the Blackfire, with your ring in your pocket, did you imagine you’d spend your retirement in a freezing cave, counting the hours till Kurgans came to violate you?”

  “You have it, don’t you?”

  He flung the back of his helmeted head against the wall behind him. “Yes indeed, why hide that now? Naturally, I have the ring. I took it from you on that night.”

  Angelika thought about knifing him. His sabre was several feet away. “Care to hand it over, then?”

  He reached into a pocket. “By Sigmar’s cumbrous hammer, why not? I thought I was such a clever boots. Luring along an indispensable minion. Had I but susp
ected how double-edged an underling’s indispensability can be.” His face convulsed in bafflement. He turned the pocket inside out. He checked his pack, and the inside of his purse. Jonas’ mouth fell silently open.

  “You’ve lost it,” said Angelika.

  “I must have,” he said, at length.

  Her hand clutched tight, as if it held her knife. “You had it, and you lost it.”

  “You’ll not believe this, Angelika, but—but my remorse is genuine. I meant for you to get it back. Never did I intend any of this—”

  “I don’t give a fig for your remorse. Where were you when you lost it?”

  Emil drifted into view. “Is all in order, sir?”

  “Yes, yes, Emil. Please let us talk in peace.”

  The sergeant faded back.

  “I did not trifle with you, Angelika. It was not meant to happen as it has. Please believe me.”

  “You took it from me that night, in the hayloft?”

  Franziskus’ fair skin flushed with crimson. He got up to leave but Angelika tugged his sleeve, to keep him there.

  She repeated her question. “That is when you took it, yes?”

  Jonas resembled a sheepish child. “When else?”

  “And where were you when you last knew you had it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She coiled to launch herself at him.

  Franziskus glanced with deliberate portent to the men. She was not so certain they wouldn’t cheer her, but eased herself anyhow.

  “Think,” she demanded.

  “I am thinking but it’s impossible to know, isn’t it?”

  “You didn’t keep checking it, to be sure you still had it?”

  “I forgot about it.”

  “When I had it, I could not stop testing my pocket, to be sure it was there.”

  “It mattered more to you than it does to me.”

  “Do you know what that ring was worth?”

  He shrugged. “Merely money, I imagine.”

  “Did you have it up on the ridge?”

  “I can’t say. You can’t go looking for it now.”

  “Did you have it at any time here in the valley?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Can you say for sure you had it in the dwarven gorge?”