The crates had been opened, the tops pried off. Reiner stepped off his horse onto the cart, and looked inside them. They were empty. His fists clenched. Empty!
He kicked one to the ground. There was a single gold ingot beneath it, missed by whoever had looted them. He snatched it up. Hardly enough to buy an hour of a sorcerer’s time, let alone pay him to remove whatever poisonous curse Manfred had put on them. He hurled it into the brush.
“Reiner,” said Franka, as the others caught up to him. “Look.”
Reiner turned to where she was pointing. On the far side of the cart was a body. He jumped down and turned it over, then recoiled. The Blackhearts gathered around him, staring and gagging.
It was Abel. He was dead, but not from any weapon of steel.
Reiner was almost certain he had been dead before those who had robbed the cart had struck. His face was stretched in a hideous rictus grin, as if something inhumanly strong had grabbed the flesh at the back of his head and pulled it tight. His tongue was thick and black and protruded from his mouth like a sausage. His hands were so flexed that the bones of his fingers had snapped, and his arms and legs were as rigid and hard as iron.
“’Tis the poison,” breathed Pavel. “Manfred knew he betrayed us and he set it loose.”
Reiner swallowed. “So it isn’t a ruse after all.”
“He can see us all,” moaned Hals. “He knows what we’re thinking.”
“But how can that be?” asked Franka, shivering. “It’s impossible.”
It was impossible, thought Reiner. But that left an even more unpalatable option—that Manfred’s spy still lived. That he was one of them. Reiner looked around. Gert or Jergen—which was it? Then an even more horrible possibility struck him. What if Manfred had reached one of the original group? The spy could be any of them. Any of them.
Reiner and the others mounted up again and continued north, but the mood of camaraderie that had united them mere moments ago was lost, replaced by an uneasy silence.
A cold wind began to blow. Franka urged her horse up beside Reiner’s and rubbed her leg against his. He instinctively returned the sweet pressure, but then stopped. What if it was she who…?
He edged away from her, hating himself. Suspicion was a poison that would kill them all. She looked up at him, confused.
He pulled his cloak tighter around him and rode alone.
Scanning, formatting and basic
proofing by Undead.
02 - The Broken Lance Page 24
