Demon King (40 page)

“Cut him loose.” They hastened to obey, then one of them, knife in hand, looked calculatingly at me. I put four inches of steel through his forearm before his thoughts became action.

“Find the rest of that rope,” I ordered, and when they brought it, a length of about fifty feet, I had the three tie loops, five feet apart, at one end and then put their heads through. The farmer was blubbering something about “great lord,” “great father,” but he owed me nothing. I gave him more gold. I took the far end of the rope and started back toward the caravan. I kept the pace just below a trot, so the men had to run, stumbling along the muddy track. All fell more than once, and I’d ride for another few yards, dragging them, kicking, flailing, before pulling up long enough to let them regain their feet. By the time we caught up with the others, the three were no more than mud-men.

Philaret demanded to know what had happened, only I made no reply, but tossed him the end of the rope, gave the
pydna
back his horse, and reentered the carriage. I don’t know what happened to the three would-be thieves, but I don’t remember seeing them on the rest of our journey.

• • •

The Maisirian soldiery weren’t all idiots and thugs. Crossing one swollen river, a man was swept off his horse and carried downstream. Without thinking, without hesitating for an instant, four
devas
dove after him. We never recovered the first man, and three of his four would-be rescuers drowned as well.

Noble, but Shamb Philaret would have ridden on without ever acknowledging the bravery of those three men.

I asked for a moment and said a prayer, a speech more to the other Maisirian enlisted men than an invocation to any gods. We went on, and the sound of a nameless river that had just killed four men died away gradually.

• • •

We reached the Anker River, about two-thirds of the way from the border to Jarrah. This east-west tributary was wide, almost two miles from shore to shore. But it ran the wrong way for commerce, and was heavily silted, so only small boats could navigate it. Here, at the village of Sidor, it broke into many courses, with sandbars and small islands between each of them. Some of the islands had a few ragged fishermen living on them.

There were two long bridges across the Anker, about twenty yards apart. Each was about thirty feet wide, made of wood, with low railings, like long causeways from islet to islet. Philaret said it was quite common for one or more sections to be destroyed in the spring melt, and for traffic to be held up for weeks or people forced to use boats to reach the next, intact, section.

Sidor, mostly built of stone, was a bit more solid than other villages we’d passed through. We admired the tall, six-sided stone granary that was the local landmark, bought smoked, salted, and sorcery-preserved fish to improve our impossibly dull rations, crossed the bridge, and went on up the low hill on the far side.

• • •

There was something even worse than the
suebi
— the marshlands. The swamps weren’t as deep on our route as they were to the east — the enormous Kiot Marshes, actually a closely connected series of swamps, with thin peninsulas running through them. But the world was still gray, and it wasn’t from the now-hidden sky, but gray moss hanging from colorless, rain-dripping, twisting trees that looked as if they never lived, never died. And there were few hamlets — Philaret said only the hardiest Maisirian ventured through these lands, although there were tales of mysterious people who lived in the swamps, paying no heed to King Bairan or anyone else of the government.

The road was, simultaneously, better and worse. It was no longer a rut, but rather corduroyed with logs — trimmed, laid beside each other, and lashed in place — and crude bridges over the many streamlets. We didn’t mire the carriages as often, but our way was a constant jolting from log to log to log. I asked Philaret about how many men it took to keep this road up, and he told me the king’s magicians helped, laying spells of preservation on the green wood and rawhide lashings, but it was still necessary to send soldiers through with axes and shovels every year, after the ice melted in the Time of Births.

There were creatures out there in the dimness. Karjan and I spotted, about a hundred yards from the road, what appeared to be an ape, but with two pairs of arms and legs and an elongated, nearly headless body, so it resembled a spider larger than a man more than any monkey. It gibbered angrily, then was gone. I was told no one knew, or wanted to know, much about these creatures. Supposedly they were intelligent, almost as intelligent as a man, lived in rude communities, and stole the children of the peasants living on the fringes of the marsh. “Either stole them,” Captain Lasta reported, since he was the one who’d heard the tale, “or had them for dinner. There’re two ways of thinking.”

At least there were few insects in this late season. But I would rather have dealt with a thousand buzzing bloodsuckers than the terrible fear that hung over us, a dread of something unknown, unseen. I felt as if something, or somethings, was watching us, perhaps hidden in this hummock or cleverly concealed behind that gnarled, tortured tree trunk. Sometimes we heard noises, but no one saw anything.

We reached a section where the corduroyed logs were rotting, dismounted, and went on afoot, drivers leading their teams. We put dismounted scouts ahead of the column, to give warning if the road had been washed out from beneath. I was wondering where we’d find a place to camp when a terror-stricken scream rang. Swords snicked from scabbards, and arrows were fumbled onto bowstrings.

Running toward the caravan was one of the scouts, howling in complete, mindless panic. But no one could call him craven, for rushing toward him, moving parallel with the road, was an impossible nightmare. Conceive of a slug, speckled, slime-yellow, shit-brown, a slug with no eyes, but a score or more gaping mouths along its slime-bubbling snout, a slug thirty or more feet long. It moved soundlessly, faster than the scout could run. It was almost on him, and the man looked over his shoulder once, shrieked again, and darted off the road, toward a clump of trees. Perhaps he thought he could outclimb the nightmare.

Philaret and another officer bellowed at the man, shouting for him to get back to the road, get back or die, which made no sense.

The slug reared as it moved, then collapsed wetly on the soldier, burying him under its disgusting bulk. Arrows spat, and buried themselves in the creature, and spears studded its flanks. But the monstrosity took no hurt. It slid away as quickly as it had come, back into the dimness, back into the shadows. There was no sign of the scout, no sign at all.

“That stupid bastard,” Philaret swore. I asked what the man had done wrong, what we should do if one of us were attacked.

“I don’t know if it’s a secret or not … but no one said not to say anything,” he said. “I told you the logs had words said over them, to keep them from rotting as fast as they would otherwise. There’s another spell, something supposed to keep any of the swamp creatures from crossing the road, or even going on it. Stay on the road and you’re safe. Move off it …” He didn’t need to say more.

We went on for another hour, then stopped where we were, on the road. We slept in the carriages, and the Maisirian soldiers spread canvas from the carriage tops to the roadway for shelter. It was uncomfortable, but I don’t think anyone slept very much. I certainly didn’t. Not so much out of fear of the slug’s return, but because I was pondering what Philaret had said. As far as I knew, no magician, not even the Chare Brethren, had the power to create a spell like the one Shamb Philaret had described. The emperor had been right — Maisirian magic appeared to be far in advance of our own.

• • •

Eventually we came to the end of the swamps, and entered woodlands, part of the immense Belaya Forest that ringed Jarrah and was its final protection. The hills were low, rolling. The ground was poor, sandy. The trees were tall conifers, and the constant wind touched them, moved them, night and day, sometimes a whisper, sometimes a roar.

The track improved until it was actually a road, even graveled from small town to town, and in the towns the ways were cobbled. We were getting close to Jarrah.

We came on the great estates of the Maisirian nobility, which stretched for leagues. But as often as not the great houses needed work, the surrounding villages were shabby, and the land poor and unyielding. We were greeted joyously at these estates, since we were, in many cases, the first visitors “of their class” to be seen in half a year, and they were eager for what they called news.

Actually all they wanted was gossip about what the rich and powerful were doing and wearing in Numantia, in Oswy, or on other estates. Real news, such as the tension between our two countries, bored them. They were lonely, they said, but I noticed none would have considered inviting any of the merchant caravans to be their guests. Boredom was better than having to deal with a lower class.

• • •

We stopped outside a village, and a peasant came out with buckets of milk, which he sold by the dipper. We drank all he had and wanted more. I went back to his farmhouse with him, this time sensibly allowing Karjan and Svalbard to accompany me. I asked questions about the land, the farm, the growing seasons, what kind of help he needed to work the land, but the man grunted monosyllables. I’d hoped to ask what he thought of the king, of his rulers, but I realized I’d get nothing from this stone.

His farmhouse was a bit neater than most we’d seen, although very small by Numantian standards. Painted over the door was an interesting symbol. It was yellow, and looked like an upside-down, curving letter U. The ends were thicker, like knots in a rope.

“What’s that?” I asked, keeping my voice innocent.

The peasant looked at me hard, a threatening expression that was strange from a man of his station.

“ ‘Tis an’ old family sign f’r luck an’ good weather,” he muttered. “No more.”

The drawing looked very much like the yellow silk strangling cord used by the Tovieti.

“Let me ask something,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “Does this mean anything to you? It’d be in red.”

With my sword tip I sketched a circle in the mud, a circle with lines curling from it, the main Tovieti emblem, of murderous snakes rising for revenge from the pooled blood of the cult’s martyrs.

“No,” the peasant said quickly. “Means naught.” But he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

So the Tovieti were in Maisir, as well.

• • •

The mansion gaped at the gray heavens, stonework still scarred from the flames that had consumed it. It might have been just an unfortunate accident, but an hour earlier we’d passed through what had been a tiny village and was now a similar ruin. I asked Shamb Philaret if he knew what had happened, and he nodded. I had to prod him for the story, but eventually he told me the peasants had risen against their masters.

I remembered the horror of Irrigon — the flames and Amiel’s death — and held back a shudder. “Why?”

“The usual reasons, I suppose,” he said and shrugged. “Sometimes peasants forget their lot’s nothing but a crust and the whip, and their master’s got the right to do what he wants — and they go mad. It’s like a plague,” he said. “None of them think about what they’re doing, about what’ll happen, and they tear and kill, like a bear among the dogs.”

“So the army burned that village putting down the insurrection?”

“Not the army,” he said grimly. “The king’s magicians sent firewinds against the killers, and let Shahriya’s fire take them all — men, women, children. The king proclaimed these lands outcast, and forbade anyone to live here or plant the lands. This was to be an example that would live forever for man to know his station, and his duties.”

“When did this happen?” I said, thinking such utter barbarism must’ve been a generation or more ago.

“Five, no six, years past.”

We rode on, through other shattered villages, still-scorched lands. I felt the dark hand of the gods overhanging us.

• • •

The inn, only a day beyond Jarrah, sat on a hill overlooking a lake, and was a delight. It was frequently used for holidays by Maisirian nobility and was quite luxurious. There were stables, covered areas for the carriages to be washed, and barracks for servants of the guests. As with other Maisirian buildings, the lower story of the huge main building was of stone, framed in wood, and the upper stories were wooden. My men were on the second level, each with a room to himself. Captain Lasta was used to such luxury, as was Karjan, but the others were as delighted as children at their day-of-birth celebration.

I was utterly exhausted, and asked to have a simple meal served in our rooms. Alegria and I had three huge rooms on the top level, lit by gas piped from a nearby fault, which was a great rarity in Maisir. We’d barely examined the bedchamber or the main room, for this inn had that most precious of all things, something we’d barely seen since leaving Oswy — a bath. The room was hand-rubbed wood and stone, with controllable vents bringing heat up from the lower floors. Now I learned the Maisirian nobility’s way of cleanliness.

Stone monsters were set on the walls, chain-pulls below each, which allowed spouts of water, in various temperatures, to gush out of the pipes into wooden buckets. You wet yourself, soaped, and rinsed clean at least twice. Then you went to the tub, a twenty-foot-wide wine barrel cut in half. You never sullied this water with dirt or soap, but used it for relaxation, Alegria told me. There were other carved monster heads with chains overhead, and when the chains were pulled, the heads would tilt and dump down hot or cold water.

Alegria went into the bathroom first, while I tried to keep awake. Every muscle in my body whined about the moil and toil inflicted over the last time and a half.

“You may come in now,” she said, and I obeyed. Alegria floated on her back in the tub, eyes closed. I was too tired, too worn, to give a hang if she chose to watch. I hung the robe on a hook, filled a bucket, found the soap and a huge sea sponge, and began scrubbing. It took three complete baths before I felt the filth of the journey dissipating, and my skin was pink as a baby’s. A hairy baby’s, and I took out my razor and polished steel and shaved, amazingly without slashing my exhausted throat.