EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (309 page)

Dante disagreed but found himself light on the guts to speak up. They broke back into the trill of birdsong and the rattle of wind-shaken leaves and made a brisk trot south. Within seconds Dante was shivering without stop.

“That wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be,” he said once his blood had calmed.

“You think about killing people a lot?” Blays said, smiling faintly.

“Sometimes,” he smiled back. It didn’t last. “On his knees like that.”

“Don’t feel sorry for him. He was all set to trample us into the grass.”

“But it was so...savage,” Dante said, and Blays shrugged. It was worse than the other times. It felt like a regression, like an act of a man he didn’t know. He had no illusions fights were supposed to be fair. If the one with the tracker had been even, he without his horse and them without surprise, he expected it would have ended with a few pounds of steel through his heart. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling what they’d done had been unnatural, that somewhere the gods were watching them and their judgment would be harsh.

“We’d be dead except that spell,” Blays said softly a moment later.

“Yeah.”

“Were you scared?”

“No,” he said, running faster. “A little. When I tripped.”

“I just about dropped a pile in my breeches,” Blays said, chortling so hard he had to sputter out the words. “Then the look on his face when you blinded his horse! Gods!”

Dante chuckled weakly. It had looked otherworldly, the black ball where there should have been a head, the rider throwing his hands over his head like a man falling through the false floor of a wildcat trap.

“You have a strange sense of humor.”

“He’d have laughed too if he could see it.” Blays giggled. Dante joined him, feeling outside himself. Their nervous energy gave out after a mile or so and they slowed to a stroll to catch their breath. Dante clasped his hands behind his head to ward off the stitch in his side.

“They’re not going to miss our tracks after that,” he said, gazing into the woods. “Not even with their woodsman dead.”

“I figured that’s why we were running away,” Blays said.

“The nearest town could be twenty miles from here. They’re on horseback.”

“So what?”

“So what? So they’ll find us and kill us!”

Blays rolled his eyes. “So what do you want to do about it?”

“I don’t know!” Dante said, startled at the pitch of his own voice. He thought he was angry with Blays for being so cavalier, but after a quarter mile of silent seething he’d reached the same conclusion as the boy. They couldn’t hide. They had no horses. Returning to the woods would do no good when the temple men had already found them once. All they could do was run and hope. The trees thinned and he saw a stream of smoke rising from a fraction of a mile down the bank. For a moment he let himself think their luck had turned, that it would be the outskirts of a town, maybe even Whetton, but it was a single house on the river’s edge. The land rolled empty beyond it.

“Wait,” he said. “That smoke.”

“What about it?” Blays yawned.

“There’ll be a boat.”

“Smoke means
fire
.”

“At the house where they have the fire, you dunce. You don’t live in a river and not have a boat.”

“Oh,” Blays said. “Sure. If we cross over, they’d have to waste time finding a ferry.”

“The current’s fast,” Dante said, frowning, picking at this new thread. “If we row hard, they’d have to be riding pell-mell to keep up. We can reach town ahead of them.”

They looked at each other. “Ambush,” Blays said.

“Nater,” Dante agreed, one of those words you repeat without a clue where it came from.

“Yeah,” the boy said, licking his lips. “That’s it. We take them out of the mix and that gives us time to think up what the hell we do next. If we can’t figure out what to do before they send the next guys, maybe we deserve to eat it.”

Dante crouched in the bushes of the forest’s fringe. Nothing but open grass north and south.

“Can you run?”

“Let’s do this thing.”

They cut right down the shallow slope of the grassy band and then the steep rocky banks until their boots touched water. The house lay straight ahead. It was a small thing, clearly no more than a couple rooms, and as they got closer Dante grew afraid they’d found the one fisherman in the wide world who didn’t own a boat. They drew to a quick walk at a couple hundred yards off, ears sharp for footsteps, for shouts, any sign of its owners other than the white wisps of smoke. At a hundred yards he could smell it strongly, the sweet smoky scent of dry heat and crisp winter. His eyes locked to the hut as they fell into its shadow. The bank stretched out in a tiny spit right before the hut and as they crested the moist earth he heard the hollow slap of water on a hull.

“Nice deduction, Sage Pratus,” Blays muttered, regarding the rowboat moored in the miniature bay beneath the house. A light wind blew in from the north. It smelled like the weather were turning.

“Think it’s safe?”

“Does it matter?” Blays said, tromping down to the two-person skiff. Its timbers were bleached with the wear of water and sunshine, and above the waterline the wood was fuzzy to the touch. Blays knocked near the top of its hull and one of the beams actually rattled. “What’s holding it together? The power of prayer?”

“They take this thing out?” Dante hissed, glancing at the river. “I wouldn’t trust it in a puddle.”

“River looks okay,” Blays said, grabbing hold of the unraveling rope at its fore and following it to a stake a few feet up the bank. “Get in.”

“Lyle’s balls,” he swore, then edged up through the water and rolled himself inside. It was decently broad and didn’t threaten to show its belly at the addition of his weight, but he didn’t like the way it rolled on the current. Blays freed the rope and swung the boat up sidelong to the shore, then wiggled his rear like a cat before it makes a leap and hurled himself in behind Dante. The boat flapped around like a man who’s just stubbed his toe and Dante threw himself flat against its bottom. “You ass!”

“I’m no sailor,” Blays said. “Now I’m the captain here. Grab a damn oar.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather finish drowning me?”

“I think I hear someone coming,” Blays said, cocking his ear and shoving them off.

“Where?” Dante whispered, ducking down and taking up an oar. He dipped it smoothly into the water.

“Well, that got you rowing.” He smiled at himself and picked up the other oar. Dante glared at him over his shoulder, then pressed his fingers to his temples.

“Row on the other side, you idiot.”

“I said I’m not a sailor,” Blays spat back. “Doesn’t sound really carry on the water?”

“One reason among many you should shut the hell up.”

Blays muttered to himself. They pointed the nose downstream and paddled out into the current. From forty or fifty feet off, the bank rushed by like they were running on the water. The blade of Dante’s oar spun whirlpools and clouds of bubbles into the light chop of the gray waters. Each time he lifted it clear a stream of water spattered away from the oar. Blacks and blues shimmered beneath the silvery surface, a hint at the vastness of its depths.

“Whose idea was this?” Blays asked. In five minutes of travel the hut was already little more than a dark blot upstream, further than the opposite shore. “It was a good one.”

“You sound surprised,” Dante said. He let his paddle skim the surface for a moment, arching his back to flex the kinks from his shoulders. He thought about calling to the nether, soothing his muscles, but let it be. Rowing wouldn’t kill him.

The breeze was very faint, buffering him around the ears with only the occasional gust, but back in the woods the heads of the trees were swaying. Brown leaves tore loose and fluttered south, hanging nearly motionless with regards to the boat. For perhaps the first time in his life Dante wished he knew more about mathematics.

Waves beat gently on the sides of the boat in glorps and burbles. The two paddles swished rhythmically. The trees on the banks fell away, replaced by fields of black-brown dirt and old yellow wheat stalks shorn of their heads. Now and then a house stood up alone in the farmland. After a while Dante’s knees cramped under him and he squirmed into a cross-legged stance. When he grew hot he shed his cloak. A few miles down, the Chanset bent to their left. Following its curve, they saw it widen further yet, and beyond the broad gray bulge of waters, no more than three miles away—twenty minutes, he figured, if they kept to their strokes—the welcome smoke and low-slung spires of what had to be Whetton. Dante looked back and laughed at Blays.

“Let’s pull up before we hit town,” Blays said. “It’ll look weird, paddling right up to the docks in this thing.”

“I’m sure we could come up with something,” Dante said, but a mile upstream they angled it into shore on a sandy beach and disembarked into the shallows. He picked up the rope from inside the bow (as far as the rowboat could be said to have one) and carried it to shore. “There’s nowhere to tie it up.”

“Who cares?”

“We should at least drag it aground,” he said, holding the rope in both hands. “Maybe it will treat someone else as well.”

“Fine,” Blays said, and blew air past his lips. They grabbed hold of its slippery sides and leaned forward, pulling it up the sand until it was clear of the waves lapping up the beach. “Good enough, master?”

“It’ll have to do,” Dante said, looking away.

“Well. Forward ho?” Blays took the lead. The land north of the city had been cleared for farms and firewood, coverless, so they took to the road. The hard, rutted dirt felt odd beneath Dante’s boots. It had been weeks and many miles since he’d walked on anything but forest floors and the beds of creeks. He looked down on himself, at the mud stuck to the bottom of his cloak, the knots in his bootlaces where they’d snapped and been retied, the grime coating his hands, the black crescents of his fingernails. He looked filthy even by city standards. He realized, with a small shock that made him feel old, he wanted a bath.

The north wind kept Whetton’s stink of smoke and sewage and tanneries and manure and sweat from their noses until they were within a bowshot of its gates. It hit them all at once and they looked at each other, noses wrinkled, then laughed quietly.

“Haven’t missed that,” Blays said.

“We’re probably no better,” Dante said, nudging his nose against his shoulder. He was right.

“At least we came by it honest.” The boy stopped before the gates and put his hand on his sword. “Um.”

“Whetton’s a free city,” Dante said, then frowned. “I think.”

Blays glanced among the modest traffic passing through the crossroads behind the gate. Men and women on foot, a lot of ox- and mule-teams bearing wagons filled with the harvest of corn and wheat and potatoes and beans. A good number were armed. Not all, not even a majority, but in a minute’s watching they saw more men (and a couple women!) with swords at their belt than anywhere in Bressel but the arms yards and the barracks of the town watch.

“I’m thinking it’s okay,” Blays said.

“I suppose we could just act natural.”

“I don’t know about that. For you,’natural’ seems to involve getting wrapped up in death cults and murderous intrigue.”

“They’re not a death cult,” Dante said, falling in behind. Among other minor miracles he’d learned to walk without knocking his sheath against his knee, and he allowed himself a small swagger as they rejoined civilization. The shadow of the gate swallowed them up and spat them back into the sunshine of the interior crossroads. A few blocks passed without purpose, lost in the vision of houses of timber and stone, the pillowy white smoke of smithies, the simple presence of other people. Dante found himself watching every man who walked their way. Sometimes, sensing his gaze, their faces darkened with the half-felt emotion of troubled dreams. Sometimes he thought he saw fear.

The shadows grew long and longer yet. Size-wise, Whetton was no contest to Bressel, but it was large enough to hide them, if they wished, and it soon became clear it was far too big for them to keep watch on every road.

“We should get the nearest inn to that north gate,” Dante said, stopping at an intersection. He stepped back from an oncoming carriage. Horse sweat ruffled his nostrils and he tasted bile.

“I was thinking about that. They might cut through the forest. We should hire a beggar to watch the western gate, too.”

“Make it a kid,” Dante said. “That way we can threaten to beat him up.”

“The docks, then. That’s where the scum always floats up.”

Dante nodded, deciding not to remind Blays where he’d first found him. They made a left for the river and descended into the noise and clutter of trade, the stink of old fish and things rotting in the water, the tall blank walls of wares-houses. Down near the docks swarms of mudders and the kind of boy who’s always bumping over bread stands tore through the streets like skinny, reeking flies. None of them looked older than ten. One such group shrieked past and Blays hauled one in by the collar.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Whatever you want it to be,” the boy said, eyes held fast on their belted swords. He looked about seven, but his clothes flapped loose around his body and his arms were straight and thin, knobby at the elbows and hands.

“Smart,” Blays said. “We’ve a job for you. Come on.”

“Can’t I stay here?” The boy’s round eyes stood out from his cinder-smudged face.

“There’s money in it,” Dante said, bouncing a chuck off his chest. The kid seemed to rematerialize at ground level to snatch it up, then stood and stared up at them, head cocked.

“George,” he said. “What’s yours?”

“We need you to watch the west gate,” Blays said.

“Don’t the guards do that?”

“The guards would want more money,” Blays said, smiling tightly. “Come with us or cough it up.”

“Let me go get Barnes,” George said. “That way he can watch if I fall asleep.”

He darted away before they could object. They hustled behind, tight on the heels of their investment.

“He’ll betray us in a second,” Dante said.

“We’ll promise him more if he doesn’t. And a thrashing if he does.”