Messenger’s Legacy (10 page)

‘What do you mean, child?’ Heath asked. ‘Seen whom?’

‘Briar Damaj,’ the girl said.

‘Ay, Tami!’ a voice called. Ragen looked up at her family and realized why she looked familiar. Masen Bales still had a gap in his teeth where Ragen had knocked one out.

‘Seen him watching me sometimes,’ Tami said, ‘from across the yard in the hogroot patch.’

Masen stormed over. ‘Ay, girl. What the Core you think you’re doin’, interrupting the Tender when he’s with someone?’

‘A moment please, Masen,’ Heath said. ‘Tami was telling us she’s seen Briar Damaj.’

‘Night!’ Masen cried. Tami wilted at the glare he threw her. ‘Don’t you go spouting that Mudboy nonsense again, girl.’

‘You saw him, too,’ Tami dared to argue.

Masen shook his head. ‘Saw some boy trying to peek as you bent to milk the cow, but he ran off before I got a look at him. Coulda been any of a dozen
living
boys in this stinking town. Sure as the sun wasn’t some ripping ghost.’

He looked back at the Tender apologetically. ‘Girl told all her friends about the ghost, and now half the kids in town are telling fire stories about having seen the Mudboy.’

‘What about the other time?’ Tami demanded of her father.

Masen rolled his eyes. ‘Here’s where she goes completely peat-brained.’

‘Why is that?’ Heath asked.

Tami looked at her feet. ‘Seen him from the window at night, sneaking a cup of milk from Maybell.’

‘Half-demon, he’d have to be,’ Masen said, ‘walking about in the naked night. Either you seen a ghost, or you seen nothing at all.’

Heath coughed. ‘Yes, well. Thank you Tami. Good day to you, Masen.’ Masen grunted at the dismissal, grabbing Tami’s arm and turning to go.

‘Just one thing,’ Ragen asked, pulling them up short. ‘When you saw this boy, which direction were you facing?’

‘East,’ Tami said. ‘Towards the dump road.’

Ragen nodded, producing a gold sun. The coins were common enough among Miln’s upper classes, but in a backwater hamlet like Bogton, half the folk had never even seen gold, and the other half hadn’t been allowed to touch. Perhaps it would help as they fled the coming army.

‘For your assistance,’ Ragen said, handing Tami the coin. She and Masen stumbled away, staring at the coin, dumbstruck.

‘T
his would explain how he kept from being cored,’ Elissa said as they approached the Bogton Dump. She waved a hand in front of her nose. ‘Demons can’t stand the reek.’

While the Boggers were still gathered in the Holy House yard, Ragen and Elissa had asked the local children for tales of Mudboy, paying a silver star for each new one. Most of them were impossible nonsense, but two or three seemed plausible, and on further questioning, Ragen felt sure they had seen … something. Something that all credible accounts had coming from the direction of the town dump.

‘Reek doesn’t cover it by half,’ Ragen said, slapping a mosquito on the back of his neck. ‘Bog air reeks all by itself. This? This is a work of art. Swamp stink laced with rotting carcass and …’

‘Something I’d find in a baby’s nappy after a night of sick,’ Elissa said.

Ragen heaved, but managed to swallow it back down. ‘All the more reason we find Briar and get as far from this place as possible. If he’s here at all, and this isn’t some tampweed tale.’

‘You don’t believe it?’ Elissa asked.

‘Heath is famous for drinking his own ale,’ Ragen said. ‘You can see it in the broken veins of his face. And it was Seventhday, no less.
No hangover like a Tender on Firstday morn
, as the saying goes.’

‘The girl swore she saw him,’ Elissa said.

Ragen nodded. ‘Ay. But it’s not odd for a child who’s lost a friend to think they see them when they don’t.’

‘Night, I do that now,’ Elissa said. ‘Could’ve sworn I saw Cob on the street in Angiers last week.’

They circled the dump, riding around the junk piles and garbage mounds, getting the lay of the land.

There was vegetation everywhere. Mostly weeds, but also a surprising number of useful plants. At first glance it appeared chaotic, but by the third pass, Ragen began to think it no coincidence. He slipped from the saddle, inspecting the plants.

Elissa followed, squatting to part the fronds so the stalks were visible down to the damp soil. ‘They’ve been cultivated.’

Ragen stood. ‘Ay, but that doesn’t mean Briar did it. Could have been the refuse collectors or their families. Soil’s good here, if you can stand the smell.’ They returned to their saddles, circling the area again.

There was a cliff with worn wagon ruts leading to its edge, the place where the rot waste was dumped. The rest of the area was filled with more solid trash, piled into small mountains by generations of waste. At the edge of this was the bog, stretching on for miles into thick and forbidding fog.

‘We’ve never really discussed what we’re going to do if we find him,’ Elissa said.

‘Do you have to ask? We’ll take him back to Miln with us.’ Ragen smiled. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time I brought home a stray.’

‘What if he doesn’t remember you?’ Elissa asked. ‘What if he doesn’t want to go?’

Ragen shrugged. ‘Then we drag him for his own good. Can’t spend his life living like an animal in the bog.’

There was a rustle in the weeds off to one side, and both of them pulled up short, staring in the direction of the sound. A hogroot patch. The stalks still shook slightly, though there was no breeze.

‘Briar?’ Ragen called loudly. ‘That you, boy?’

There was no response. The stalks settled back in place. But something didn’t feel right, and Ragen nudged his horse into the weeds for a closer look.

He was beginning to think he’d imagined the whole thing when there was an explosion of movement as something burst from concealment, a dark blur passing so close his mare gave a great whinny and stood on her hindquarters, kicking the air. By the time Ragen managed to calm her, whatever it was had fled.

‘You see that?’ Ragen demanded, leaping the horse out of the weed patch. Without waiting for an answer he kicked and rode up one of the more solid mounds of trash, standing in his stirrups for a better vantage.

Elissa was beside him in a moment. ‘I only caught a glimpse, but it was too big to be a rabbit, too small for a nightwolf. Saw it dart across the road into the weeds there.’ She pointed.

Ragen could see where the weeds were trampled, his tracker’s eye following the trail as easily as he found markers on an overgrown Messenger Way. Whatever it was had darted from cover to cover, heading straight for the bog. The fog was still stirring where the thing had disappeared.

Ragen slipped from the saddle, taking his night satchel, spear and shield. ‘Stake the horses and put up circles. I’ll be back before dark.’

Elissa pointed to the satchel. ‘If you’ll be back before dark, why are you taking your weapons and portable circle?’

‘Common sense,’ Ragen said.

Elissa crossed her arms.

Ragen sighed. ‘I’ll leave markers. Circle the horses and catch up. We’ve only got a few hours of sunlight left.’

Ragen smacked another mosquito, biting down the curse on his lips, lest he give away their position with his shout. The trail had not been easy to find, but their quarry was in a hurry, and the muck of the bog left undeniable prints. The shoes had mismatched treads, but they were consistent with a teenage boy.

It still wasn’t proof, but Ragen wanted to believe.

‘I’ll admit I thought Messengering glamorous from the warmth of our manse,’ Elissa slapped a mosquito drinking deeply from the back of her hand. ‘I was even jealous, sometimes, when you talked of cities and sights.’

‘It’s the glamour that makes the Jongleur’s songs,’ Ragen said. ‘They never add a verse for mosquitoes.’

‘Or slogging through muck until your boots are soaked through,’ Elissa agreed. ‘Feels like I’m walking on two blocks of ice.’

‘Head back to the horses and dry off,’ Ragen said. ‘I’ll be along soon.’

‘Come with me,’ Elissa said. ‘We can look more in the morning. No reason to cut it close to dark. If that was Briar, he’s got a safe place to hide for the night, or he wouldn’t have lasted this long.’

A fat mosquito landed on Ragen’s nose. He struck it instinctively, effectively punching himself in the face. Elissa put a hand over her mouth, hiding a smirk. As the pain subsided, Ragen blew out a long breath. ‘Ay, maybe you’re right. We’ll head back, though I’m not convinced the bog demons are likely to be any worse than these corespawned mosquitoes.’

Elissa looked around, amusement fading from her face. ‘You
do
know which way is back in all this fog?’

Ragen smirked, pointing. ‘I may be fat and grey, but the first thing you learn as a Messenger is to point north even if you’re piss drunk and spun in a circle.’

‘Charming,’ Elissa said.

Ragen started back to their camp, but stumbled as his boot slipped into a sinkhole. He pitched forwards as pain blossomed in his ankle.

‘Corespawned ripping demonshit!’ Ragen screamed.

Elissa was by his side in an instant. ‘Keep calm.’ She dug in the mud to free his ankle, but suction held the boot fast. Ragen screamed again as she pulled his foot free of it, hauling him onto a solid mass of relatively dry peat.

Ragen took a deep breath, flexing the foot experimentally. The dull, throbbing pain flared again with the movement, but everything moved as it was supposed to. ‘I don’t think it’s broken. Find something to bind it, and I should be able to limp back to camp.’

The words had more confidence than he felt, but Elissa took them at face value, taking the riding scarf from her shoulders and wrapping the ankle tight before it could swell. She dug Ragen’s boot out of the muck and he bit down hard on a stick as he pulled it back on. She took the night satchel and his shield, leaving the spear for him to lean on.

He limped on for some distance, but they were deeper in the bog than he realized, and the pain grew with every step. At last he could stand it no more.

‘I need a moment to rest,’ he said, collapsing onto a rotted stump.

Elissa had given him space for pride, but now she moved in quickly. ‘You’re bathed in sweat. We need to get rid of that armour.’

Ragen shook his head. ‘This was my father’s …’

‘I know,’ Elissa put a hand at the nape of his neck, stroking his sweat-slicked hair. ‘But he wouldn’t want us to die for it.’

Ragen gritted his teeth, but he let her help with the fastenings.

‘We can send the men for it in the morning,’ Elissa said.

‘It’ll be rusted by morning,’ Ragen said as he dropped the heavy linked shirt into the muck. ‘And I won’t ask any of the men to risk themselves looking for it with an army on the way.’

Ragen took a deep breath and leaned on his spear to stand. Admittedly, it was easier without forty pounds of metal on his back. He began to hope they would make it back to camp with time to spare.

But his ankle howled with every step, the pain worsening as it swelled inside the tough leather of his boot. They would have to cut it off.

First my armour, now my favourite boots,
Ragen thought. Then he took another step and his ankle gave out completely, pitching him back onto the ground.

Suddenly the boots were the least of his problems. He looked to Elissa, wondering if they would die here, alone in this Creator-forsaken bog, for a boy who might not exist.

He expected to see fear in her eyes, but Elissa only huffed and cast her eyes about, spotting a wide peat flat amidst the endless streams of the bog. She nodded in satisfaction, and moved to Ragen, putting his arm around her shoulders.

‘What are you doing?’ Ragen asked.

‘You’re not going to get much further on that ankle, and I can’t carry you,’ Elissa said. ‘I’ll help you to that flat, and then set up the circle around us.’

‘You could—’ Ragen began.

‘I’m being patient with you Ragen,’ Elissa said, ‘but Creator my witness, if you so much as hint that I should leave my injured husband in the swamp to try and save myself, you’ll be wishing the demons got you before I’m through.’

Ragen felt too drained to argue. It took all his energy to stumble to the flat. By the time they made it, he was leaning almost his full weight on her, but Elissa bore it without complaint, setting him in the centre of the flat and taking out his emergency circle. It would be a tight fit, but enough to ward off the demons for the night.