Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides (49 page)

he asked her.

She met his eyes, for once neither sneering nor ignoring him, then turned back to the Inquisitor. ‘We’ll wait beside my skiff,’ she told him, adding ‘sir,’ almost as an afterthought.

The Commandant narrowed his eyes, but nodded.

Ramon and Kip dismounted and walked their horses to the skiff. Severine’s expression was torn between disdain and the need to speak of what she’d scryed.

‘What did you see?’ he asked her a low voice.

Severine said quietly, ‘I’ll tell the legate when he arrives.’ She was sweating profusely, and shivering too, as if running a fever, but she sounded coherent, if distressed.

‘Duprey’s not going to tangle with Inquisitors on your behalf,’ Ramon told her. ‘What was it? Who was that bald man with the brand?’

She shuddered involuntarily. ‘I don’t know …’ Her voice trailed off.

Liar.

But she refused to say more, ignoring him stolidly until Duprey arrived, followed by Renn Bondeau, Bevyn Fenn and the Andressan, Hugh Gerant. The scout Coll trailed behind them, barely noticed. Bondeau hurried to Severine and held out his arms, but she shoved him away and stalked towards the legate, leaving Bondeau glaring after her sullenly.

‘Sir, you’ve got to make them stop,’ she demanded.

‘Stop what?’ Duprey asked, puzzled.

‘They’re killing people,’ Severine burst out, looking on the verge
of tears.

‘It’s called “war”,’ the scar-faced Acolyte nearest Ramon sneered.

The legate made a gesture to silence Severine, then saluted the Fist Commandant. ‘I am Jonti Duprey, Legate of the Thirteenth. Is this a military matter?’ he asked crisply.

The Commandant made the Imperial salute, thumping his right fist to his heart. ‘Ullyn Siburnius, Commandant of the Twenty-Third Fist,’ he named himself. ‘No, it is a religious matter, Legate. As such, it is out of your jurisdiction.’

‘They’re going to kill them all, sir,’ Severine called in an anguished voice. ‘They’ve already slaughtered the men.’

Bondeau’s face clearly showed his view:
So what?

‘A Hadishah spy is among this group,’ Siburnius claimed. ‘If they turn her over to me, they are free to go.’

Ramon glanced at the scar-faced Acolyte, watching the smile playing across the man’s lips.
Sure they are.

‘There is an assassin amongst the women?’ Duprey asked doubtfully.

‘The Hadishah recruit women and children as readily as men,’ Siburnius replied.

‘You’re a murdering bastard,’ Severine snapped.

Ramon glanced at Renn Bondeau, who was watching her with growing anger, and at her outburst, he erupted, ‘Oh, grow up, Severine, you ignorant little bint.’

‘Quiet, Bondeau,’ Duprey snapped. He clearly wished he was somewhere far away, enjoying a drink – a large one. But the central command had issued orders covering the jurisdiction of the Inquisition: Echor didn’t like the Church and was seeking to limit its authority. He’d already decreed that they were forbidden to operate their own courts in the lands his army passed through; nor could they summarily execute suspects until their proofs had been checked by a legion commander.

Reluctantly, Duprey followed his orders. ‘How do you know there is a Hadishah among them?’ he asked Siburnius calmly.

‘Because I’m a pure-blood descendant of the Blessed Three
Hundred anointed by Kore to hunt heretics.’

‘I need to see proofs, sir, not badges of rank.’

‘If it were so simple, I would furnish them,’ Siburnius replied, in tones that suggested otherwise.

‘Ask him where the men are,’ Severine demanded.

‘There are no men,’ Siburnius replied dismissively. Ramon thought back to Coll’s words about the crows and jackals and met the scout’s eyes.

Why should we care? These are enemies
…

But the faces of the watching Keshi women told him that he did care.

Severine implored Duprey. ‘Ask him where the men are, please, sir?’

‘Farseer Tiseme, the Commandant says there are no men,’ Duprey replied, his voice hollow.

‘Severine,’ Renn Bondeau said in an exasperated voice, ‘they’re just Keshi. This is achieving nothing.’

That he’s right only makes this worse
. Ramon glanced at Kip, who was eyeballing the Acolyte opposite him, the grey-haired woman with flinty eyes. He was twice as big as her, yet they both knew who was the deadlier.

Severine gripped Duprey’s reins. ‘Sir, about an hour ago, I heard the mental death cries of nearly thirty men,’ she said in a low, urgent voice. ‘They were slain near here. There was a man …’ her voice faltered momentarily. ‘He has a branded scalp.’ She pointed at the hut. ‘He’s in there: he’s the one who was killing them. I saw his face in my scrying.’

Ramon glanced at the man opposite him, memorising his face, his duelling scar. Inquisitors had been unleashed in Rimoni and Silacia too many times. They were the demons of his people’s nightmares. ‘What have you been doing?’ he asked the Inquisitor.

‘What do you care, Rimoni scum?’ Scarface sneered.

‘You could be next,’ the grey-haired woman Acolyte threw in. ‘Just keep talking, rodent.’

Ramon felt Kip shoulder his horse alongside him. He knew that
they wouldn’t last three seconds against well-trained pure-bloods, but he appreciated the solidarity.
Severine’s right. Something is going on here. Siburnius has broken Echor’s orders.

‘Legate Duprey,’ Siburnius said in a bored voice, ‘my investigation will continue. If you wish to watch, that is your business.’ He ran his eye from Severine to Ramon and Kip. ‘Call these imbeciles off before they get hurt.’

Duprey wavered, the conflicts of duty and fear clear on his face. Then he exhaled dejectedly. ‘Tiseme, fall in. That’s an order.’ He looked pointedly at Ramon and Kip. ‘You two as well.’

‘They’re going to kill all of these people, Legate,’ Ramon told him. ‘Severine is right. They do this in my homeland. It’s their idea of fun. You can smell it on them.’ He could too, with a little air-gnosis.
Blood
.

Severine wavered, then gave a sob of defeat and ran back towards her skiff. Ramon pulled on his reins and cantered in her wake. He heard Duprey apologising –
apologising!
– behind him, and didn’t turn lest his contempt show. He leapt to the ground and caught Severine’s shoulder. ‘Meet me at the village a mile to the north,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll show you where to look.’

She stared at him then backed away, her face for once not filled with contempt. She looked as if she was on the verge of saying something, then she spun away.

*

First they heard the barking and snarling of the jackals, then the shrieking of the crows, as they trotted their mounts towards the edge of a small gully, hidden until they were almost upon it. Once Duprey had lectured them about interfering with Inquisitors and then left, Coll had taken Ramon and Kip three miles back to the west before leading them along a small trail heading south. After half a mile, the crows swirling above the gully were visible.

Severine arrived on a small mare, her eyes red, her face tearstained.
She’s too sensitive for this
, Ramon decided, a little surprised to feel some concern.

Coll pointed down into the gully. ‘This is as close as I came,’ he reported. ‘As you said yourself, there’s no wisdom in this.’

‘We’ll see what we see, Coll. Those women back there weren’t soldiers, were they?’

Over the past few weeks he and Coll been developing the beginnings of mutual respect: the scout knew his business, and once he saw that Ramon had commonsense as well as the gnosis, he’d began to treat the Silacian as a genuine maniple commander, not just a figurehead – and he’d proven himself useful as a courier of messages and gold too. Like most of the rankers, Coll was a complex mix of brutality and humanity. Perhaps because they saw the people they’d invaded close up, the rankers had quickly realised there was very little difference between the poor of Antiopia and those of their homelands. It didn’t stop the practical brutality of looking after themselves first, and others only if it suited, but it did mean they had little love for butchers, even Church-sanctioned ones.

Severine walked to the lip of the gully, her face shaky but determined. A waft of foul air from below made Ramon retch, but he clenched his stomach muscles and held down his rising gorge. Severine was not so strong; she went white, leant sideways and vomited over the edge. But her freckled face was still filled with purpose, a young women inflamed by a cause. ‘I’m going down there,’ she said through gritted teeth.

Ramon glanced at Kip, then said, ‘Watch the horses, Coll.’

Severine began to clamber unsteadily down into the gully, sending loose rocks and gravel sliding before her as she descended. The air was filled with the cacophony of crows, and the yapping of many, many jackals. The stink of rotting meat got worse, and Ramon had to call on his Air-gnosis to filter it just to breathe. Severine was clearly doing the same, but she was still sobbing as she led the way. Kip followed, panting heavily, but apparently of much stronger gut; he had no Air-gnosis at all, but he showed no sign of being about to vomit like the others.

They caught up with Severine at the edge of a blood-fouled pool, beside which was a mound partly covered with sandy earth, one end of a row some fifty yards long. There were more than two dozen
jackals here, slavering menacingly as Severine faced them down. ‘Will they attack?’ she asked fearfully.

Ramon shook his head, though he had no real idea what they would do: the jackals were hungry and frightened, and that was never a good combination. He exerted his animism-gnosis, sending a threat straight into the animals’ brains, and the jackals whimpered and backed away twenty or thirty yards, running into each other as they fled. The crows rasped their own anger as they took to the air, revealing a bloodied mound of tangled flesh. Severine whimpered softly, while Kip swore in Schlessen.

What had been uncovered made the charnel yards behind Butchers’ Row in Norostein look pristine. Tangled limbs and bloated bodies had been dragged out of the burial pits by the starved scavengers desperate to get to the meat. Ripped bellies spewed innards that had been dragged out, the tangled, chewed skeins now blackening in the heat.

‘Those bastards,’ Severine panted, gagging.

Ramon found himself staring, speechless. The rational part of his brain estimated that the jackals had got to a dozen bodies, those in the first five yards of trench. He tried to do the numbers, came up with one that was horribly high, and stopped. Surely his maths must be off …

‘What did you scry?’ he asked Severine softly.

Severine spoke in a hollow voice. ‘That bald man with the brand: he went from man to man. Every one of them he kissed on the mouth; and they dropped dead, screaming inside their minds as they did.’ Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘Then they fell completely silent.’ She closed her eyes. ‘This place is dead now; even the spirits have fled this place.’

Kip surprised them by nodding. ‘Yar, it is as the frau says.’ His eyes gleamed with faint purple light: the colour of necromantic gnosis, a common affinity for an Earth-mage. ‘There are no spirits here, no ghosts, not one. They are all gone.’ He frowned. ‘That is not usual.’

‘Every time he killed, the bald man’s periapt flared up, a violet and green colour,’ Severine whispered. She wrapped her arms about
herself, hugging herself as if to give herself some comfort. ‘It lit up his face with a horrible light.’

‘A magister at our Arcanum told us there is a necromancy spell in which the soul is consumed,’ Kip commented, his voice hollow. ‘We were not taught it: the spell is
verboten
.’

‘Why was he branded?’ Ramon wondered aloud. ‘Delta – I wonder what that means.’

He looked at one of the jackals, the pack leader, which was edging closer. It barked furiously, and the others joined in, becoming bolder again. ‘Time to go, I think.’

They fizzed some mage-bolts into the sand in front of the pack, clearing themselves a path out of the pit, and as they climbed, the jackals boiled back into the gully with a crescendo of satisfied canine growling, and returned to their gory feast. The crows spun about them like a dark tornado.

‘We can’t tell Duprey,’ Ramon reminded Severine and Kip as they remounted. ‘We’re not supposed to have come here.’ He glanced at Coll and put a finger to his lips, but the scout was already tapping the side of his nose, winking solemnly.

Once they were close enough to the column but still out of sight, they parted company, Kip leaving first, hurrying back to his maniple. Severine lingered, looking at Ramon uncomfortably. ‘You stood up for me in front of the Inquisition Fist. That takes guts.’

Ramon shrugged. ‘So does writing ditties about Saint Lucia.’

Severine said ruefully, ‘No, that was just stupid. I’d be safe at home in Mouneville if I’d not been such a fool.’

‘Some truths should be told, especially about Her Holiness.’ He jerked a thumb in the rough direction of that hideous gully of death. ‘We’ll talk about that back there too, one day. To the right person.’

‘You might. I just want to forget it now. Duprey is right. Those bastards would pull my lungs out through my mouth for the sheer fun of it.’ She bit her lower lip. ‘I’m going home, as soon as I quicken.’

Ramon looked her up and down with his cheekiest expression. ‘You’re aiming too high: all those high-bloods are nearly sterile. You need a nice low-blood if you want better odds of conception,’ he said,
and winked mischievously; truth was, she wasn’t so bad, not once she’d mislaid all her airs and graces.

Sadly she found them again. ‘Go screw yourself, rodent.’

*

Severine’s nightmares got worse, and now she awakened screaming, every third night or so, from visions of the branded mage. As she became increasingly erratic, she tried everyone’s patience. Then she started getting struck by the visions in daylight too, and they increased in frequency as the column wound its way east and refugees became more and more common on the road.

Still the relentless march continued. Jonti Duprey came back from a legates’ meeting and reported that Kaltus Korion’s column had sacked Galataz and his men were now pouring towards Istabad. The duke was angry at being upstaged: so far the southern Keshi cities were like ghost towns, vast, and virtually empty. The advance scouts had seen a few Keshi cavalry units, all of which fled when detected, but mostly all they found were refugees, walking eastwards in endless lines. But refugees couldn’t run forever, and the largest cities, like Sagostabad, Peroz and Vida, were now overflowing with the homeless destitute. Disease was rampant, hundreds dying every day, and their bodies had to be burned because there was nowhere left to bury them. Echor left a legion outside each city to contain them, but he kept his soldiers away from the miasma of death, for their own protection. Inquisitorial Fists circled the stricken population like crows.