Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (68 page)

“He’ll go on twenty!”

“No, on twenty-five!”

“Whoo! Whoo! Twenty-two! Heh! I win!”

With a chorus of laughs and shouts, coin changed hands.

Kesh averted his eyes and kept walking as he whispered thanks that the poor victim was not screaming. Ahead, the village ended in fenced gardens, livestock sheds, and a pair of granaries on stilts. A tent had been raised just outside the last
shed, although it was little more than a lean-to of canvas rigged out from the shed’s cantilevered roof. A trio of men stood at attention beside a small fire, guarding both tent and shed.

“Who sleeps there?” Kesh whispered.

“Eh! The lord does.”

“The lord?”

“He don’t usually stop by us, but there’s somewhat afoot. Anyway, he don’t like to be disturbed by the likes of us. So, hush!”

It was middle night, more or less. There was no moon. Kesh stumbled more than once before they clambered back on the road “downstream” of the shed. The road here ran fairly straight, with a long view back into the village and its emptied buildings. In an open meadow lay the ruins of the old Ladytree, fallen into a massive tangle of trunk and branches that no one dared cut up. In the darkness, the new sapling, no more than two years old, wasn’t even visible.

They walked a little farther on the pale surface of the road until they came to the road’s intersection with a wide gravel path that pushed straight through the woods toward the distant uplands. The path’s beginning was marked by one of the three-span gates that marked a temple to Ilu, the Herald, though it was too dark for Kesh to see any buildings in all those trees and brush. Just ahead, the road began to curve. Here in the middle of the roadway stood two sentries.

“Heh! About time!” said one, a burly man with his hair shaved down against his head.

“What was all that noise?” asked the other.

“Just Rabbit,” said Twist, wiping his nose.

The burly man cackled. “Eh! He wouldn’t know what to do with a live one, eh? You ever get to wondering just what he did do to get run out of his village?”

Twist spat. “Did you ever think I don’t want to know? Eh?”

Kesh felt sick, but he said nothing, made no expression, just waited.

Fortunately, the pair headed back for camp without any further discussion. Kesh’s companion settled into a comfortable stance, feet shoulders’-width apart and weight canted onto his spear.

The ginnies slept, a heavy burden in their sling. Kesh shifted nervously as he looked back toward the camp, wondering what he ought to do. There were thirty-six in the cadre. He’d counted three times: eighteen mounted and eighteen walking on their own feet; he made the thirty-seventh. A sergeant led them, but who their commanders were Kesh could not tell. In general, the southern towns were councilled, so he wasn’t sure how one could tell a “lord” apart from a well-to-do council member, although there must be signs and customs that spoke of such things. In his travels in the empire, he had dealt with merchants who were agents for lords, of whom they spoke in only the most formal of terms. But lords in the empire were a different beast, set apart, isolated. Nor could he ask Twist to explain it to him, lest Kesh seem too ignorant of things the others took for granted. As the old saying went, better keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool, than open it and be known as an impostor.

It was so quiet. The horses had been strung up on a line near the council house,
visible from here by the distant glimmer of light from a single lantern hung at the porch. The mascot dogs who accompanied the cadre were tranquil beasts, and he supposed they were now sleeping. In truth, it was the look of the men with whom he marched that agitated him.

Like Twist. The man’s jaw had been damaged and healed wrong. He was missing two fingers. He had a net of lash scars on his back. He carried himself with the bravado of a man who relishes a fight over nothing.

A figure appeared on the road out of the darkness and loped up to them in that gangling, hopping way he had.

“Eh, there, Rabbit,” said Twist. “Finally remember you have sentry duty?”

“Heh. Heh. Yah.”

Like this one, who tolerated the others calling him “Rabbit” and who had a way of grinning at unseen sights that made Kesh think he was unbalanced, and who was capable of the most grotesque acts, things Kesh had not thought anyone could force himself to do. Like what he had just done. All Kesh could think of was that if the woman, or man, was dead, then there wouldn’t have been any pain.

“How long have you been on this road?” he asked Rabbit, because the silence was making him twitchy.

Rabbit fished a strip of dried flesh out of his pouch and chewed on it before answering. “Eh. Since I was kicked out of m’mam’s village and forced to take cover up in the hills. There I found some who were more like me than otherwise. Comrades, you might say.” He hawked and spat, then wiped his mouth clean. “Let me see. That was ten years ago now, I’m thinking.”

Kesh whistled. “That’s a long time. How old are you?”

“Oh, I’m a Goat, sure enough. You work it out.”

“Huh. Same as me.”

“Really?” said Twist. “You look younger than Rabbit.”

It was true. Rabbit had the wiry strength of a young man but his face was seamed and weathered in the manner of a person who has suffered far beyond his years and lived to tell a noisome tale. He bore a series of parallel white scars on his right forearm, and he kept himself clean-shaven because of the knotted scar along his jaw that prevented him from growing an even beard. No telling what he had done to get run out of his home village, and since this was the second corpse he’d humped since Kesh joined the company this past early afternoon, it was best not to ask and not to know.

“How long, you?” the older man asked Kesh.

“Oh, in the service of that one, since I was twelve,” said Kesh, figuring it better to tell as much of truth as he could.

Rabbit twitched. “Heh! You ever done it with her? Front or back?”

“Her? No.”

“I bet that reeve done it. That one was carrying her. Heh! He was as ready as a split log to burn. Popping right out of his leathers, near enough. Fancy them dropping down just like that to warn us of you waiting there by our dead comrades just ahead.” Rabbit scratched where Kesh did not want to look. That weird, crazy grin crept up the corners of his mouth. “Wonder who killed them.”

“I’d like to know,” said Twist. “I’ve been camping with Jeden and Ofass for five years now. If I caught that one who did them, I’d open their chest and squeeze their beating heart ‘til they told me. And then burst it anyway.”

“Heh. Heh. Just like we did at that place . . . huh . . . it had a name.”

“Reyipa,” said Twist.

Rabbit snickered. “Then we tossed them from the cliff, four at a time. Heh. Heh. ‘It’s the flying fours for you!’ Remember how we called that out? Heh. Pretty clever.”

“Whew! I do have to pee,” said Kesh, not liking the turn of this conversation. “I’ll be right back.”

Trying not to disturb the sleeping ginnies, he picked his way sideways down off the roadbed and gingerly high-stepped along the ground, to the edge of the trees. Made water there, while his thoughts spilled.

If he ran, they would just be on him. This motley group, part of a larger unit that called themselves the Flying Fours, had embraced him into their ranks only because the reeve and his fascinating passenger had dropped down beside their cadre and warned them to “pick up the lad who is just up the road, and keep him safe.” Or so the sergeant had made sure to tell him. How Bai had managed to persuade them he could not imagine, since he hadn’t been there to see, but she seemed at this juncture capable of anything except, he hoped, raping corpses.

He peered into the trees, but it was all darkness beneath the canopy of rustling leaves. The river ran close by, a constant chuckle of amusement, no doubt laughing at his plight. What was he to do? He could race to the shore and throw himself into the water, but he didn’t know how to swim, and anyway the ginnies would likely drown. He could hide in the undergrowth, but the dogs would probably find him. In the other direction the woods thinned where the ground began its steady rise toward the high plateau of the Lending. He might have a chance running in that direction, up the path toward the temple at first before veering into the bush, but it seemed foolish to take the chance when Bai had managed to gift him with safe passage. Such as it was. He hated to march with this group back toward Olossi, especially not knowing what they intended. He hadn’t quite asked, and they hadn’t quite said, but from the way they spoke it seemed they were riding to meet up with the strike force, which was almost a day ahead of them. That strike force had murdered the poor folk in this exceptionally inoffensive village.

Everything had gone wrong. But at least he was still alive.

He heard what was not a sound, felt the shadow although it could not be seen in darkness. A prickling sensation ran from his ears to his neck, and his throat went dry, and he was suddenly horribly, terribly, genuinely scared, so badly that he would have wet himself if he hadn’t just peed.

He stepped away from the trees, thinking at first that the threat came from beneath the canopy, but as he set a foot on the slope of the road’s underbed, a shape passed low over him. He and the other sentries ducked, covering their heads although nothing came close to hitting them.

On the road behind them, the shape descended sharply. His breath lodged in his throat. The creature made the transition effortlessly from flying to trotting. When those mundane hoof-falls slammed on the road, he choked and gasped, and scrambled
up to the road’s pavement to stare after it as it moved away from them and toward the tent.

He would have called it a horse with two heads, one equine and one human, each one streaming wings like smoke. But as it came to a halt a little away from the campfire, it separated as its rider dismounted; it was a person wearing a voluminous cloak that had gusted out in the landing. But the horse really did have wings, fanned out at first as it came to earth and then folded in against its body. They swaddled its flanks like a monstrous growth.

“ ‘Rid us of all that is evil,’ ” he muttered.

“What did you say?” asked Twist.

“What is that thing?”

It was the wrong question to ask. Twist and Rabbit looked at him, chins lowering as might muzzles dip on dogs who are thinking of taking a bite out of you.

“You don’t know?” asked Twist.

“Heh,” said Rabbit suspiciously.

“I’ve never been out of the south,” said Kesh in a choked voice. “Never saw such a thing before.” He sorted through his choices and opted for belligerency. “You want to make something of it? I can’t help it I’m not well traveled like your sort. I have to go where the mistress tells me, and she doesn’t stray far, let me tell you. She works for the temple, and they don’t let their hierodules off the leash. If you take my meaning.”

“Heh. Heh.” Rabbit scratched himself. “Like to see that.”

The creature and its rider vanished inside shed and tent respectively. One of the guardsmen detached himself from the campfire and jogged down to the sentry post.

“Where’s the new one?” he called when he was within earshot. It was the sergeant of their company. “Master wants him to come.”

“Heh,” snickered Rabbit.

“He always interviews the new ones,” said Twist with a sneer. “Sees right through you, if you take my meaning.”

Kesh did not, but he saw no chance to escape with three armed men beside him and he with only a knife and an unstrung bow for which he had no arrows and no facility. So it would end badly after all, and just in the teeth of his victory. Fortune had turned its back on him, that was clear.

He trudged to the tent with the sergeant beside him.

“Young man come to my company a month back,” remarked the sergeant, “and didn’t take to our way of doing things here. So I had to break all his fingers. I did that, you see, to get him to tell me why he’d come. It seems some folk from Nessumara had sent out a few likely lads to scout the land, see what was up. I just don’t like folk who will go tattling tales of me to people who don’t like me. But he fessed up pretty quickly after I got to cutting off his fingers.”

“Did he now?” asked Keshad, thinking of the marketplace and how you could never let your true feelings show. “What happened then?”

“Oh, it seemed a kindness just to slit his throat. I’m not one for drawing it out, although I admit a few of my soldiers asked me to let them have a go. I don’t think
that’s right, once you’ve gotten what you need. I just killed him. Most likely the vultures ate him, if the Lady was feeling as kindly as I was. Here you go.”

He motioned for Kesh to go through a rigged-up entryway made of hanging cloth and in under the canvas roof. Kesh heard the sounds of the creature moving within the shed. It seemed to be eating or drinking; it made horse-like noises, so that in hearing it one would think it a horse. But horses had wings only in the old stories.

In the stories about the Guardians, who had long since vanished from the Hundred.

If this was a lord’s resting place, then it was no better furnished than the hovel of a simple farmer. There was a pallet covered with a thin blanket, a folding table on which stood a bronze ewer and basin, and a small traveler’s chest so old its edges were smoothed to a shiny curve and its planks were warped.

The man sat on a stool, still dressed for travel. If he was a lord, then he wore clothes common to every laborer: a long knee-length linen jacket dyed an indeterminate color that the candle flame did nothing to distinguish; wide-legged trousers; knee-high boots that looked well worn and scuffed. His dark cloak pooled around his hips and thighs as if he had scooped it over them to keep himself warm.

He looked up as Kesh halted uneasily before him. He had a strange cast of face, a little broader across the cheekbones, a shade different in complexion, the shape of the eyes more exotic, twisted and pulled. Something about his features seemed passing familiar. He might be an outlander, or else the son of some hidden corner of the Hundred whose folk rarely left their home valley, a person glimpsed once and recalled now in a spin of dizziness. No, Kesh had never seen this man before. His eyes were so brown as to be black, and they were like holes driven into Kesh’s heart to lay bare his secrets.