The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) (13 page)

Pushing through the sword-thorns and the saw weeds and the ever-present corpse ivy slowed us to a crawl. Mama huffed and puffed and mopped sweat. I tore a rip in my hat batting at a hornet in a sword-thorn thicket. Darla strolled through it all without a scratch or a tear, only confirming my long-held suspicion that my wife is in fact a powerful witch.

When we first caught sight of the tower’s blunt apex through a break in the foliage, I insisted on going ahead alone. I did just that, on my hands and knees, moving only one limb at a time and listening between each motion for any hint of shouts or alarm from ahead.

Maybe I’d gotten a little softer and a little thicker since the War, but I made it out of the trees and behind a fallen pine trunk just fine. A sword-thorn bush gave me enough cover to stick my head up for a peek, and I did.

They weren’t much bothering to hide. I counted a dozen men, four wagons, six horses, two mules, and an Ogre. Chickens ran underfoot, pecking and clucking. The Ogre amused himself by snatching up a hen and munching contentedly on it while its idiot brethren pecked blissfully about his furry toes.

They’d done just as I suspected by making themselves a back door into the tower simply by yanking big stones out of the wall. They’d erected a crude, tin-roofed lean-to over the opening, and were hard about whatever business it was that bloodthirsty demigods and their hirelings get up to.

A jaybird squawked behind me.

“Hist,” whispered Mama. “Time to get hid, boy!”

The Ogre lookout snatched up another hapless hen. The only three humans I could see were huddled around a fire, shivering as though it was the dead of winter rather than summer side of spring. I supposed being that close to Big-and-Nasty might chill one to the bone.

I waved Mama and Darla to me. They had sense enough to stay low and stay quiet. We held hands again until the ghost of winter was past, and then we turned our eyes on the enemy camp and watched.

A wagonload of what appeared to be food arrived and was unloaded an hour later. The driver remained. The Ogre consumed half a dozen hens before putting his furry back to the wall. I wondered if his employers knew Ogres can sleep with both eyes open. I had to assume they either didn’t know or didn’t care.

The soldier in me railed. They hadn’t set up a perimeter. They hadn’t established a watch pattern. The trio around the campfire stared into the flames from whence an assault was unlikely to emerge.

I frowned. Darla saw it and showed me her questioning glance.

“They aren’t afraid,” I said in a whisper that went no farther than her ear.

“Good or bad?” She mouthed the words in mine.

“Don’t know yet.”

We kept watching. When the black wagon arrived, I had my answer.

The Ogre sprang to attention, his ears fanned back, his eyes narrowed, the crest of fur on the back of his neck and the top of his head going erect with Ogre terror. The men around the campfire stomped it out as soon as they heard the first faint rattle of wheels. They were gone, inside, before the wagon rolled into sight.

Hell, even the chickens took to the trees.

Mama Hog grabbed our hands and squeezed her eyes tight shut.

The wagon was covered with black burlap. The driver sat alone on the buckboard, and she sang as she drove. Her voice was wavering and hoarse and everything but pretty, but what she lacked in talent she had in volume. The tune wasn’t one I knew, nor was the tongue.

She braked the wagon and leaped down, her long, black skirts whirling. She wore so much jewelry the effect of her leaping to the ground was much like that of someone dropping a wind chime. She tied her ponies beside the others and did a quick walk around the camp, and I was suddenly glad we hadn’t come a step past my sword-thorn bush.

The Ogre pissed the ground after the woman passed him.

Darla’s eyes got big at that. So did Mama’s. I didn’t risk an ‘I told you so,’ but the thought did cross my mind.

The woman stepped into the shade of the tin-roofed lean-to and barked out something in the same strange tongue in which she’d sung.

I got a good look at her then. She was tall and muscular. Lantern-jawed and a bit bug-eyed. She had a long mane of straight, black hair and rings on every finger and eyes ringed with dark make-up that lent her long face a skeletal cast. When she spoke, her teeth flashed white and wet, and her canines were a bit too long and a bit too sharp.

Mama drew in her breath with a hiss and damned if the woman’s black eyes didn’t rake the tree-line as if she’d heard.

The wagon shook, and a flap on the back lifted, and its passenger stepped out into the sun.

He was as tall as the Ogre. As tall and as wide. I’ve heard the old stories of giants in the frozen wastes of the north, but until that moment I never believed a word of them.

He’d been hunkered down in the wagon. Now he stood and stretched and when he made his hands into fists and yawned I knew damned well those storied northern giants were as real as clay.

I heard his knuckles crack when he rolled his hands into fists. His mouth, opened wide, could easily swallow a man’s head whole, and those yellow teeth and that massive jaw could easily bite it off.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt. His barrel chest rippled under a network of old scars. Hell, his biceps were as big as my waist, and none of it fat.

A tattoo coiled its way down from his face to his neck to his waist. It was that of a serpent, done in red ink, and as he flexed and moved, it seemed to coil and tighten about him.

The woman’s voice sounded again, muffled. The giant roared back, his words unintelligible, his tone clearly annoyed. He spat on the ground and stomped off into the wall, his booted feet sounding like those of a Troll on the barren, hard-packed ground.

The Ogre didn’t move until the giant was out of sight. Then he deflated, and for the first time in my life, I saw an Ogre shiver with fear.

A few minutes later, a pair of white-faced bumpkins scurried out of the wall. They watered and fed the black wagon’s ponies, and brushed them a bit, but they didn’t untie them or lead them away.

“We ought to get away from this place,” whispered Mama. “We ought to go right now.”

“They didn’t unhitch the team,” I said. “We wait. They’re leaving soon. Want to follow.”

Mama searched for words.

She never found them. We waited.

Four more times, we joined hands. Four more times, Mama whispered her words. She was corpse pale and shaking after the last time, and I’d resolved to leave when the skull-faced woman in the black lace skirts came strolling out of the makeshift lair.

She headed straight for the black wagon. A nervous man followed her and untied her team and then scurried quickly away. She laughed and cursed him for a coward in passable Kingdom and then she turned the wagon back the way it had come and we held our breath until she was well and truly past.

The hens stayed in the trees. The Ogre shuffled from foot to foot, clearly weighing his need for coin against the call of the wild wood.

We crawled back into the pines. Mama reached them first and kept crawling, picking up speed and pushing heedless through briars.

No one spoke for half an hour.

“That there critter is the scariest damn thing I ever seen,” said Mama after hiding us with her hexes. She was shaking, and she forgot to put the witch-woman rasp in her voice.

“The sire or the dame?”

“You know damned well which one I’m talking about, boy. He was wrapped ‘round with hexes. I ain’t never seen the like.”

“I don’t doubt it.” I mopped sweat from my face. “But let’s talk about the woman for a minute. What can you tell me about her?”

“I reckon she’s some kind of foreign witch. Wears too many bangles.”

“So she’s got lousy fashion sense. I was hoping maybe you could tell me what kind of magic she deals in.”

“I recognized several pieces of her jewelry,” said Darla, who refused my offer of a handkerchief with a smile. “None were particularly valuable. Her boots came from Ingalls, and cost half a silver new, which they weren’t, because they’ve been re-soled.”

“So she shops for bargains and prefers style over substance.”

“Hell, boy, are ye lookin’ to recommend her some shops?”

“Nope. I’m going to follow her, see what she’s up to. You both heard the way she spoke to our giant, shirtless friend. They’re a couple, or I’m a potato rancher.”

“I tell ye, boy, she’s dangerous too, and don’t you think otherwise.”

“I don’t.” We were back to our wagon, and I was relieved to find both wagon and ponies waiting.

“She’s got quite a head start,” said Darla. “Do you think we can find her?”

I clambered up and took the reins while Mama untied the ponies.

“If I can’t find that wraith of a woman and that black wagon in broad daylight, I need to take down my finder’s eye and take up cheese rustling.”

“Best idea I’ve heard all day,” said Mama as she climbed aboard. “Let’s get gone.”

I turned the ponies around, and we headed back to Rannit.

Chapter Twelve

Finding the woman in black was as easy as falling off a barstool. I just stopped the wagon now and then and asked anyone idling near the street if a circus witch-woman had passed in a black wagon.

Kids playing in vacant lots, oldsters napping in the sun—all were eager to share tales of the singing woman who drove like a devil and cursed like a barge-master. She’d charged through north Rannit at a gallop, whipping her ponies and screeching. Blind, old Mr. Waters could have stayed on her trail by listening with just one ear.

I first caught sight of the black wagon a few blocks from the old palace. I hung back, occasionally letting her get out of sight, sure I could catch up easily enough. I had Mama and Darla swap places now and then, and Darla and I took turns driving so if she was watching she didn’t see the same silhouette twice.

The woman in black had quite an afternoon. She stopped at three potion and herb shops, ones Mama Hog claimed to deal in dark arts. She paused at a couple of bars too, screaming and cursing so loud we could hear her from a block away. She would enter, the screaming would begin, and in a few moments the bar’s former patrons would pour out and hurry away.

It was after her second bar stop that she drove half a block, parked her wagon in the middle of a busy street, and got out to scream at the row of pigeon-spotted statues that lined the old Hall of Justice.

A crowd gathered just to watch the show. She went from statue to statue, howling at each, waving her ring-encrusted fingers at each sooty, weatherworn face.

“She’s insane,” said Darla.

“She’s certainly no fan of historical masonry.” I turned to face Mama. “Remind you of anyone?”

Mama frowned. “Boy, there ain’t no comparison.”

“Comparison with who?” asked Darla.

“With Mama’s friend Granny Knot.”

“The spook doctor?”

“Don’t they all act like this?” I watched the woman rave. “Granny does a fair amount of railing at fence-posts and mail-boxes. Seems to come with the talent.”

“Them what can speak to the dead are a might eccentric,” said Mama. “But this woman appears to be just plain crazy.”

“We’ll see.”

Once she’d castigated each of Rannit’s last six kings, the woman scrambled back into her wagon and resumed her reckless charge through Rannit, scattering pedestrians and traffic-masters alike.

We followed her west, then south, then east again. She took her wagon through the Park, running over one of the NO CARRIAGES OR WAGONS signs and whipping a terrified Park patrolman in the face when he dared tell her to halt. She parked her wagon atop a hill and ate a lunch of what appeared to be raw eggs and whiskey.

When the sun began to set, though, she changed with the darkening sky.

She stopped singing. She stopped whipping her sweat-soaked ponies. She didn’t curse or scream or threaten.

“I was a mite more comfortable when she was loud,” said Mama.

I agreed. Crazy was one thing. Crazy and focused was quite another.

A bank of clouds marched across the sky, extinguishing the sun early. Distant thunder began to sound, and flashes of far-off lightning lit the belly of the clouded sky.

Her next stop was a cemetery. There isn’t a boneyard in Rannit that isn’t locked up tight come sundown, but she rolled through the iron gates without slowing.

“I don’t like this at all,” said Mama.

I shushed her. We were hidden behind a row of stores, but Rannit was falling quiet, and even softly spoken words can betray.

The woman remained in the graveyard for a quarter of an hour. Then she rolled out and sped away.

“Stay put,” I said. Darla’s boots hit the cobbles with mine. So much for lingering patriarchal authority.

Mama stayed. “I ain’t got to tell you to stay this side of the gate,” she said.

“You don’t. We’ll be right back.”

I offered Darla my arm, and she took it, and we were just two people, strolling home.

When we reached the cemetery gates, they were open. The chain that should have held them closed was broken, the links snapped as clean and smooth as though they’d been cut with a hard, patient file.