The Pleasure of Memory (72 page)

Wenzil was beginning to think there was hope when Hector’s horse tripped. It plowed headfirst into the grass, catapulting Hector backwards over its neck. The prodes followed them both down into the deep grass.

Nearly at the tree now, Wenzil brought his horse dancing to a stop. He waited in horror, winded with excitement, his eyes fixed on the still grass where he’d last seen his friend. His own horse shivered beneath him, snorting and pawing at the grass. The breeze whispering through the grain was as loud as thunder.

Then Hector’s horse was on its feet, shaking the chaff from its back. An instant later, it pranced off into the vale between the hills.

Wenzil held his breath.

The two remaining prodes shot straight up out of the grass, twisting skyward in a rage of black wings. They rose up ten, twenty, thirty feet, shrieking and rotating around each other as they ascended. There was no sign of Hector.

Wenzil’s heart felt like it was pumping sand. He couldn’t breathe. His friend was dead. There was no other possibility. Hector was dead!

The horse then kicked into a lope beneath him, though he had no memory of issuing the command. His stomach felt like ice. The cool, calculating edge his mind had summoned just moments ago was gone, replaced by the dull stupidity of shock.

He was nearly up the hill when a shriek rang out behind him. Wenzil drew his sword and twisted around in the saddle, slicing backward instinctively. The prode fell to the earth in pieces behind him.

The last prode was twenty yards back and closing too fast.

He dropped low and kicked his horse forward. As they broached the outermost edge of the low canopy, he cast the sword away. When his horse galloped past the massive trunk of the tree, Wenzil stood in his stirrups and reached for the lowest branch.

The horse erupted from between his legs. Wenzil swung up onto the branch and was immediately climbing. He prayed the tree was old enough and strong enough to support his weight.

A bone-chilling screech erupted below him. Wenzil doubled his efforts, climbing like a monkey chased by a leopard, flying up one branch after another. Another screech rang out from just at his feet. Wenzil kicked down at the beast with the flat of his boot. The prode tumbled a dozen feet before catching the trunk with its talons and stopping. For a moment, the beast simply clung where it had stopped, its wings wrapped tightly to the smooth bark like a smear of tar. The long oily quills covering its back rose and fell as its tiny black eyes seemed to study him.

Wenzil dragged his heel against the bark and scraped the greasy black quills from the sole of his boot. As he resumed his climb, he prayed they hadn’t penetrated the leather.

He heard the scurry of claws on bark beneath him and looked down. The prode was coming again, shimmying quickly up the tree after him. It had insect-like claws at the apex of its wings, which easily gripped the wood as it scaled the smooth bark. A thick eruption of long, shiny quills covered its shoulders and back, and each foul screech sent the quills flaring.

Wenzil slipped himself up over a particularly thick branch, straddling it and scooting himself backward. He slid several feet out from the trunk, then steadied himself and pulled his knife free. The branches were too dense here to allow the creature, which had a wingspan of a solid four feet, to fly. The little monster would have to come out after him if it wanted him badly enough. It’d have to expose itself to reach him.

The prode hissed threateningly as it poured up over the base of the branch.

“Come on, you little bastard,” Wenzil whispered, as he inched his way farther out on the limb, “What’re you waiting for? I’m right here!”

The prode released an ear-piercing screech, revealing a beak densely lined with black, needle-like teeth. It screeched again and its quills flowered across its back. Oily venom sprayed the trunk behind it.

Wenzil knew he had to draw the beast out to him. He tapped his blade against the trunk, drawing the prode’s interest. “Come on, you son of a bitch!” he yelled, rapping the blade harder, “Come out here and get me!”

The creature obliged his request, flowing quickly out across the branch.

The prode came out faster than Wenzil expected, moving within reach in a matter of seconds. Wenzil panicked and spiked his knife at it, but the prode withdrew too quickly. In his excitement, he’d driven the blade deep into the wood, too deep. He tried to pull it out but couldn’t apply the leverage needed to free it without crawling closer to the prode.

The prode appeared to sense his predicament. It shrieked again and flared its quills. Then it flowed forward across the limb toward him, though more cautiously now.

“Come on, then!” Wenzil growled as he struggled with the knife, “Come get me, you greasy little bastard!”

The creature feigned a rush at him. Wenzil abandoned the knife to retreat further out the limb. He threw a quick glance behind him. He was moving too far from the tree’s trunk. The branch was sagging. It could never support him out here.

The prode screeched at the buried knife. Oil spattered the leaves around it. Wenzil thought the blade might deter it from coming closer, but the prode only hissed at it again, then flowed under the branch and around top again just beyond the knife.

Wenzil inched back. The branch was sagging most sincerely. He glanced down at the ground thirty feet below. There were a dozen large branches between him and the end. He might be able to drop a dozen feet at a time, hopping from branch to branch, but even if he did manage to make the ground intact, then what? Run away? Not hardly. His horse was probably a mile away by now. Could he make his sword in time? Doubtful.

The prode was barely two feet back now, easily within striking distance.

Wenzil grabbed a narrow side branch and began twisting at it hoping to break it and use it as a stave. As he fought the wood, he thought about the stories he’d heard of people in olden times, people who’d died from unfortunate encounters with a prode’s quill. It was said they convulsed to death, sometimes taking hours before succumbing to the venom.

He decided that if he had a choice he’d rather suffer a broken neck and go quickly, if not peacefully. If he pushed off just right, he might land cleanly. He’d rather not bounce from branch to branch on the way, breaking half a dozen bones and ending up only incapacitated in the dirt below and still at the mercy of the prode. He had to drop determinedly.

He was out of time. The prode was coming for him.

He steadied himself for the lunge. He visualized his descent. He took a deep breath and braced himself for the trip. And then—

The prode abruptly snapped upward, flipping free of his branch and hitting the branch above it. But it didn’t drop back. It was pinned to the wood by a clothyard arrow with bold red feathers. One of Hector’s arrows.

Wenzil looked down at the earth and yelled, “Hector!” He couldn’t see his friend through the dense branches separating him from the earth below. “Hector!” he called again.

No one answered.

He slipped down to the branch below him, and worked his way back toward the trunk, taking care to avoid the oily venom dripping from the dead prode above. From there he quickly made his way down the trunk. Soon he swung from the lowest branch and landed on the ground more gently than he’d been expecting just moments earlier.

He looked around for his friend, peering across the shadowed humus covering the ground beneath the tree.

“Hector?” he called.

There was no answer.

“Hec, where are you?”

Nothing.

Wenzil looked back up at the dead prode. He estimated the trajectory of the arrow. The shooter must have been standing right here, almost directly beneath the prode. He looked at the earth. The ground cover here was trampled. A few spots of blood spoiled the dried leaves. He followed the trauma to the edge of the tree line. And then he spotted Hector’s abandoned bow.

“Hector!” he yelled.

He broke through the canopy and nearly tripped over the prone form of his dear friend.

Hector lay face down in the grass, his arms stretched out on both sides of him as if he were hugging the earth itself. Dozens of shiny black quills, some a foot or more long, littered his neck and shoulder. Wenzil knelt beside him.

“Hector?” he asked, fearing both a response and a lack of one.

He laid his trembling fingers against his friend’s neck. The skin was icy and moist, and no pulse was palpable beneath it. It was the most terrifying moment of his life. Hector was dead.

He took Hector’s arm. He dropped forward into the grass and buried his face in his dear friend’s hand. Hot tears washed between their entwined fingers. “Why, Hec?” he cried, “Why did you do it? Why? Why?”

Yet, even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. He knew it as clearly as he knew he was the one who should be moldering in that grass instead of Hector. Hector was a fantastic shot. He could’ve easily dispatched his own prodes and made the tree safely. Instead, he’d used his last living minutes to save Wenzil.

Wenzil felt the ground melting away beneath him. He was plummeting through a cold, dark shaft of grief. “I’m so sorry, Hec,” he said, sobbing, “I’m so, so sorry.”

∞

Wenzil buried Hector beneath that great tree.

It took him nearly the rest of the afternoon to dig the grave, having only a small pack shovel to use. His grief was so heavy, so commanding, that he could barely dig for more than a few minutes before the pain and tears disabled him. They’d been friends since diapers, and partners all their adult lives. They’d ridden side by side through more adventures than a hundred average men did in their collective lifetimes. He loved Hector better and truer than he’d ever loved anyone in this mortal plane.

Now, Hector was gone, and Wenzil had never felt so alone in his life.

When he finished burying his dear friend, he took his knife and carved four lines into the smooth gray bark:

HERE SLEEPS HECTOR FELTHE.

THOUGH HE RESTS NEATH THIS TREE,

HE RIDES WITH THE WIND.

HE IS DONE BUT NOT FINISHED.

He then took Hector's knife and spiked it deep into the wood above the inscription so his spirit would have it for protection in the Jha’wyr.

It wasn’t the glorious marble sarcophagi expected of a Baeldonian soldier. He’d never rest in the halls of his kin lying deep beneath the earth, as was his people’s way. All Wenzil could do was take some solace from the knowledge that Hector had been a runner all his life, that he’d always been more at home in the fields and forests than the mountains. He knew Hector would find a kind of satisfaction, even amusement, in this resting place beneath such a grand tree here on Belfry Hill. Mayhaps the tree would eventually consume his remains and he’d become one with it, like the legendary pig beeches he’d heard stories of in his youth.

He sat beside his dear friend until he ran numb from the pain. He prayed to Calina and all the Gods of Pentyrfal that Hector’s spirit would find peace out here in the sweeping plains. He prayed harder that his soul would settle calmly, contentedly into eternal silence, and that it stay far clear of the restless swamps of Sken te’Fau.

XXXVII

THE LITTLE MOUSE

REE OF HIS SHACKLE, LUREN CROUCHED IN THE DARKNESS DIRECTLY BEHIND THE SCARRED CELL DOOR.

He rubbed at the ache that’d taken root in his fingers as he watched the dim orange glow of torchlight radiating through the barred window high above him. The suggestion of firelight beyond his prison was the only semblance of warmth to be found in this nightmare, and he took what solace he could from it.

He wiped at his sore, weeping eyes. A dry tongue rubbed ineffectively against scabbed lips. He couldn’t remember his last drink of water, and his urine had grown thick and hot. He’d die soon if he didn’t get a drink. He’d die alone and forgotten in this miserable pit.

One of his cellmates lay across the cell from him. He’d been a Baeldon in life. His huge skull hanged awkwardly from the brace of the collar imprisoning it. The massive bones of its arms and legs sprawled across the rotting straw as if he’d finally just given up, as if he’d surrendered to his fate and hung himself by that thick, rusted shackle because, in the end, what other option was there? As Luren studied the remains of that pitiable Baeldon, he wondered if such an end would be so bad.

But one look into the empty caverns that’d been the Baeldon’s eyes was enough to convince him that such an escape was no escape at all. Spending the rest of eternity here in this wretched tomb as the greasy rats gnawed on his remains? Decaying into time, his name gradually forgotten as everyone he knew slowly died off? No! It was an unthinkable option. There had to be another way out.

He again looked up at the cell window. The dim light filtering through the bars offered hope. It spoke of blue skies and green fields, of crimson sunsets, of the prospect that, no matter the horrors conjured within the colorless nightmare of this cell, the beauty and hope of the outside world still existed.

Keys clinking just outside the cell door startled him back to the present. He crawled deeper into the shadows, moving back behind the door. He held his breath as the jailer fumbled to find the right key on that terrible ring.

“Ye in there, little mouse?” The voice was shrill and ignorant, and reeked of bad intentions. “I got a surprise for ye, little mouse.”

Luren cowered tighter into that corner behind the door. His back burned with the memory of the whippings Creenon had given him on that first day. He couldn’t take another beating like that one. He’d never survive it, he was sure of it.

The key scratched against the lock face. “I got me something real good, little mouse,” Creenon said, cackling weirdly, “Thinking ye’ll like this, I am.”

Luren had to act. He had to act this very instant or resign his fate to the hands of a drunken maniac. His eyes combed the cell for a weapon.