“So that’s why he didn’t eat you,” Angelika said, coming closer to the two
young nobles. “You made yourself too entertaining.”
Lukas wheeled on her, tears burning in his eyes. “Do not mock my agony, you
knife-wielding harlot!”
Angelika crossed her arms. “I’d gut you for that, except it’s what you want.”
He dropped to his knees. Angelika saw him shudder with pain as they hit the
stony trail. That will bruise, she thought. “Do it! I give you my throat!”
Instead she took him by the shirt and hauled him up. He was limp, like a rag,
so it took her no great effort. “I need your throat intact, you self-pitying
little blueblood. So stop whining and start moving!” She slapped him. “Your tale
of woe may inspire bitter tears in my companion here, but all I want is the silver you’re worth. I don’t care two figs what your brothers do with
you when I turn you over to them.”
“No, no, you mustn’t do that! You must slay me now—I beg of you!”
She bared her teeth and pulled his face closer to hers. The boy’s stink made
her eyes water. She resolved to plunge him into a stream and see to it that he
got a good washing. “How much can you pay me to kill you now?”
He pulled at his belt, to show that his purse was missing. “I have nothing!”
She let him fall. “Then your fate is not yours to decide.”
He hugged her ankles and burbled. “I was never meant to be a soldier. I never
mastered the rapier, much less the sabre. When those men came to kill us, my
body rebelled against me. All I could do was turn and run. You mistake me if you
think I’m of any worth.”
“You’re worth two hundred crowns if you’re worth a penny.” She went to kick
at him, but ended up just pushing on his shoulder with her foot. “Get up,” she
said. “Get up!” Even without looking at him, she could tell that Franziskus was
making sad puppy eyes at her. She stamped down the trail, and let him attend to
the boy, coaxing him up to his feet, and leading him onwards.
They made camp for the night in the foothills overlooking the pass. This put
a good distance between them and the beast-men. Angelika had made the boy scrub
up in the stream. He’d performed his ablutions sullenly, and since that
indignity had found little to say for himself. Silence suited him, Angelika
decided; it was only when he spoke that she wanted to split open his puckered
lips.
She sat on a rock and got to work, teasing one of the gut strands from the
beastman’s net. When she was finished, she approached Lukas, who was on top of a
knoll, kicking at a patch of small blue flowers. Stealing a sidelong glimpse at
Franziskus, she noted that he was still sitting cross-legged before a pile of
sticks and dried plants, attempting to spark his tinderbox on it. Light was
disappearing from the sky.
“It’s time we rested,” she said. She looped the cord around her hand. “Come
with me.” She led Lukas to the base of a tall spruce and told him to sit. “Hands behind your back.”
Franziskus saw this and abandoned his fire making. “What is this, Angelika?”
Lukas’ hands stayed in his lap.
“I won’t have my three hundred crowns creeping away in the night.” She tied
one end of the cord around the tree’s trunk. She gave it a mighty yank, making
certain that the knot was sturdy.
“Wait a moment. Have we rescued him, or made him our prisoner?”
“Prisoner,” said Angelika. She took hold of Lukas’ left hand and tugged it
until he moved it behind his back.
“You cannot do that to him,” Franziskus said. “He is of noble birth.”
“Precisely. Never trust a blueblood, that’s my credo.” She tugged on Lukas’
right hand; he moved it back, too, more reluctantly, then crossed wrists with
the left.
Franziskus knelt beside them and clasped his fingers around the boy’s wrists
in an attempt to stop Angelika from wrapping the cord around them. “Scandalous
jokes are all well and good, but this goes too far. I won’t let you humiliate
him.”
“Don’t trouble yourself, good Franziskus,” the boy said. “My cowardice has
erased all claim to noble privilege. She may do with me as she likes.”
Franziskus left his hand in place. “But it is uncalled for. You will not
attempt to part company with us, will you, Lukas?”
“No.”
“And, when you say that, you give us your word of honour?”
Lukas nodded gravely. “Yes.”
“Please, Angelika,” Franziskus said. “Why would he run? He couldn’t survive
for a day alone in these hills. If my friendship means anything to you, let the
poor fellow be.”
“We must talk,” she said, pulling Franziskus out of earshot. They both
regarded him, as he stayed in place, forlornly plucking up grass shoots. “You’ve
got to stop sympathising with him.”
“How could I not? He’s spent the last weeks as a Chaos beast’s plaything.
It’s a tribute to his good breeding that he has any wit left in him at all. I can hardly blame him for being less than
charming. Besides, the two of us have much in common.”
“That’s your bad fortune. I need to know where your loyalties lie.”
“I’ve sworn to serve you. Not that you’ve accepted that.”
“Does that mean I can rely on you, when the time comes to turn him over?”
“You can rely on me in all things, Angelika.”
“Because I don’t want you coming down with a case of last-moment lily-liver.”
“Do not fear. My duty to you, and to my class, are both in accord. He must be
given over to his family, as honour demands.”
“But you like him.”
“I feel for his plight. He did, however, swear an oath on pain of death… I
wish him no ill, but our responsibility to turn him over is clear.”
“Even though they’ll make him fall on his sword?”
“I can’t believe it will come to that. This von Kopf fellow will find some
other way to justly absolve Lukas of his misdeeds. He’s a boy of fifteen, and
the man’s own son. The Empire is fuelled by the honour of its nobles, but not to
the point that we applaud blind and unyielding savagery.”
“I hate to correct you, but it’s avarice and the lust for power that drives
the Empire, not—Damn it!” She sprinted off.
The boy was gone.
She saw his head bobbing up and down, along the side of a hill. She slid down
through high grass and closed the distance between them, barely conscious of her
footfalls as her long legs carried her toward him. He reached the valley floor,
sliding on a patch of mud, then recovered his footing. He kept running. She
grabbed her knife. He stupidly stopped to look north, then south, to pick a
course. He glanced back at her, then ran straight ahead. She pushed herself
harder. He turned his head again, running. She flew into him, hitting his legs,
and bowling him over. He somersaulted backwards. She wrenched herself around and
dived on his chest. She’d reversed her grip on her dagger, and thumped him
instead on the forehead with the pommel. He cried out. She thumped him again, and then stuck the bone of her forearm against his throat and
pushed, until his breathing became strained.
“Franziskus is going to be very disappointed in you.”
He worked his lips as if to speak; she relaxed the pressure on his throat,
giving him air. Instead of speaking though he pushed up with his shoulder,
trying to roll her off him. She kneed him in the groin. His eyes widened. He
fell slack, choking. Spittle drooled from his lips. Angelika got off him. He
doubled up.
“So that’s what your word of honour is worth?”
“My honour is lost to me,” he groaned, “so it means nothing for me to swear
on it.”
She kicked him, placing real force behind the blow this time, and again.
Franziskus reached them. She expected him to pull her off, but he didn’t, so she
kept on kicking, moving from his ribs to his legs.
“I beg you stop!” Lukas wailed.
She stopped, and moved a couple of yards away, leaving Franziskus to help the
boy up and lead him back to camp. When next she looked at them, when they were
halfway up the hill, she saw that Lukas’ face was red, his teeth clenched, and
his cheeks stained with tears. This made her want to knock him down for another
round of pummelling. Instead, she waited until they got back to Franziskus’
unlit fire. Then she trussed Lukas to a tree, as tightly as she’d done the two
halflings and the elf. He would have to sleep standing up. If that left him
weaker tomorrow, so be it: he wouldn’t be so ready to escape then.
Franziskus got a flame going. They sat on their cloaks and warmed themselves.
When the silence got too loud, Franziskus spoke up. “He will be very sore
tomorrow.”
“Pain reminds you you’re alive.”
“He lied to me, and so I am angry with him. You expected him to run. Why are
you angry?”
“You damn bluebloods are all the same.” She slid forty-five degrees away from
the fire, so he could no longer see her face.
“What injustice have I done you?”
“I mean the whole lot of you. Your rules elevate you and permit you to tread
on everyone below you. But the minute it looks like you’ll have to follow those rules yourselves… That’s when the
truth comes out. He gave us his word, as a gentleman. Then it transpires he’s
not a gentleman anymore, which gives him permission to lie.”
“He’s still only a frightened boy, just as he was an hour ago.”
“I’m only sorry I won’t personally witness him receiving the axe.”
Franziskus went quiet. “If we aristos are as you say, then he will not get
the axe. An accommodation will be made.”
“You’re right.” She had difficulty getting even those words out of her mouth.
“Angelika, you seem… not yourself.”
“I preferred it when we were just sitting here, thinking our own thoughts.”
“I merely wonder if you need a reassuring word.”
“Not from you, or your kind.”
“Is there something you wish to speak of?”
“Shut up,” she said, “before I start kicking you, too.”
“Goblins,” Angelika said, bending down to point at a bare spot in the trail,
where many markings could be seen in the dirt. They’d found the spot where she’d
left Toby and his cronies, the day before. The cords she’d used to bind them lay
tangled in the branches of a thorny bush.
“I can see marks on the ground,” Franziskus said, “but how can you tell
goblins made them?”
“It’s easy when you know what to look for. Have you ever seen a pack of
goblins? No? Well, the nasty things can’t stand still for even a moment. They’re
always skittering back and forth. And when they move, they move in a sort of
sideways manner. See how they slide their feet when they go?”
“I still see only disturbed dirt.”
“No one scuffs up a trail like goblins do.”
“Do you think they came upon Goatfield and the rest, and brought them to
grief?”
She squinted at the trees where they’d been bound. “I see no blood. If they
found them still tied up, goblins would certainly attack them. But they don’t
usually have the inclination to take prisoners—they’re too cowardly and
dull-witted for that. I’d guess our friends got free—either on their own, or with help from Benno and Gelfrat—and then the goblins came sniffing
around later, sensing something amiss.”
“Goblins!” Lukas exclaimed. For appearance’s sake, Angelika had tied his
wrists, out in front of him. She’d left his ankles free, though, there was no
telling when they might have to suddenly run from something. “I hate this place!
Bandits, beastmen, now goblins—is there any creature or villain that does not
lurk in these godforsaken mountains?”
“Nearly all the places on this earth are godforsaken,” Angelika said. The
estate where you were brought up, with its nurses and its polished floors and
its all-day games of
paille-maille
—that was the exception.” She spoke
without looking at him; purple bruises covered his face, throat, and wrists.
There would be worse marks under his clothing, and she was responsible for most
of them. She’d woken up ashamed of her violence against him—at least, of the
kicks she’d dealt him after his surrender. Several times already this morning,
she had found herself on the brink of an apology. But each time she took a look
at him—his haughty posture, and the childish way he rolled his eyes at her
when he thought she wasn’t looking—the impulse went away.
“I never got to play
paille-maille,”
said Lukas, using the back of a
restrained hand to rub the damp off his nostrils.
Before her retort had fully gelled, Franziskus stepped up. “So how do we
propose to catch up with his brothers again?”
“I expected to see signs of them by now. Benno had no great love of mountain
travel; maybe he decided to stay in the lowlands to await our return. For that
matter, they might have gone back already, with some suitable set of bones that
they could pass off as Lukas’. The only way to know for certain is to return to
the hollow and track their movements from there.”
They crossed the nearby alpine meadow, where the fight against the
mercenaries had begun, and jumped down onto the slope of rocks. Lukas made small
complaining noises as the stones gave way beneath him. They paused at the bottom
to dump pebbles from their shoes, then Angelika led them into the pine wood,
heading south. After a few minutes, she gestured for silence.
“Do you hear it?” she asked Franziskus.
“No.”
“Horses.” She crept to the edge of the trees. Franziskus made to follow, but
Angelika told him to wait with Lukas. He nodded gravely; she did not need to
specify that waiting with Lukas meant making sure he did not run.
Angelika looked down onto the plain and saw the Averlanders. Most, including
Benno, milled about a fire, where a cooking pot hung, steam escaping from around
its lid. They had four ill-fed horses with them, one brown, the others grey and
dull. Angelika wondered whether they’d been purchased or commandeered.
Travelling horse peddlers were not a common feature of the Blackfire Pass.
One of the greys had slipped its reins and was cantering in circles around
the soldiers. Heinrich and Gelfrat loped after the nag, trying to flank it. It
did not seem like it was trying very hard to escape from them; it was only
testing them. The nag was far from Angelika, but she thought she could detect a
churlish grin on its yellow teeth.