Shadow of a Dark Queen (12 page)

Roo looked ready to run at a moment's notice as he looked around the glade. “We didn't have to kill him, Erik. If we are put in the dock and made to testify, we can't honestly say we had to kill him.” Roo put his hand on Erik's arm as if to drag him from the scene. “I wanted him dead, Erik. You did, too. We murdered him.”

Erik found it almost impossible to keep events clear in his head. He knew he had felt something close to murder in his heart as he wrestled with Stefan, but now that was a distant memory, and events were jumbled.

“I've got my money, here”—he indicated his travel bundle— “so we can make for Krondor and buy passage to the Sunset Islands.”

“Why there?”

“Because if a man lives for a year and a day in the islands and commits no crime, he's pardoned for whatever he did before he came there. It's an old law from when the islands came into the Kingdom.”

“But they'll be looking for us.”

Rosalyn stirred, with a faint moan of discomfort. Roo leaned down and asked, “Can you hear me?”

The girl didn't answer. Roo said, “They'll probably think we're going to Kesh. A man can hide in the Vale of Dreams and get across the border without much trouble.” The vale, the border between Great Kesh and the Kingdom, was a no-man's-land of smugglers, bandits, and garrisons along both sides of the frontier. Men came and went and few questions were asked.

Erik moved his shoulder experimentally and felt light-headed when a stabbing pain answered his movement. “This isn't right,” he said.

Roo shook his head. “If we stay here, we will be hung. Even if we had twenty witnesses, Manfred would make sure we were found guilty.” Roo looked around as a distant shout split the night. “Someone's coming. We have to go
now!”

Erik nodded. “I should go back to the inn—”

“No,” said Roo. “They'll expect that. We must go down the old western trail. We'll go all night and cut into the woodlands at daybreak. If they send the dogs after us, we had better be across a dozen streams or more before noon.”

“Mother—” began Erik.

“She'll be safe,” Roo interrupted. “Manfred has no reason to trouble her. You were always the threat, not your mother.” A shout from the far side of the orchard caused Roo to swear. “They're on the other side already. We're trapped!”

Erik said, “There!” He pointed to an old tree both had played in over the years. The centerpiece of the old orchard, the tree was heavily shrouded in leaves and might offer possible haven.

They crossed the short distance to the tree and Roo said, “How's your shoulder?”

“Hurts like blazes, but I can move it.”

Roo didn't hesitate but scampered up the tree. He moved as high as he could, leaving the slightly heavier lower branches for Erik. By the time Erik was out of sight, torchlight and lanterns could be seen coming close.

Roo shook for a moment as he lost balance, then regained it, and Erik was now almost sick with pain, fear, and disgust. Stefan's death was still unreal to
him; he could see the dark shape of his body on the ground and expected him to rise up in a moment, as if this were all some mummery put on at a festival.

Then a soldier with a lantern saw Rosalyn. “Master Greylock! Over here!”

Through the leaves, Erik could barely make out the figures that rushed to where Rosalyn and Stefan lay a few yards apart. Then he heard Owen Greylock's voice. “He's dead.”

Another voice asked, “How is the girl?”

A third said, “She's in a bad way, Swordmaster. We should get her to the chirurgeon.”

Then Erik heard Manfred's shout of rage. “They've killed my brother!” An almost inaudible oath and a sobbing cry was followed by “I'll kill him myself.”

Erik caught a glimpse of Owen Greylock's slender form between the nearby leaves and heard the Baron's Swordmaster say, “We'll find those who did this, Manfred.”

Erik shook his head. The three soldiers who had seen him and Roo run after Stefan and Rosalyn would certainly place them at the scene. A soldier said, “I know there was bad blood between the bastard and your brother, but why did they beat the girl?” Erik knew then that they had already been identified.

Erik felt his anger rise again. A familiar voice said, “Erik wouldn't harm Rosalyn.” Nathan was there!

“Are you saying my brother did this, Master Smith?”

“Young sir, I only know that this girl is as gentle a soul as the gods have placed upon this world. She was a sister to Erik and one of Roo's few friends. Neither boy would harm her.” Then he pointedly
added, “But I can certainly imagine them killing anyone who did.”

Manfred's voice rose in anger. “I'll have no excuse for black murder, Master Smith. No member of my family would do this.” Manfred raised his voice to a shout of command: “I want every man on his horse and combing the countryside, Swordmaster. If those two murderous dogs are found, I want them held until I can join whichever soldiers find them. I don't want them hung until I'm there to watch.”

Nathan's voice cut through the muttering of the gathered soldiers. “There will be no hanging them out of hand, young lord. That's the law. And as you are a member of the family that is wronged, neither you nor your father can sit in judgment; when caught, Erik and Roo are to be bound over to a King's justice or magistrate.” Then Nathan's tone became warning. “Erik is a guild apprentice, so if you really want troubles, young sir, try to put my apprentice into a noose without due writ.”

“You'd bring the guild into this?” asked Manfred.

“I would,” answered Nathan. Erik felt tears gather in his eyes. Nathan, at least, understood why this had happened. “I suggest the young lord returns to his father's side. Someone needs to break this grave news to him, and it should be someone he loves.” To drive the point into the ground, he said, “It should be you, young sir.”

There was a stirring and a weak cry from Rosalyn, and Nathan took command. “Master Greylock, would you ask two of your lads to carry the girl back to the inn?”

Greylock gave instructions and began issuing commands to search for Erik and Roo.

They remained in the tree while soldiers fanned out in all directions, and said nothing to each other until it had been quiet for some time.

Then slowly they dropped to the ground, and crouched, ready to bolt should any noise indicate they were discovered. At last Roo said, “For a while we have luck on our side.”

“Why?”

“They don't think we're behind them. As they widen the circle to find us, there'll be more places we can slip through. Any local farmer would think of the old western trail, but Greylock's probably never heard of it; all his trips west have been by the King's Highway. For a while we can worry about soldiers in front of us, not behind us.”

Erik said, “I think maybe we should give ourselves up.”

Roo said, “You may have Nathan and the guild to protect you,
maybe,
but I don't. Manfred will get me hung before the sun sets on the day they find me. And don't think he's likely to worry about the law much if it dawns on him that you're now a threat to his inheritance, not Stefan's.”

Erik felt a sinking in his stomach. Roo whispered, “You've made him Baron next, and I don't think he's going to want you around to thank you, Erik. We're dead men if we can't make straight to the Sunset Islands.”

Erik nodded. He was still light-headed and in pain, but he rose to unsteady feet. Without another word he followed Roo into the darkness.

E
rik fell
.

Roo turned and helped his friend back to his feet. In the distance, the baying of hounds could be heard, accompanied by the clatter of horses.

The boys had been running on and off since leaving the orchard the night before, with no more than a few minutes' rest at any one time. Erik's wound refused to stop bleeding, though the flow was slight. Still, it throbbed and burned with heat and he felt himself grow weaker by the hour as they worked their way down out of the low mountains of Darkmoor.

The area west of Darkmoor and north of the King's Highway was still fairly underpopulated. Rocky terrain with little to recommend itself to farmers, much of the land had been timbered out but left unplowed. Thick stands of trees gave way to a sea of stumps, only to be replaced by unexpected rocky ridges. This region was rich with gullies, ravines, dead-end canyons, and low, flat meadows. Despite their having run down any number of streams, the sound of the dogs had been carrying on the wind for
hours. And as Erik weakened, the sound was getting closer.

As the morning sun crested the peaks behind them, Erik said, “Where are we?”

Roo said, “I'm not sure. When we left the old wagon trail, I think we turned around a bit. The sun's in the right place, so we're still heading west.”

Erik looked around, perspiration streaming off his forehead. He wiped it away and said, “We'd better keep going.”

Roo nodded, but after three or four fumbling footsteps, Erik collapsed. Roo tried to help his friend up. “Why'd you have to be so damn big?”

Erik gasped for air and said, “Go on without me.”

Roo felt the hair rise upon his neck and felt panic slash through his stomach. Finding strength he didn't know he had, he forced Erik to his feet. “And have to explain to your mother how I lost you? I don't think so.”

Roo silently prayed that Erik could hold on long enough for them to find shelter and hide from the dogs. Roo was terrified. One of the heartiest lads in Ravensburg, Erik had stamina almost as legendary as his strength among the boys he grew up with. His ability to work from dawn to dusk since the age of ten, his ability to carry iron ingots to the forge, his ability to withstand the constant weight of draft horses leaning on him while being shod—all had given Erik an almost superhuman stature among the townspeople. His weakness was as alien to Roo as it was to Erik himself. Roo found it far more frightening than anything else that confronted them. With Erik at his side, he felt he had a fighting chance to survive. Without Erik, he was helpless.

Roo sniffed the air. “Do you smell something?”

Erik said, “Only the stink of my own sweat.”

“Over there.” Roo motioned with his chin.

Erik put his hand against his friend's shoulder and rested a moment as he sniffed the air. “Charcoal.”

“That's it!”

“There must be a charcoal burner's hut upwind.”

“It might mask our scent,” said Roo. “I know we can't go much farther. You've got to rest, get your strength back.”

Erik only nodded, and Roo assisted him as they moved toward the source of the smoke. Through light woods they stumbled as the sound of the dogs grew louder by the minute. Erik and Roo were not woodsmen, but as boys they had played in the woodlands near Ravensburg enough to know those searching for them were less than a couple of miles behind and coming fast.

The woods thickened and grew more difficult to navigate, darker shadows confusing their sense of direction, but the smell of burning wood grew stronger. By the time they reached the hut, their eyes stung from it.

An old woman, ugly beyond belief, stood tending a charcoal kiln, feeding small cuts of wood into it, banking flames as she ensured the wood burned down properly; too hot, and she'd have ashes.

Seeing the two young men suddenly appear out of the gloom, she shrieked and almost dove inside the rude hut beside which her kiln rested. The shrieking continued and Roo said, “She'll bring them down on us if this keeps up.”

Erik tried to raise his voice over her shouting. “We mean you no harm.”

The shrieking continued, and Roo added his protestation of no evil intent to Erik's. The woman continued to shriek. Finally Erik said, “We had best leave.”

“We can't,” answered Roo. “You're on your last legs now.” He said nothing about the wound, which continued to weep blood, despite the rags pressed against it.

Stumbling down a small incline to the charcoal burner's hut, they confronted a simple piece of hide that served as a door.

Erik leaned his weight against the mud-covered wall and pulled aside the leather door. The woman huddled back against the bale of rags that served as her bedding, shrieking all the more.

Erik finally shouted, “Woman! We mean you no harm!”

Instantly the shouting ceased. “Well,” she answered, her voice as raspy as a wire brush on metal, “why didn't you say something?”

Erik almost laughed, he felt so light-headed and giddy. Roo said, “We were trying to, but you kept screaming.”

Getting up off the rags, showing a surprising nimbleness for her age and weight—easily as much as Erik's and he stood a good foot and a half taller than she—the woman stepped out of the hut.

Roo reflexively stepped back. She was the ugliest human being he had ever encountered, if indeed she was human. From her appearance, she could possibly be one of those trolls he had heard about that haunted the woodlands of the Far Coast. Her nose was a lumpy red protrusion, resembling a large tuber, with one big wart on the tip of it, from which several long
hairs grew. Her eyes could only be called piggish, and they wept from some sort of inflammation. Her teeth were blackened stumps with green edges, and her breath was as foul as anything Roo had remembered smelling that wasn't dead. Her skin looked like dried leather, and he shuddered to consider what her body under that assortment of filthy rags might resemble.

Then she smiled and the effect was heightened. “Come to pay old Gert a visit, have you?” She tried to be girlish as she combed her fingers through grey hair tangled with straw and dirt, and had the boys not been so tired and frightened, they would have laughed. “Well, my man is gone to the city, so maybe—”