The Barrow (2 page)

He had a spyglass in one of the satchels strapped to his body, but they were close enough to their intended destination that he did not need to use it. His sharp eyes would occasionally flicker left or right, to scan along the hillsides and nearby ridge tops, or up to track a sparrow hawk wheeling in the distance against the clouds, only to return to stare at the door into the earth. He listened to the weird wind, hearing the faint jangling of small bells and the whisper of what could have been a song sung backwards. He sniffed the air, and inhaled wet earth and old stone, moss and scrub thickets and tree heath, and from somewhere near the hint of something dead and rotting.

The two men hidden in the rocks slightly behind and below the man in the lead did their best to imitate his stillness, but despite their patience and good sense, neither was a woodsman, either by training or by birthright. They did not see what he saw, or hear what he heard, or smell what he smelt. The closer of the two had blond hair and fair skin, a golden youth of noble breed and bearing, though dressed down for the occasion. His fine travel coat and breeches were woven of good dark wool with silk trim, the sheen of the weave enough to tell that they were of quality. His sword brace held a dagger with a silver-wire-wrapped pommel and a matching rapier. He was obviously charming and just as obviously trouble. He bore a faintly bemused expression on his face as he waited for the man in the lead to move, but his eyes were nervous.

The third was older than his companions, perhaps almost forty years of age, but improbably he was also quite handsome despite the wear and tear: chiseled sun-burnt features, a hint of mischief about the weathered mouth, cunning in clear blue eyes, rough stubble and dirty blond hair dangling before his face, the air of surety and danger about him that came from being a veteran (though a veteran of what might have been less certain). He was dressed in a simple padded doublet of black cloth, opened to reveal an unbuttoned shirt and hairy chest, two long daggers strapped to his side and a scabbarded broadsword and round metal shield slung over one shoulder, along with several leather packs and satchels. Vambraces of dulled steel were strapped over each forearm.

It was this third man who finally stirred and spoke. “Black-Heart,” he grunted. “Can we get on with it?” He spoke low but did not bother whispering; there was no one nearby to hear them.

The man in the lead stared at the hillside ahead of them a moment longer, then turned and looked back. His name wasn't Black-Heart—it was Stjepan, son of Byron and Argante—but enough people had called him Black-Heart over the years that it might as well as have been his name. His features were distinctly Athairi: sun-kissed copper skin, short-cropped dark hair, high cheekbones, and a sharp, prominent nose with a diamond-shaped bump in it. Stubble darkened his chin and jaw. His left ear was pierced twice, as was common amongst some Athairi men, and set with small silver loops. He would almost certainly have been considered handsome, at least at first glance, until perhaps the eyes. His eyes were piercing, even unsettling to many, and his sharp gaze was tinged with a hint of hate, or perhaps simply disgust, as though whatever he was looking at had been judged and found wanting. And that gaze fell on the third man, and for a moment the third man regretted speaking.

Stjepan stared at him a second, then looked past him to take in the rest of their group, a hard-looking lot of grim-faced murderers and thieves spread out in the brush and rock below them, all dressed in dark travel clothes, haphazardly armed and lightly armored, with an occasional cuirass or ringed brigandine amongst them. They had been told to stick in pairs, but Stjepan noted that one man had moved forward to join the group in front of him, leaving a slight figure alone in the rear. He squinted and frowned in annoyance, though as he was often frowning it would perhaps be better to say that his frown deepened. But he was not surprised; that last figure in the rear made many men uncomfortable, though they could not perhaps put their fingers on why.

He turned back to look up the hill.

“We're fucked,” Stjepan said, low and calm. “No cover between here and the entrance worth talking about. Not for our lot. The old
fae
stones might help a bit, Erim and I could maybe make it there without anyone seeing us, but not the rest of us. Not in the day. So either we make a straight run for it and hope no one's watching, or we wait until dark.”

“Shit,” swore the third man, his sure expression wavering for a moment. “Shit,” he repeated.

“It's all right, Guilford,” said the second man. He glanced around at the nearby hills, the expanse of the range across the horizon, and made a short subtle gesture with his hand. “We haven't seen anyone for half a day. Not since that backwater village where we left the horses.”

Guilford looked up at the second man. “You've never been up here, Harvald. Stjepan and me, we have,” he hissed. “There's always someone watching up here. If it isn't one of the bandit knight descendants of the Wyvern King waiting to rob you blind, it's some of the fucking hill people, waiting to cut your throat and cook you for dinner. Those same fucking villagers watching our horses are probably following us, waiting to do us in.
If
they're not busy chopping up our horses for their cooking pots.”

Harvald's bemused smile grew wider in response. “It's true I was not summoned to the campaign against the rebel Earl of Orliac, praise be to the Heavens, so I defer to your combined experience of these hills, of course,” he said. “But is it possible, given the disastrous outcome of said campaign, that you're just shitting your pants at the memory?”

“Fuck you, Harvald,” hissed Guilford, suddenly angry enough to make most men take a step back. “You weren't fucking there. Night battles, ambush and kidnappings, corpses strung up and flayed . . . the people of these hills do not fight fucking straight. They're vicious little shits worse than anything you've ever seen in the big city. And the Rebel Earl and his men are still out here somewhere, a thousand fucking strong.”

“No doubt,” said Harvald, nodding sagely. “No doubt.”

Guilford was about to respond when Stjepan glanced back. “Shut it, both of you,” Stjepan said in a quiet voice that brooked no argument. Guilford was a Marked Man with a crew and certainly thought of himself as tougher than Stjepan, but still he paused, and nodded.

Stjepan turned back and contemplated the hillside ahead of them. His stern gaze swept over the ring of
menhirs
, nearby hillsides and brush covered slopes, rocky crags and bleak summits, and in the distance the main high range of the Manon Mole, snow-capped against cloudy gray skies. It was a beautiful sight, he realized.
Almost as beautiful as home.

He listened to the weird wind for a little bit longer.

“Ah, fuck it,” he said finally. “Let's go.”

Somewhere in the dark, a woman whispered. They had come creeping to her in the dark, her children and her lovers, her Nameless bringing word of brazen interlopers, cruel huntsmen from the cursed lowlands. Eleven men, one of them fae-born and marked with wood-magics, and another a Servant of the Bright King walking in disguise. It was not the first time that men such as these had come, though the Servant of the Bright King surprised her. Did he come as an emissary? Or as an enemy? So she had rolled her bones—for of bones she had plenty—and she had been filled with despair.

Erim glanced about, mostly behind them back the way they had come, as was her job as the last in the line. She was supposed to be paired with Gap Tooth Tims, but the moment they'd stopped he'd slunk forward to hunker down with Porter and Smitt behind some thorny bushes. She didn't mind; in truth she was probably better off alone, so she could move quick and quiet, and without having to worry about what Gap Tooth thought of her. She counted off the others in the group ahead of her, looking at the backs of their heads: Gap Tooth and Porter and Smitt, then old Jon Pastle and Llew the Stew, then Colin of Loria and the tall thin man everyone called the Stick. A mix of Aurian and Danian commoners, united in their greed, amorality, and desperation. A hard lot, meant for hard things, and therefore perfect for the occasion.

Up beyond them she could make out the three men way up in the front. Three handsome men, clinging to a hillside. Some might have considered themselves quite lucky to stumble into those three, in a different place, say in a tavern or a revel or feast perhaps; except for the aura of danger that lurked about them, and that hard gaze of hate in the lead. But that gaze might just quicken some pulses all the more. She wondered at the fact that the three best-looking men in the group were the ones in the lead. Was it just coincidence, she wondered, or did men like that get together and plan it all out, the worldwide league of dashing rogues?

Her mind wandered unbidden, staring up at the three of them, back to a story she'd heard being loudly told in a tavern back in Therapoli by three sailors just returned from the decadent cities of the Déskédran coast. The sailors had been on a merchant cog that had stopped in Lagapoli, looking to trade for spices. Like all good sailors they had visited its infamous temples to Dieva, the Evening Star, and they regaled their eager audience with lurid stories of the priestess-prostitutes there. A particularly beautiful one, a raven-haired temple dancer with bronze skin dressed in nothing but golden chains, bracelets, and anklets, had invited them to experience a rare and special sacrament to her Goddess; and there on the altars of the temple they had lain with her all at once. They claimed she'd cast some spell over them, and anointed their cocks with a special oil so that they found themselves harder than usual, and that after furiously fucking her for what seemed an age they'd spent themselves the first time, only to find themselves still hard, and that they'd then switched places and rutted her again until they'd spent themselves a second time, and finding themselves still hard had switched places yet again; so that by the end of it they'd each spilled their seed one time in each of her wet, eager orifices. The sailors had claimed the Déskédrans even had a name for it, the
trephallas treferrai
, and they'd claimed it was the most intense sex they'd ever had.

Not everyone listening in the tavern had believed them. One old man said they'd been fooled by the priestesses there, who he said dosed their patrons with a potent of the poppy plant that made men have vivid waking dreams of impossible acts of pleasure.

But she had believed them. She had been surprised to discover how very, very much she had wanted to believe them.

She flushed at the memory of that story, and felt herself grow warm and wet between her legs, and she was briefly ashamed at being aroused while hiding behind a rock in the middle of some of the most dangerous country in the whole of the Middle Kingdoms. She took a deep breath, and dug a nail into her wrist to give her mind something sharp to focus on. If she had been a different woman, she would have quickly offered a prayer to some god and a warding sign to drive off Ligrid, the Queen of Perversion; but in her case she knew that was of no use, and she just gritted her teeth at the pain.

Erim looked up and saw the three men up in the lead rise. No more sneaking about, then. Guilford turned and signaled to his men to follow them up the hill. And they were indeed his men, the seven between him and her. If anyone had asked Gap Tooth or the Stick “Whose man are you?” they would have quickly answered: “I'm Guilford's man, Guilford of the Run Street in Vesslos.” A meaningless answer, in most quarters, as Guilford wasn't a noble or a knight, just a rough man that other rough men followed; but in other quarters, it meant a great deal, as Guilford bore a brand from the Guild of Therapoli. Everyone knew that Stjepan and Harvald were true Kingsmen, with Harvald noble-born to boot, and so what their answer would be. But if someone had asked her “Whose man are you?” she wasn't sure how she would answer. Not just because she wasn't a man, but because she didn't belong to anybody. And in most of the Middle Kingdoms, that meant you were nobody.