The Barrow (93 page)

She picked herself up, and walked slowly down the hill around the entrance to the barrow, keeping the crossbow trained on him. She stopped a few yards away.

“How do I know it's you?” she asked again.

Stjepan opened his mouth, paused, then shrugged. “You don't.”

Erim took a deep breath.

She walked toward him slowly, crossbow pointed at his chest.

She lowered it, and they embraced gingerly, each wincing from their wounds.

The late afternoon sun was starting its descent. The carriage and the two wagons had been pushed and partially disassembled and set in the middle of the campsite as the base for a great bonfire, and piled with the tents and just about anything that would burn and with the bodies of the dead: what was left of Malia Morwin, the squire Wilhem Price, Caider Ross, Garrett “Too Tall” Akins, “Handsome” Pallas Quinn, Giordus Roame, big Cole Thimber, Lord Arduin Orwain, Sir Lars Urwed, Sir Colin Urwed, Sir Helgi Vogelwain, Sir Holgar Torgisbain, Sir Theodras Clowain, Sir Theodore Lis Cawain, the squire Brayden Vogelwain, Leigh, and Gilgwyr, either their whole bodies wrapped in cloth, or bags of body parts where the
Ghúl
had not left enough in one piece.

Stjepan splashed lamp oil over the improvised pyre.

Erim held some horses ready for herself. She had Cúlain-mer and Ironbound and a spare packhorse; each was loaded with gear and grave goods packed into saddlebags and satchels. She wore the high-necked gorget and partial pauldrons from Arduin's garniture over a quilted arming doublet, and his cuisses and knee poleyns were strapped to her legs above her black boots. The rest of his armor had been packed onto the spare packhorse. Her sword brace now bore a different sword next to her daggers rather than her familiar cut-and-thrust rapier.

Cúlain-mal waited patiently for Stjepan, along with a small herd of horses and mules, over thirty of them: knight's destriers, spare riding mounts, draft horses, burros, all standing about in the tall grasses and weeds and occasionally grazing on them.

Stjepan stood back from the improvised pyre and tossed the bottle of lamp oil aside. He lit it. The fire started to crackle and pop, smoke slowly rising as the flames started to take hold of the wood.

“So who do you really work for? The Magisters at the University? The High Court? The High King himself?” asked Erim.

“Do you really want to know?” Stjepan asked her as he looked at the flames.

Erim studied his profile for a moment, then shook her head.

“What are you going to tell them when you get back?” she asked finally. “Whoever they are.”

“Don't you mean when
we
get back?” he asked, turning to look at her.

“No. Time to start over again, I think, someplace different with new faces and new names. Someplace where this sword can be of service,” she said, conscious of a peculiar weight on her hip. She paused. “Some place where
I
can be of service. Do you mind being sole survivor?”

“Nah,” Stjepan said with a shrug. “Makes for a better story.” He eyed her for a moment. “Stick with me to Aberdelan, at least, will you? If the Lamb is there and we decide to go into the Devil's Tower, we could use you and that sword.”

“Yeah, why not,” she said.

Stjepan smiled.

He turned back to the rising heat of the pyre and started to pray.

Dawn Maiden. Awaken!
Bright Star. Awaken!
Sun's Herald. Awaken!
And announce . . .

He stopped, mouth open, and stared up past the rising smoke, up the hill toward the barrow.

Ravens and vultures by the hundreds were taking wing and lifting up into the sky from the top of the hill above them. The great, dark swarm flew about the top of the hill in an expanding circle, until eventually they flew directly overhead and then off to the north and a line of distant mountains.

Stjepan watched them go until he couldn't see them anymore, and he surveyed the horizon with his sharp gaze for several long moments. He listened to the wind, to the faint jangle of unseen bells, to whispers and wails and the distant sound of brazen horns and howling wolves coming closer and closer. He sniffed the air, smelt dry earth and old stone, grass and rotting wood, acrid smoke and burning flesh, bile and blood, sun-burnt leather and rusted iron, horse sweat and horse shit and polished steel and the strong, clean scent of someone he loved and trusted.

His sharp, hard gaze returned to stare at the rising heat and the flames flickering up before him.

“Fuck it. You know the way,” he said finally.

And then he turned and walked away from the burning pyre.

Gelber Woat stood behind the long wooden bar at Woat's Roadside Inn and slid a flagon under the valve tapping one of the long line of casks arrayed on the back mantle. The old man poured a heavy amber ale into the flagon, turned and set it down on the bar before looking up to eye his customer.

“And you're the only survivor,” he said with a raised eyebrow.

The customer on the other side of the bar lifted the flagon in a toast to himself and slowly drained it dry. He licked his lips and wiped them clean with the back of his sleeve. He wore a fine, dark brown doublet with a touch of red in it, and had bought new breeches and leather boots as well along the way, but despite the expensive quality of his new clothes there was nonetheless a familiar, ragged quality to his appearance. His damp, unkempt hair, the rough stubble on his chin and mouth, and the dirt under his fingernails gave him away. “Admit it, you're glad to see me,” Godewyn said with a grin, setting the empty flagon back onto the bar.

Behind him at a nearby table sat the beginnings of his new crew: a young Danian man, Moris Quinn, not nearly as scarred nor as handsome as his older and now deceased brother Pallas, and a Mael lad, a deserter from the ranks of the Watchtowers named Dyver Bragoss. They surveyed the nearly empty great hall of the Inn with quick eyes that took in every detail, pretending a jaded look as they reveled in their new adventure. Sunshine trickled in through the shuttered windows and the holes in the patched walls. A few passed-out patrons were scattered about, and a few tired dancers either wandered aimlessly or clustered at their own table on the far side of the room.

Gelber Woat grinned slyly as he refilled the flagon, and indicated a bag on the bar in front of Godewyn, overflowing with barrow treasures. “Well. I'm glad to see all that, at least,” he said. He set the ale-filled flagon back on the bar.

“Look, I'll cut you a good deal on these pieces, it's the least I can do,” said Godewyn. “I was sorry about your crew, but we never had a chance to weigh in on it. I mean, they never even got to us. Prince Fionne's men, was it?”

“Aye, and now their corpses help feed the flowers,” said the Woat Elder quietly, his hands idly sorting through gold jewelry and small figurines and gem-encrusted cups. “Such is the way it's always been, that we are merely hunting sport for land lords and princes. Quick enough to come in and drink our ale and fuck our women when the mood strikes them, and just as quick to cut our throats because we got the wrong blood.”

“Well, perhaps I can go a ways toward changing that,” Godewyn said with a laugh. “Oh, I have such plans, you'll see! I'm a changed man, I am, I seen things no man should ever see, looked upon the body of Azharad in the dark beneath the earth, dueled a champion of the Tourneys over a sword with a curse on it, escaped corpse-eaters, the unquiet dead, and an arrow in the back to walk out of the Bale Mole, the last man standing! You don't go through all that and not be a changed man!” He raised the flagon in the air. “To Stjepan Black-Heart!” He took a huge gulp of ale and laughed. “To think it's all thanks to that dumb heathen bastard.”

Gelber Woat's eyes narrowed a bit. “Shouldn't speak ill of the dead,” he said.

Godewyn looked up, catching something in his tone. “Well, I don't know he's dead,” he said defensively. He shrugged. “Sure, I left him tied up in a dead wizard's barrow with some lunatic magician and an army of walking corpses running around in it, but he could be alive.” He turned and indicated the front door to the Inn with a broad, regal sweep of his arm. “He could walk through that door at any moment.”

“Yeah, right,” said Gelber Woat.

They started to laugh together, harder and harder, as Godewyn threw back his drink.

But the laughter didn't quite reach Gelber Woat's eyes.

On the morning of the 18
th
day of Ascensium, the old man using the name Sequintus Eridaine rose in his small rented chambers on Murky Street in the eastern end of the Public Quarter, practically in the shadows of the great hill upon which the High King's Hall was raised. He used the chamber pot and unceremoniously dumped it out the window onto the street below, to a shout and curse from an unfortunate passer-by. The building he had found was too old to have the more modern attempts at plumbing installed within it that could be found in some parts of the city, and not old enough to have the pipes and waterworks common to cities built during the Great Palace period of Düréan expansion. But
beggars can't be choosers
, he thought to himself. And, he supposed, he should probably count himself lucky to be alive and able to rent rooms at all. Many of those who had been privy to the darker parts of Gilgwyr's affairs had met with much more permanent ends than the state of limbo in which he found himself.

After eating a light breakfast of fruits and stale, days-old pastries, he had dressed and prepared himself for his interview. He checked briefly on the condition of the various brewings and concoctions ongoing in his small workshop and allowed himself to leave only when he was satisfied that all was proceeding according to direction.

Given his age, Sequintus could at best manage a slow mosey through the city. The faces he passed on the street bore about them the downtrodden look shared by the poor and the desperate everywhere, and they took on an even more subdued and dour undertone as he slowly turned into the Plaza of Ergist. The six handmaidens of the notorious witch Annwyn Orwain had been burned at the stake only several days before in the center of the square. Justice had been swift; the Grand Duke, his personal household knights, and a company of Templar knights and priests of the Inquisition had returned to Therapoli from Araswell with the women in custody on the 4th of Ascensium, and in under two weeks they had been tortured, broken, tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed. Their burnt cadavers, still lashed to blackened stakes, were to be left on display for a month by edict of the Inquisition as a warning and a reminder to the public at large of the ever-present danger of the enemies of the Divine King. The women had confessed to aiding and abetting the witch in her necromantic rituals, placing curses upon the High King and his Court, casting spells to divine the future, and engaging in sordid sexual practices with Lady Annwyn and her brother Arduin in their worship of the Devil. They had confessed that the beauty for which the Lady Annwyn had been famous had been an illusion, fabricated by the foulest black magic, and that the Lady was in reality hideous and deformed.