Exile's Challenge (43 page)

“Well then, we ain't alone,” Jaymes said. “You want some company?”

Var nodded: he felt no wish to walk alone this night.

“What are they?” he asked as they trod the silent, snowbound streets. Overhead, the sky was a sullen gray, snow-laden cloud obscuring the stars and whatever moon might have risen. “I don't understand this.”

Jaymes laughed and spat a stream of tobacco onto the snow. “Nor me,” he said cheerfully. “I never seen anythin' like them afore.”

“Don't they frighten you?” Var asked. “By God, they make me wonder.”

“Wondering ain't the same,” Jaymes said. “There's a difference between being frightened an' wondering.”

“Yes.” Var ducked his head in agreement. “But even so …”

“It cross your mind,” Jaymes asked, “that there's been nothin' like this until you an' the Inquisitor arrived here?”

Var shook his head. “What are you saying?”

Jaymes shrugged. “I don't rightly know, save that last time we got hit by livin' creatures—demons if you like, but they could be killed—an' now it seems like we're attacked by ghosts. Only they can't hurt anyone, only scare folks.” He spat a stream of tobacco. “Me, I'm more concerned with what
can
do me harm.”

Var put that argument to Jared Talle, after the second time he saw an apparition.

He had inspected his men and made his way to the governor's mansion, and halted at the gate when out of nowhere a fanged horse with skin the color of darkest midnight and eyes burning the same fire that gusted from its mouth reared above him. It seemed more solid than the other beast. Surely, he believed the clawed hooves that struck at his head might easily crush his skull. Instinctively, he ducked below the creature's pounding hooves, instinctive, snatching out his pistol and saber at the same time, slashing, the pistol blasting.

On a saddle of gold, hung with gilded skulls, a rider in golden armor laughed at him from under a golden helmet and pointed a wide-bladed golden sword at his throat.

You'd defy me? You pride yourself man You are nothing! You are a worm, crawling in the dirt to be crushed and severed Do you understand?

Var rolled away from the pounding hooves that trampled fire out of the cleared ground and sparked like blazing moonshine on the piled snow. The horse—a horse? He had seen no horse like this before, not with horns and tusks—trod him down, clawed hooves tramping him. He screamed in anticipation of the pain that did not come, and flung his emptied pistol at the thing's face as it snarled at him and ducked its head on the rider's command to drive its horns down into his chest.

He screamed again as the golden-armored rider pointed his sword and leaned out of his magnificent saddle to drive his blade into Var's skull.

Var felt a terrible cold invade his body, and at the same time a feverish heat. Then all was gone and he felt only embarrassed as servants and soldiers came running to the commotion of his shouting, where there was nothing save the Inquisitor's right-hand man—the Inquisitor's dog—rolling in the empty street, his saber slashing empty air.

“So you saw a ghost.” Talle took the decanter from Nathanial's hand and waved the branded man away. “Tell me—exactly—what you saw.”

Var drank the brandy, warming his chest where the hooves had struck, easing his head where the golden blade had gone in. He felt cold, as if ice were placed inside him, and told the Inquisitor everything.

“Like the rest,” Talle said. He rubbed his hands, and it seemed to Var that sparks of darkness fell from his fingers, matches to his lank hair and crow clothes. “Like all of them.”

“I saw,” Var said, reaching uninvited for the decanter, “what I saw.”

“Which,” the Inquisitor said, “were only ghosts. Phantasms; images.”

“I thought,” Var said, slowly, his voice clogging in his throat, “that I was dead. They seemed most real to me.”

Talle said, “They would,” calmly. “They've powerful magic, these folk who oppose us. It confirms my belief that we must mount a campaign against them.”

Var said, sipping more brandy, not liking at all what Talle was saying, “In this winter? I thought you'd given up on that notion.”

Talle shook his head, and said, “Not a military campaign, my friend. Only a small expedition—you and I, and your frontier scout friend; perhaps a few others.”

“Against …” Var shrugged, helping himself to a fresh measure of brandy. “Whatever these things are?”

“Would you grant them sway?” Talle sat behind Governor Wyme's ornate desk, his fingers steepled. Var saw blood ingrained beneath his nails, in the ridges of his knuckles, and wondered at his practices. “They bring this new magic against us, and I—
we!
—must fight it, no?”

Var nodded, reluctantly.

“And what magic they bring,” Talle said, “they deliver from out of their forests, no?”

Again, Var had no choice but to duck his head in agreement.

“And we are only servants of the Autarchy,” Talle said. “We are sent here to resolve such … problems.… So, do you go find your scout and bring him to me?”

Var hesitated; Talle cocked his head, again reminding Var of a carrion crow anticipating a feast.

“What?”

Var mustered his thoughts. “You and I and Abram Jaymes?” he asked. “Perhaps a few others? How many, Inquisitor? And to do what?”

“A … sortie, wouldn't you put it? A small venture to identify our enemy; not so many men as shall make us noticeable, but enough to find their weaknesses.”

“And how shall we do that?” Var asked.

“Why,” Talle said with disturbing calm, “we shall go out to the border forts and find us a savage. Take it alive, learn what it knows. I can do that, Major Var, have I one living to question.”

Var felt no doubt but that the Inquisitor could. He ducked his head a third time and went to seek out Abram Jaymes.

They made an odd trio, Jaymes thought, the Inquisitor and the marine major and the scout. They sat ensconced in the governor's study, the fire burning merrily, logs crackling sparks up the chimney and over Wyme's carpet, a decanter passing between them—used mostly and lustily by Jaymes. The windows were shuttered against the Candlemas night and the door locked against intrusion. Talle sat still behind the desk, clad all in black. Var sat erect in his blue marine's tunic, sword and pistol at his side. Jaymes lounged, legs stretched and wide, in dirty leathers, his shirt unbuttoned against the heat.

“An' you want me take you into the woods,” he said, cradling a goblet of imported glass loose against his chest. “Take you into the—what do you call them now? Demons, territory?”

“Savages,” said Talle. “They are only savages.”

Jaymes shrugged, seemingly careless of the Inquisitor's black-eyed gaze. “Savages, demons—call them what you want, they can still kill you.”

Talle said, “I'm hard to kill.”

“Yes: I seen that.” Jaymes emptied his glass and looked to Var for another measure. “But still … I reckon they could kill you if they want. I reckon they got magic big as yours.”
He looked Talle in the eyes. “How else they been making such trouble here?”

Talle smiled. “That's what I need to know; that's why I need you.”

“An' if I refuse?” Jaymes asked.

Talle's smile grew broader, thin lips stretching back over stained teeth like a rabid dog's. “I could hex you,” he said.

“Sure.” Jaymes nodded easy agreement. “But could I scout like you want then?”

Talle shrugged, acceding the point: “Or I could have you hanged.”

“An' I be no good to you at all,” Jaymes said. “Quite,” Talle allowed. “So what do you say?” Jaymes glanced at Var and asked, “Who else comes?” Var looked at Talle and said, “I am commanded by the Inquisitor.”

“So?” Jaymes asked again, this time directing his glance at the black-clad man.

Talle said, “Perhaps only we three. What do you suggest?”

“Three,” Jaymes said, “could slip in easier than any of your Militiamen. God knows, but they move noisy, an' the … whatever you want to call them … are likely to hear 'em coming long afore they arrive. Hear them an' slay them.”

Talle looked at Var, a question in his eyes.

Var was surprised the Inquisitor bowed to his knowledge. He shrugged and ducked his head and said, “In this, I'd be governed by Abram.”

Jaymes chuckled as Talle said, “Then so be it. Only we three.”

Governor Wyme was no less pleased to be left again in command of Grostheim than was Alyx Spelt. Neither man had thought to see his command returned him, but when the Inquisitor announced his imminent departure, accompanied by his dog, who left his marine contingent under Spelt's orders, both men were delighted. Not least to see the usurpers of their power gone out to what they believed must be certain death.

That they must face the problems of a dissenting populace, of dwindling food and ghosts in the streets, did not occur.

They both believed the Inquisitor and his dog must die out in the forest snows and welcomed that demise, anxious to show Evander and the Autarchy that they could prevail.

They were wrong, but that should be learned later.

The Restitution was frozen too hard to carry any river traffic, so they rode out shrouded in furs against the bone-numbing cold, Abram Jaymes leading a pack mule behind his own lop-eared animal. Each man wore a furred coat, hooded and well padded, and Var carried a new Hawkins rifle—requisitioned, like all their gear, from Rupyrt Gahame.

It was, inevitably, slow going. Jaymes's mule handled it best, plunging lustily through the deep snow as Var's and Talle's horses ducked and struggled complaining through the drifts. Var had thought perhaps the Inquisitor might clear them a way. He had seen, in the War of Restitution, magic-wielders open tracks through snow to allow attacks, assaults. But Talle made no such offer—neither explained why not—and they could only move at such pace as the animals allowed until they reached the harder inland snow, unaffected by the salty wind blowing in from Deliverance Bay, where hooves did not break through nor drifts deny them passage.

That was a full day clear of Grostheim; two more at least before they reached the closest holding where they might find honest lodgings under a sound roof, with a fire burning in the hearth. Var longed for such shelter, and wondered if he grew soft, for he knew they must make camp that night under the sullen sky, in the snow. He gave thanks to God that Abram Jaymes was knowledgeable of Salvation's winters—there were none such in Evander or any other land he'd visited—and had procured from Trader Gahame thick furs and sound canvas tents, charcoal to light fires, and had thought to bring kindling and dried meat.

It was all very different from a military campaign: three
men alone, he thought, as they halted on Jaymes's advice to pitch their tents. The wind got up and sent snow skirling against the canvas as if winter sought to blow down their refuge.

They were camped under a bluff where knobby pines grew wind-twisted and gnarled, scrubby brush coming down to the ice-edged river, which was all one great expanse of dimly shining silver, hard as lost hope. Jaymes gathered brushwood and built a fire that sparked and crackled in the blustering wind, trailing sparks horizontally across the darkness. The scout brewed tea that he fortified from a bottle of trader's brandy, and Var was surprised to see Talle drink deep and ask for more before they ate. Overhead, the sky hung sullen, empty of anything save threat. It began to snow as they ended their meal and retreated to their tents: Var wondered if that might not be some portent.

The next day the sun shone cold: an unforgiving eye that stared at the three travelers from out of a colorless sky that blew a harsh wind into their faces as they moved westward. The landscape around them was bleak, snow-clad and desolate, and they moved unspeaking, the wind tearing conversation from their lips before the words might be heard. Frost coated the manes of the animals and the furs of the riders; snow crunched crisp under the hooves, and their breath gusted thick billows of steam into the freezing air.

A day later they reached the closest homestead. It was inhabited—close enough to Grostheim that the holder and his wife felt safe—and they put up their wearied animals in a warm barn and saw them fed by indentured folk, and accepted the comfort of the hearthfire and the food.

The holder's name was Anton Groell, a man in his middle years, not yet either old or young, though strands of gray stretched through his beard, and his eyes hung nervous on Jared Talle.

“I'm not quitting,” he said. “I kept this holding going through the troubles, and I'll not let it go now.”

“Why should you?” Talle asked amiably. “Have you problems now?”

Groell shook his head.