“Cardinal Chang,” said Elöise again, “please—”
“I require some air.”
In seconds he was down the steps and marching away into the trees, the calls behind him like the cries of crows.
FOR THE first minutes he did not mark where he walked at all—generally south through the trees, away from the village. But the farther he went, the closer he came to the flooded part of the forest. He cursed aloud at the effort required to pull his boot free of the sucking mud, and shifted his course toward the shore.
Chang had not been to this part of the woods before. He leapt a rushing watercourse and climbed a small rise, beyond which he expected to see the ocean. With a bitter smile, he realized that once on the other side he would be happily hidden from any prying villager's eye.
But just before his head cleared the crest, Chang stopped. His hand twitched with an instinctive urge to draw a weapon, but he had none. He dropped to a crouch. He was certain he'd heard the snuffle of a horse.
It would have been difficult to steal a horse from the stables and remain unseen, especially with the flooding. Apparently someone had done it… but who? Chang raised his head over the bracken and was surprised to see, their long necks rising up from the foliage, not one horse, but two, and saddled as if their masters were ready to ride. Chang waited, and was rewarded by a sharp hiss and then, his eyes turning toward where it had come, a faint curl of ash in the air. Some one had just thrown water on a skillfully made fire whose smoke he had not noticed, even ten yards away.
A man with a shaven head stood struggling into a dark greatcoat. Near his stocking feet were travel bags, a grey blanket tied into a tight roll, and a pair of leather boots. Chang appreciated the variety of people's personal habits, yet knew from experience how incalculably stupid it was to leave one's footwear for last when dressing, especially in a dangerous forest. He launched himself into a dead run as the man lifted his left foot to its boot-top.
The bald man heard the rustling leaves but only turned in time for Chang's right forearm to catch him square on the jaw and send him sprawling by the fire. Chang wheeled around for a second man—why else would the other horse be saddled?—but saw nothing. The bald man swept a snubbed pepperbox pistol from his coat, but Chang kicked the weapon into the underbrush. Another kick landed just below the man's rib cage, doubling him onto his side, and a third, lower still, had him gasping. Chang placed a foot hard on the man's face, pinning it to the earth, scanning around him again, unable to hear any sound over the stamping, startled horses.
“Who are you?” he asked, not bothering to wait for a reply before grinding down with his boot. He relaxed the pressure and asked again. The man spat dirt from his lips and coughed.
“My name is Josephs—I'm a hunter…”
Chang noticed for the first time the long leather holsters slung near each saddle. “Those are carbines.”
“No,” the man said hastily. “You can't hit deer with a carbine.”
“I agree,” said Chang. “Only men. Where's your friend?”
“What friend?”
Chang pressed again with his boot. The other man must be near, he had to assume it… he had to assume he carried a pistol as well.
He stepped away from Josephs and toward the horses, untying their leads.
“What are you doing?” gasped Josephs.
“Where is your friend?” repeated Chang.
“In the village! Buying coffee.”
“You'll find the Pope before you'll find coffee there,” muttered Chang, stepping between the beasts and drawing a carbine from its sheath. He opened the chamber to confirm it held a shell, and slammed it home.
“If you want the horses, take them,” wheezed Josephs.
“I will. And you with them, back to the stables.”
“What stables?”
Chang raised the carbine to his shoulder, taking aim. “It is the last time I will ask. Where is your friend?”
Chang's thought in standing between the horses was to protect himself from being shot, but now he wheeled awkwardly at a rustle of leaves, lifting the carbine barrel to clear the horse's neck, and realized too late that the sound had come from a stone being thrown. At once Chang dropped between the horses—he hated horses—and threw himself toward the rustling, reasoning it to be his one safe refuge. He rolled downhill, then came up to his knees and raised the carbine, but no one was there. Josephs had taken the horses, pulling them so the animals blocked his body from Chang's aim.
Where was the second man? Chang charged in a circle to the left, boots digging in the soft earth, crouching low. It was a risk—he was running either into safety or straight into a bullet—but the second man must be on the opposite side. Josephs hauled at the horses, but the animals were confused and Chang rushed forward, bursting out of the leaves and outflanking Josephs completely.
Josephs dropped the reins and stumbled back, a wide-bladed hunting knife in his hand.
“It is him!” he cried over his shoulder. “The criminal!”
Chang reversed the carbine in his hands—shots would alert the villagers. Josephs’ lips twisted into a satisfied grimace, as if he were perfectly happy to weigh his knife against the carbine butt. The man was near as tall as Chang and quite a bit more solid. Josephs came at him with a snarl.
Why did the second man hold back?
The knife required Josephs to close quickly, to reach Chang with the blade and render the swinging carbine useless, and so Chang fell back against the charge, swiping once at Josephs’ knife hand to slow him down. Josephs paused, feinted at Chang's abdomen, and then slashed at his face. Like most deadly grapples, this would be over in an instant—Josephs would land his blow or die.
Chang whipped the carbine against Josephs’ forearm, cracking it hard and driving the knife stroke wide—by perhaps an inch—which threw Josephs off balance. Chang spun and drove a knee hard into his back, near the kidney, staggering the man enough for Chang to spin again, this time with room to swing the carbine. The blow caught Josephs across the jaw and dropped him flat. At once Chang flipped the carbine again and jammed the barrel into the gagging man's soft throat. Chang looked around him in the trees.
“If you do not come out, he dies.”
Josephs swallowed, his eyes askew from the blow. Chang waited. Silence.
Where were the horses?
Chang wheeled around. The second man had crept up to collect them while Chang and Josephs grappled. Chang snatched up the hunting knife, and dropped the carbine. A quick stroke across Josephs’ neck and Chang was running again.
Criminal. These hunters were hunting them.
HE'D NOT gone thirty yards before he saw them, for the fool still led both horses—too greedy to drive one off. The man looked back and Chang saw his face—pointed and with a girlish, fair moustache and side whiskers. The man reached to the nearest saddle and drew out, like a music hall magician revealing a silver scarf, a gleaming and wickedly curved cavalry saber. He stepped to the side of the horses, dropping the reins and allowing them to walk past, and fell into an easy en garde, his boots taking their position with a soft jingle of spurs. No wonder he had thrown the stone—any movement and the spurs would have betrayed him.
Chang stopped, aware that his hunting knife was no match for the other's heavy blade. He considered throwing it, but the knife's hilt was an awkward curve of brass and badly weighted. Instead, Chang spat into the leaves and nodded at the saber.
“Strange weapon for hunting.”
“Not true.” The man smirked. “Given the prey.”
“You must have ridden hard to get here.”
The man shrugged.
“That you are only two says you are part of a larger effort—searching the entire Iron Coast. I suppose there's less need to search a populated area—one would have heard of a fallen airship crammed full of dignitaries.”
“And criminals.”
Chang nodded at the saber. “Is that yours, or have you robbed some soldier?”
“You want to know if I can use it?”
“I want to know how much of a criminal you are too.”
“Why not come at me and see?”
By the man's obvious comfort with the military blade, Chang knew he was a soldier. Who had sent the search parties so quickly? Who could have known so soon of the crash, or guessed its location? Every fear of exposure and retribution he had expressed to Svenson was staring him in the face.
Why had he dropped the carbine? Because the noise would rouse the villagers to something he wouldn't want to explain. And because he would miss his shot and die in the bargain.
Assuming his opponent knew his business, the attack would be a snapping overhead slash, the whole happening so fast that Chang must choose blindly where to parry—and with the short-bladed knife, there was not the slightest margin for error. He would have to make one parry—he could not hope for more—and then dive forward, slashing and stabbing before the soldier could land a second blow.
Chang stepped forward until he was just at the far reach of the saber, the hunting knife held before him. “You will have much to answer for with these villagers.”
In response, the man feinted once at Chang's legs and then hacked upwards at Chang's face. Chang stopped the blow but was caught flat-footed by its strength and could not charge. The man swung again, this time the overhead slash that Chang had dreaded. Chang moved his knife and felt the ringing of steel at his correct guess. On sudden impulse, he twisted his wrist. The brass hilt of the hunting knife pinned the saber blade and for just an instant held it fast. The soldier grunted in anger and ripped the saber free, but Chang followed the saber as it pulled back and sent the tip of the hunting knife lancing straight for the soldier's eye. At the last moment the man's left hand seized Chang's wrist and the knife went wide. Chang lowered his shoulder and tackled his opponent to the ground.
The soldier landed hard but flailed his sword's brass pommel into Chang's back. Chang swore aloud and clubbed his forearm across his opponent's throat, but then let pass the chance to bring the hunting knife down into the man's heart. He knew he should take him alive— as proof to the village and to learn their true peril—so instead snapped his fist into the soldier's face. The brass guard left a cruel red mark, but to Chang's surprise the soldier arched his back and flipped Chang over. The man clawed to get away. Chang seized his boot and dropped him facedown in the leaves. He stabbed the knife at the back of the man's knee, but the soldier rolled again and the edge cut across his leather boot. Chang snarled with frustration, aching to simply kill the man, and chopped the hunting knife at the soldier's ribs, hoping for a bloody wound that would break his spirit without piercing any organs. But the soldier stopped it with a desperate parry, the metal ringing through the trees. Both pulled free—Chang on his knees, the soldier on his back—gauging their next blows. But Chang knew he had his opponent. As soon as the soldier swung, Chang would deflect the blade and leap forward, the knife against the man's neck. As if he too was perfectly aware of his peril, the soldier cried out with effort, sweeping the saber with all his strength at Chang in a wild slash. Chang threw himself just clear of the blow, ready to attack—but his rear foot slipped straight over the edge of a five-foot drop. The rest of him followed, landing only to roll through fallen branches and leaves for another ten yards, where the woods began to give way to the sea.
Chang shook his head and looked up. There was no sign of the soldier.
CHANG STOPPED, bent over and gasping. The leaves had given way to a muddy clearing spattered with prints. He saw one line of hooves, and then—wide apart and deep, as if made at a run—the prints of a man. Was the soldier trailing his own horse? They would worry for him back at the village, no doubt, but the man's knowledge was too great a danger. Chang paused long enough to drink muddy water from the pooling bootprints.
He had followed as quickly as possible, hoping the man had lost his horses, or lost enough time in recovering them to allow Chang to catch up. By the time Chang was sure the soldier had regained his mount, the village was far behind him. He recalled from Svenson's torporous talks with Sorge after supper that the next town to the south, Karthe, was a mining settlement, with a distant spur of the train line. If the soldier was part of a larger force, their search would be headquartered there. It was also possible, given the town's isolation, that the trains ran on an irregular basis. If so, Chang might catch up with the soldier in town—no matter if he'd arrived a day earlier by horse— and take him, along with whatever fellows were there, before the news could spread south to their masters.
The forest gave way to tall grasses and hard, gnarled shrubs. The land began to rise, and Chang reached the tall blackened rocks as darkness fell, deciding it would be as good a place as any to stay the night—continuing on was idiotic, given his eyesight and ignorance of the area. He'd no means to make a fire, nor food to cook. Chang curled himself to the most wind-protected nook of rock. He stared up at the sky, starless, shrouded in black cloud, waiting far too long for sleep.
When he woke the ground was wet with dew. Ten minutes after opening his eyes Chang was on his way.
IT TOOK him another day to reach Karthe. There had been no further signs of the soldier, though as he had spent so much time cutting across open country and then still more lost amongst identical piles of rock, this was no surprise. Chang trudged up the last turn of the road into the town, assuming the worst, that his enemies would be fully prepared and waiting for revenge.
Chang's battered red coat blended in with the brown dirt road and the grey rock houses, rendering him all but invisible in the twilight. The doors of Karthe were closed and its shutters drawn. As he stalked its length Chang heard snatches of talk, the ringing of pans, the high voices of children, but everything remained hidden behind layers of wood and stone.
He passed the village's only inn—a ramshackle wooden building that filled Chang with a palpable longing for a bed, warm food, and several pints of ale—in favor of going directly to the train. Knowing whether the soldier had already escaped would dictate everything.
He looked up at the sound of footsteps and saw a young boy in a pale canvas coat racing toward him without heed.
“You! Boy!”
The boy stopped short, eyes widening at Chang's appearance, and began to edge backwards. Chang calmed him with an open hand.
“I am a traveler in need of the train. Where is the train yard?”
The boy backed up another two steps and pointed over his shoulder, to where the road wound from sight beyond the last few buildings.
“When did the last train leave—to the south?”
“Not for these two days.”
“Two days? You're sure?”
The boy nodded, his eyes darting between Chang's red coat and his black glasses.
“And when is the next?”
“This night, sir. As soon as they finish loading the ore—it'll be some hours.”
Chang looked behind him, back toward the inn. It could not be more than five o'clock now, by the light. Would the soldier be there?
“Where were you running—”
But the boy had dashed back to where he'd come from—a tall wooden structure that from its wide, high double doorway must be the village stables. One door was open, yellow lantern light pooling through it across the muddy yard. Chang strode after him. If he did not need to reach the train at once, the stable was an excellent way to discover if the soldier had arrived by horseback, and if he might have any companions with him at the inn.
THE BOY was nowhere to be seen as Chang walked in, one hand loosely on the hilt of the hunting knife in his belt, though he could hear scuffling from a tack room in the rear. The last stall held a white horse he knew he'd never seen. The horse snorted, sensing his gaze, and pawed the straw. It was obviously spent, still wet with perspiration, nostrils pink and flaring, and shifting its feet with an unsettled, stumbling fearfulness. Was the animal ill, or had it been driven mad from mistreatment? Cha
ng stepped away, uncomfortable as ever in the presence of infirmity, and crossed to the tack room.
The boy he'd seen in the street stood in the doorway. He looked up to Chang as he entered, his face already turned to a grimace of nausea. Curled at his feet lay another groom—breath ragged and face pale—the planking before him pooled with vomit. Near the stricken groom's hands—shaking and compulsively clutching together—lay a dagger-sized spike of blue glass.
Chang took the young boy's shoulder and turned the boy's face to his.
“What is your name?”
“Willem, sir.”
“Willem, your fellow is sick from that piece of glass. Bring me water.”
Chang scuffed a wad of straw into the vomit with his foot and stepped carefully around it, scooping up the groom and dragging him to a rolled straw pallet, which lay beneath a row of pegs dangling bridles and stirrups. Chang very carefully picked up the wedge of glass and laid it on the seat of a wooden stool. Willem reappeared with a wooden bucket and a cup. Chang dipped the cup and without ceremony splashed the water in the older groom's face, then refilled the cup as the man coughed and snorted.
“Drink,” he said, and then called over his shoulder to Willem, as the boy was even then peering at the dagger of glass, “Get away from that—can you not see what it's done to him?”
The groom gagged on the water but Chang was able to turn his head before what he'd drunk shot back out on top of the pallet, staining the dirty canvas bright blue. Chang refilled the cup and forced it into the groom's hands.
“Keep drinking,” he said, and once more took Willem's shoulder, pulling the boy after him back to the stalls.
Chang nodded to the bay gelding. “Whose horse is this?”
“Mr. Bolte's, sir—one of the mine directors.”
“He's the only man with a horse in Karthe?”
“No, sir. The others are let out to folk coming to Karthe—traders, hunters—Mr. Bolte's too. To the Captain—just came back today!”