Mr. Hightower looked peevish. “I thought she would let us go if she realized that there were more interesting specimens to be discovered nearby.” He stared down at the sand with a pitiful expression. “But she didn’t. She simply swanned off in the direction of a particularly nasty toxic cache to look for ghosts. She said she’d be gone an hour or two.”
“And this was six days ago?” Rachel asked.
“The whole forest is riddled with little holes into Hell,” said Mr. Hightower. “I suppose something terrible must have happened to her.”
“He’s like this with the phantasms, too,” said Mr. Bloom. “He won’t stop talking at them. And now they’re so completely bored with him they don’t even haunt us anymore.”
“That’s unfair, Mr. Bloom.”
Rachel decided to leave them to it. She didn’t have to go far to find Mr. Partridge. He was, as she had suspected, lying right behind the puppet booth itself. Looking at his slack body, bundled into a black suit and white frilled shirt, she couldn’t help but think of an oversized slug. Partridge had a shock of white hair and glazed eyes which looked in two directions at once. He was licking the red-and-black-spattered root of a tree.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said.
By moving in a series of jerking motions, Mr. Partridge somehow managed to swivel himself around. “This particular toxin,” he said gruffly, like a schoolteacher reprimanding a pupil, “happens to be one of my favorites. It helps me think clearly, while relieving the itching sensation in my backbone.”
“You don’t have a backbone.”
“Are you mad?” he said. “Of course I don’t have a backbone.”
He shuffled back around and went back to lapping at the root.
Rachel could not see how further conversation with these men could improve the situation. All three of them were clearly unhinged. If these toxins couldn’t actually kill Mr. Partridge, then what did it matter if she left him to enjoy them? She shook her head, and returned the way she had come.
Hightower and Bloom were still—as she could hear—arguing with each other. “They seem harmless enough,” Rachel said, stepping down from the wagon. “We should cut them down.”
Trench was staring at the two hanging men with contempt. “What would they do then?” he grunted. “Flap around the place like fish? Would that be any better than leaving them where they are? Once they leave this wood, someone will only find them and abuse them. They have no way to defend against that.”
“They want to be free.”
He shrugged. “As you wish.” He helped lift each man down from the stage in turn while Rachel severed their ropes. Meanwhile, Mr. Hightower and Mr. Bloom did not stop arguing until their limp bodies were stretched out lying side by side on the sand.
“We are down, Mr. Bloom.”
“I see that, Mr. Hightower.”
Both men’s glances moved rapidly about them, as though assimilating the view from this new and strange perspective. Mr. Hightower tried to move first. By flexing the muscles in his shoulders, arms, and legs, he managed to squirm an inch forward. His hat fell off. “Did you see that, Mr. Bloom? I am mobile.”
“You are indeed, Mr. Hightower!”
“Then let us race!”
“A race, Mr. Hightower?” The other man sounded excited. “Yes, yes, but to where?”
“To Mr. Partridge, of course. I intend to murder the scoundrel for leaving us to rot up there all this time.”
“Not before I do, Mr. Hightower. Not before I do!”
With much exciting grunting and wriggling, the two Soft Men headed off just like snails without their shells.
Their numbers had grown again since nightfall. In addition to forty or so riders, the Heshette raiders had now acquired a further dozen men on foot, three hags who claimed to be seers, two dogs, and a herd of goats.
News of a sighting reached the party when they were less than half a league from Cinderbark Wood. One of the outriders returned, his mount steaming in the fog, to tell them that he’d witnessed the Spine assassin and her companion entering the grove of poisonous trees.
Ramnir frowned as he spoke to John Anchor. “This woodland is a dangerous place,” he said. “Deepgate’s chemists went to work on it with every poison in their arsenal.”
Anchor shrugged his massive shoulders. “It is no big problem for me,” he said. “I don’t die so easily.”
“Yet your rope might become entangled.”
“It happens often.” The giant gave him a huge grin. “I just keep walking, no problem.”
Ramnir laughed and clapped the black man on the arm. “Then our elders and women will bring the livestock to the eastern fringes of the wood while our warriors accompany you into the trees, John Anchor.”
Jack Caulker scowled. He didn’t like the way these heathens had attached themselves so closely to the giant. They’d obviously seen profit in this situation and they’d stuck to it like bone glue. No doubt every one of them had an eye on Anchor’s soulpearls. This display of jovial camaraderie they had put on for the giant’s benefit was clearly faked. Now they were going into Cinderbark fucking Wood of all places. Everyone who’d ever gone there left it insane—if they left the cover of the trees at all.
Well, Caulker wasn’t about to join them. “We’ll ride with the livestock,” he announced from the rear of his shared gelding. “We shall be waiting on the far side in case the two of them get away from you.”
At this the remainder of the horsemen snorted and laughed, and called him a coward. The rider in control of Caulker’s mount laughed as loud as the others. “Not all the livestock will miss this hunt, then,” he cried. “I’m carrying one of them here on my horse. Did you hear it bleat just then?”
Caulker fumed. Where was Hammer Eric now, when the cutthroat needed some muscle to emphasize his point of view? These idiots would kill themselves in Cinderbark Wood. But he smiled gracefully. An idea had just occurred to him—a way in which he might change the situation to his favor. He swung his leg over the horse in order to dismount. But just at that moment his horseman twitched the reins, urging their shared mount forward. Caulker lost his balance and fell clumsily, landing on his rear in the sand.
A chorus of laughter and hoots went up from the gathered Heshette riders.
The cutthroat scrambled to his feet, his face hot with rage. “If any one of you is man enough to fight me,” he cried, “then—”
A dozen blades rasped from their sheaths all around him.
Caulker felt the blood leave his face. “Then I would obviously refuse,” he said quickly. “The desert folk are not my enemies. We’ve shared fire and water, for which I am grateful. And if you’re ever in Sandport, look me up so that I can return the favor.” He prayed that they would. Hammer Eric knew a dock official who collected Heshette ears. “But it seems to me that we’re facing a great deal of danger ahead. We’re all weary after the long trek here, and a man needs all of his wits in Cinderbark Wood.”
“We are not weary,” Ramnir said, sheathing his blade. “That trek, as you call it, was naught but a gentle excursion to us.”
“Then I admire your stamina as much as your generosity. But I’m a sailor, unused to horses and sand.” He stretched his legs and winced. “My bones ache and my flesh is raw. I fear my presence will be a burden to you all.”
One of the Heshette spat.
“You are my guide,” Anchor said to Caulker firmly. “I need you with me.”
“You appear to have found some better guides,” Caulker retorted.
“But I like you, Jack Caulker.” The giant’s smile now seemed to have a slightly sinister edge to it. “We are good friends. And you are still…ah, indebted to me, yes? You would not break our deal?”
The cutthroat remembered the glass bead he had smashed, payment for services he had yet to provide, and he smiled as Anchor mentioned it now.
“John Anchor’s generosity almost matches yours,” he said to Ramnir. “He was kind enough to
give me a soulpearl, a bead with the power to bestow great strength upon any man who consumes it.” Now he shrugged sadly. “Foolishly, I broke the pearl.” He sighed. “Such a waste of power is especially galling now. I think we’d all benefit from a boost to strength and endurance if we are to follow Anchor into the dangers ahead.”
He caught Anchor’s eye and, for an instant, saw a shadow pass across the big man’s face. That’s right. Not so willing to share your power with these heathen bastards, are you?
None of the Heshette spoke. Several eyed the pouch at the giant’s belt, then looked quickly away. The horses whickered. Finally Ramnir said, “John Anchor has already offered us much. We do not need to be bribed with power.”
But Anchor beamed suddenly. “No, no. Jack Caulker is right. I have souls aplenty, and any man who wants one is welcome to it.” He untied the pouch from his belt. Now the Heshette looked abashed. Not one of them would step forward.
Jack Caulker wasn’t so modest. He reached into the bag and plucked out one of the glass beads. It glittered in the flat grey light, as though illuminated by an interior glow. “I thank you, Anchor.” He popped the soulpearl into his mouth and swallowed.
Wild cackles of laughter assaulted the cutthroat’s ears, as though the ghost of a madwoman had been let loose inside his head. His vision blurred and eddied and suddenly the view before him changed. He found himself standing before a parapet on the edge of a sickening drop, peering down into a fog-shrouded valley of green conifers. Great eagles circled in the air below him, drifting in and out of the mists. He smelled cold mountain air and pine needles. A gust of wind made him shiver—he was wearing a thin, floaty garment.
A dress?
But then two huge hands grabbed his shoulders. Caulker had just enough time to turn around and see a face he recognized—the massive wooden harness, the rope leading up into the heavens, and the thick black lips split into a huge grin—before John Anchor shoved him out into the yawning precipice.
The cutthroat plummeted down towards the misty trees, his ridiculous dress flapping wildly about his ears—his screams now mingling with the feverish laughter of the madwoman in his mind. Green branches rushed up to meet him…
He hit sand.
Caulker opened his eyes to see John Anchor and a ring of Heshette riders staring down at him. A horse snorted nervously somewhere nearby.
Anchor grinned. “You ate the soul of an old midwife,” he said. “And you died her death at Rockwall Fortress.”
The cutthroat groaned. “I died her death?”
“Yes. With Cospinol’s soulpearls, you experience the soul’s death. Now, her…” He frowned, thinking. “What is the word? Essence. Yes, her essence lives inside you.” He laughed suddenly. “Makes you as strong as she was.”
Caulker’s arms and legs were trembling; his heart hammered in his chest. The scent of that cold mountain still seemed to linger around him. “It was horrible,” he said. “You killed her. You threw her off a cliff.”
“From the Rockwall battlements,” Anchor admitted. “Count Lat of Grenere asked me to dispatch this woman. So many infants had died in her care. All very suspicious.”
With some effort, Caulker rose shakily to his feet. He certainly didn’t feel any stronger than before. “I never want to experience that again,” he said.
“But you will,” Anchor said brightly. “Her last thoughts are yours now. When you sleep, I think you will dream this death many, many times. It is a small problem with Cospinol’s soulpearls—these nightmares.”
Caulker felt sick, trapped, beaten. Of all the gods and archons and warriors the giant claimed to have in his horde of ghosts, why had Caulker chosen that soulpearl? A murdering midwife! Had Anchor tricked him? The thought of reliving that fall again and again filled him with despair. Would he ever sleep peacefully again?
The Heshette declined to take soulpearls for themselves. Indeed, they now seemed to carry themselves with a degree of righteous aloofness.
Caulker silently cursed them all. The more he thought about it, the more sure he became that the big man had deliberately tricked him into choosing that worthless pearl. Anchor wasn’t nearly as stupid and garrulous as he pretended to be. He clearly had some plan for Caulker—and Caulker didn’t like that idea at all.
But if Anchor thought he could manipulate Jack Caulker, then he had seriously underestimated the cutthroat. Caulker hadn’t survived as long as he had without good instincts. He would find a way to turn the tables on the giant.
The seed of a plan began to take shape in the cutthroat’s mind.
The Heshette left their women with the elderly folk to steer the livestock around the eastern edge of Cinderbark Wood, while the mounted warriors accompanied Anchor and Caulker onwards, towards the trees. Soon the snarl of phosphorescent branches loomed before them in the fog like a toxic dream. At the very edge of the forest Anchor halted and addressed the others.
“I will go in first,” he said, “and clear a path for the horses, yes?” He bulled his huge shoulders then slammed his fists together. The huge rope quivered behind his harness.
And then he marched headlong into Cinderbark Wood.
A small smile tugged at one corner of Jack Caulker’s lips as he waited for the first poisonous thorn to bite the tethered giant.
Anchor’s rope snagged in the canopy above him, but he did not pay it any notice, dragging the rope onwards, further into the woodland. The petrified branches could only bend a little before snapping, showering down upon the big man like fragments of brightly glazed crockery. Anchor brushed this debris off his shoulders and harness without any apparent concern, kicking the larger branches aside.
Caulker watched and waited.
But the giant was unstoppable. He marched on into the fog, apparently immune to his toxic surroundings. His rope rent the canopy above him, snagging great colourful nests of branches, twigs, and thorns before ripping them free.
Caulker jerked backwards, just as the Heshette horsemen spurred their mounts forward after the giant. “Don’t take us in there,” he hissed to the rider in the saddle before him. “You’ll kill us both.”
“Where John Anchor goes, we follow,” the rider replied. “Hah!”
His gelding picked up speed, and a heartbeat later they were inside Cinderbark Wood.
The twelve riders formed a line with Ramnir in the lead. The Heshette leader kept a sensible distance behind the tethered giant to avoid the debris falling from the canopy, but he was often forced to leave the giant’s trail and choose a snaking route through the surrounding trees to avoid those tangles of painted stone which had already fallen. Countless twisted branches reached out of the fog, but the Heshette riders guided their horses skillfully between them.
Anchor crashed on through the wood like a boar through a hedge, picking up pieces of the broken trees and tossing them aside. His hands and arms soon became stained with different-coloured gels, yet none of the poisons had any apparent effect on him.
Had the toxic forest lost its potency?
Caulker was soon to find out.
The party had traveled less than a quarter of a league inside Cinderbark Wood before they lost their first rider. He was one of the Rook Clan nomads the party had picked up during the previous night: a willowy young man with cynical eyes, barely older than a boy. Led onwards by Anchor, the Heshette had reached the apparent safety of a glade, an oasis amidst the riotous colours where thick dark roots wormed in and out of the cool white sands. The nomad’s little tan mare lost its footing in the soft sand and faltered, shifting two paces out from the Heshette column while it regained its balance. The beast’s front fetlock brushed momentarily against a glutinous dark blue root.
The poison acted quickly and violently. From the saddle of his own mount, two positions further back along the line, Caulker watched in fascination as the afflicted mare suddenly reared.
The young Heshette rider kept his seat while he fought to control his panicking horse. Somehow he managed to s
top it from bolting, but nothing could be done to save the animal. Tiny red blisters swelled on its fetlock, turning black and hard even as Caulker watched. An odor like spoiled meat filled the glade, accompanied by the sound of crisping skin. The bucking mare let loose a hideous scream. With its eyes wild with fear and froth spraying from its mouth, it spun around and then lunged drunkenly towards a dense thicket of pale lemon-and-peach-coloured branches on one side of the glade.
Rather than leap free, the young rider remained in the saddle and tried to steer his mount away from the toxic trees. Hearing the commotion from his position at the far end of the glade, John Anchor turned and bellowed out a warning. He rushed forward to help the stricken horseman, but it was already too late.
Horse and rider plunged into the thicket.
The young Heshette’s mount collapsed, and both horse and rider fell amidst the sharp glowing branches. Black blisters now covered most of the mare’s forelegs and breast, corpuscles which burst and streamed milky fluids across its hide. It snorted and kicked wildly, smashing up the petrified thicket around it.
The rider had been thrown clear, but not of the thicket. He managed to stand, and then to stumble back out of the branches, shards of broken twigs protruding from his naked arms. He managed five steps before the poisons began to change him. Yellow-and-peach-coloured welts bloomed on both his arms, spreading across his skin more rapidly than Caulker would have believed possible. He gasped and fell forwards into the sand, clutching his throat as he struggled to breathe.
A bulky warrior with long black hair dismounted and rushed to aid his fallen comrade, but Ramnir barked a command: “Don’t touch him—his skin is coated with poison.”
The warrior hesitated.
Ramnir wheeled his own mount and took up his bow. He loaded an arrow, aiming it down at the gasping horseman.
Strangled screams came from the poisoned man. A black, swollen tongue lolled amidst yellow froth in his mouth. The skin on his arms hardened and began to split like cracked leather, revealing white nodules in the open wounds beneath.