I nodded. With the sun going down Tadd would have to stay until morning. I thought it might be best for me to ride on into the camp and start working. "I think I'll leave you here and join the party. Which way?"
Tadd pointed east. "Two, maybe three leagues."
I swung into Wolfs saddle and adjusted the saddlebags Tadd handed me. My tsincaat lay in my bedroll and I'd sheathed my ryqril at my right hip. The sword would not attract any attention because it looked like any other blade. It would only be "special" if my identity as a Talion was revealed.
I pointed Wolf east and we cantered off. The dying sun gave us enough light to pick out a trail, but by the time we left the valley at the far end I could only see flickering firelights to guide us into the camp. Wolf saw them and we hurried on in the darkness. We found a woodsman's track and made good time on the trail rubbed smooth by the logs hauled down it each day.
The tent community needed to house the hunters and all the servants who accompanied them was the size of a small village. Fifty tents, from large nobles' pavilions and the central tent for entertaining to small tents for servants, formed a rough circle in a meadow. A stream cut through the camp and woods surrounded it. Fires burned before each tent and servants scurried to and fro making preparations for sleep.
Something was very wrong, because there was no celebration going on. The largest tent was dark and I heard no sounds of drinking or merrymaking anywhere in the camp. Furthermore, the servants acted terrified of something. One half was startling the other at any one moment, then everyone would freeze when something common and normal within the forest made a sound.
I urged Wolf forward and we rode into the camp. A young man nearly collided with Wolf, turned, and screamed when he saw me. The loaves of bread he'd been carrying flew up and out and he fell to his back.
I reined Wolf in and dismounted. "Whoa, why so jumpy?" I bent down, helped him to his feet, then squatted to gather some bread up.
He stood there shaking. "The goblins, they have him!"
"Who? Who do they have? Where is the King?" The servant trembled and could say nothing. I Called, "Where is the King?"
He held a quaking hand out and pointed to the south. I looked back along the direction he indicated and saw more torches. I handed him the loaves—he promptly dropped them—and mounted Wolf again. In five minutes we reached the circle of torches.
Nobles, hunters, and servants stood looking down into a huge sinkhole in the middle of the road. Large enough to have taken down three ranks of horsemen riding four abreast, it was a riot of dirt, stones, and roots. Off to one side a narrow little hole just large enough for a man to stand upright in broke into the sinkhole's wall. Wolf shied and I knew what it had to be.
Dhesiri. Goblins, the servant had said, and he'd named them correctly.
I dismounted and looped Wolfs reins around a bush. I could not see King Tirrell, so I searched out the noble in the center of things. "I beg your pardon, my lord. I am Lord Nolan ra Yotan. Where is the King? I was to report to him upon my arrival."
The noble was an older man. His hair had thinned without losing any of its black color. His face was florid and full, though neither it nor his middle were as stout as they might have been at his age. From the crest worn over his heart I learned he was Hamisian and I deduced him to be Grand Duke Fordel, the King's uncle.
His black eyes quickly took my measure. I could read his dislike in my crest because it was not surrounded by the blue field meant to acknowledge Harm's. Beyond that, though, he saw something he liked in my stance and how I carried myself. He decided in an instant to deal with me as a peer as opposed to a foolish noble who would only get in the way.
"The King is in there." He pointed at the sinkhole. "Him, Duke Vidor, and my son, Count Patrick. And their horses."
"When?" The Dhesiri love horseflesh, and if the queen was sated by the horses, the King and the others might not yet be gone.
"Two hours ago is when we found the ambush. I saw them not too long before that." The Grand Duke looked at the other nobles crowded around us and they confirmed what he said.
I nodded. "Have you sent anyone in after them?"
Murmuring started behind both of us. He shook his head, then stopped and stared into my eyes with an unwavering gaze. "Into a Dhesiri warren, are you mad?" He shook his head again. "We've been waiting for them to fight their way out."
I looked hard at him and saw his dilemma. Were he twenty years younger, back in his prime, he would have leaped into the hole and gone after them, but surrounded by young nobles who had never fought in a war, and who probably only dueled to first touch or blood, there was little he could do.
Alone, the job was impossible, unless the person sent in could sneak through the warren, free the prisoners, and get them out before anyone raised an alarm. No one in that lot had those skills and, even in his prime, the Grand Duke would have been hard pressed to succeed.
"They won't get back without help." I walked back over to Wolf, withdrew my tsincaat from the bedroll, and strapped it on over my back. My hilt rose at my right shoulder.
Grand Duke Fordel stared at me. "You can't go in there, it's suicide."
I nodded to him and drew my ryqril. "It can't be any more difficult than eluding the lords of the Darkesh. Send any after me who have more courage than brains."
Then, for the second time in a week, I jumped into total darkness to do battle with a foe who was at home in it. Certainly, kill anything I find down there. But the question was, in a Dhesiri warren, could I kill enough?
Chapter Twelve
Novice: Nightmare
A breeze swept across the dusty yard and swirled the charnel-house scent around me. It knocked me from Wolf's back and onto the ground, where I vomited. Weak knees and unsteady, quivering arms held me above the puddle that had been my breakfast as my body convulsed again and again to further empty my stomach. Bitter bile coated my mouth, sweat slicked my flesh, and tears seeped from my tightly shut eyes.
"That's enough, Talion. Get up." Ring's Call cut through my physical agony but carried no compassion or concern for me with it. He hated me and threaded his words with contempt.
I dug my fingers into the dust and relished the simple feel of each grain of gritty sand. I reached inside to calm my body and stop my stomach from heaving, but a second gust of wind threatened to start the process all over again. I used my rage with Ring and myself to exert iron-willed control over my insides and, for a moment, took refuge in just feeling all the pains in my body. Better that than what lurked outside.
"Now, Novice, get to your feet and tell me what you see."
I rolled back on my heels, kept my eyes closed, and raised my face to the sky so the sweat could cool me before I attempted any more complicated movement. I reached behind me, felt for and found my left stirrup, then dragged myself to my feet. I swayed, both from weakness and a dizzying wave of nausea washing over me. Slowly, dreadfully, I opened my eyes.
I'd seen it before and shook my head hard to flick off the tears welling up in my eyes.
They'd used sod to build their house but, other than that, the farm looked identical to the one I'd grown up on. The smoke still drifted up from the charred ends of roof beams. Fire-blackened ruins and the blue sky filled the empty doorway and windows. Back behind the house, mocking the carnage before it, stood a smokehouse.
Corpses choked the sunbaked yard in front of the house. The men lay on the right and the women on the left as if they had been taken in the midst of a ceremony or celebration. Their animals, all dead, lay scattered around haphazardly, but they looked as though they'd tried harder to escape their fate than the people had.
Several small pits, about two feet in diameter, half that depth and filled with loose, dry dirt, were sunk in a seemingly random pattern throughout the yard. Everyone, everything was dead and had been dead for a few days. And everything had been chewed on.
"Nolan, what do you see?"
I turned too quickly in anger and wav
ered until the world caught up with my head. Ring towered over me up there on his horse. A silver circlet held back his long black hair. The breeze tugged and played with his hair, but he gave no indication that it brought to him the same scents it did to me. A cruel sneer twisted his black moustache and warped his pinched face into a mask of disgust. His eyes were merciless, flat, slate-gray chips.
I breathed in through my mouth, then spat to rid myself of the dusty thickness on my tongue. "I see a farmhouse that has been attacked by Dhesiri. I see many dead people. I see evidence of Dhesiri tunnels in the area. I see one male body that might be one of the two men we are chasing." I could not and did not hide the anger in my voice.
Ring narrowed his eyes to gray stiletto points. "Oh, good, little Nolan. You tell me what is there. Now look again and tell me what happened."
Something inside of me whispered the true story of this farmhouse, but I denied that explanation because it hurt too much, and forced me to remember too much. "Dhesiri attacked and killed the family here. It's obvious."
Ring vaulted from his saddle and for a moment I thought he'd lash me with his quirt. "You fool! You are not thinking!" He stood a head shorter than me and carried an open challenge for me to try him any time or place I dared. "You'll need a Journey far longer than a year to make you a Justice."
He walked past me and I turned to watch him. "The women are over here on the left, the men on the right. Dhesiri do not segregate prisoners. All the animals are dead, but there is no horse body. They had a plowhorse—there's manure back beside the house—and that's what the Dhesiri would have taken first, but there's no hole large enough to drag even a dismembered horse through. And this man over here ..." He kicked the headless body of a big man. "He has no head."
I walked forward. "He could be Ahnj ra Temur."
Ring shook his head violently. "No! Look at his neck. It's been cleanly cut with a steel weapon, one blow. His head is gone to make identifying the body difficult, or misidentifying the body, as you have done, easy."
I could not surrender that easily because my transparently wrong explanation was all that shielded me from past ghosts. "The Dhesiri could have taken it, for food."
"Fool. If they wanted the brains they'd crack the skull." He spat in my direction, then skewered me with a volcanic stare. "You're wrong, admit it and stop being stupid."
Inside all hope withered. Vanquished, I bowed my head to him. "Please, Justice, tell me what happened."
Ring turned away, but I knew he did not smile. His hatred ran so deep he could not even take pleasure in a victory over me. "Ahnj ra Temur and Dabir ra Insal came to this farmhouse. They offered to trade labor for food and lodging. During the night they rounded the family here up. They murdered the men, raped and murdered the women. They took the plowhorse and headed off.
"It's all obvious, novice, despite the arrival of a Dhesiri hunting party. The humans have been dead longer than the farm animals. The Dhesiri have sampled the carrion but have not returned to carry it away. The Dhesiri killed the farm animals to make sure they would not get away, then returned to their warren to bring more workers to carry the bodies off. The one body that could be mistaken for Ahnj was decapitated to make misidentification possible."
His voice almost lost its biting edge at the end of his explanation. Everything he said echoed the words I'd heard within my own head. I should have known better than to fool myself, because, successful in my effort or not, the battle inside was lost, and I would suffer the consequences as certainly as life breeds death and sleep breeds nightmares.
In a small voice I asked, "The Dhesiri will return soon, then, won't they?"
Ring nodded. "If you're over your sickness we'd better get started hauling the bodies into the smokehouse back there." He pointed to the small building back behind the house. "We'll have to burn them."
I was almost sick again, but I did not protest the work. I knew a funeral pyre had a particular scent to it and I knew it would bring back the nightmare. But that really mattered little, because after seeing a family lying slaughtered around their farmhouse, nothing could keep the nightmare away.
* * *
I lay in total darkness. Even in my feverish state I knew the shadows were my friends. They made sunfever easier and sucked away the searing pain that burned the flesh when light struck it. They made sunfever survivable and, down there, nestled in the cool, dark root cellar beneath my family home, I would survive.
Silhouetted faces came and went. I could not see detail, but the soft, soothing voices—my grandmother, my mother, and Laura, my elder sister—encouraged me and praised my progress. Sometimes I woke when they came to press cool cloths to my forehead, and even forced a smile when they brought me broth. My brothers were not allowed down to see me—they'd not had the fever and it was much harder on men than women—but I heard their joyful shouts as Mother or Laura would apprise them of my improving condition.
Fleeting memories of delirious dreams and pleasant times melted away as the nightmare took hold. My eyes snapped open, painfully wide, and locked open. I could not close them or flood them with tears. I could not move.
I was powerless to do anything but peer through the invisible darkness. The stout wooden beams above me stood out in exquisite, sun-drenched detail, then faded to a misty gray. Slowly, but agonizingly swiftly, they became crystal clear and provided me an unobstructed view of the glassy floorboards above them. Anything and everything that could prevent me from seeing the drama unfolding above me, obligingly and unbidden, became transparent.
Even the tears I tried to summon to blur everything just drained down the sides of my head.
I tried to scream. The sound echoed within my head, but I knew it never made it past my lips. Locked in deathlike immobility I could only watch. Watch and die inside.
Soldiers stood in our house. With harsh voices the two of them demanded information from my father. They'd bound him into a chair and struck him when he answered curtly. My mother screamed and Hal held his twin, Malcolm, back. Grandmother and Laura quieted Arik. My sister Dale, a year younger than me, fingered a knife and, behind her, a friend named Lyel—a boy my age from the next farm over—balled his fists.
The smaller Hamisian soldier, a Master-Sergeant according to the red armband he wore, hit my father again with a backhanded slap and drew blood. Dale rushed forward and stabbed the sergeant in the stomach. He roared in pain and smashed a fist into her face. She flew back and slammed into the wall with a wet thud. Her neck broken like a twig, she slid to the floor. Blood trickled from her nose but lost all color as it washed across the floor.
Hal and Malcolm, too young to join the army, yet old enough to die for their country, closed on the soldiers. Hal kicked the wounded soldier in the stomach, drove him to the ground and completed the job Dale had started. The other soldier wrestled with Malcolm. They crashed through the door and out into the yard.
They rolled to a stop right in front of the eight other men in the Hamisian patrol.
Everyone was screaming. Hal pointed to the door and yelled, "Run, run." Lyel bolted out the door with Arik quickly following. Mother stopped to untie my father. Laura bent to help free his feet. Grandmother picked up a meat cleaver.
Malcolm got to his feet first and kicked the soldier he was righting in the teeth. The man's head snapped back, and I saw his neck was broken just like Dale's. Malcolm stared down at him, pleased, and oblivious to the danger he was in.
Again a scream blasted through my skull but could not break free to warn Malcolm. My eldest brother half turned as the horseman galloped up behind him. Malcolm's hands rose, not to ward the sabre slash off but to try to catch the wrist behind it and pull the man from the saddle. Malcolm was far too slow and the blade crushed the left side of his head. He was dead before his body, wrenched around by the force of the blow, flopped to the ground.
Arik ran to the left, as fast as his hobbling gait would allow, toward the barn where he'd so successfully hidden many times before. He
shot glances back over his shoulder and a smile played over his lips. He was innocent enough to think this some sort of game. Death meant nothing to him, and he was just running off to hide until someone came and told him the game was over and it was time to return home.
The Hamisians balked at chasing him because of his clubbed foot. To them it meant he had been touched by supernatural creatures in the womb. To the Daari mercenary in their midst it meant he was a demon. And, for the Daari, that meant my brother's death was a divine imperative to be ignored at the peril of the warrior's soul.
The Daari chased Arik and herded him. He shouted taunts at my brother, who, though he did not understand the words, was lashed by the tone and the hatred. Arik turned to run back to Mother or Laura—who he knew would drive his tormentor off as they had so often done before—but he never made it. The Daari speared him from behind. He left Arik's crumpled form in the dust with the Spiritlance standing high in his back—the weapon was now unclean.
Father shook the loosened ropes off and was free. Hope sparked in my chest, but was almost instantly smothered. He drew the family sword from over the doorway and walked out into the yard. The horseman who had killed Malcolm turned his horse and came back for Father. My father dodged the first slash and cut up through the soldier's rib cage. The man fell from the saddle and lay still in the dust.
Lyel ran off to the right. A Hamisian soldier chased him on horseback. Lyel dodged and evaded him until trapped against our pigpen. He got halfway over the fence before the soldier split his skull with an overhead sword blow.
Two men dismounted and engaged my father in a fight. While Father might have been agile and smart, he was no swordsman. He held them off at first by parrying their blows furiously but futilely. Then they seriously started to work and cut my father to pieces.