“It all feels wrong, sir. All of it. It’s been bad since we left Talorea and its getting worse.”
“You’ll get no argument from me, Sergeant.”
“I was rather hoping I would, sir.”
“We’ve seen nothing but plague and dark magic and assassination since we left the homeland. The Elder races are stirring. The dead walk. I’d be a fool to try and convince you things were fine, and you’d be a fool to believe me. And we’re neither of us fools, are we Sergeant?” Sardec scanned the street as he spoke, watching for any signs of violence.
“I’d like to think that was the case, sir.”
The Foragers had started to emerge from the buildings. A few of them shook their heads. They looked confused. Sardec gestured for Weasel to come back over.
“What did you find, Weasel?” he asked.
“A couple of corpses, sir. Dead a while. Looked like someone had eaten bits of them.” They had seen more and more of that recently. The deaders liked to feed on human flesh. Sardec wondered why that was. He could see no pattern to any of it. Why did some corpses rise and others not? Did the undead feed only on those that did not rise or did they attack each other? He had no answers and he was not sure he wanted any.
“There’s something odd, sir.” Weasel sounded genuinely puzzled.
“Out with it, man.”
“Not enough bodies, sir. Not nearly enough for a village this size.”
“Maybe the cannibals ate them.”
“No bones, sir. Not many half-eaten corpses. There ought to be a lot more about if there was an outbreak of long-pig feasting.”
“Maybe the people fled when the plague hit.”
“Could be, sir. There’s tracks leading out all heading East.”
“And…”
“Something strange about the spacing of the prints, sir. As if all the people making the tracks were staggering drunk or…”
“Walking dead,” Sardec finished.
“Precisely, sir.”
They waited for the Foragers to finish checking the houses. They found nothing save a few gnawed bodies and putrefying corpses. Sardec looked at Hef and Weasel.
“Where did the corpse eaters go?” he asked.
“They might be hiding, sir,” said Hef.
Suddenly Handsome Jan came running up. “You’ll want to see this, sir,” he said. He sounded very frightened. Sardec followed him back to the local Temple and together they climbed up into the spire. “I came up here to get a look at the lie of the land as you ordered, sir.”
They reached the top of the Tower, emerged onto the open platform beneath the bell. Sardec had a clear view for leagues around. He did not need to follow the soldier’s pointing finger to see what had him so frightened. An enormous dust cloud was rising along the horizon, out of it loomed the massive forms of Bridgeback wyrms. He could hear something as well, the thunder of strangely powerful drums, beating like the heart of some world-eating monster.
Sardec flicked open his spyglass with his good hand and raised it to his eye. He picked out details, as figures emerged from the dust cloud. There were soldiers there in the purple and black uniforms of Sardea, thousands of them. Judging by the size of the cloud there must be hundreds of thousands marching behind them. How had the Sardeans mustered an army so large, so quickly?
Sardec came to a decision. “We need to take word of this back to Lord Azaar. Now!”
There were really two camps, some people claimed: the one where the soldiers were, and the one where the camp followers slept. Rik knew it was not quite so simple. Many of the troops had families, lovers and friends in the second camp and spent their time there. Others, like himself, sought some form of escape or anonymity there.
The first camp was laid out along Terrarch military lines, all the tents in ordered ranks with the regulation amount of space between them. It had been built around the outskirts of a village marked on the maps as Weswood.
The second camp was anarchic, with lean-tos and tents and people lying in blankets beneath the sky. Fires blazed everywhere, and the smell of smoke and cooking surrounded him. Musicians played, singers sang, and camp-girls called for custom. There were vendors here, selling skewered bird and rabbit and toasted bread. Makeshift bars made from planks set across empty barrels served beer to those who could afford it. Laughter and conversation rang out all around him. He listened to it all, drinking it in, sad that he could no longer feel entirely a part of it. For many years camps like this had been his home. He missed them sometimes.
It was a pity that none of his old company had returned from their patrol sweep yet. He had wanted to talk with them, escape for a few hours the feeling of being trapped in Terrarch intrigue, listen to tales of what they had found on the march, swap lies. He liked Asea well enough, and enjoyed her company but there were times when he needed to get away and this was one of them. From the scouts reports he knew that battle would be joined within the next day or two. The Eastern armies had been sighted by the light cavalry scouts.
“Rik,” a voice he recognised called out to him. “A word.”
He turned and saw Rena sitting there by a fire with a couple of girls he recognised. She rose from the spread blanket on which she had been sitting, adjusted her scarf and walked towards him. He smiled, pleased to see a familiar face in the whole lonely mass of people.
“You decided to come with the army, I see.” He smiled but she did not respond in kind. She looked drawn and worried. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”
“I don’t know. But I think you and Sardec are.”
He felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, knowing what she was going to say before she said it. “The Inquisition have been asking about you.”
“They picked you up?”
She nodded. “Back in Halim not long after I spoke to you. They dragged me off to the Palace. Threw me into a cell. Held me there overnight.”
“Then they asked you questions.” He suppressed a cold laugh. The thief-takers back in Sorrow worked in exactly the same way sometimes- picked you up and then left you to stew in a dank cell with no knowledge of why you had been lifted or what they knew about your activities.
She nodded again. Tears ran down her face. The memory had shaken her. “They asked how I knew you and how I knew him.”
“You told them?”
“I told them about Mama Horne’s.”
“What else did you tell them? What else did they ask you?”
“They asked about hill-men.”
“Did they give you any clue why?”
“There had been some murders. One of them was a scout who led the Foragers into the hills to find the Prophet Zarahel.”
“Vosh?”
“That was his name.”
“What did they want to know?”
“Whether either of you had ever talked about him. What happened to him in the end. It seems you were seen talking to him the night he died.”
Rik shuddered. So they knew that, did they?
“I had nothing to do with his death,” he said, hoping the lie was not evident in his voice. He had not killed the little hill-man but he had no doubt that the death was related to his knowledge of the grimoire he and the Weasel and the Barbarian had taken from the corpse of the Prophet’s tame wizard. If the Inquisition knew about that, it might be burning for sure.
“I never thought you did,” she said. “I told them that. They kept asking any way. They were very persistent. They said that a Terrarch Magister had died on that expedition, and that it was a serious business.”
It got worse, Rik thought. The Inquisition took the deaths of Terrarchs very seriously, particularly magicians. He had thought the regiment had managed to cover the matter up but it looked like he was wrong, and the thing was going to come back to haunt them.
“What else?”
“They asked me whether Sardec and I lived together. They talked about the miscegenation laws. They told me it was a serious matter for both of us. Were they telling the truth?”
“I’ve not heard of anyone being prosecuted under those laws for years but they are still on the books. No doubt the Inquisition find them useful when they want to put pressure on folks. What did you tell them?”