With a chorus of laughs and shouts, coin changed hands.
Kesh averted his eyes and kept walking as he whispered thanks that the poor victim was not screaming. Ahead, the village ended in fenced gardens, livestock sheds, and a pair of granaries on stilts. A tent had been raised just outside the last shed, although it was little more than a lean-to of canvas rigged out from the shed's cantilevered roof. A trio of men stood at attention beside a small fire, guarding both tent and shed.
"Who sleeps there?" Kesh whispered.
"Eh! The lord does."
"The lord?"
"He don't usually stop by us, but there's somewhat afoot. Anyway, he don't like to be disturbed by the likes of us. So, hush!"
It was middle night, more or less. There was no moon. Kesh stumbled more than once before they clambered back on the road "downstream" of the shed. The road here ran fairly straight, with a long view back into the village and its emptied buildings. In an open meadow lay the ruins of the old Ladytree, fallen into a massive tangle of trunk and branches that no one dared cut up. In the darkness, the new sapling, no more than two years old, wasn't even visible.
They walked a little farther on the pale surface of the road until they came to the road's intersection with a wide gravel path that pushed straight through the woods toward the distant uplands. The path's beginning was marked by one of the three-span gates that marked a temple to Ilu, the Herald, though it was too dark for Kesh to see any buildings in all those trees and brush. Just ahead, the road began to curve. Here in the middle of the roadway stood two sentries.
"Heh! About time!" said one, a burly man with his hair shaved down against his head.
"What was all that noise?" asked the other.
"Just Rabbit," said Twist, wiping his nose.
The burly man cackled. "Eh! He wouldn't know what to do with a live one, eh? You ever get to wondering just what he did do to get run out of his village?"
Twist spat. "Did you ever think I don't want to know? Eh?"
Kesh felt sick, but he said nothing, made no expression, just waited.
Fortunately, the pair headed back for camp without any further discussion. Kesh's companion settled into a comfortable stance, feet shoulders'-width apart and weight canted onto his spear.
The ginnies slept, a heavy burden in their sling. Kesh shifted nervously as he looked back toward the camp, wondering what he ought to do. There were thirty-six in the cadre. He'd counted three times: eighteen mounted and eighteen walking on their own feet; he made the thirty-seventh. A sergeant led them, but who their commanders were Kesh could not tell. In general, the southern towns were councilled, so he wasn't sure how one could tell a "lord" apart from a well-to-do council member, although there must be signs and customs that spoke of such things. In his travels in the empire, he had dealt with merchants who were agents for lords, of whom they spoke in only the most formal of terms. But lords in the empire were a different beast, set apart, isolated. Nor could he ask Twist to explain it to him, lest Kesh seem too ignorant of things the others took for granted. As the old saying went, better keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool, than open it and be known as an impostor.
It was so quiet. The horses had been strung up on a line near the council house, visible from here by the distant glimmer of light from a single lantern hung at the porch. The mascot dogs who accompanied the cadre were tranquil beasts, and he supposed they were now sleeping. In truth, it was the look of the men with whom he marched that agitated him.
Like Twist. The man's jaw had been damaged and healed wrong. He was missing two fingers. He had a net of lash scars on his back. He carried himself with the bravado of a man who relishes a fight over nothing.
A figure appeared on the road out of the darkness and loped up to them in that gangling, hopping way he had.
"Eh, there, Rabbit," said Twist. "Finally remember you have sentry duty?"
"Heh. Heh. Yah."
Like this one, who tolerated the others calling him "Rabbit" and who had a way of grinning at unseen sights that made Kesh think he was unbalanced, and who was capable of the most grotesque acts, things Kesh had not thought anyone could force himself to do. Like what he had just done. All Kesh could think of was that if the woman, or man, was dead, then there wouldn't have been any pain.
"How long have you been on this road?" he asked Rabbit, because the silence was making him twitchy.
Rabbit fished a strip of dried flesh out of his pouch and chewed on it before answering. "Eh. Since I was kicked out of m'mam's village and forced to take cover up in the hills. There I found some who were more like me than otherwise. Comrades, you might say." He hawked and spat, then wiped his mouth clean. "Let me see. That was ten years ago now, I'm thinking."
Kesh whistled. "That's a long time. How old are you?"
"Oh, I'm a Goat, sure enough. You work it out."
"Huh. Same as me."
"Really?" said Twist. "You look younger than Rabbit."
It was true. Rabbit had the wiry strength of a young man but his face was seamed and weathered in the manner of a person who has suffered far beyond his years and lived to tell a noisome tale. He bore a series of parallel white scars on his right forearm, and he kept himself clean-shaven because of the knotted scar along his jaw that prevented him from growing an even beard. No telling what he had done to get run out of his home village, and since this was the second corpse he'd humped since Kesh joined the company this past early afternoon, it was best not to ask and not to know.
"How long, you?" the older man asked Kesh.
"Oh, in the service of that one, since I was twelve," said Kesh, figuring it better to tell as much of truth as he could.
Rabbit twitched. "Heh! You ever done it with her? Front or back?"
"Her? No."
"I bet that reeve done it. That one was carrying her. Heh! He was as ready as a split log to burn. Popping right out of his leathers, near enough. Fancy them dropping down just like that to warn us of you waiting there by our dead comrades just ahead." Rabbit scratched where Kesh did not want to look. That weird, crazy grin crept up the corners of his mouth. "Wonder who killed them."
"I'd like to know," said Twist. "I've been camping with Jeden and Ofass for five years now. If I caught that one who did them, I'd open their chest and squeeze their beating heart 'til they told me. And then burst it anyway."
"Heh. Heh. Just like we did at that place… huh… it had a name."
"Reyipa," said Twist.
Rabbit snickered. "Then we tossed them from the cliff, four at a time. Heh. Heh. 'It's the flying fours for you!' Remember how we called that out? Heh. Pretty clever."
"Whew! I do have to pee," said Kesh, not liking the turn of this conversation. "I'll be right back."
Trying not to disturb the sleeping ginnies, he picked his way sideways down off the roadbed and gingerly high-stepped along the ground, to the edge of the trees. Made water there, while his thoughts spilled.
If he ran, they would just be on him. This motley group, part of a larger unit that called themselves the Flying Fours, had embraced him into their ranks only because the reeve and his fascinating passenger had dropped down beside their cadre and warned them to "pick up the lad who is just up the road, and keep him safe." Or so the sergeant had made sure to tell him. How Bai had managed to persuade them he could not imagine, since he hadn't been there to see, but she seemed at this juncture capable of anything except, he hoped, raping corpses.
He peered into the trees, but it was all darkness beneath the canopy of rustling leaves. The river ran close by, a constant chuckle of amusement, no doubt laughing at his plight. What was he to do? He could race to the shore and throw himself into the water, but he didn't know how to swim, and anyway the ginnies would likely drown. He could hide in the undergrowth, but the dogs would probably find him. In the other direction the woods thinned where the ground began its steady rise toward the high plateau of the Lending. He might have a chance running in that direction, up the path toward the temple at first before veering into the bush, but it seemed foolish to take the chance when Bai had managed to gift him with safe passage. Such as it was. He hated to march with this group back toward Olossi, especially not knowing what they intended. He hadn't quite asked, and they hadn't quite said, but from the way they spoke it seemed they were riding to meet up with the strike force, which was almost a day ahead of them. That strike force had murdered the poor folk in this exceptionally inoffensive village.