“That’s all I ever saw.”
“Good. I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?” Darige asked.
“King’s business. I’ll be back.”
Aspar scouted back down the road half a league, just to make certain there were no trailing bandits. Returning, he rode back up Edwin’s Brooh, looking for more signs of whatever had made the print, but couldn’t find anything. He suspected the creature must have walked in the stream itself. Given time, he could probably pick up the trail, but right now he didn’t have the time. The boy seemed truthful enough, but you could never be certain. And he was starting to feel that it was very urgent indeed that he see exactly what sort of massacre had happened at Taff Creek.
When he rode back up, he found Stephen rising unsteadily; he’d been kneeling over what looked very much like a pool of vomit.
“Well, Cape Chavel Darige, how has it been?”
Stephen gestured at Gangly. “He’s dead,” he said weakly.
Aspar couldn’t help it; a laugh burst entirely unbidden from his lips.
“What—what’s so funny?”
“You. Of course he’s dead. Grim’s eye, look at him!”
“See here—” Stephen’s eyes bulged and watered, and he spasmed, as if about to vomit again, but then he straightened. “I’ve never seen a dead man before. Not like that.”
“Well, there’s plenty more men dead than alive, you know,” Aspar said. Then, remembering his first dead man, he softened his tone. “Never mind him. The other two? Did you leech them?”
“I—I started one …” Stephen looked sheepish.
“I shouldn’t have left them to you. My mistake.”
“I’m trying! It’s just, well, the blood—”
“Like I said,” Aspar said gruffly. “My fault. I should have reckoned you’d never actually done it before. I’m not blaming you.”
“Oh,” Stephen said. “Do you think they’re dead, too?”
“I doubt it much. I shot ’em in muscle, see? Not in the organs.”
“Why? You don’t seem to care much about killing.”
“I told you. I need to question ’em.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s start again. Can you cut bandages? Can you do that?”
“I already did.”
“Good. Let me see if I can’t save these fellows from Mother Death, then, so as you can keep your next meal down, yah?”
“Yes,” Stephen replied weakly.
Aspar knelt beside Redhead, who was dead to the world but still breathing. The arrow was lodged in his shoulder bone, so it would take a little cutting to get it out. Aspar started to it, and Redhead moaned.
“What did you want to question them about?” Stephen managed.
“I want to know where they were a few days ago,” Aspar grunted, grasping the arrow shaft and working it back and forth.
“Kidnapping me.”
“Where?”
“Two days back.”
“Not when—where.” The shaft came out, clean with the head. Aspar pressed the rag Stephen had cut into the wound. “Hold this here,” he commanded.
Stephen made a gagging noise but did as he was told. As-par found another bandage and began wrapping it.
“Where?” he repeated. “Press hard.”
“Two days back along the King’s Road,” Stephen replied.
“That being where? Nearer Wexdal or Forst?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Well, had you crossed the Owl Tomb before they took you up?”
“That’s a river? I’m not sure.”
“Yes, the Owl Tomb is a river. You couldn’t have missed it. It had an old stone causey over it. You can let go now.”
Stephen lifted his hands, staring at the blood on them, his eyes a little unfocused. “Oh. You mean the Pontro Oltiumo.”
“I mean what I say. What’s that gibberish?”
“Old Vitellian,” Stephen said. “The language of the Hegemony, who built that causeway a thousand years ago. They made this road, too. Owl must be a corruption of Oltiumo.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I looked at maps before I came. Hegemony maps.”
“How is it you thought that maps made a thousand years ago would do you any good at all?”
“The Hegemony made better maps than we do. More accurate. I have copies of them, if you want to see.”
Aspar just stared at him for a second, then shook his head. “Priests,” he muttered, making certain it sounded like a swear word. “Let’s do this other.”
Big Nose was easier. The shaft had gone straight through the muscle of the thigh without even grazing the bone.
If Gangly and his bunch had taken Darige east of the Owl, it was impossible for them to have been anywhere near Taff Creek. There went that possibility. So it was on to the Taff, after he figured out what to do with this bunch.
Whatever he decided, it would take him at least a day out of his way.
That couldn’t be helped, he supposed, not unless he wanted to kill them all and set the priest a-wandering. It was a tempting thought.
“Help me get these men up on their horses,” he grunted, when they were finished.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“I mean, I’ll be late getting to the monastery.”
“Will you? I’ll try to hold my tears.”
“Why—what are you so angry with me for, holter? I didn’t do anything to you. It’s not my fault!”
“Fault? What does that mean, or matter? You set out from Virgenya alone, didn’t you? Just you and your maps, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What book put that in your head?”
“Presson Manteo did it, almost a hundred years ago, when he wrote the Amvionnom. He said—”
“Doesn’t matter what he said, does it? It didn’t do you a damned bit of good.”
“Well, I know it was stupid now,” Stephen said. “It still doesn’t explain why you’re mad at me.”
It didn’t, did it? Aspar took a deep breath. The boy didn’t seem a bad sort, actually; he was just a burden Aspar didn’t need at the moment. And that superior tone and low-country accent didn’t help make him more endearing.
“I see a few of your sort every year,” he explained. “Little noblings off for a romp in the wild. Usually what I see are their corpses.”
“You’re saying I’m a burden to you?”
Aspar shrugged. “Come on. I’ll take you someplace safe.”
“Tell me the way. I’ll go alone. You’ve saved my life. I don’t want to trouble you anymore.”
“I have to take the prisoners anyway,” Aspar said. “Ride along with me.”
He started to mount.
“Aren’t we going to bury him?” Stephen asked, pointing at Gangly.
Aspar considered that, then walked over to the deceased bandit. He dragged the corpse about ten feet off the side of the trail, folded its arms across his breast.
“There we go,” he said, with mock cheer. “A holter’s funeral. Care to say any words?”
“Yes. There is a proper liturgy—”
“Say it as we travel, then. We have someplace to be before dark.”
Like most priests—and boys—Darige couldn’t seem to stop talking. Within a bell, he had quit moping from being chastised and begun chattering constantly about the most inane subjects—the relation of Almannish to Hanzish, the dialects of Virgenya, the virtues of certain stars. He gave trees and birds and hills names that were long, unpronounceable, and entirely wrong and thought himself clever. And he kept wanting to stop to look at things.
“There’s another,” he said, for the fifth time in two bells. “Can you wait just a moment?”
“No,” Aspar told him.
“Really! Just a moment.” Stephen dismounted, and from his refurbished pack drew a roll of paper and separated a leaf from it. From a pouch at his belt, he produced a chunk of charcoal. Then he hurried to a waist-high stone standing by the side of the road. There were many such, along Old King’s way, all like this, squared columns two hands on a side. Most had been pushed out of the ground by roots growing up beneath them, expelled like infected teeth.