“Which is why you struck me, I suppose,” Cazio said.
“No, that was just for the pleasure of it,” Euric countered.
“Don’t make a fool of yourself, lad,” z’Acatto said. “You let him talk because you’re hoping he’ll get you mad enough to untie him. You want to fight him as much as he wants to fight you.”
“Well,” Euric allowed, “I would like to see how he thinks he could beat me with that little sewing-needle of his, yes,” Euric said. “But I’m on a holy mission. I can’t think of myself when my task comes first.”
“There’s nothing holy about chasing two young girls all over creation,” z’Acatto grunted.
“That’s done with,” Euric said, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. “Didn’t you know? We found them just after we caught you. In fact, Hrothwulf thinks you killed them.”
“Killed them?” Cazio blurted. “What are you talking about?”
“They had their throats slit, both of them, just over the hill from where we caught you. There were already ravens pecking at their carcasses. That’s how Auland got hurt.”
Cazio stared at him. “What, the fellow who lost his eyes? The one that died of blood poisoning before the day was even up? You really think a raven did that to him?”
“I saw it myself,” Euric said. But he looked strange, as if somehow he doubted what he was saying.
“Although—” He broke off. “No. I saw them. Their heads were nearly off.”
“You’re lying,” Cazio said. The girls had just gone over the hill to answer nature’s call. He’d only taken his eyes off them for a few minutes. Still, he pictured the girls, brigand’s grins cut in their throats, and suddenly felt a wave of nausea.
“You sons of whores,” he swore. “You get of distempered dogs. I’ll kill every last one of you.”
“No,” Euric said. “You’d be dead already, if we didn’t need a swordsman. But the old man will do, I think, if you’re so very impatient to meet Ansu Halja. Rest assured, you will die, and it won’t be pleasant, so take this time to pray to the ansu you pray to.”
He put a loop of rope around Cazio’s neck and jerked him to his feet. Then he threw the rope over a low-hanging branch and tied it off, so he couldn’t sit down without choking himself.
He left Cazio trying to think of new curses.
That afternoon, more men rode in, most dressed like men-at-arms, but more than a few like clergy. That brought a brief hope, but it didn’t take long to see that they were friendly with the knights.
Cazio had little to do other than watch them work, and try not to fall asleep.
The camp was near a rough mound of earth and stone, the land that in Vitellio were called persi or sedoi, and often had fanes built on them. Those taking holy orders were said to walk such stations in a proscribed order to be blessed by the lords. But whatever was going on here seemed decidedly unholy. The newcomers had captives with them, as well, women and children, and they set about planting a ring of seven posts around the mound then clearing back the vegetation. Others began constructing a stone fane upon its summit.
“Have you any idea what they’re about, z’Acatto?” Cazio asked, studying his enemies as they went about their antlike business.
“Not really,” the old man said. “It’s hard to think without wine.”
“It’s hard for you to stand without wine,” Cazio replied.
“So it should be,” the old man replied. “A man should never be denied wine, especially one who’s soon to die.”
He was interrupted by a commotion of some sort. There was a good bit of distant shouting, and the knights mounted and rode out from the clearing, followed quickly by the five men dressed like monks. They returned perhaps a bell later, leading more captives. These were all men, one of middle years and three younger, the youngest looking barely thirteen. All of them were wounded, though none seemed seriously so.
The older man they tied as Cazio was tied, just a perechi away from him. Then they went back about their business.
When none of the enemy was near, the new captive glanced over at Cazio.
“You’d be the Vitellians, then,” he said in Cazio’s native tongue. “Cazio and z’Acatto.”
“You know us, sir?” Cazio asked.
“Yes, we’ve a couple of friends in common, friends of the fair sort.”
“Anne and—”
“Hush,” the man said. “Pitch your voice very low. I think those are all Mamres monks, but some may be of Decmanis. If so, they can hear a butterfly’s wings.”
“But they’re alive, and well?”
“So far as I know. My name is Artore, and I was helping them to find you. It looks as if I’ve done at least part of my job, though I would prefer that the circumstances were different.”
“But they escaped? The knights didn’t see them?”
Artore shrugged. “I can’t say for certain. My sons and I held them off as long as we could, but the monks are deadly shots. They wanted us alive, or we wouldn’t be.”
“How can the Church be part of this?” Cazio whispered. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“All men are corruptible,” Artore said, “and the more easily if they can tell themselves they are doing holy work. But in fact, I don’t know much more about this than you do. My wife would be the one to ask.” He looked glum. “I would have liked to see her one last time.”
“Well escape somehow,” Cazio promised. “Just watch. I’ll find some way.”
But as he pulled at his intractable bonds, he still couldn’t imagine how.
Neil sat his horse, his hands crossed on the pommel, thinking he didn’t like the looks of the forest that lay before him. He didn’t know much about forests to start with—there weren’t any on Skern, and besides the pretty thin ones he’d passed through on his way to Vitellia, he hadn’t seen much of them on the mainland, either. But once, when he was about fifteen, he’d gone north with Sir Fail de Liery to Herilanz. The trip had started as an embassy, but they’d been set upon by Weihand raiders. It had come to a sea fight which they’d won, but not without damage, and so they had put ashore for repairs. Beyond the narrow, rocky strand there had been nothing but forest, a holt of fir and pine and black cheichete that seemed to Neil like one vast cave. Facing your enemies on the open heath or the great wide sea was one thing, but fighting where concealment was everywhere was quite another. They’d gone in to find a good mast, and come out with half their number, pursued by a tribe of tattooed howlers that recognized no king or crown.
This forest had that look, only worse, for while the one in Herilanz had been of straight, clean-boled trees, these twisted and wove together like a gigantic bramble-bush.
It hadn’t been hard to follow the Hansan knights. The land between Paldh and Teremene was a rural one, the kind of place where people noticed strange things. A group of foreign armored knights and men-at-arms traveling hard and asking after two girls was a bit out of the ordinary. Even though he was a stranger himself, it wasn’t hard to start people talking if he was polite and bought something.
Near Teremene he’d met the knights at a bend in the road, headed back toward Paldh. By the time he realized who they were, it was too late to try and hide. Instead he could only ride forward, reckoning that they wouldn’t recognize him. They didn’t, and the girls weren’t with them.
There wasn’t much he could do then but keep going. Either they had found Anne and Austra and killed them, or they had given up the chase. The last seemed unlikely, and so it was with a heavy heart that he entered Teremene. It was there, with a few well-placed questions and paying three times what he ought for a beer, he’d discovered that a few of the knights, “the really unpleasant ones,” had gone off north, and some even said they had captives with them, a couple of Vitellian men.