"What were their crimes?" the boy asked. His throat was thick and constricted and it was difficult to form the words. Again, Deparnieux gave him that unconcerned smile. He made a pretense of trying to think.
"Let's say 'various,'" he replied. "In short, they displeased me."
Horace held the other man's amused gaze for a few seconds, then, shaking his head, he turned away. He tried to keep his own gaze from the tattered, sorry figures hanging above him. There must have been more than twenty of them all told. Then his horror increased as he realized that not all of them were dead. In one of the cages, he saw the imprisoned figure moving. At first, he thought it was an illusion, caused by the movement of the man's clothing in the wind. Then one hand reached through the bars as they drew closer and a pitiful croaking sound came from the cage.
Unmistakably, it was a cry for mercy.
"Oh my God," said Horace softly, and he heard Halt's sharp intake of breath beside him.
Deparnieux reined in his black horse and sat, easing his weight to one side in the saddle. "Recognize him?" he asked, an amused tone in his voice. "You saw him the other night, in the tavern."
Horace frowned, puzzled. The man wasn't familiar to him. But there had been at least a dozen people in the tavern on the night when they had first encountered the warlord. He wondered why he should be expected to remember this man more than any of the others.
Then Halt said, in a cold voice: "He was the one who laughed."
Deparnieux gave a low chuckle. "That's right. He was a man of rare humor. Strange how his sense of fun seems to have deserted him now.
You'd think he might while away the hours with the odd merry jest."
And he shook his reins, slapping them on his battlehorse's neck and moving off once again. The entourage moved with him, stopping when he stopped, moving when he moved, and forcing Halt and Horace to keep pace.
Horace looked at Halt once more, seeking some message of comfort there. The Ranger met his gaze for a few seconds, then slowly nodded.
He understood how the boy was feeling, sickened by the depravity and abject cruelty he was witnessing. Somehow, Horace found a little comfort from Halt's nod. He touched his knee to Kicker's side and urged him forward.
And together, they rode toward the dark and forbidding castle that waited for them.
27
T HE PONY WAS WHERE E RAK HAD TOLD HER IT WOULD BE. I T stood tethered to a sapling, its hindquarters turned patiently to the icy wind that was bringing the snow clouds lower over Hallasholm. Evanlyn untied the rope bridle and the little horse came docilely along. Above their heads, the wind sighed through the pine needles, sounding like some strange inland surf as it stirred the snow-clad branches.
Will followed her dumbly, staggering in the calf-deep snow that covered the path. It was hard going for Evanlyn, but even harder for the boy, exhausted and worn out as he was from weeks of hard labor with insufficient food or warmth. Soon, she knew, she should stop and find the warm clothing that Erak had said was inside the pack on the pony's back. And she'd probably need to let Will ride the pony if they were to make any distance before dawn. But, for the moment, she wanted no delay, no matter how short. All her instincts told her to continue, to put as much distance as possible between them and the Skandian township, and to do it as fast as she could.
The path wound up into the mountains and she leaned forward, into the wind, leading the pony with one hand and holding Will's icy-cold hand in the other. Together, they stumbled on, slipping on the thick snow, staggering over tree roots and rocks that were hidden beneath its smooth surface.
After half an hour's traveling, she felt the first tentative flakes of snow brushing her face as they fell. Then they were tumbling down in earnest, heavy and thick. She paused, looking at the path behind them, where their footprints were already half obscured. Erak had known it would snow heavily tonight, she thought. He had waited until his sailor's instincts had told him that all signs of their passage would be covered. For the first time since she had crept out of the Lodge's open gateway, she felt her heart lift with hope.
Perhaps, after all, things would work out for them.
Behind her, Will stumbled and, muttering incoherently, fell to his knees in the snow. She turned to him and realized that he was shivering and blue with the cold, virtually done in. Moving to the pack slung over the pony's back, she unlaced the fastenings and rummaged inside.
There was a thick sheepskin vest, among other items, and she draped it around the shivering boy's shoulders, helping him push his arms through the armholes. He stared at her dully as she did so. He was a dumb animal, mutely accepting whatever befell him. She could hit him, she knew, and he would make no attempt to avoid the blow, or to strike back at her. Sadly, she contemplated him, remembering him as he had been. Erak had said he could possibly recover, although very few warmweed addicts ever got the chance. Isolated in the mountains as they would be, Will was going to have every opportunity to break the vicious cycle of the drug. She prayed now that the Skandian Jarl was right, and that it was possible for an addict, deprived of warmweed, to make a full recovery.
She shoved the unresisting boy toward the pony, motioning for him to climb astride. For a moment he hesitated, then, clumsily, he hauled himself up into the saddle and sat there, swaying uncertainly, as she headed out again, following the forest pathway as it led them up into the mountains.
Around them, the fat flakes of snow continued to tumble down.
Erak watched the two figures move furtively off into the forest, taking the fork that he had described to Evanlyn. Satisfied that they were on their way, he followed them out of the stockade but continued past the point where they had turned off, and headed for the harbor instead.
There were no sentries posted at the Great Hall at this time of year. There was no fear of attackers, as the thick snows covering the mountains around them were more effective than any human sentries. But Erak was more cautious as he approached the harbor front. A watch was kept here, to ensure that the wolfships rode safely at their moorings.
A sudden squall could see the ships dragging their anchors and being cast up onshore, and so a few men were posted to give warning and rouse the duty crews in case of danger.
But they could just as easily see him and wonder what he was doing at this time of night, so he stayed in the shadows wherever he could.
His own ship, Wolfwind, was moored to the harbor quay and he boarded her silently, knowing that there was no duty crew present.
He'd dismissed them that afternoon, relying on his reputation as a weather forecaster to reassure them that there would be no strong winds that night. He leaned over the outboard bulwark and there, floating in the lee of the ship, was the small skiff he had moored there earlier in the day. He glanced at the way the boats in the harbor rode to their moorings and saw that the tide was still running out. He had timed his arrival to coincide with the falling tide and now he climbed quickly down into the smaller craft, felt around in the stern for the drainage plug and pulled it loose. The icy water cascaded in over his hands. When the boat was half-full, he replaced the plug and heaved himself back over the rail onto the wolfship.
Drawing his dagger, he cut through the painter holding the skiff alongside.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the little craft, already sitting lower in the water, began to slide astern, slowly at first, then with increasing speed as the tide drew it along. There was one oar in the boat, set in the oarlock. He'd arranged it that way in case the boat was found in the next few days. The combination of an empty boat, apparently swamped and half-full of water, with one oar missing, would all point to an accident. The skiff drifted down harbor, becoming lost to sight among the larger craft that crowded the anchorage.