Twelve hours later he was on the line they had planned for Henri and the girl to take. But ten miles ahead, just in case. Then he started to walk back down the line to make sure he didn’t miss them, all the while keeping as hidden as he could so that the Redeemers Kleist was supposed to be spotting didn’t blunder into him or he into them. It was only a few hours before he found all three of them standing in a large hollow surrounded by some twenty mutilated bodies, some cut into small pieces. The others saw him from a hundred yards away and waited, without moving, as he walked through the scatter of dead bodies. He nodded to all three of them.
“The Redeemers have gone to the west,” he said.
“Last time I was with mine, they’d turned east.”
Then there was silence.
“Any idea who they are?” said Cale, nodding at the dead.
“No,” said Vague Henri.
“They’ve been dead for about a day, I’d say,” said Kleist.
Riba had something of the same stunned look about her Cale had seen when he rescued her from Picarbo-a look that said: this isn’t happening.
“How long have you been here?” he asked softly.
“About twenty minutes. We met Kleist on the way here a couple of hours ago.”
Cale nodded. “We’d better search them. Whoever did this hasn’t left much, but there might be some salvage.”
The three boys started to search among the remains, finding the occasional coin, a belt, a torn coat. Then Vague Henri spotted something shiny in the sand next to a severed head and quickly brushed the sand away, only to discover it was a brass knuckle duster. He was disappointed, but it was at least useful.
“Help me,” groaned the severed head.
With a cry Henri leapt backward.
“It spoke to me, it spoke to me!”
“What?” said Kleist, irritable.
“The head. It spoke.”
“Help me,” groaned the head.
“See!” said Vague Henri.
Carefully Cale approached the head with his knife and poked it in the temple. The head groaned but did not open his eyes.
“They’ve buried him up to his neck,” he said after a moment of careful consideration. The three boys, familiar with human atrocity, realized now that nothing supernatural was involved. They all looked down at the buried man and considered what was to be done.
“We should dig him out,” said Vague Henri.
“No,” said Kleist. “Whoever did this went to a lot of trouble. I can’t see they’d take kindly to us ruining their efforts. We should leave well alone.”
“Help me,” whispered the man again.
Vague Henri looked at Cale. “Well?” he said.
Cale said nothing, thinking carefully.
“We haven’t got all day, Cale,” said Kleist. By now Cale was looking into the distance.
“No, we haven’t.” Cale’s tone of voice was odd, alarming. The other two looked up, following his flat gaze. At the top of the nearest hillock, about three hundred yards away, a line of Redeemers was looking down at them. Then the line began to move.
The boys, all three of them pale, stood still. There was nowhere to run. Riba moved first, running forward to get a better look at the line of men marching toward them.
“No. No. No,” she said, over and over again.
Vague Henri, white as flour, looked at Cale.
“You drew the small stone,” he said.
Cale stared at his friend, eyes expressionless. There was a moment’s pause, and then Cale took out his knife and walked quickly toward Riba, who was still staring at the line of advancing men. As Cale moved to grab her hair and expose her neck, Kleist called out.
“Wait!”
At this Riba turned round. Cale had lowered the knife, but even in her terrified state she could see that something odd was happening.
“They’re not Redeemers,” said Kleist. “Whatever they are. Best just to let’s see what happens.”
As they watched, more men came over the top of the hillock, but they were on horses and leading behind them thirty more. The riders caught up with the men on foot, who then themselves mounted, and within less than a minute, fifty or so bad-tempered cavalrymen surrounded the four of them. Half of them dismounted and began examining the remains of the bodies. The others, swords drawn, just stared at the four.
One of the cavalrymen looking at the bodies called out: “Captain, it’s the Embassy from Arnhemland. This is Lord Pardee’s son.”
The captain, a large man on an enormous horse nearly twenty hands high, moved it forward and dismounted. He walked over to Cale and without pausing fetched him such a hefty blow to the face that the boy crashed heavily to the ground.
“Before we execute you, I want to know who ordered this.”
Dazed and in pain, Cale did not answer. The captain was about to add a kick of encouragement when Vague Henri spoke up.
“It was nothing to do with us, Lord. We only came on them just now. Do we look as if we could have done this?” Henri thought it best to tell the truth. “We only have one knife between us. How could we?”
The captain looked at him and then back at Cale. Then he delivered a hefty kick to Cale’s stomach.
“Fair enough. We won’t cut your throats for murder-we’ll do it for looting.”
He looked over at the small pile of things they had collected from whatever the killers had missed-a bag, a plate, some kitchen knives and dried fruit as well as the brass knuckle duster. Henri could see that it looked bad.
“One of them’s still alive. We were just about to dig him out,” Henri pointed to the now unconscious man who, more than ever, looked like a severed head in the dust.
Quickly the soldiers surrounded him and began digging at the sand and gravel.
“It’s Chancellor Vipond,” said one of them. The captain waved them to stop and knelt down, taking out a flask of water. Gently he poured a little into the unconscious man’s mouth. He coughed, spitting all the water back.
By now one of the soldiers had brought forward a pair of shovels, and within five minutes they had eased the man out of the sand and laid him on the ground. There was much listening to his heart and checking him for wounds.
“We were going to save him,” said Henri, as Cale looked at the captain malevolently from his pitch in the dust.
“That’s what you say. All I know for sure is that you’re a bunch of thieves. No reason not to sell the girl and kill you three.”
“Don’t be unreasonable, Captain Bramley, darling,” called out a man’s voice from behind a mounted cavalryman’s horse. That he was not one of them was clear from the fact that he did not wear a uniform and that both his hands were tied and hung from a rope knotted to the saddle of the horse in front of him.
“Shut your big gob, IdrisPukke,” said the captain.
But IdrisPukke was clearly not a man to do as he was told.
“Be wise for once, Captain, darling. You know that Chancellor Vipond and me go back time out of mind. He wouldn’t take kindly, I’d say, to you killing three young men who’d tried to save him. What do you think?”
The captain looked uncertain for the first time. IdrisPukke dropped the mocking tone. “He’d want the chance to make up his own mind. That’s for certain.”
The captain looked down at the unconscious man, now being put onto a stretcher with a rolled blanket under his head. He looked back at IdrisPukke.
“One more word out of you and, I swear to God, I’ll disembowel you where you stand. Understand me?”
IdrisPukke shrugged but wisely, thought Vague Henri, said nothing. “Grady! Fog!” the captain called out to two soldiers. “Stay close to this gobshite. And if he even looks like he’s going to try and escape, blow his bloody head off.”