I never imagined saying this, but there wasn’t any reason not to. At least to Vendurro. “I suppose I envy you that. Well, I know I do. You have something I’ll never experience. Maybe someday I’ll find a place that becomes home. I’d thought Rivermost might have been it, but I sort of knew the entire time that was temporary, too. I doubt I’d have ridden off with Captain Killcoin otherwise. But what you Syldoon have… The intense bonds. The allegiance. The blood oaths to your comrades. That’s truly unlike anything else I’ve seen or heard of, even among other soldiers.”
“No lie, that. None at all.”
I sighed, and got angry at myself for doing so. “No matter where I set down roots and make a home out of, I’ll never know the world as you do. It’s quite… something.” The conversation had turned much too earnest, probably for either of our tastes, so I added, “If I could have that without having to be a slave for a tenyear, and then kill men routinely after, well, that would be lovely.”
Vendurro laughed, loud enough that the soldier in front of him looked over his shoulder before seeing me and wondering if his comrade was laughing at me, then assuming he must have been, faced front again.
“Plague me,” Vendurro said. “When you put it like that, I kind of do miss my family.” Then we laughed together, earning a scowl over the shoulder from the same soldier in front.
It felt good to laugh after witnessing the battle in Alespell. Not just witnessing, I reminded myself. I had participated in the worst way possible. Even if it had been defending myself and Skeelana, I had taken a life. And what’s more, suggested freeing the ripper, which had surely ended several more. I almost felt guilty laughing, but still, it felt good.
We were quiet for a minute after the laughter died away, and while I was reluctant to ask or say anything that might spoil the moment, I never knew when I would have another opportunity, so I gave it a go. “You said you’ve been in Anjuria for three years?”
Vendurro nodded. “Something like that. Wasn’t counting the days. Ought to ask Hewspear. That man knows something about practically everything. The lieutenant could probably tell you down to the minute.”
“And Lloi had been in the company for two? Or close to?”
Vendurro thought about it, then replied, “Near enough.”
I glanced over my shoulder to be sure no one was immediately behind us. “And how long has Captain Killcoin had Bloodsounder then?”
Vendurro said, “About four years, give or take. About a year before we come to Anjuria. Thereabouts.”
“And how did he come to have it? Lloi told me he unearthed Blood-sounder. But she wasn’t with him, obviously. What did she mean by that?”
Vendurro looked at me, lower lip moving back and forth, dragging that patch of sandy hair on his chin with it, as he seemed to be wrestling with how to, or whether to, respond. Then he looked ahead to make sure no one was close enough to hear. As the company had the road to ourselves, we had spread out a fair amount-someone would need to drop back or ride forward quite a bit to make out our conversation. “I was there, as it happened. Kind of wishing I hadn’t been. But Cap, guessing he’s wishing the same right about now.”
“Where was ‘there’?”
“We was riding screen for the army. In-”
“Riding screen?”
Vendurro stopped himself. “Easy to forget the only things you know about soldiering you read in some book or other. You seen the captain sending scouts ahead, behind, all around?” I nodded and he continued. “Well, an army, they do the same thing, only bigger like. Usually send a small unit. Scour the countryside for stores of food, signs of the enemy. Sometimes sent out to destroy crops, or poison wells, or work up some other kind of mischief. That’s what the crossbow cavalry was best at-scouting, gathering intelligence, taking what needed to be taken, breaking what needed breaking.”
“Crossbow cavalry? I take it you mean this unit?”
Vendurro tapped the side of his long nose. “Yup. Nailed it true, Arki. But this is only a portion of it. Anyway, the army was on the move. This was in the hills of Gurtagoi. We weren’t at war with the Anjurians just then, so this wasn’t the army entire or nothing. Just a few battalions, set to check out reports of some movement from uppity Gurtagese bandits. Worst kind of screening there is-just getting a lay of the countryside, not expecting any scrapes, not stirring up trouble of any note. Just riding. Sleeping. Riding. Sleeping. So when we come upon a burial mound, and Cap said he wanted to take a closer look, we were half bored out of our minds and all curious as cats.”
I’d read about burial mounds, but never seen one. “You said Gurtagoi? There weren’t any tribes or clans in the vicinity, were there? If memory serves, this province had been settled for some time, right?”
“Yup. A lot of open country, still, but no active tribes that I know of. Any that lived there were wiped out or moved on a long time ago. Why?”
“Well, my studies indicated that burial mounds in active tribe lands might have something worthwhile in them. But since this was in a settled region, open or not, I’m guessing it would have been looted a long time ago, wouldn’t it? So what caused the captain to want to investigate?”
Vendurro scratched at his stubbly neck with two fingers. “Can’t rightly say. You weren’t the only one who had that thought. A few of the men said the same thing. Mulldoos the loudest. But you seen the Cap-when he gets a thought lodged proper in his head…”
“A blacksmith with tongs couldn’t pull it out.”
Vendurro chuckled. “Right. And you got to remember-well, maybe you don’t, since you probably didn’t know this in the first of all, but Cap, before he was with the Syldoon, him and his sister-” he looked up the line at Soffjian. “They were something of experts when it came to robbing burial mounds. To hear him tell it. So maybe he gleaned something in the flowers and dirt, or the slope of the land, or devils know what he saw-but he seemed real certain this mound was worth exploring for a bit. And since we weren’t in a bull-busting hurry just then, most of the men were more than happy to let the horses graze and lay in the thistles while the Cap and a few of us investigated.
“We followed his lead as we walked the perimeter. Looked like a big mound of grass most of the way, until we came to the entrance. A big old stone slab in place, bunch of squiggly carving worked into the face. Cap told us to find some logs to bust in there. Mulldoos, he looked at Cap, you know, like he does, and said, ‘Cap, what makes you think somebody else ain’t busted in here in before now? Why are we playing in the dirt? Let’s get back to camp.’
“But Cap, being Cap, said, ‘Have you no spirit of adventure, Lieutenant?’ Well, Mulldoos weren’t one to have the size of his manhood questioned, so he helped fetch some logs and pry that stone slab off the entrance. Heavier than it looked. Took some sweat from all of us, but we finally worked it free.”
“Did you have torches?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have thought to bring none, it being midday and all, and the mound didn’t look all that big, figured enough sun would come down there with us to see what was what. But Cap insisted we get some ready, which earned him another of those Mulldoos looks. But we went about it, worked something up, started inside.”
I asked, “Did it… smell?”
Vendurro laughed. “Now that you mention it, it did. But not like death or rot. Just a stale, trapped sort of smell. Like the earth had belched but never had a hole to let it out. So we hoisted those makeshift torches, started in. The dirt floor was packed tight, covered in dust of the ages, and there weren’t footprints that I could make out. Didn’t look to me like no one had broken in there before us. As we started down the incline, Hewspear must have been thinking on that and said, ‘Captain,’-you know, never have heard him shorten it, just wouldn’t sit right with him, I suppose-‘Captain,’ he says, ‘I do have a spirit of adventure. But don’t you find it peculiar that a crypt like this would have been undisturbed for so long?’”