Agalas waved the Houseblades forward and they all rode past the stranger.
‘That wasn’t much help,’ Cryl said as they continued on up the road.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Agalas, ‘but I’m not buying it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, sir, he wasn’t quite right. Not sure.’
‘I could see him as a caravan guard.’
She nodded. ‘But his horse was a damned good animal, well groomed and well fed, and the tack was clean.’
Cryl considered. ‘Any man long on the road would do well to take care of his mount and tack.’
‘As to that, sir, he wasn’t carrying much gear. I don’t know, is all I’m saying.’
‘Wonder who gave him that beating. He was armed, after all.’
She shot him a look and then reined in hard. The Houseblades veered past her, drawing up in confusion. Cryl halted his own horse and swung round to face the sergeant. ‘What is it?’
‘His sword, sir. It was Legion issue.’
Cryl frowned. ‘Hardly surprising — those weapons must have flooded the market stalls after the disbanding.’
‘You’d think so, sir, but they didn’t. Maybe you heard different, but I’m saying they didn’t. Soldiers kept their gear.’
‘No, I believe you. I only assumed.’ He looked back down the road but the stranger was already out of sight. ‘So he’s ex-Legion. Might be riding to join up with a renegade troop-’
‘Sir, we went with the Lord this morning. We saw the Deniers, that village, it was a place of slaughter. The killers just cut ’em all down. Children too. It was butchery.’
‘So what was he, then?’ Cryl asked. ‘A scout? If so, he was coming from the wrong direction and heading the wrong way.’
‘I don’t know, sir. I don’t know what to think, but it feels all wrong here. All of it.’
He studied her weathered face, the flat eyes. If she was in an excited state, he’d not know it from looking at her. ‘Sergeant, a word alone, please.’
They rode on ahead and then reined in again.
‘Sir?’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Cryl confessed. ‘Lord Jaen commanded us to return to Enes House. He fears for his household. If that lone rider’s a scout, then the renegades must be somewhere ahead and that would mean that they’d already hit the estate — assuming they were planning on doing so. But I see no dust above the way ahead, and we’re not close enough to see smoke if they attacked the Lord’s house.’
She said nothing, watching him, her gloved hands folded on the saddle horn.
‘But they wouldn’t attack a wedding procession,’ Cryl said.
‘We need to keep an eye on the road, sir. Study the tracks ahead. Lone rider or lots of riders? Headed which way? Problem is, sir, there’s trails through the forest, some of ’em running parallel with this road.’
‘Is this your suggestion, sergeant?’
‘We can reach Enes House before dusk, sir.’
‘They wouldn’t attack a wedding procession,’ Cryl said again. ‘Deniers — well, you’ve seen the proof of that.’ Still he hesitated. Lord Jaen had promoted him, given him this command, and the orders were explicit. Return to Enes House. Muster the full garrison of Houseblades. Prepare for an attack. ‘Abyss below, one lone stranger on the road and suddenly nothing is clear!’
‘I told you he was wrong, sir. And he is. All wrong.’
‘That beating was days old-’
‘More like a week, sir, or even two. That wasn’t swelling, just dead nerves.’
Cryl fidgeted, hating himself, hating his indecision. Lord Jaen had but eight Houseblades in that train. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said again.
She frowned. ‘Sir, you got your orders. Lord Jaen rides to a gathering of highborn.’
‘And no one would dare attack a wedding procession.’
‘Unless they’ve lost their minds. Sir, it’s all down to that rider.’
‘Should we ride back and question him?’
‘If you give me leave, sir, me and two of my Houseblades will do just that. If I have to, I’ll ask my questions with the point of my knife. Why’s he riding south? That’s the key to it all. It don’t make sense.’
‘Take two with the strongest mounts, sergeant, and waste no time,’ Cryl commanded. ‘We will continue on and you ride to catch us up — or you send one rider and take yourself and the other to Lord Jaen, if — well, if it’s necessary. No, wait, take four, not two.’
‘Yes sir. We shouldn’t be long.’
‘If he’s an innocent, I feel for him,’ Cryl said.
‘If he’s an innocent,’ Agalas replied, ‘his run of bad luck ain’t ending soon.’
They rode back. Cryl watched the sergeant select four Houseblades and set off at a gallop. He eyed the eight who remained. She’d left him Corporal Rees, a round-faced veteran with a caustic sense of humour, but there was little amusement in the man’s visage today. ‘Corporal Rees, I’ll have you ride at my side.’
‘Send scouts ahead, sir?’
‘Yes. But we will now ride without rest.’
‘Understood, sir,’ Rees replied. ‘Don’t worry about the sergeant, sir — she’ll get the bastard to talk.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Agalas’s been on the other end of torture, sir.’
‘She has?’
Rees nodded severely. ‘I got drunk one night and cornered her. Told her my whole life story, sir. But she survived. Most of her sanity intact, too.’
Cryl shot the corporal a look. ‘It’s already a day of blood, corporal. I really don’t think you’ll win much laughter with comments like that one.’
‘Wasn’t thinking about laughter, sir.’
Cryl let it pass.
They cantered on, horse hoofs thundering under them.
Ever since the huts and their dead, and the soldiers he’d found camped further along the trail, everything had gone wrong for Kadaspala. His mule had plunged a hoof down a burrow hole and snapped its foreleg in half. The artist had toppled from the animal’s back, landing awkwardly on his paint box, and then received a solid kick from the braying, thrashing beast, leaving his left thigh so bruised he could barely walk.
He had considered making his way back to the soldiers, but by then they had been a half-day behind him — assuming they’d not moved on. His agitation deepened when he realized that he had lost track of the date — that he was, perhaps, at risk of arriving too late to accompany the procession from Enes House. Once his father and sister arrived at the site of Andarist’s new estate, there would be two days of preparations before the ceremony. Even half lame and loaded down with equipment as he was, he expected to reach them before the ceremony. It was, he decided, the best he could hope for.
Cutting the mule’s throat had proved messy and brutal, leaving him sprayed in blood and sickened by the deed.
When he looked down at his stained hands and clothes, he felt as if he had caught a curse from the Deniers’ camp, and blood was now following him everywhere, a trail of culpability steeped in death and dying. The child’s dead face returned to him, no longer ghostly, no longer sketched in the air by the fingers of one hand, but hard with accusation now. That child had made him a consort with the ending of lives, Tiste and beast, the wild into the tamed and the tamed into the decrepit, and all was sullied, all was ruined.
He limped on through the afternoon, the straps rubbing his shoulders raw, the insects biting through his sweat — but with all that he carried he could not brush or wave them away, forcing him to suffer their frenzy.
Art failed reality. Each and every time, it failed in the essence of experience. A work could but achieve the merest hints of what was real and immediate: the tactile discomforts, the pangs of disequilibrium, the smells of endeavour and the shaky unease of a rattled mind. It pawed bluntly at immediate truths and fumbled blindly
