The man, Vang, turned out to be one of Leddie’s horsemen. In fact, he was the small, slow one who had been sent to cut Pil’s throat. When I told him about that, he shrugged and said, “Sorry. I didn’t much want to kill her anyway.”
The woman, Affie, said she had been with these horrible, murdering dog-knockers just one week, and before that had led a blameless life of prayer and good works. She cried as she said, “I didn’t have any single idea what kind of men these were, not a single goddamn one! I thought they were some nice traveling tradesmen, out fixing pots and saddles from one nail-dick town to the next. I never killed a single soul myself, not me, not a single rotten soul at all, and I didn’t rob none, either. The deceivers tricked me! I’m the one who was hurt!” She dropped her face into her bound hands, and her shoulders shook like she was riding in a bad wagon on a rough road.
Vang belched. “Hell, woman, you’re going to kill me if I have to listen to much more of your bullshit.”
Affie snapped, “Shut up, you cross-eyed, thimble-balled son of a dripping bitch! You . . . you’re the murderer with blood on your sword! And human flesh in your bag—” She glanced up at me before sneering at Vang. “Maybe it was a pig shank, but it could as easily have been a baby’s leg! Couldn’t it, you soulless throat-pounder?”
I might have appreciated Affie’s vicious profanity more, but even after a nap, my head felt like a thumb that somebody had slammed in a door. I pointed at her. “You! Hush!” I turned to Vang. “Where are the rest of Leddie’s little boys?”
Vang peered off into the swamp. “Well, I shouldn’t say, I guess, since it would be traitorous and all.” He shifted one shoulder and then the other up and down as if they were scales, and he grimaced. “But I guess you can’t be a traitor unless you go against your king, and the captain and I ain’t got the same king. I’m not sure she has a king. And she already missed two paydays, which doesn’t make me love her too damn much.”
“He’s a liar!” Affie leaned toward Vang, and flecks of spit flew at him.
Vang sat up straight. “Which part was I lying about?”
“All of it!” Affie shouted. “Don’t listen to that maggot slime! I’m the one who can help you!”
Halla stood tall over Affie. “Be quiet if you do not want to be thrown into that water.”
Vang said, “The captain sent little groups of us off to watch the places where trails leave the swamp. If we saw you lot, we were supposed to ride hell for leather back to her with the word.” He nodded at Affie. “Three fellows and I were guarding the trail north of here when this banded bitch sneaks up with some friends and whacks me while I’m shitting behind a bush.”
“Oh, the untruths! Let me fight him!” Affie strained against the rope around her wrists. “The gods will see that the truthful are victorious!”
Halla thrust her spear into the ground between Affie’s legs, a finger’s width away from the woman’s crotch. “Be silent. Speak, and I will cut you in a bad way. Speak again, and I will cut off one finger for every word you say.”
Affie froze for several seconds before leaning back away from the spear.
Vang laughed until his eyes watered. “Thanks for that. I’ll help you for sure now.”
Halla and I combed a few more details out of Vang. Leddie had survived the falling tree, which I had suspected, although she’d been wounded in some way. She and her main force waited about four hours away, ready to run us down since we’d be afoot.
Whistler and Bea had dragged Peck and the eight dead bandits to the middle of the clearing and laid them in a row. Now Whistler was limping around, digging with a cracked wooden spade he’d found someplace. When I reached him, I saw that the three-foot square hole he had dug was nearly filled with water. He glanced up at me, reached into his shirt, and handed me something wrapped in dirty cloth.
I unwrapped it to find a dozen assorted coins, a nice ring, and a good whetstone. The cloth wrapping had been torn from one of the dead men’s shirts.
“That’s your share.” Whistler nodded and then jammed the spade into the ground again.
“Hell, I don’t need this.”
Whistler shrugged and took it back from me. A moment later, it was rewrapped and stuffed into his shirt. He returned to digging.
I kicked a few pounds of mud off my boots, a futile effort. “Whistler, leave off that work. You’ll open your wound, and I need you to take watch.”
The man gaped at me. “I can’t let them lie here. It’s not decent.”
I blinked a few times. “They weren’t too damn decent themselves. Getting eaten up by bugs and alligators is good enough for them.”
Whistler shook his head. “I can’t let them lie here and rot. It’s against the gods.”
“Oh, but once they’re dead, the gods are pleased for you to steal everything but their teeth?”
“No priest ever told me that taking a dead man’s things would make the gods mad.” Whistler glanced at me sideways. “Besides, is it worse to rob them or to kill them?”
I could have told Whistler how much the gods didn’t give two shits and a blind horse about whether he let these bodies rot, but nothing good could arise from arguing religion just then. “You’ll never get a hole big enough. This is a swamp—water would fill a bucket if you held it over your head.”
Whistler examined the hole. “Maybe I won’t. Or maybe the gods’ll hold back the water. I won’t know if I stop digging.”
I left the man to dig and walked over to Pil, who was handling Peck’s bow.
“May I take a look?” I asked.
She handed
