The captain shook his head. ‘Gelfred, I’m still mocking you. I have problems with God. But you are a good man doing his best and I apologise for my needling. Now – be a good fellow and pass your wand over the snow.’
Gelfred knelt in the snow.
The captain winced at how cold his knees must be, even through his thigh high boots.
Gelfred spoke four prayers aloud – three Pater Nosters and an Ave Maria. Then he put his beads back in his belt. He raised his face to the captain. ‘I accept your apology,’ he said. He took the wand from his belt, raised it, and it snapped upright as if it had been struck by a sword.
Gelfred dug with his gloved hands. He didn’t need to dig far.
There was a man’s corpse. He had died slowly, from an arrow in the thigh that had severed an artery – that much they could reasoned from the blood that soaked his braes and hose into a frozen scarlet mass.
All of his garments were undyed wool, off white, well made. He wore a quiver that was full of good arrows with hardened steel heads – the captain drew them one by one and tested the heads against his vambrace.
Gelfred shook his head. The arrows alone were worth a small fortune.
The dead man’s belt pouch had a hundred leopards or more in gold and silver, a fine dagger with a bronze and bone hilt and a set of eating tools set into the scabbard, and his hood and cloak were matching undyed wool.
Gelfred opened his cloak and took out a chain with an enamelled leaf.
‘Good Christ,’ he said, and sat back.
The captain was searching the snow using his sword as a rake, combing up old branches under the scant snow cover.
He found the bow after a minute. If was a fine war bow, heavy, sleek, and powerful – not yet ruined by the exposure to the snow.
Gelfred found the arrow that had killed him after assiduous casting, using his power profligately, casting it wider and wider. He had the body, had the blood, had the quiver. The connections were strong enough that it was only a matter of time, unless the arrow was a very long way away.
In fact, the arrow was near the road where they had left it, almost on their trail, buried in six inches of snow. Blood was still frozen to the ground where the arrow had been torn from the wound.
The arrow was virtually identical to the fifteen in the quiver.
‘Mmm,’ said the captain.
They took turns watching the woods while the other stripped the corpse of clothes, chain, boots, belt, knife – of everything.
‘Why didn’t something eat him?’ Gelfred asked.
‘Enough power here to frighten any animal,’ the captain said. ‘Why didn’t the man who killed him strip his corpse and take the arrows? And the knife?’ He shook his head. ‘I confess, Gelfred – this is-’ he snorted.
Gelfred didn’t raise his eyes. ‘There’s plenty of folk live in the Wild.’
‘I know
Gelfred shrugged. ‘He isn’t an Outwaller.’ He looked at the captain as if he expected trouble. ‘He’s one of those men and women who want to bring down the lords. They say we’ll – that is, that they’ll be free.’ His voice was detached and curiously non-committal.
The captain made a face. ‘He’s a Jack, isn’t he? The bow? The leaf brooch? I’ve heard the songs.’ He shook his head at his huntsman. ‘I know there’s folk who want to burn the castles. If I were born a serf, I’d be out there with my pitchfork, right now. But Jacks? Men dedicated to fighting for the Wild? Who would fund them? How do they recruit? It makes no sense.’ He shrugged. ‘To be honest, I’d always assumed the Jacks were made up by the lords to justify their own atrocities. Shows what a little youthful cynicism will get you.’
Gelfred shrugged. ‘There are always rumours.’ His eyes slipped away from the captain’s.
‘You’re not some sort of secret rebel, Gelfred?’ The captain forced the other man to meet his eyes.
Gelfred shrugged. ‘Does it brand me a traitor to say that sometimes the whole sick wheel of the world makes me want to kill?’ He dropped his eyes, and the anger went out of him. ‘I don’t. But I understand the outlaws and the outwallers.’
The captain smiled. ‘There. At last, you and I have something in common.’ He rolled the frozen corpse and used the dead man’s sharp knife to slit his hose up the back. He cut the waistband of the man’s linen braes, stiff with frozen blood, and took them as well. He got a sack from his heavy leather male that sat behind his saddle, and filled it with the dead man’s belongings.
He tossed the purse to Gelfred. ‘Get us some dogs,’ he said.
Naked, the dead man didn’t look like a soldier in the army of evil. The thought made the captain purse his lips. He leaned over the corpse – as white as the snow around it – and rolled it over again.
The death wound went in under the arm, straight to the heart, and had been delivered with a slim bladed knife. The captain took his time, looking at it.
‘His killer came and finished him. And was so panicked, they didn’t know their man was already dead.’
‘Already dead?’ Gelfred asked.
‘Not much blood. Look at his cote. There’s the entry – there’s the blood. But not much.’ The captain crouched on his heels. ‘This is a puzzle. What do you see, Gelfred?’
‘His kit is better than ours,’ Gelfred said.
‘Satan pays well,’ the captain shrugged. ‘Or perhaps he merely pays on time.’ He looked around. ‘This is not what we came for. Let’s go back to the trail and look for the monster.’ He paused. ‘Gelfred, how can you conjure with Witch’s Bane?’
Gelfred walked a few paces. ‘I’ve heard it can’t be done,’ he said with a shrug. ‘But it can. It’s like mucking out a stall – you just try not to get the shit on you.’
The captain looked at his huntsman with a whole new appreciation. Sparring about religion had defined their relationship in the weeks since the captain had engaged him.
‘You are potent,’ the captain said.
Gelfred shook his head eyes on the trees. ‘I feel that we’ve disturbed a balance,’ he said, ignoring the compliment.
The captain led his horse to a downed tree. He could vault into the saddle, but he felt sore in every limb, and his neck hurt where the wyvern had tried to snap it, and he was still more than a little hung over, and he used the downed tree to mount.
‘All the more reason to keep moving,’ he said. ‘We’re not in the Jack-hunting business, Gelfred. We kill monsters.’
Gelfred shrugged. ‘My lord-’ he began. He looked away. ‘You have power of your own. Yes?’
The captain felt a little frisson run down his back.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A little.’
‘Hmm,’ Gelfred said, noncommittally. ‘So. Now that I have eliminated the . . . the Jack from my casting, I can concentrate on the other creature.’ He paused. ‘They were bound together. At least,’ he looked scared. ‘At least, that’s how it seemed to me.’
The captain looked at his huntsman. ‘Why do you think someone killed the Jack, Gelfred?’
Gelfred shook his head.
‘A Jack helps a monster kill a nun. Then, another man kills him.’ The captain shivered. The chainmail under his arming cote did a wonderful job of conducting the cold straight to his chest.
Gelfred didn’t meet his eye.
‘Not money. Not weapons.’ The captain began to look around. ‘I think we’re being watched.’
Gelfred nodded.
‘How long had the Jack been dead?’ the captain asked.
‘Two days.’ Gelfred was sure, as only the righteous can be sure.
The captain stroked his beard. ‘Makes no sense,’ he said.
They rode back to the track, and Gelfred hesitated before facing west. And then they began to ride.
‘The stag was a sign from God,’ Gelfred said. ‘And that means the Jacks are but tools of Satan.’
The captain looked at his huntsman with the kind of look fathers usually have for young children.
Which, the captain thought, was odd, since Gelfred was ten years his senior.
