into keeping its distance. The bodies were deliberately left on the road where they’d be found. After twenty years’ peace under King Marcus, the citizens were completely unprepared for this level of brutality.
Ahead of me a light moved on the side of the road, arcing back and forth in the air. As I got closer, I made out a torch waving to get my attention.
Again I drew my sword and put it on the wagon seat beside me. I had no shield, so if they had arrows, I’d be a pincushion. I stopped the wagon fifty feet away and called, “Who’s there?”
“I’ve got an injured Knight of the Double Tarn here,” a woman’s voice said. “Can you help me?”
I crouched as much as I could to make a smaller target. “How’d he get injured?”
“How do you think? Those dirty bastards who came through here cut him up and left him for dead.”
“Who is he?”
“Says his name is Kay.”
Well, hell. I jumped from the wagon and cautiously approached the torch. The old woman holding it had limp white hair and clothes that had never been new. “Where is he?”
She warningly pointed the torch in my direction. “Not so fast. How do I know you’re not one of them?”
“How do I know you’ve really got an injured knight?”
She pondered this, then raised the torch. “I reckon at this point it doesn’t matter. I’ve got nothing left anyway. Come on.”
I followed her down into the shallow, dry ditch. The torchlight reflected off armor that moved a little as we approached. A sword waved a weak warning in our direction.
“It’s okay,” the woman said. “It’s me. I’ve brought help.”
Bob Kay lay on his side, a bloody makeshift bandage around his neck. His face shone with sweat and his breathing was louder than the crackling torch. He lowered the sword but kept his hand around the hilt.
I knelt beside him. “Bob, it’s me, Eddie.”
It took him a moment to focus on me, and another moment for recognition to hit. “LaCrosse?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?” His voice was thin and raspy.
“Isn’t that my line?”
He grabbed the front of my tunic with his empty hand and pulled me close. “Elliot never showed up, you bastard. You betrayed us.”
“The hell I did,” I said, and slapped his hand away. I was too tired to endure insults. He fell forward, and if I hadn’t caught him, he would’ve landed on his face. I pushed him back onto his side and said, “I got to Blithe Ward and delivered the message. He should’ve been at Nodlon yesterday morning.”
Kay’s eyes closed and his head sagged. “Then they got him, too. I went to find him under a flag of truce, and as soon as I got out of sight of Nodlon, they jumped me.” He sighed despairingly. “Without Elliot…”
“Is Ted Medraft behind all this? Did he bring in an army of mercenaries?”
Kay nodded, then winced at the movement and gingerly clutched his neck. “All those months he was supposed to be protecting our northern coast from raiders, he’s been hiring them instead. He’s got Marcus pinned at Nodlon. Brilliant move, tactically speaking. At Motlace, Medraft never could’ve forced a confrontation, but Nodlon’s not set up to endure a siege.” Kay coughed painfully. “How that little pig turd and his mother managed to pull all this together…”
“How bad is your neck?”
He shrugged. “Hurts like a bastard. Hard to breathe. But it can’t be too bad if I’m not dead yet.” He raised up on his elbows. “Polly here fixed me up. She’s got a sure hand.”
The white-haired woman shrugged. “I’ve had three husbands. They all tended to get into scrapes.”
I leaned close to Kay. “Listen, I know what’s happened and why. But we have to get to Nodlon before the real fight starts, and before Marcus does anything he can’t undo. And I have a secret weapon.”
“You’ve been busy,” Kay rasped. “Sorry for doubting you. Hard to know who to trust anymore on this fucking island.”
I nodded. “Ain’t it the truth.”
He saw the sword in its scabbard across my back. “That looks like one of Elliot’s.”
“I told you I found him.”
“Yeah. There was a time a whole division’s worth of men couldn’t have stopped him from getting to Jennifer. I guess we all slow down when we get older.”
Kay was a big man, and it wasn’t easy moving him out of the ditch; he was weak and couldn’t really help. Polly and I got him onto the road, and they waited while I brought the wagon closer.
Both of them stared at the coffin. “What the hell is that?” Polly asked.
“ Who the hell is that?” Kay rephrased.
“Just a favor I’m doing for someone,” I said.
“Is that your secret weapon?” Kay muttered as he struggled up onto the seat. I didn’t answer.
“What about me?” Polly said. “You going to leave an old lady by the side of the road?”
“We’re heading literally into the middle of a battle,” I said. “Hopefully we’ll get there before it actually starts, but I can’t guarantee it. You sure you want to come?”
She gestured around her with the torch. “There’s not a standing farmhouse or a living person within ten miles of this road. I won’t be much better off.”
“You’ll have to ride in the back.”
She scraped the torch across the road stones and extinguished it in a shower of sparks. Then she jumped over the tailgate with surprising nimbleness. “It’s not the first time I’ve ridden with a coffin. Who’s in it?”
I didn’t answer. I made sure Kay wouldn’t fall off, then urged the horses on their way. We headed west into the blazing clouds toward Nodlon Castle.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Kay was too weak, and Polly apparently disinclined, so we rode without talking. I kept tabs on the old woman out of the corner of my eye; I knew exactly what her game was. But she just watched the fires, her expression unreadable.
The road became an obstacle course of bodies, both human and livestock. The nauseating death smell grew stronger as well. At one point I had to stop and drag an overlapping pile of corpses aside to make room for the wagon. They were tied together at the wrists and weren’t all adults. They’d been marched here and then executed; the family dog, no doubt loyally tagging along, was on the bottom.
When I returned to the wagon, Polly said flatly, “What a mess.”
“You think?” I said, and snapped the reins before she could reply.
AT last the rising sun burned through the cloud cover and showed the full extent of the damage. Homes were reduced to their stone parts. Fields smoldered, bodies lay everywhere, and livestock stood numbly, not sure whether to flee or graze. Buzzards began to appear in the sky as wolves skittered for the shadows. The worst part was the utter silence: there seemed to be no wounded, only the dead.
“That son of a bitch,” Kay muttered. “That son of a bitch. This was never supposed to happen again. We promised the people it wouldn’t, and they trusted us. They made this a country, not just an island.” His rage, even muted by his injury, was fearsome.
“Why would he do this?” Polly asked from the back, as calmly as if discussing a pot roast.
“Because he enjoys it, the son of a bitch,” Kay said. “As a kid he liked to cut the legs off birds and watch them try to land.”
I remembered the adolescent Medraft I’d encountered. This is exactly how I’d have guessed he’d grow up. But as I came to appreciate the scale of it, it no longer made sense as a tactic. “If he’s planning a coup, then he must believe that all this will be his soon. Why destroy it?”
“I don’t know,” Kay growled. “You can be sure there’s a plan, though. Courtesy of the poison-titted bitch that suckled him.”