Fifth Quarter (42 page)

Vree and Gyhard stared past her a moment longer then, abruptly, both turned away, a silent question hanging between them.

What happens when we catch up?

He stopped suddenly, cocked his head, and listened to the silence. He could hear… He could hear… No. Nothing. But just for a moment, he thought…

The cart rolled by him, one laborious inch at a time. He turned as it passed until he faced back the way they'd come. In cities and towns and villages, where lives were crammed in close together, he could sense only
life
. Out where lives were spread across the land, he could sense each one. He sensed a small cluster of lives up ahead and to one side. He brushed over the lives of his companions, each one bending toward him like flames in a breeze. And he touched, like a whisper in the distance, four lives following behind.

The mud made a soft wet sound as he poked his staff into it. This was a road. People traveled on roads. Who was to say that these four lives were not just simple travelers, as he was; simple travelers going home.

But there was something about them, something that made him remember old pain…

"They are demons, Kars! They are not enclosed by the Circle!" The teacher raised the rod again and again. And again. "Sing to these demons and remove yourself from the Circle! Or surrender your voice to the truth!"

He surrendered his voice to the screaming, the only truth that he could find.

"Fa… ther?"

He turned to see Kait staring at him from her new position at the back of the cart, a shadow of concern lying over her face. "I'm all right, child," he told her, managing to find a reassuring smile. He let it drop when she lowered her gaze, and he looked past her at the young man by her side.

He remembered staring deeply into those incredible, luminous eyes and seeing love stare back. He couldn't see it now, but he would as soon as they were safely home. He knew he would.

"They're out there now, looking for me. They'll find me."

He didn't know who
they
were but he wasn't going to lose his heart again.

"Why are we going up here? This is a way station…" Otavas swallowed hard. A way station meant soldiers. Young ones or old ones at a station so far from a Great Road—but soldiers. If he could catch their attention. If he could just make one of them see him.

The cart rolled out of the mud onto the slightly higher ground of the way station's yard, and the old man ordered the dead to stop pushing.

The prince started toward the building and found the old man in his way.

"Wait here, my heart. There are things in this place that we need."

Otavas glanced at Iban and Hestia who were bracing the shafts. "Like what?" he demanded, then he flushed as his stomach growled loudly.

"Like food." The old man smiled indulgently.

An elderly soldier came out of the station house, and peered toward the road. The three sunbursts on her uniform tunic matched the three on the flag hanging limply overhead. "Who's there?" she called, one hand on the hilt of her short sword, the other shading her eyes.

"Help me!" She was so close, Otavas could see the corporal's stripe circling the hem of her kilt. "You've got to help me! Please!" He leaped forward and was dragged back by cold fingers gripping his arms. When he froze, the dead hands lifted away, but he knew they'd be on him again if he moved.

The corporal frowned. "Ash! Get out here!"

"Corporal?" A chestnut-haired boy, old enough to wear a uniform, young enough for this to be his first posting appeared in the doorway.

"It's too slaughtering hot. That's the problem." She scanned the area again, terror touching her gaze for an instant as it slid over the dead. "I wonder what's gotten into the horses. Look at them, all grouped over by the far side of the corral."

"My ma calls this weatha mad dahg weatha."

"Weath-er, Ash. Mad
dog
weath-er." The corporal turned and pushed the boy soldier back inside. "I'll never get used to the way you people talk up here."

"Don't look so sad, my heart." The old man patted his shoulder; still feeling the grip of dead hands, Otavas wasn't able to move away. "I won't be gone long. Come, Rait."

Shaking with frustration and despair, the prince watched the old man and the dead girl walk across to the building. To his surprise, just before they reached the door, the old man started to sing. It was a pretty song, a comforting song; Otavas stopped shaking and yawned. His eyes closed and he slowly sank to the ground.

He heard the dead move closer but, wrapped in the song, it didn't seem to matter. Pillowing his head on his arm, he sighed and fell asleep.

The corporal sprawled in the room's only wood and leather chair, mouth open, snoring softly. Ash lay stretched out on a narrow bench, tunic off, bare chest rising and falling to the slow rhythm of the Song. Another soldier, gray-haired but younger than the corporal, was curled up on the hearth, clutching the wooden handle of a cleaver loosely in one hand.

While he continued to Sing, Kait took the corporal's short sword and used it as he'd taught her. She found the fourth soldier, a woman in her thirties with a patch over one eye and a peg where her right leg should have been, asleep on a pile of hay in the attached stable.

As Kait dragged the fourth body into the main room, he stopped Singing and sank down onto the end of Ash's bench to conserve his strength. A pewter tankard by the boy's limp hand held two inches of tepid ale. He drained it, the warm liquid soothing his throat, as the four kigh buzzed about him; confused, unwilling to be dead.

"Kait, please gather up all the food you can find, there's a good girl." His head ached and he hoped he'd be strong enough for what he had to do. His heart needed to be protected.

Otavas woke to see the old man smiling wearily down at him. "Wake up, my heart. It's time to move on."

Rubbing his eyes, the prince pushed himself up into a sitting position, unable to understand how he'd fallen asleep laying in the damp and the mud. He stretched and frowned at the smell of his own unwashed body. The rain had helped, but he hated not being clean; it made him feel less than himself. Hot water, scented soaps, and attendants to shave him seemed part of someone else's life.

Someone else's life… Perhaps they were. Perhaps he'd never had anything but this cart and the old man and the dead.

One hand around a spoke, he used the wheel to pull himself to his feet. Shaking off the torpor that threatened to push him back into sleep, Otavas' brows drew in as he focused on the old man's face. The ancient eyes were sunk deep in violet shadows and the skin hung so loosely off his skull that the gray wisps of his beard appeared to drag it from his chin. "Are you… sick?"

"I am tired, my heart." Both his hands clutched at his staff, which seemed to be supporting most of his weight. "But, more importantly, you are safe."

"Safe?" Then he looked beyond the old man—at the corporal, at the boy, at the two other soldiers. They all wore full infantry armor; steel helm, breast and back, boiled leather greaves and vambraces, round shield and short sword. Two of them were old, one was very young, and the other had lost a leg and an eye. Blood had turned the blue of each kilt purple-black in places and had drawn scarlet lines down bare arms and legs. The prince's breath caught in his throat as he was forced to acknowledge one final similarity among them. They were all dead.

"No." He wouldn't take that responsibility. They didn't die for him. He shook his head, found himself in the sudden rush of anger and used it to hold his terror tightly in check. "I am Prince Otavas Irenka, son of His Most Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Otavan."

The four soldiers came sluggishly to attention.

Otavas stepped forward—unable to look the corporal in the eye, he glared at the end of her nose, "I order you to escort me safely back to the Capital!"

The corporal slowly shook her head.

"I
order
you!" His voice grew shrill. "You have to obey the order of an Imperial prince! You have to!"

"Come, my heart." The prince jerked around as the old man leaned out of the cart and touched the top of his head. "We must go."

Otavas flushed as, in spite of the day's new horror, his body made its needs known. "I have to relieve myself."

The old man nodded. "Go with him, Iban."

Ears burning, the prince hurried over to a thornbush growing at the edge of the station yard, the dead man walking by his side, stopping when he stopped. As the prince fumbled with his trousers, an idea fought its way through the fear. Struggling to hold himself free of the returning numbed lethargy, he worked one of the thin gold rings off his right hand. When he turned to go back to the cart and his body hid the movement of his hand, he quickly slipped it over a thorn.

He could see a small cluster of buildings just up the road and a field of grain behind—a farmer taking advantage of the army's proximity to buy land out of the crowded Imperial core. In time, surely they'd check the station. If not, the army would. If the sun was shining that day, perhaps someone would see the ring.

And if someone saw the ring…

Back in the cart, the circle of death closed around him and licked at his thoughts like dark flames.

The weather had not improved as the day went on. Neither had tempers. On edge without the kigh, Karlene kept her eyes locked on the distance they still had to cover, her heart beating like a kettle drum every time the road swooped around a blind corner that could hide the prince.

In mid-afternoon, they came on tracks cut into the mud—cut after the rain had stopped.

"A two-wheeled cart, two people pulling, two people pushing, two people walking along beside." Still squatting, Vree pointed back along the tracks. "I'd say they spent the night there, where the mud's all churned up. The rain came down hard enough to pound yesterday's tracks away."

Karlene felt sick. "The kigh said it was a man and a woman killed in the fishing village. If there're six sets of footprints, Kars must have left the Capital with more than just the two young men."

"Must have," Vree agreed, straightening. She rubbed her palms together as she gazed at the road. "They're not going very fast. These prints are almost one on top of the other."

Vree twisted her arm free and stepped away from the bard. "I mean no," she said. "We aren't gong to catch them by dark."

"But we
can
close up the gap." Gyhard swung into the saddle as he spoke.

By the time they approached the way station, they were on foot again—the heat and humidity combined with the soft footing had caused the horses to tire quickly. Still some distance away, Vree moved her gelding to the far side of the road and fell back until she was screened by his head. Gyhard, having been made violently aware that the body he wore was as much at risk of being identified as hers, did the same. The way stations along the Great Roads were set back behind palisades, but on the lesser roads, nothing blocked the possibility of discovery.

Directly opposite the station, Vree stopped walking. The horse took another two steps, then stopped as well. Brows drawn in, her blood beginning to sing, Vree stared across the road over the horse's back. "Something's wrong. It's too quiet."