I Know Not (The Story of Fox Crow) (12 page)

      I took a deep breath staring into branches that blotted out the sky, “I know not.”

      She sighed, but only to slow down her breathing. She was frightened, “Are you a hero or a villain, Crow?”

      I looked down at the pale, glowing flesh of my open hands, marveling at the power of life inside and wincing at the flecks of blood caught in the tiny hairs and caked under the nails. I glanced at the black patch of ice and snow where the knight had fallen. My eyes fell to the corpse of the horse, hacked open and meat parceled out to the four winds. I winced a bit then. It had been a lovely animal. “I know not.”

      Somewhere in the village there was movement, and the cleric’s voice took on a panicked edge, “Crow you must cover up.”

      I ignored her, but I watched the perfectly black sky, feeling subtle movement hidden therein.

      “Please, now. Cover up.” She said.

      Uncountable winking stars twinkled to life. I reached down and scooped the Angel into my hands, relishing the weight. Only then I realized that none of my instincts said fight or run. I was at peace, a foreign and frightening thing.

      “So, Crow, where did you get that sword?” Gelia murmured quietly.

      I looked up into the black canopy above, drawing the dregs of truth up from my soul as I said, “I know not.”

      The world exploded into a flurried eruption of ebony feathers and golden beaks. The morning sun blasted my eyes as an uncountable number of crows shattered into action, lifting from every tree on every side, becoming a wall, then a cloud, then a fading black mist that scattered into infinity. The twilight of predawn had been a lie to the crystal clear winter morning hidden by hundreds of thousands of dark wings. Somewhere a cock crowed, confused and late.

      I turned to Gelia and accepted the hurt, the uncertainty, the fear I saw there. I took them to me as blades unto my naked skin. I spread my arms, defenseless and helpless. I repeated, “I don’t remember.”

      I wind up saying that a lot these days.

      Then the day crashed in on me with the speed and finality of a scythe. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Trust me when I say that it sounds more romantic than the reality. I didn’t wake for a full day, dragged to my palate and watched over the elderly cleric.

      When we finally started off, we reached a clear hilltop that allowed a fine vista. In the distance we could see the snow covered top of Orphan Mountain, at the base of which sat Carolaughan. We were only days away.

9   

Lies and Gold

I was drinking in a dive and enjoying myself. Well, I was sipping swill and being eaten alive with worry, I imagine that it’s almost the same thing.

      I sipped at a beer that tasted as if it had been aged with a drowned cat in the barrel as a storm of eyes rained furtive gazes down upon me. This bar was like most others, crowded and smoky, but I had been careful to pick one in the poor quarter. That was not true, there was nothing careful about it: The moment we had entered Carolaughan, I had marched straight to the slums as if hooked on the end of a line. We came across this place as a matter of luck, really. When I had poked my head in and saw a room filled with low–lifes, dirty and violent men who eyed me with suspicion and avarice, I knew it was perfect.

      To be totally honest, it doesn’t take a genius to find a place like this. Simply look for a sign that has no words, and is sufficiently vague it could mean any of a dozen things. In this case the weathered board out front showed a crudely carved naked woman that was either dancing, running, or maybe fleeing. Which was it dancing, running, or maybe fleeing? Was the woman a human, an elf, or god? How long does it take for all that paint to completely flake off? There was no explanation whatsoever. When you see a sign like this you know it does not matter what the place is called, because the select clientele who know of it do not want outsiders intruding. If you don’t know the place, you don’t want to know.

      I took another sip of the dead–cat–beer, stifled a wince, and spooned through the congealed–stew–of–unknown–meat–type. Automatically my hindbrain marked the place of every person in the bar, everyone who was looking at me, and every weapon that was less than fully and competently concealed. This was a place of predators and prey, of killers and victims. It had rules and I understood them in my bones. The promise of my money was balanced by the Phantom I had set in its new sheath across the table. I tallied more in the threat than opportunity column. Balancing on a knife edge is still balance, after all.

      I had hustled the disguised Lady and her entourage past the crowd of hidden knives and ensconced them in a room upstairs with the aid of a few foreboding looks at the innkeeper and fewer silver coins. The threat of the unwashed masses kept the Lady and Priestess in their room, and the boys busy playing guard. It finally left me some free time. I used it to explore the streets between this place and our destination. Or should I say our next destination…or perhaps our true destination.

      I wondered how it could have happened.
You are a man and she’s a woman. That made you stupid
. I rejected the thought with a sneer, but it crept back underneath the table, nipping at my ankles and denying me any chance at relaxation.
Then you wanted to be a hero, idiot.

      As I could have guessed, the road into Carolaughan had gotten no easier. Every day we walked toward our destination, and every night before bed the already exhausted boys learned a little more of the art of killing. Less than three days after burying the Knight of Amsar we were waylaid by another group of ‘bandits’.

      Winter was upon the land as never before in recorded memory, and it was certain that some men would turn from farming or soldiery to banditry. It was easy to stab a stranger so your children could eat, but the presence of tribes of bandits on every major road and hiding at every major intersection near Carolaughan was beyond belief. There would literally be nobody left to rob, only bands of masked men shrugging at one another as they camped along the otherwise empty roads as their families starved at home.

      Besides, a mask does not a bandit make, not when they were wearing the slightly rusty armor and carrying the chipped and dented weapons of professional soldiers. Mercenaries, by the smell of them. I wrestled with one masked man, rolling around on the hard, cold ice as I tried to get his heart and my misericorde to shake hands. Another bandit had shaken off Miller and came at me, prone and occupied. Then there was…

      You don’t even remember his name
.

      A ghastly cold hollowness surged inside of me, pushing tears into the back of my eyes. I blinked them back furiously, willing the buildup away. I scowled and put the tankard down with slightly more than necessary force. Many of those who had been looking for a likely pocket to pick went back to their own drinks.

      DORIAN
!

      His name had been Dorian. The triumph was short lived, because the worst kind of lie is to say it was good enough to
eventually
remember the name of someone who had died to save your life. We killed the bandits, we lived. I lived, but it was only because of Dorian. Gelia and the rest had buried him —no older than seventeen…

      Dorian didn’t know me well, no one really can without me knowing myself, and he had been a quiet boy. I had taught the boys everything I could during our morning training sessions, but it had not been enough. I guess he decided I was more important than he to safeguarding his lady. He matched himself to a man many years his senior and many times the swordsman. He died upholding his oath to her and I decided I had a powerful need to know why.

      Out there, covered in blood and under a cold, clear sky, I felt storm clouds eclipse every bright part of my soul. Then, there It was. That Darkly Vicious Thing, always half hidden in the Fog, floated up behind my eyes. It settled in like a comfortingly numb cloak. It whispered in my ear terrible things. Terrible things, terrifying things, but true things. It said that people do not respect someone who loses his head. They can dismiss you, disarm you. They can disassemble your arguments by sliding lies in the gaping cracks of your rage. It said you can distill rage into a compact line and use it as a whispered weapon. You can slip it into their skull and pry out their secrets.

      Man, this beer is horrible. I’ve a mind to not order a third.
And I glanced around the bar, but only for a second before the scene of a few days ago continued.

      I had stalked across the clearing with the dark cloak of the Thing in my mind flapping around me, invisible in plain sight as I took all light from my eyes. She saw me coming, still off balance from the stress of the attack, and she retreated before me without even a protest. Aelia continued to give ground, managing nothing but clips of words as she stumbled on her dress. She threw out her hands, tripped again, and fell against the bole of an old oak tree encased in a cocoon of blood-spattered ice. Everyone waited, tension sparking in the air as Theo laid his hand on his sword, ready to kill even me to protect his charge—

      Even as I made tentative plans to murder him the moment his sword left his sheath, a small part of my mind whispered to him,
Good boy.

      —But I never looked at him, never glanced away from Aelia as my eyes stapled her to the tree with thunderingly silent questions and accusations. Tears welled up in her eyes, and her lips trembled, revealing at last her lack of years. She was only as old as half her guards, and younger than poor Dorian. Under the crushing weight of my silent judgment, cracks began to appear in her mental walls. From inside the carriage Leoncur yowled.

      Then her clasped hands found an unobtrusive ring perched ungainly on her thumb. She looked down at that plain, gold band as if she had never seen it before. Her head snapped up and her lost, lonely eyes locked with mine, but then she began to change. It started in her shoulders, which started clenched around her neck and dropped like an executioner’s axe. Then her chest swelled, filled from some hidden reservoir inside. Her jaw set. Iron flooded from her heart and straightened her spine. Though more than a head shorter, suddenly we were equals, her fear fled before her unfathomable strength. One, last deep breath brushed aside her lingering doubts, and her eyes blazed like the noon day sun off the snow.

      She mastered herself and in that moment she became more beautiful than any creature of legend. She took the legs out from under the Beast and sent it sprawling in my head. Just gazing into her steady eyes released something fluttering and fragile inside of me. I tried to ignore it, to say I was more than passing successful would be a lie. She gestured to a fallen log on the other side of the road, and even that little motion was enough to push me aside. She walked over, adjusted her skirts primly, and sat on the rotting icy wood as if it were a throne. I took a seat and gazed deep into her eyes. She did not shrink nor flinch.

      You are one hell of a woman
.

      “We are not heading to Carolaughan to trade for iron.” Several seconds slipped past, giving the sky precious time to come close over our conversation. The pressure squeezed out white flakes of snow that swirled down on every side as if to curtain off her secrets from the world. “We are going to bid on Red Sky.”

      This was the point where I was supposed to say something witty, something insightful, or failing all else, something dashing. What I managed to get past the flying, trembling lump in my chest was a guttural throat noise. Thankfully, she took it as a sound of disbelief instead of an audition for village idiot. She took a deep breath and continued. “I am completely serous, Fox. The dwarves have long been pressed for men. They have finally begun stripping their outlaying forts to strengthen their main towns and city centers. They cannot simply leave these outposts–“

      “–it would open them to attack without warning.” I finished, nodding. The harsh northern mountains were not just dangerous for men, and there were worse things than barbarians and redcaps. The dwarves were a bulwark against the untamed lands beyond, but it was not kind to their population.

      She smiled at me, “They have taken to selling these lands to humans who can afford the price. They have traveled to Carolaughan, the center of the Kingdom, to give all the noble families a fair chance to bid on the land and the fort.”
And, incidentally drive up the price with access to more bidders
, I thought as she continued, “They get an infusion of gold and the protection of the fort maintained–“

      “And the high bidder gets to tax anything that goes in or out of the pass.” I finished. Considering the amount of luxury goods and implements of war that come out the dwarvish kingdoms, whatever outrageous sum the winning family pays will be made up in less than ten years. Not only that, any enemy buying dwarven weapons or armor in bulk, whoever taxes the goods will know of it. These thoughts and their implications propelled me to my feet where I paced the road.

      Just as the safety of the Ridge Mountains, and the peace of the Sorrow Wood had both been illusions of luck and fate, so now too the path before me was not a wide trek but a thin board over a rushing river. Still, something did not fit into this new scene. My eyes flicked to the boys, and to Gelia, who still watched like wide eyed children, “You are not from the family of Llewellyn.”

      She lowered her eyes and nodded, but stood to face me with the bearing of a queen, “I am not of the family of Llewellyn, servants to the family of Conaill: I am Aelia of the ancient and revered family of Conaill, Grand Duchess of Conaill, Warden of the Eastern Plains.”

      I didn’t feel any more like bowing to her, but I did feel the river below my pathetic board bridge turn into a lake of fire.

      “Ishad’s bones!” I screamed at the sky, invoking in my mindless rage the name of the God of Murder. I spun to face Theo and his crew, all of them pale at my blasphemy, “Make camp!”

      Four days later, I slammed my hand against the table. People on all sides winced. The bartender shouted something, but one baleful eye wilted his objection on his tongue. Drinkers on all sides decided to make it an early night and filed out meekly. Under the hubbub, I slipped my hand under the table and rubbed it as it wailed like a baby. The pain was good. It focused me. It also opened up the floodgates at the back of my head.

      Four days ago, I looked around at the carriage party wondering if my blindness was an effect of the Fog or something softer and far more sinister. It made sense when I thought it through. Having the Church of Ethryal assign one of their number to a noble’s daughter took substantial and frequent donations, out of the reach of even some of the most affluent families.