What Remains of Heroes (29 page)

There was a crackle of twigs snapping and leaves crunching. The brush rustled and shifted, suggesting the movement of a large form. After a moment, though, the brush grew still again.

“Show yourself!” Keln growled, sinking to a predatory stance so menacing Bale found himself more frightened of the Scarlet Swordsman than whatever it was lurking in the brush.

Just then two men, wretched and wounded, stumbled from the brush. Keln threw them to the ground where they collapsed into a heap. Their chainmail hauberks were ripped and stained, their armor plates battered and broken. They wore the red sashes of Rune, though judging from the agonized looks on their faces they no longer wanted any part of the kingdom’s war.

“Stand up, soldiers,” Keln said, his sword dipping but still at the ready.

“Mercy,” groaned one of the soldiers, struggling to rise to a knee. The other remained prone, drawing rattling breaths. Bale recognized the men were badly hurt, and likely suffering from infection. He frantically pulled his travel pack off his shoulder, knowing they required the healing arts.

“Stand up, boys,” Keln said, rolling the prone soldier over with the toe of his boot. The man had three dark wounds in his chest, each of them wet with blood.

“These men are badly hurt,” Bale said, starting forward. He stopped just as quickly, though, when Keln regarded him with a vicious gaze.

“You will stay clear of this, spooker,” he said, derisively spitting out the last word. “On your feet, soldiers! That’s an order from an officer.”

At last the soldier who’d gotten to his knee forced himself upward upon unsteady feet. His eyes were feverish, his lips split and bleeding. Bale noticed a wound in the man’s side, the chainmail there shredded. The wound was bandaged, but the blood had soaked through.

Keln regarded the man sternly. “Do you always respond to orders so slowly, soldier?”

The soldier looked at the clasp fastened upon Keln’s red cloak and snapped to attention. He hurriedly nudged the prone soldier with the toe of his boot. “Piter,” he said. “Get up! This fellow’s a captain!”

“Identify yourselves.”

“S-Sir,” the soldier stammered, “I am Corporal Stevran, of the First Division of the Third Column. Him there,” he said, “is Private Piter, also of the First of the Third.”

Keln lowered his sword near Piter’s throat. “You’re deserters?”

“Dead gods, no, Sir,” Stevran said, his voice thick with emotion.

Keln’s expression softened unexpectedly. “What is it, son? What brings you here, so far from the fighting?”

Stevran swooned and nearly fell, but Keln caught him by the arm. “We were routed,” Stevran said. “Routed at Blackvale.”

“The entire division?”

Stevran nodded. “What was left of us, but at least a six hundred soldiers. General Fane himself arrived to lead us. Told us he wanted to take Blackvale, telling us it would cripple the enemy if we did. I’d scouted Blackvale days before, and knew it to be nothing more than an abandoned town with a few dozen starving cows. But by the dead gods he wanted it.” He began weeping.

“Slow down, son,” said Keln, his voice gentle. He directed Stevran to sit. “Don’t worry. You’re with friends now.”

“Thank you, sir,” Stevran said, sinking to a spot near the motionless Piter.

“Tell me what happened.”

Stevran sniffled, his eyes fixed on his wound. “The general ordered half the division into Blackvale, while the rest of us held back.” His eyes were distant and he was quiet for a moment. “The road into the place was narrow, with steep hills on either side. The Arranese knew we were coming, and they’d set an ambush with fire, oil, and archers. Our men were funneled right to the points of their swords. Half our division, slaughtered to the very man. And we just watched it happen.”

“And then?”

Stevran pounded the earth with a fist and blinked away tears. “General Fane ordered us in after them, telling us there was strength in numbers. Telling us the dead gods favored us. Ha.” He sobbed and rubbed snot away from his nose. “We didn’t stand a chance. We fought atop the bodies of our countrymen, the ground slick with their blood.” He swooned again and seemed about to faint.

Bale pressed forward. “He’s suffering from a terrible infection. He’s been gravely wounded. I should tend to these men or they will die.”

Anger colored Keln’s face and he gritted his teeth. “You will do nothing of the sort, spooker. Mind yourself.”

Bale did as instructed but with great reluctance.
How I hate this man!
The soldiers would die if he didn’t act. His hand moved to his robes, finding there the knife he’d stolen from the governor’s palace in Riverweave.
Sometimes saving a life means taking another
. His mind raced with the possibility, wondering whether the neck or the back would be the better place to stick the thing, whether he would be able to move subtly enough to be thought of as harmless.
Do I possess the courage?

Keln returned his gaze to Stevran and spoke again with a kind tone. “It’s alright, son. Speak freely. We’re just talking soldier to soldier.”

“There…” Stevran began, but his voice failed him. He breathed deeply and began again. “There’s talk, sir. Most of the soldiers are too scared to spread the word, but it’s made it round. Soldiers are saying the general’s gone mad, sir. There’s whispers he’s talking with devils, speaking to a black skull he keeps in his tent. I know a man who saw it himself.”

Keln stood in silence, his expression unreadable.

“The men are afraid of him. They say he’s possessed by a demon and soldiers are talking of revolt, sir. One of our captains questioned the general before we marched on Blackvale, but the general had him put him to the sword. Right before us. Then we marched, just as we were told.” He shuddered. “There was so much blood… Piter and I barely escaped with our lives. We fled, hoping to find help.” His legs were seized with a sudden spasm and his whole body shook. For an instant the life seemed to drain from his eyes.

“You had no other choice,” Keln said, his tone paternal. His eyes, though, flared with cruelty.

Stevran choked back a sob. “Could you help us? There’re other soldiers heading northeast, to the Silverflow River and regrouping. Soldiers who’ll fight for Rune but not for the general. We could win this war, for the High King. But I fear the general has come undone…”

“You were right to tell me this, soldier,” said Keln, placing a hand upon Stevran’s head and wiping his thumb across his brow. “At ease, now,” he said.

“Aye, sir,” Stevran said, his face drooping with exhaustion.

Then Keln seized the soldier by his hair and plunged the sword into his throat. Stevran gurgled and gasped, falling backward. The sword slowly glided free of his gullet, replaced by a font of blood.

“No!” Bale shrieked, leaping to the soldier’s side. But it was futile. The boy was beyond any help, his heart sputtering its final beats.

Keln shifted and stuck Piter with the sword. The body did not move, and Bale figured the lad had already passed.

“Why?” said Bale. “They were
soldiers
, just like you!”

“Treason can never be tolerated, in any of its forms, and desertion in wartime is a crime of the worst sort. Orders are to be followed. To the very letter.”

“But your general was marching them to their death.”

Keln laughed. “Aren’t we all marching there?” He stooped and wiped his blade on Stevran’s body. “Rise, spooker. Let’s find your Lector so I can be done with you.”

They found the site by late afternoon. It was a wide clearing in the forest, far from the nearest trail. There was a fallen tree stretched across the tall grass, and beside it a mound of ash. The remnants of a funeral pyre.

Keln took a swig from his wineskin and took a look about. “How is it you know this is the place?”

“I don’t,” Bale whispered, moving slowly about the pyre. “Not yet, at least, but I should know soon enough. Stand clear. Please.”

Bale felt a tingling sensation settle upon him, a disbelieving giddiness. He’d not dared hope he would succeed in finding the Lector’s resting place. But now, he believed he had.

He stooped and began seizing handfuls of ash from the pyre. With each sampling he shut his eyes and mouthed sacred words of divination.
The body must be
here
.

He sensed something. A faint echo, a ghostly call. Then, finally, as he seized another handful of the ash it was there. A presence. An answer. He
knew
Lector Erlorn was one of the bodies burned at this place. He placed the handful of ash upon the ground, apart from the pyre, and said a prayer of passage.
Farewell, my
friend
.

He then set about gathering kindling, a few armfuls of dry twigs and crumbling leaves. He brought it to the edge of the pyre and stacked it carefully, enough for a reasonable fire. He knelt before it and withdrew from his pack his sleeve of reagents and compounds. Therein he found a vial of powder and sprinkled it over the kindling. Soon it was ablaze, not with natural flame but with a pure, white fire that burned with minimal heat.

“Another fire, spooker?” demanded Keln. “Must we have this discussion again? The enemy stalks this same forest.”

“The fire, like faith, illuminates all things,” Bale said, remembering when Erlorn had spoken to him those same words.

“It had best be out by nightfall, and this had best be the last of it. Tomorrow we’re returning to General Fane, whether you have your answers or not.”

Bale pressed his hands toward the fire, pretending not to hear.

Keln grunted and assumed a seat upon the fallen tree, and after a moment began sharpening his sword with a stone. It produced a squealing, scraping sound, but after a time Bale was able to insulate his thoughts.

Bale withdrew a small brazier and a pair of tongs from his sleeve of pouches. He then found another vial in the sleeve, this one filled with a viscous, milky liquid. He emptied several drops into the brazier and then mixed in a few pinches of ash from the pile he’d set nearby. He positioned the brazier over the flame and sank into the ritual of spellcraft, chanting quiet words of power known only to the Sanctum’s most skilled casters.

The concoction hissed and popped and spat, and, above all, smoked. It was a thick smoke which poured from the lip of the brazier, but it did not rise. Rather, it gathered about Bale before settling into a haze near the ground around him. He sniffed, noting a pungent odor not unlike soured wine.

In time the mixture in the brazier transformed, congealing from a pasty liquid into something solid. It appeared decidedly fleshy, like a swatch of skin separated from a body. Bale drew a sharp breath.
The spell succeeded
.

He pulled the brazier from the fire and dropped the substance into his hand. He squeezed it and quickened his thoughts, knowing he had but a precious few moments before the substance disintegrated. His bond to the Lector’s body was fleeting, and there was little chance he’d be able to cast the spell again.

He stilled himself, finding an inner reserve of calm with which to surround his thoughts. There, he formed an image of the Lector, of Erlorn, as he looked the last time they’d met. He rubbed at the spongy substance in his hand, and soon felt the connection form.

Much as it did with the Spell of Divination, this Spell of Recounting took Bale’s conscious mind from the immediacy of his surroundings to somewhere else. But unlike divination, this enchantment took him not to a place, but to a time. A time when the substance in his hand was, indeed, flesh, to a time when its bearer still lived.

His mind focused and his thoughts distilled, and just then he was there, within the Lector, within another time not long ago. He could sense not thoughts, but the flesh contained a memory of physical action. Bale searched first for the sensations at the moment of death. He waited for his own mouth to move, to mimic the Lector’s own. But there was nothing.
Was a confession spoken?
The flesh yielded the answer: the Lector’s mouth had not formed words upon death.

Bale was stunned.
A Lector without a confession?
He felt doubt creep inside him, but knew he needed to press onward. The fleshy piece was withering and he knew he had but a brief time remaining with this link.

Of the killer there was nothing. It was as though the Lector’s life had been taken in a blind instant, a moment of absolute vulnerability and without struggle. Bale shook his head again, frustrated.

He broadened his inquiry, willing the flesh to yield answers from further back in time. The substance withered further, wasting away as more was demanded of it, but soon there came the swaying sensations of riding, the performance of the routine activities of travel. Prayer, too. Sleep. And then more travel, shifting here to there on horseback. Nausea.

There must be more!
Bale set his resolve and pressed ahead, feeling the substance begin to sweat, liquefying and weakening the bond. Time was not in his favor.

He pushed deeper with his mind, seeking other actions, movements betraying both thought and purpose. Not the routines of travel nor the mundane activities of life, but something more. He paused as he discovered something, and for a moment his mouth moved as the Lector’s had. Yet, he sensed these were terse commands rather than revelations of purpose. He gesticulated involuntarily, miming the Lector’s motions, but these were random gestures.