This is what traitors get, unless theyre lucky enough to die first, the driver said. He nodded to the two who had ridden with the cart. Clear that off. Whatever he did, its not his turn anymore. Clear the cages so that it draws the animals.
Grumbling, the two guards set about their work, and Raymond would have run then if he had been able to, but the truth was that his chains held him far too tightly. He couldnt even raise himself over the lip of the cart, let alone lift himself beyond it. The guards seemed to know that, moving casually from gibbet to gibbet, pulling the corpses of men and women from them and flinging them to the ground. Some came apart as they dropped, body parts scattering across the hillside for whatever came to devour them.
The woman who had been in the cells with them brushed against the stone at the hillsides heart as they threw her body aside, and her eyes opened wide. She let out a scream then that Raymond was sure would haunt him until the moment he died, so raw and full of pain that he couldnt begin to guess at the agonies she had endured there.
Must have still been alive, the one with the crossbow said, as the others dragged her clear of the stone. She fell silent again as soon as she stopped touching it, and, just for good measure, the crossbowman put a bolt through her chest before they flung her aside.
They dragged the man on the stone clear next, and to Raymond, the worst part of it was that he thanked them when they did it. He thanked them for dragging him away to die. The moment he left the stone, Raymond saw him go from a struggling, screaming man to a lifeless lump of meat, so much so that it seemed redundant when one of the guards cut his throat, just to be sure.
Now, the hillside was silent, except for the calls of the carrion birds, and rustling that promised bigger predators further off. Maybe there were even human predators watching them there, because Raymond had heard that civilized men didnt see the Picti out in their wild homes when they didnt want to be seen. Just the not knowing made it worse.
The duke says that youre to die, the driver said, but he didnt say how, so were going to play the game that traitors get to play. Youll go in the gibbets, and maybe youll live, maybe youll die. Then, in a day or two, if I remember, well be back, and well pick one of you for the stone.
He looked straight at Raymond. Maybe it will be you. Maybe you can watch while your brothers die, and while the animals come to gnaw on you, and the Picti come to cut you. They hate the folk of the kingdom. They cant attack the town, but you youd be fair game.
He laughed at that, and the guards lifted Raymond down, disconnecting his chains from a bracket in the cart and hauling him from it bodily. For a moment, they headed toward the stone, and Raymond almost begged them not to put him on it, thinking that maybe theyd changed their minds and decided to put him there straight away. Instead, they took him to one of the dangling cages and shoved him inside, closing the door behind him and locking it in place with a lock that it would take a hammer and chisel to cut through.
It was a tight fit in the cage, so that Raymond couldnt sit comfortably, couldnt even begin to think about lying down. The cage creaked and shifted with every movement of the wind, loud enough that it seemed like a torture in itself. All Raymond could do was sit there while the men dragged his brothers to other cages, unable to even begin to help.
Garet fought, because Garet always fought. It just earned him a blow to the guts before they lifted him and stuffed him into another of the gibbets, the way a farmer might have shoved an uncooperative sheep into a pen. They lifted Lofen just as easily, throwing him into another of the gibbets, so that they hung there with the stench of death all around them from the bodies abandoned on the hillside.
How did you three ever think that you could fight against the duke? the driver demanded. Duke Altfor has said that youll pay for what your brother did, and you will. Wait, and contemplate that, and suffer. Well be back.
Without another word, he turned the cart and started to drive away, leaving Raymond and his brothers dangling there.
If I can just Garet said, obviously trying to reach the lock on his gibbet.
You dont know how to open a lock, Lofen said.
I can try, cant I? Garet shot back. We have to try something. We have to
Theres nothing to try, Lofen said. Maybe we can kill the guards when they come back, but we cant get through those locks.
Raymond shook his head. Enough, he said. This isnt the time for us to argue. Theres nowhere for us to go, and nothing for us to do, so the least we can do is not fight with each other.
He knew what a place like this meant, and that there were no real chances of escape.
Soon, he said, there will be animals coming, or worse. Maybe I wont be able to talk after. Maybe Ill maybe well all be dead.
No, Garet said, shaking his head. No, no, no.
Yes, Raymond said. We cant control that, but we can face our deaths bravely. We can show them how well honest people die. We can refuse to give them the fear they want.
He saw Garet pale, and then nod.
Okay, his brother said. Okay, I can do that.
I know you can, Raymond said. You can do anything, both of you. I want to say How could he say all of it? I love you both, and Im so grateful that I got to be your brother. If I have to die, Im glad that I at least get to do it with the best people I know in the world.
If, Lofen said. Its not done yet.
If, Raymond agreed, but in case it happens, I wanted you to know.
Yes, Lofen said. I feel the same.
Me too, Garet said.
Raymond sat there in his cage, trying to look brave for his brothers, and for anyone watching, because he was sure that there must be something or someone watching from the ruins of the tower. All the time, he tried to not to think of the truth:
There was no if to this. Already, Raymond could see the first flickers of carrion birds gathering in the trees. They were going to die. It was just a question of how quickly, and how horribly.
CHAPTER FIVE
Royce knelt among the ashes of his parents house, charred fragments of wood falling from the frame in a way that matched the tears scouring their way down his cheeks. They scythed tracks through the soot and dirt that now covered his face, leaving him streaked and strange looking, but Royce didnt care.
All that mattered right then was that his parents were dead.
Grief filled Royce as he looked down on his parents bodies, set out on the floor in surprisingly quiet repose, in spite of the effects of the flames. He felt as though he wanted to tear at the world the way his fingers sought out the increasingly ashen tangles of his hair. He wanted to find a way to make this right, but there was no way to make this right, and so Royce screamed out his anger and his grief to the heavens.
Hed seen the man who had done this to them. Royce had seen him out on the road, returning from this as calmly as if nothing had happened. The man had even warned him, unknowing, about the soldiers about to come down on the village. What kind of murderer did that? What kind of murderer killed and then set out his victims as if they were getting them ready for an honored grave?
This wasnt a grave though, so Royce went around to the back of the farm, finding an adze and a shovel, working at the dirt there, not wanting to leave his parents flesh for the first scavengers that came by. Some of the ground was hard packed and charred, so that his muscles ached with the work, but right then, Royce felt as though he deserved that ache, and that pain. Old Lori had been right all of this was because of him.
This wasnt a grave though, so Royce went around to the back of the farm, finding an adze and a shovel, working at the dirt there, not wanting to leave his parents flesh for the first scavengers that came by. Some of the ground was hard packed and charred, so that his muscles ached with the work, but right then, Royce felt as though he deserved that ache, and that pain. Old Lori had been right all of this was because of him.
He dug the grave as deep as he could and then lifted his parents charred bodies into it. He stood on the edge, trying to think of words to say, but he couldnt think of anything that made sense to send them up to the heavens with. He wasnt a priest to know the ways of the gods. He wasnt some traveling tale spinner, with all the right words for everything from a wild feast to a death.
I love you both so much, he said instead. I I wish I could say more, but anything I could say would come down to that.
He buried them as carefully as he could, each shovelful of dirt feeling like a hammer blow when it landed. Above him, Royce could hear the shriek of a hawk, and he shooed it away, not caring if there were crows and jackdaws spread across the rest of the village. These were his parents.
Even as he thought it, Royce knew that it wasnt enough to bury just them. The dukes men had been there because of him; he couldnt just leave everyone they had killed for scavengers. He also knew that there was no chance of him digging a pit deep enough for all of the bodies alone.
The best he could hope to do was to build a pyre to finish what the burning buildings had started, so Royce began to work his way through the village, collecting wood, pulling it from winter stores, dragging it from the remains of buildings. The beams were the heaviest parts, but his strength was enough to drag them at least, letting him build them into great cross members for the pyre he was building.
By the time Royce was done, it was fully dark, but there was no way he wanted to sleep in a village of the dead like this. Instead, he searched until he found a lantern outside one of the buildings, only a little twisted by the heat of the fire that had wracked it. He lit it and, by that lantern light, he started to gather up the dead.
He collected them all, even though it broke his heart to do it. Young and old, man and woman, he collected them. He dragged the heaviest and carried the lightest, setting them in their places among the pyre and hoping that somehow it would mean they would get to be together in whatever came after this world.
He was almost ready to set his lantern to it when he remembered Old Lori; he hadnt collected her yet in his grim harvest, even though hed been past the wall she had been leaning against a dozen times or more. Perhaps she hadnt been quite dead when hed left her after all. Perhaps she had crawled further back to die on her own terms, or perhaps Royce had just missed her. It seemed wrong to leave her apart from the others, so Royce went in search of her fallen form, returning to the spot where she had lain and searching the ground around by lamplight.
Are you looking for someone? a voice asked, and Royce spun, his hand going to his sword in the second before he recognized that voice.
It was Loris, and not. There was something less cracked and papery about this voice, less ancient and wearied by time. When she stepped into the circle of his lamplight, Royce saw that was true of the rest of her too. Before, there had been an ancient, timeworn old woman. Now, the woman in front of him seemed almost young again, her hair lustrous, her eyes piercing, and her skin smooth.
What are you? Royce asked, his hand straying to his sword again.
I am what I always was, Lori said. Someone who watches, and someone who learns. Royce saw her look down at herself. I told you not to touch me, boy, to just leave me be to die in peace. Couldnt you just listen? Why do all the men of your line never listen?
You think I did this? Royce asked. Did this womanhe still had trouble thinking of her as Lorithink that he was some kind of sorcerer?
No, stupid boy, Lori said. I did this, with a body that wont let me die. Your touch, one of the Blood, was just enough to catalyze it. I should have known that something like this would happen from the moment you washed up close to the village as a baby. I should have walked away then, instead of staying to watch.
You saw me arrive at the village? Royce said. Do you know who my father is?
He thought back to the white-armored figure he had seen in dreams, and to the time the master of the Red Isle had said that the unknown man who had sired him had saved his life. Royce knew nothing about him, save that the symbol burned into his palm was supposedly his.
I know enough, Lori said. Your father was a great man, in the way that men call themselves great. He fought a lot, he won a lot. I suppose he was great in some of the other ways too: he tried to help people where he could, and he made sure those under his protection were safe. This pyre of yours its the kind of thing he would have done, brave and righteous and so utterly foolish.
Its not foolish to want to keep our friends from the crows, Royce insisted, giving Lori a hard look.
Friends? She thought for a moment or two. I suppose, after enough years, a few of them might have been. Its hard for me to truly be friends with anyone though, knowing how easily death comes to most. It will come to you too, if you insist on lighting a beacon so that everyone from here to the coast can see that the dukes men havent finished their job.
Royce hadnt thought of that, only of what needed to be done for the people of his village, and what he owed them, after bringing this down on their heads.
I dont care, he said. Let them come.
Yes, definitely your fathers son, Lori said.
You know who my father was? Royce said. Tell me. Please, tell me.
Lori shook her head. You think Ill willingly hasten everything thats to come? From what Ive seen, there will be death enough without that. I will tell you this: look to the symbol you bear. Now, will you give an old woman a head start before you do anything stupid like lighting that fire?
Anger flickered in Royce, roiling up from within his grief. Dont you care about any of the people here? Youre just going to walk away before this is done?
It is done, Lori countered. Dead is done. And dont you dare accuse me of not caring. I have seen things that arrgh, whats the point!
She flung a hand toward the pyre Royce had built, muttering words in a tongue that hurt his ears just to hear. Smoke started to billow up from it, and then the first small flickers of flame.
There, does that make you feel better? she demanded. I managed to keep myself from resorting to that while a man stabbed me, I was going to let myself die, not that I had the power to do much else, being so old. Now you have me doing it in five minutes, damn you!
Royce had to admit that her anger was quite impressive. There was something almost elemental about it. Even so, there was something he had to ask.
Did you did you have the power to save people here, Lori?
Youre going to try to make this my fault? she demanded. She nodded over to the spot where the fire was just starting to catch. Magic isnt just wishing for sheets of fire or calling lightning from the sky, Royce. With a ritual long enough, maybe I can do some things that might impress you, but a spark like that is about the limit of what I can do as I am. Now, Im going, and dont you try to stop me, boy. Youre going to cause enough trouble for me as it is.