CHAPTER 8 #2
They’d dismounted to lead the horses up a long, winding hill. Brenner plodded along with his eyes forward, apparently hoping that had ended the conversation.
No such luck.
“Do you enjoy killing people? If I may ask?”
Brenner sighed and glanced at Caliban, possibly hoping for rescue. Caliban shrugged. He had little enough chivalry left, he wasn’t going to waste it on Brenner.
“If I say yes, will you stop asking?”
“I’m trying to understand what you do, Mister Brenner,” said Learned Edmund stiffly. “I do not believe in judging a man before I know him, and I do not know you well.”
Brenner gazed up at the sky, apparently looking for divine intervention, or at least rain. Neither was forthcoming. Clouds drifted by in a sky as blue and airy as a butterfly’s wing.
“I enjoy hunting people,” he said. “I’m good at it.”
“And the act of killing?”
“That’s just the bit that happens at the end. Look, why don’t you go bother the paladin? He’s killed at least as many people as I have, and got paid a lot less.”
“Dig your own grave, Brenner,” said Caliban. “I’m not helping.”
“I am quite clear on the motivations of Knight-Champions,” said Learned Edmund. “I’m asking about yours.”
Caliban stifled a sigh. Bet you’re not half as clear as you think you are. Hell, these days, I’m not even clear on my motivations most of the time…
Brenner apparently agreed with him. “My motives? I kill people who have managed to piss somebody else off. I bear them no ill will; it’s strictly business.
He goes and persuades poor stupid peasants who think they’re possessed to come back to the temple to have demons tortured out of them. And I’m the bad one?”
Caliban discovered that his hand was on the hilt of his sword. He looked at it as if it didn’t belong to him, and carefully pried the fingers away.
“The work of the Knight-Champions is generally recognized as a noble calling—” said Learned Edmund nervously, and licked his lips.
“Ask him if he enjoys it.”
The statement made a little silence around itself. Learned Edmund looked back and forth worriedly.
“Did you enjoy killing that woman with the blighted child?” Caliban asked quietly.
There was another little silence, while Brenner stared at him.
“That’s sick,” the assassin said finally.
“You volunteered to do it,” said Caliban, still gazing straight ahead, to where Slate’s horse was kicking up little puffs of dust from the roadway.
“Somebody had to! They were going to shoot her anyway, and those idiot butchers in the guard would have made a bloody mess of it!”
Swish went the horse’s tail ahead of them.
Caliban nodded. “Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
“Downhill from here,” Slate called back.
In more ways than one…
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” said Caliban, lengthening his stride. He stopped beside Slate, knelt, and offered her a hand up into the saddle. She gave him one of her crooked smiles as she mounted.
He was pretty sure she hadn’t heard the conversation behind her.
Probably that was just as well.
Another day passed, then two. They passed through miles of carefully tended fields, where some crops were just starting to pull their way up from the soil.
It was humble but prosperous land, full of humble but honest people.
Slate felt like a fish not just out of water but twenty miles from the nearest puddle.
No one’s evacuating. No one’s leaving. I suppose you still have to plant seeds even if there’s a war going on, but this seems utterly mad…
One night there were no inns, and they stayed at a farmhouse, or more accurately, in the barn.
“I am surprised you did not take the offer of their bed,” said Caliban, as they walked back to the barn, carrying provisions.
Slate shrugged. “Safer not to. If we have to run in the middle of the night, less chance of being split up.”
“That hardly seems likely out here, with these people.”
“I have gotten out of the habit of trusting people,” said Slate. “No matter how harmless they appear.”
The sun was setting and dyeing the fields crimson. Caliban raised his eyebrows. “That seems a difficult way to live.”
“You note that I’m still alive, though. At least for another few days.”
“An unassailable argument. At least until we get to the war zone.”
She slept that night at one end of the barn, far enough away that Learned Edmund need not fear her feminine exhalations. Caliban took the stall beside her. She woke in the night to hear the demon muttering, and rolled over and went back to sleep.
“I cannot get used to this,” said Brenner, looking up the road. They had dismounted and were leading the horses. “That’s an army outpost.”
“A minor one, yes,” said Learned Edmund.
“And we’re just walking right up to it.”
Caliban laughed softly to himself.
“Something funny, god-boy?”
“Yes.”
The assassin’s eyes narrowed. “Be a shame if someone slipped up and dropped your name, Lord Caliban.”
Caliban controlled his expression as tightly as he could, but he knew that Brenner saw his eyes flicker. “They are expecting criminals. As you enjoy reminding me, I, too, am a criminal.”
“Damn straight. Try acting like one.”
Slate turned her head and looked back at them. There was no mistaking her expression. Annoyance crossed her face like clouds casting shadows on a hillside. “I swear to god, if you two don’t stop, I’ll tell the army to give you forty lashes for insubordination.”
“Can they do that?” asked Brenner.
“They can,” said Caliban. “Though time in the stockade is more usual.”
“I’ve never had forty lashes. Actually, I’ve never had even one lash.”
“I have,” said Caliban.
Slate had turned back around, but missed a step at that. “What?”
He shrugged. “The demon had a whip.”
“And?”
“I had a sword.”
“Who won?” asked Brenner.
“We’re having this conversation, so I did.”
“Ah.”
Slate waved them to silence, and handed Caliban the reins of her horse. A soldier in dusty blue motioned her toward the guard post. She mounted the steps into the small building, already reaching for the document case at her side.
Caliban looked over the outpost. A wall of sharpened posts ran around the outside. From what he knew of them, a Clockwork Boy would go through that in about five seconds flat.
They had taken the precaution of digging a moat around the exterior.
The guard post stood at one end of a narrow bridge.
If the enemy did arrive, they could destroy the bridges and let the Clockwork Boys fall into the ditch around the palisade.
It wouldn’t destroy them, but would at least give the soldiers the ability to attack from above, without being trampled.
Siege tactics were not part of a Knight-Champion’s training. Caliban couldn’t say if the precautions were brilliant or foolish. Presumably it was the best that could be done with what resources were available.
Just like we are.
The sheer awfulness of that thought made him flick his fingers across his eyes in a warding gesture.
Brenner started to say something, but Slate’s footsteps stopped him. “All right,” she said, coming down the board steps again. “Our papers are in order.”
“They’re authentic, you mean?” asked Caliban.
She snorted. “They’re better than authentic, I’ll have you know.”
They stabled the horses outside the walls, and crossed the bridge to the inside. It was held up with ropes, easily cut. He looked up and saw archers stationed in towers on either side.
“Will archers stop the Clockwork Boys, do you think?” he murmured.
“From what I understand, not a chance in hell,” said Slate.
Learned Edmund made a small distressed sound, and pulled his robes more tightly around himself.
The commander of the outpost was a woman with long silver hair tied back into a bun. She looked over the four of them with a dour expression. Slate actually heard Caliban’s spine crackle as he snapped to attention.
Didn’t think the man’s spine could get any straighter. She probably reminds him of a nun.
Slate didn’t bother to pretend that she was military. She dropped her papers on the commander’s table with a flourish. Brenner was slouching aggressively. Learned Edmund was looking at a female military commander with the expression of a man having an internal crisis.
The Commander looked at the papers. She read them. She looked up at Slate.
“You’re in charge, I take it.”
“Same as you,” said Slate. The woman snorted.
“You’re the next batch, then.”
“Yep,” said Slate.
“Heard the first ones didn’t do so well.”
“Yeah, I heard that too.”
“You run into a column of Clockwork Boys, they’re not sending the army to haul you out.” She steepled her fingers and put her elbows on the desk. “They can’t haul you out, you understand? Those things are walking siege engines.”
“We’re aware,” said Slate, not looking at her companions. Brenner and Caliban were aware. Learned Edmund…well. Was it even possible to tell a sheltered nineteen-year-old boy that he was going to die and make him believe it?
The Commander sighed and reached for a stamp. “You’re headed to the front, then?”
“Nowhere else to go,” said Slate. She was lying through her teeth, but she was pretty sure that she was the only one who knew that.
Brenner can probably tell, but Brenner will go along with it…
The Commander stamped the bottom of the document. “See the Quartermaster for anything you require. We don’t have much, but the capital says you’re welcome to what we’ve got.” Her expression indicated what she thought about this.
“Cigarettes and poppy milk,” muttered Brenner.
The Commander’s lip curled, but she handed back the paper. Her eyes scanned over the three men, lingering the longest on Caliban. Slate was pretty sure it wasn’t because the paladin was good-looking.
“Did they ever find the second group?” she asked, as Slate turned to go.
“No,” said Slate, keeping her voice dead even. “Did they make it this far?”
The Commander’s scowl deepened. “They did. They asked for two of my men as escorts,” she said.
“Ah,” Slate said.
“That was nine weeks ago,” said the Commander. “They went north into the hills. They had pigeons with them. One came back the first week. After that, nothing.”
“The hills can be treacherous in late winter,” said Slate.
The Commander stared into her eyes. Slate stared back.
You may be sharp, ma’am, but you can’t read minds. All my papers are in order and that’s all you need to know.
In the end, the Commander’s contempt for civilians won over anything else. “We’ll send word to the front to expect you, but I wouldn’t count on that.”
“Believe me,” said Slate, “I’m not counting on anything right now.”