CHAPTER 9
“THE VILLAGE UP AHEAD is supposed to have a very nice inn,” said Learned Edmund, consulting his map across the bow of his saddle. “Hot baths, good food, and we can pick up supplies for the horses.”
“From your lips to the gods’ ears, priest,” said Brenner.
Unfortunately, as Slate had begun to suspect long ago, the gods did not seem to be listening.
They were nearly to the first row of houses when a man hurried out to meet them, waving his hands frantically.
“Some sort of trouble,” Caliban murmured, looking past him.
Brenner slid a hand down to his daggers. “Yeah. Either that’s a dead body in the middle of town, or somebody picked an awful strange place for a nap.”
The stranger was middle-aged, dressed like a farmer, his muscles stringy rather than powerful. Thin brown hair hung down in disarray. “Go back!” the stranger shouted, as soon as he was within earshot. “Turn around, go back!”
“Is there some trouble here?” asked Caliban, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Can we help?”
Brenner rolled his eyes.
“He is right,” said Learned Edmund, not sounding terribly sure of himself. “If they are in need of aid, it is our duty to render it…”
Brenner looked at Slate for appeal. Slate grimaced. If Caliban takes it in his head to help them anyway, my illusion of authority won’t be worth beans. “Let’s see what they want…” she muttered.
“Help?” said the man, and laughed. His voice was high and hacking. “There’s no help. It’s the blight. You can’t help the blight.”
“Blight?” Slate sat up straighter in the saddle.
The man looked up at her with faded eyes, as if unable to quite understand the question. “Blight? Yes…yes. It’s the blight. People got it—we thought it was contained—then they pulled a body out of the well.”
Caliban drew in a sharp breath. Learned Edmund traced a protective sign across his breast.
“It wasn’t human. I don’t know what it was. Some kind of animal, maybe. But we’ve all got it now, you see. The whole village—the well water—everyone must have it. They’re starting to drop. You have to get away. Tell anyone you see on the road to stay away.”
“Is there anything we can do to help?” asked Caliban. There was a flat, fatal note in his voice.
“No.” The stranger looked away. “We can kill ourselves well enough. Just go away.”
“May the gods keep you,” said Learned Edmund, sketching a benediction in the air.
Useless, Slate thought tiredly. Better the gods grant them a quick death and a strong hand on the knife. She cleared her throat.
“Is there a way around the village?”
The stranger barely looked at her. “Around the far fields. There’s an ox-road, just down the road behind you. Don’t touch anyone. Don’t let anyone touch you.”
Slate nodded.
She thought of all the things she could say, and they all became flat and meaningless on her tongue. She lifted a hand in salute, and then turned her horse.
The others followed. No one said anything.
The ox-road was rough and bumpy, but it did indeed swing in a wide circle around the fields. Tan dust rose in a cloud behind them, turning the mules a vague beige. The village in the distance looked like a bruise.
They passed a farmhouse off to the right. The empty windows stared at them. Slate watched it, fearing that someone might come out, fearing what she might have to do if someone did.
Brenner reached back into his pack, swung his crossbow forward, and slapped a bolt into it. The sounds seemed very loud, even over the clipping of the horses’ hooves. Click. Click. Tap. Slate would have bet that every ear in the party was riveted on it.
Click. Skreeeeek.
Click.
Brenner will shoot anyone who tries to approach us. And I will let him do it.
No one came out of the farmhouse. There were crows perched on the fence railing, and she could hear them croaking behind the house. A whole murder’s worth, by the sound.
Eating something.
Could just be a dead farm animal.
She was careful not to look back, when the ox-road swung wide, in case she might find out what they were eating.
A long time later, they returned to the main road. Slate felt a painful clutch of relief when they rode up onto it, as if somehow the presence of the wider road might protect them.
It seemed to be a cue to speak again. Learned Edmund sighed. “Those poor people.”
“Nothing we could do, priest.” Brenner reached out and slapped him on the shoulder. Learned Edmund started, and then offered him a tentative smile.
“I don’t know why we even bother having wars,” muttered Slate. “The world’s trying to kill us fast enough as it is.”
Caliban gazed between his horse’s ears, and said nothing at all.
That night they stayed at a posting-house several hours farther on. They had to ride most of the evening to get there, but there was a unanimous feeling that a bath at the end would be worth the time. Slate’s skin felt faintly sticky, as if the death in the village had clung to her like mist.
Word of the plague had already reached the posting-house.
Slate had to explain twice, and then Caliban had to explain again that they hadn’t touched anyone, they hadn’t even ridden through the village, they hadn’t come anywhere near anyone with the blight.
The innkeeper finally believed them, probably because Brenner was glowering and even Caliban was starting to look inclined to violence.
Slate wondered if he had simply decided that blight would be a less sure death than having his throat slit by large men in desperate need of hot water.
There was only one copper tub. They drew lots.
By the time Slate’s turn came around—Caliban offered her his place, out of chivalry, and Slate shot him down out of irritation—it was near midnight. Learned Edmund and Brenner had already gone to sleep, and she could hear Caliban removing his armor in the next room.
She would have preferred a soak, but a savage scrubbing with pumice and hot water seemed to remove the stink of death from her skin, even if it left her raw afterward.
A body in the well, they said. Some kind of animal. And an entire village rotting away in hours, or killing themselves to save themselves the trouble.
“Learned Edmund,” she said, the next morning.
“Will you write a message to the Captain of the Guard and tell him what has happened to the village? I assume that he will have received reports already, but I want to be sure. We’ll leave it for the innkeeper to give to the next courier that comes through. ”
Learned Edmund nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s a very good idea.”
“They’ll have been dead for days before anyone gets that message,” said Brenner, when the dedicate was out of earshot.
“I know,” said Slate. “I know.”
On the seventh day, they joined up to the trade road and traffic began to stream past them. It was all going the other way.
“Refugees,” said Caliban. He watched a cart go by, dragged by a single elderly ox, piled high with all a family’s worldly goods, followed by more and more carts.
Those who did not have oxcarts walked. A strapping young woman, taller than Caliban, walked past with an ancient woman clinging to her back.
Caliban dismounted and handed his reins to Learned Edmund. He caught up to the tall woman and her…
“Great-grandmother,” the tall woman informed him. “The rest of the family’s gone.”
“Fools,” growled the ancient woman. “I told them. I told them to run. We ran before, you know, when I was a girl, and the ones who didn’t died. Stubborn fools. No one ever learns. But I’m not dead yet.”
“I learned,” said the tall woman. “As soon as we heard the Clockwork Boys were coming, we ran. We got off the main road only just in time.”
“They’ll chase you if they see you,” said the ancient woman. “Like terriers with a rat. But if you hide in the woods, sometimes they miss you. Not in houses, though. They’ll get you in a house every time.”
“Where is your village, may I ask?”
She gave him the name of a village six days away on a horse. She had been walking a long time, it seemed.
“Thank you,” said Caliban. He held out a coin, and the young woman hitched her shoulder down a little. The old woman’s hand shot out like a bird’s claw and snatched the coin away.
“Paladin, eh?” she said. She grinned, revealing a distinct lack of teeth. “Must be. They don’t make many farmers that pretty. Hope the god appreciates it.”
“Please forgive Gran,” said the tall woman, in almost exactly the same tone that Slate said, Shut up, Brenner.
“There is nothing to forgive,” said Caliban, and bowed to the old woman with exaggerated deference.
“Ha! Come find me sometime, pretty paladin. I’m not dead yet.”
“I fear that you would be too much for me, madam,” he said, and took himself back to the others. When he related the conversation, he left that part out. Brenner would have enjoyed it entirely too much.
“South of here,” said Learned Edmund, looking up the village on the map. “Well south and east, it seems. But I thought the army was holding on the far side of that village.”
“We’ll find out when we get there,” said Caliban. “Correct, Mistress Slate?”
“Hmm?”
“The army outpost.”
“Oh, them. Yeah. Let’s get moving.”
The inns were full with people streaming west. There was no traffic going their way. Refugees looked at them with bafflement and tried to warn them off.
Well…they tried to warn Caliban off, anyway, and occasionally Learned Edmund. Brenner, they gave a wide berth to. They didn’t seem to notice Slate at all. She found this amusing.
When they stopped at a farmhouse for the night, it was empty. The livestock were gone. Learned Edmund got a bedroom. Slate and the other two men threw bedrolls on the floor in the main room, though they deeded her the place closest to the fire.
There wasn’t much food, but Caliban insisted on leaving coins to pay for what they took. Slate glanced at Brenner, gave a quarter of a nod, and he pocketed the coins when the paladin wasn’t looking.