Chapter 2 #2
“No good,” Svangerd said, joining me a few moments later. “I suppose we could hang around and see if the one you brained wakes up, but I don’t think he will.” She looked at me, and I made a vague effort to wipe my face clean. “This really isn’t your sort of thing, is it?”
“No,” I said.
“Pity. You’re not bad at it. But where I grew up you wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.”
I stood up. My habit was drenched in blood on one side and sick on the other. “I’ll have to wear my dress robes,” I said.
“Just as well you brought them. Go and sit in the cart. I’ll see if there’s any plantain.”
Where Svangerd learned to sew up wounds I don’t know and have never liked to ask, but she’s neat and quick, which is all you can really ask for.
She also knows about washing the dirt out and sweetening cuts with plantain juice, which I’ve read about but never actually seen anyone else do in practice.
“It’ll stiffen up and hurt like buggery in an hour or so,” she said cheerfully, “so you’d better shift those bodies now, while you feel like doing it.
Don’t strain too much or you’ll burst the stitches. ”
I dumped the bodies back in the chaise, and that was all my strength used up for the day. She turned the horses loose, then scrabbled together some twigs and dead brambles to kindle a fire under it. Clearing up after yourself is good manners.
“I don’t think we’ll be seeing the carter again,” she said, climbing up onto the box of the cart. “I’ll drive.”
“No.”
“You’re in no fit state,” she said firmly. “Also we need to make up time if we’re going to catch the boat.”
I groaned, but no use. Svangerd doesn’t know how to drive a cart, but she thinks she does.
She also likes to go fast. On previous occasions the nightmare hadn’t lasted very long, because she’d either hit a tree or ride over a pothole and crack an axle.
This time, though, it seemed to go on for ever.
“We need to talk,” she yelled over the thunder of the wheels, “about who those men were. I’ve been racking my brains and I can’t think.”
I couldn’t think either, because of the fear.
“For one thing,” she went on, “this junket of ours is supposed to be a secret. For another, why guzzle us so close to home? It leaves plenty of time for the abbot to send somebody else. Also, I don’t suppose you noticed, but those men weren’t exactly at the top of their profession.
We saw them a mile off and they couldn’t fight for honeycomb.
The sort of people who’d want to stop us going to the shindig would have better men at their disposal, don’t you think? ”
“Would you mind slowing down just a little bit?”
“On reflection, we should’ve taken the chaise,” she said.
“But to get back to what I was saying,” she went on, as the offside back wheel grazed a large rock and my teeth came together like hammer and anvil, “I’ve been turning over in my mind who it could’ve been and none of them rings true.
There’s the princess’s lot, obviously, but how in God’s name would they know about us?
There’s the Sashan, because Sashan intelligence knows everything about everything everywhere, only we’ll be doing the Sashan a favour, so why stop us?
Of course it could be someone inside the Order, which would explain how they knew, but I don’t remember pissing anybody off enough to want to kill us. How about you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone you gave a lift to once.”
“Funny man. This is serious. If the object of our mission is common knowledge, we’re going to be in shit up to the armpit.”
“Maybe we should go back.”
“Wash your mouth out with ashes and water.”
“You said it yourself,” I said. “There’s still time for them to send another team. If you’re right and our cover’s blown before we start, there’s no point us going on. Also, we’re liable to get killed, which I object to.”
“Don’t be such a girl. All I’m saying is, it’d be nice if we had some idea what’s going on, so we don’t go making stupid mistakes which we could avoid with a little common sense and forward planning. How’s the leg?”
“Painful,” I said. “Hurts like hell every time we go over a rut.”
“The plantain will take the heat out of it,” she said blithely. “No offence, but you need to be more careful. Like I said, those boys were hardly the brightest and the best, and you let them get to you. I’m not criticising; I’m just saying, that’s all.”
I like Svangerd a lot. Some times, though, more than others.
Metousa Bay isn’t what it was. Three hundred years ago it was one of the Nine Ports, back when they had the monopoly on the herring and salt cod business, and they actually extended the old imperial harbour and built a new jetty, to shelter the east side of the bay.
Then the Aram Chantat and the Auzida appeared out of nowhere and turned the whole of the east coast of the Bitter Sea into a wasteland.
There was nobody left to eat herrings, so Metousa dwindled away into what it is now: a small town that happens to be on the edge of the sea.
Once a month the stone barges put in, to load granite and basalt blocks from the quarries at Stachel – in the old days a fleet of barges arrived every week, and they say that there are palaces in Iden Astea and Moy Ennep built exclusively out of chunks of the Stachel downs, which is hard to imagine – and if you’re lucky and you have a chit from the right abbot, you can hitch a lift on one of them as far as Mavais, where you can take your pick of ships bound for Choris.
Svangerd hates sea travel. I don’t mind it one bit. I feel just the same standing on a deck as I do in the street or the cloister. She suffers the torments supposedly reserved for perjurers and men who kill their mothers, though she does her level best not to let it show.
“You’ll be fine,” I promised her. “These things aren’t like other ships.
I’ve been on them loads of times. They’re big and heavy and flat-bottomed, so they don’t roll and wallow about, and there’s never any bad weather this time of year.
Give it a day or so and you’ll have forgotten you’re on a ship, trust me. ”
There’s a curious irony in the fact that every time I utter the words trust me, something screws up.
Even more curious is the fact that she continues to listen to me, even when I use the dreaded formula.
“I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about,” I said, as she clung to the rail with bits of half-digested food sticking to her chin. “It’s a bit frisky, but no big deal.”
A wave smashed into the side of the barge, drenching us both with spray.
I didn’t mind all that much. I was washing my soiled habit by wearing it, and the spray had done a pretty good job of rasping the ingrained blood and vomit out of the fibres.
She’d borrowed an old oilskin from one of the barge hands.
“I hate you,” she said. “I hope we both drown.”
“About what you were saying the other day,” I said. “I’ve been giving it some thought, and I agree with you. It doesn’t make sense. Who’d want to kill us before we get to Choris?”
I think she sincerely intended to answer my question, but what came out was a horrible retching noise.
“It’s a real shame you insisted on killing that man,” I went on, “before he could tell us anything. That’s the trouble with you, though, you do tend to get carried away.
Yes, fair enough, first things first, neutralise the threat and then think about the good of the mission.
But I should point out that I managed to defend myself perfectly adequately and still leave two out of three of the bad guys still alive and capable of imparting valuable information, whereas you—” At which point I had to move quickly.
I got it wrong, but only because the wind changed suddenly and I ducked into the projectile vomit instead of out of its way.
“Not to worry,” I said. “The rain’ll clear it off in two shakes. ”
She turned her head and glared pitifully at me. “Why don’t you go below,” she said, “where it’s dry?”
“A bit of rain never hurt anybody,” I said.
“Besides, we need to talk about this. As I see it, the only logical conclusion is that there’s a security breach at our end.
Someone back at the abbey told those idiots exactly where to find us and what we’re doing.
That’s really rather serious, don’t you think? ”
She’d got her elbows under the rail and her fingers clenched tight, like a blacksmith’s vice. “It doesn’t have to be that,” she whispered, her throat raw from vomit burns. “Been thinking about it. Maybe just robbers.”
I’d thought about that too. A cart from the abbey in the middle of nowhere; carts coming in to the abbey tend to be carrying bulk goods of little intrinsic value, but carts coming out could well be carrying books, or icons; nearly everything we make is small, portable and extremely valuable to the right buyer.
In fact, when you come to think of it, it’s amazing how rarely we get robbed.
But we usually don’t, and that surely was the point.
“Robbers don’t drive about in chaises,” I pointed out.
“Professional assassins don’t use billhooks,” she managed to reply before another billow rendered her speechless. Good point, which had already occurred to me. I’d dismissed it from my mind, but only because I couldn’t find a way to account for it.
“I still think we should’ve turned back when we had the chance,” I said.
“Still, too late for that now, so we’ll just have to soldier on and make the best of it.
But it means we’re going to have to rethink our strategy from the ground up.
If they know who we are and why we’re really going to the council—”
“Who’s they?”