Chapter 26
As much as Brine disliked the Lathian mercenaries, he could not deny the feeling of relief that came over him as he watched them barreling through the sand. These were the men who had called him names and pushed him down (and, he was pretty sure, left him and his teacher to die at the fangs of that hissing monstrosity), but he had decided to give them another chance.
Was it not Amontus, he reflected, who said that forgiveness was a narrow path that leadeth to a peaceful glade?
Amontus had indeed said this (there was no arguing with ten ages of monastic teachings), but apparently the Lathian thugs were not familiar with his work. Instead of a peaceful glade, they charged headlong into the person forgiving them and flung him as hard as they could in the direction of the spur.
Brine had a moment to utter something like, “Ughnt,” and then he was struggling to keep his legs beneath his body and nearly losing the pack from his shoulders. Silently, he thanked Owndiah he hadn’t had his monocle out. He’d have dropped the slippery devil for sure.
Regaining his balance, he wondered what the all-fired hurry could be. Was the hissing-thing on the prowl once more?
He cocked an ear to the sky, slowed his breathing, and softened his footfalls as best he could. There to the south, faint in the open starlit sky, was the distant wailing of the bole-beast’s victim.
Looking back to his shadowy assailant, Brine winced and said, “I’m sorry, but is there some reason we’re in—”
“Move,” the man told him, grabbing him a second time and throwing him towards the pinnacle.
Brine’s teeth clicked together and he went stumbling across the sand like a puppet on a string, arms flailing, legs weaving. When his momentum ended, he decided not to bother the man behind him with additional questions and had a look around himself.
He still couldn’t see Godfry, which bothered him a little, and he couldn’t see anything else either, which also bothered him. The thought had crossed his mind that perhaps there was a new predator prowling through the sands and that the Lathians were hastening their steps for their own protection.
But if that’s the case, he thought, why aren’t they looking around as they walk? Why not scan the bole-line or the back trail?
Brine gave the violent man at his rear a questioning look, then the four men striding behind him, then the three to the side. Their expressions were lost to him in the gloom, but the movements of their heads and bodies were not, and none of them were looking around.
He opened his mouth to attempt this inquiry a second time, and saw something behind him that left him speechless. It was Godfry’s silhouette, recognizable by the billowing robes and massive beard, very distinguishable from the brawny frames of his captors.
Godfry was roughly ten paces back and picking himself off the ground, trying in vain to quick-foot it across the sand as the hulking fellows beside him took turns grabbing him by the back of the robes and dragging him towards the jut.
Before his better judgment could intervene, Brine found himself yelling over his shoulder. “He can’t keep up,” he scolded. “He’s tired, and old. You’re going to—”
“Shut it,” spat the man directly behind him, driving a granite-hard palm between Brine’s shoulder blades and causing the disciple’s head to whip back.
Brine caught his balance and jerked his head at his attacker. “What is wrong with you?” he asked, tears of pain in his eyes. “We’re walking, okay? We can’t walk any fa—”
The rock-hard palm came again, this time in the shoulder. Brine staggered forward, and sideways, and a bright flare of anguish filled his neck as his head tried to break from his spine.
The man with the granite-like hands said, “I told yeh to shut it.”
“Yes, I heard you,” Brine retaliated. “But he isn’t talking,” he jabbed a finger at Godfry, “and they’re still knocking him down.”
Granite Hands did not turn around. He marched along for a time, black face directed at Brine, then said, “You’d best jus’ worry bout yourself, Wogol Boy.”
Brine glared at the man as he turned back around, but on the inside he was trembling with fear. He hadn’t liked the menace he’d heard in that last comment. It wasn’t just a threat, but a jagged possibility.
He made a glance over his shoulder and watched as Godfry once again failed to keep his escorts happy. They slapped him across the bushy head and he went down in a shadowy ripple of robes and beard.
Brine felt an irrational heat filling his mind, an irrational voice (the belly-fire) telling him to run back there and leap upon their persecutors. He resisted the urge.
He knew from childhood experience that such a reaction would cause the bullies to shove his advisor even harder…and there was no telling what they’d do to him, especially after the comment Granite Hands just made.
He kept his mouth shut and pretended that Godfry’s groans of pain were really gasps for air and that the sandy floor was actually cushioning his blows. A few white lies like these and he was able to reach the rock spur without his heart breaking in two.
“This way,” Granite Hands said, giving Brine a slap in the left side of his pack and sending him dancing off to the right.
Brine skirted the pinnacle on the east side and took the opportunity to inspect the massive landmark. It was, indeed, an enormous shaft of stone, as he suspected, and it appeared to be as big around as the temples of Valley Rock, only pointed on top and black as midnight.
“Over here,” the man said, shoving Brine to the left and steering him towards a crowd of Lathians along the north side of the spur.
Brine counted twenty or twenty-two dark shapes standing by the jut. He thought that was about right when accounting for the number of men lost at the claws of the bole-beast. They were all here, he saw, all of them awake and armed and staring right at him,
The light was poor, and it went without saying that Brine’s eyesight was poorer, but even in the paltry starlight Brine could tell by the way their muttered conversations had sputtered to a halt, and the way their various activities had quickly followed suit, that his presence was an unwanted disruption.
He slowed his pace.
“Keep goin’,” Granite Hands growled, shoving him in the back.
Brine staggered with the blow, but managed to speed up. Around him, the smell the armpits and vine spit stirred the air, the sound of spitting and cursing rising in his ears.
Stumbling along, Brine tried to understand the pathological hatred he was hearing. He wondered if there was something he could say to these men that might make things better, a prayer or a gesture of gratitude, but before he could say anything Granite Hands leapt in front of him, grabbed the closest Lathian in the group, and began screaming at the rest.
“An arc, gods ban yeh!” He shoved the first man into another and pointed at a third. “An arc! Get your filthy hides in an arc!”
The dark masses glared at this, a few moved away from the obnoxious fellow—some grumbling, others showing him a fist—but no one seemed to grasp the concept.
“A horseshoe?” Granite Hands snarled, making the shape with his thumb and forefinger. “Yeh know what that is, don’tcha? Now get on and do it! Make a horseshoe; One side of the cave to the other.”
The men appeared to be familiar with a horseshoe and did as they were told. There was, of course, some scuffling as everyone ran for the spots closest to the spur, but once those skirmishes were resolved—usually by whomever was holding a crossbow and whomever drew it first—something resembling a horse’s footwear had been formed along the sand.
“There yeh go,” Granite Hands said, giving Brine a shove at the spur.
Brine scurried away from the sadist and scrunched his face at the spur. The angry man had made reference to a cave in the rocks and he desperately wanted to see it.
The cave, he decided, was what the Lathians had been searching for when he’d first spied them from afar. He had no idea how they knew the
cave was here, but that didn’t change the fact that it was a possible means for escaping from the black-skinned butcher in the boles.
He ran his eyes along the face of the jut, but could see nothing resembling an opening in the rocks. Not to worry, though. Granite Hands was leading him straight towards the spur. If a cave existed, he would see it soon enough. He was only seven or eight paces away and already he could see more—
He stepped on something in the sand and looked down. He didn’t want to look down, but had to. The object beneath his sandal was not a thing to be ignored. It was an anomaly.
It had felt like a clod of mud, and at first, despite the fact he hadn’t seen mud since the banks of the Leresh several leagues to the south, he believe it was a clod of mud. Then the thing gave beneath his weight and the stuff he’d stepped on became the stuff he’d stepped in, engulfing the side of his sandal and three of his toes.
He raised his foot to have a better look and a hand like a clay brick shoved him in the back. He staggered on and decided he’d look later, finding, after only a few more strides, that he no longer needed to look.
Tearing the lump open had stirred a smell like a fat man’s bowel movement, a smell that engendered images of corn-flecked feces and bubbling brown juices.
He scrapped his sandal on the ground and gave the men around him a very dirty look. If they were anything like him, the adrenaline and exercise had given them loose bowels, and this was the first opportunity to empty their guts.
He stepped in another pile, this one was even larger than the first, but he dared not stop, not with Granite Hands right behind him.
He continued dragging his feet and sneaked a peek at Godfry. The old man was looking at his feet as well, but he was making no attempt to clean his slippers. Stranger still, Brine noticed the men behind his teacher weren’t even bothering to watch their step.
Were they guilty? he wondered. Were they afraid that acknowledging the filthy piles would cause the others to suspect them as the culprit?
He stepped in his third pile of mush and began to have doubts about his theory. What were the chances that three men took a hearty crap within strides of one another and right where their superiors had ordered them to form a defensive perimeter?
Granite Hands stepped in front of him, jabbed a finger at the ground, and screamed, “Si’ down,” but he could just as easily have yelled at the man behind Brine to shove the disciple to the sand, because that’s what happened.
Brine hit the sand with an unflattering, “oof,” landed in at least two piles of drek in the process, and turned just in time to see the oldest of the Jashian advisers falling into his arms.
He caught the old man with ease (Godfry couldn’t have weighed more than your average teenage girl) and helped him down to his knees. He leaned his mouth close to the dark area of his teacher’s head and said, in a hushed whisper of sound, “Are you all right?”
He felt stupid for asking the question, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and the situation seemed as though it called for some inane comment to show he cared.
Godfry remained doubled over, sucking air like a drowning man and leaning bodily against his student. A slight moaning exited his mouth with each windy exhalation, but otherwise he made no response.
Brine fastened his fingers in the old man’s robes and fought back his tears. He wished he’d been nicer to Godfry when the hissing monster first attacked. He wished he’d not been so rough while hauling him to his feet and dragging him to the north.
Surely, I didn’t treat him like this, he thought. Surely, I was nicer than this.
He lifted his eyes back to Granite Hands, but Granite Hands wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at a dark figure that Brine had not noticed, a dark figure seated on a piece of slag at the base of the spur. The figure was stooped and leaning on a cane.
Casting a thumb over his shoulder, Granite Hands said, “Got them Jashian pukes you wanted.” His hand came down. He seemed to be waiting for the hunchback to speak. “I got the men in an arc, too,” he said. “Like yeh wanted.”
Balthus twisted the silhouette of his head from Granite Hands to the Jashians, seemingly unaware of the mercenary’s presence.
“You may leave us,” he said, his voice absent of life.
Granite Hands didn’t leave, and even in the dark Brine could tell the angry man had something on his mind. He was shuffling his boots in the crap-filled sand and shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
From behind him, two or three men were calling him by name—Ardose, if Brine wasn’t mistaken—and telling him to ask.
“Shut it,” Ardose hissed, whirling around and waving a hand at them. The requests ended and he turned back to Balthus, maybe trying to find his words, maybe waiting for his men to disobey. When neither of these events occurred, he said, “How come we ain’t goin’ in?”
Balthus acted as though he did not hear, his shadowy gaze never leaving the disciple.
Ardose glanced back at his men. “Lot of us think we ought’a go in,” he said, shrugging casually. “Lot of us think we’d be better off usin’ the inside of the cave.”
If Balthus agreed, or even registered the other man’s inquiry, he made no outward sign.
Ardose studied him for a time, then turned southward and made a curt nod. “You hear that?” he asked.
Brine didn’t know if Balthus could hear the pitiful cries to which Ardose referred, but he certainly could. They were a good ways off in the distance now—a tad weaker, as well, with the victim’s vitality on the fade—but they were still there.
“That thing out there,” Ardose said, “when it’s done with Hingle, when the screamin stops,” he raised a hand and yanked at his earlobe, “it’s comin back fer us. It’s comin back and we better be ready.”
Still ignoring him, still staring at Brine as though he could read his every thought, Counselor Sneel said nothing.
Ardose pulled at his ear a little longer, then gave Brine a shrewd and unfriendly look. Brine met the man’s dreary gaze for only an instant, but he thought the mercenary looked confused, the look of a man who’d not heard the full story about his mission or charge.
Lowering his hand from his ear, the lead mercenary turned back to Sneel and said, “You hear me, old man?”
“I hear you,” the counselor said, never looking at him.
“Well?” Ardose said, flinching. “You gona answer me?”
Still staring at Brine, Balthus said, “Our destination is the homeland…not the bowels of the wilderness.”
Brine went cold. He lifted his gaze to the Lathian Counselor, then lowered it, his mind spinning. He didn’t think they would continue to the Forn River, not after what had happened to a third of their team and not when the path carried them through the boles to the north, but did that crazy hunchback really say they were going to Lathia?
As he pondered this further, he heard the lead mercenary chuckling wickedly.
“Yeah, I kind’a figured that,” Ardose said. “But if you ain’t noticed, Friend, the road home is runnin through them boles.” He stabbed a shadowy hand to the south. “And if we don’t kill the thing in them boles…,” he paused to shake his head, “…we ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
His outline never moving, Balthus said, “Then kill it.”
Ardose made a sarcastic huff. “Kill it…,” he said, speaking without tone. “An’ how you figure we do that?”
Taking up space in the stillness of the spur, Balthus said, “Its concealment is no more…and you have numbers.”
Ardose looked back at the shadows of his men, then at the hollow darkness in the spur that Brine’s ruined eyes interpreted as a cave. He gave his head a morose shake.
“I ain’t so sure bout that,” he said. “I ain’t at that, but even if we could kill the thing, why not use the cave for cover? You know? We could slide in there, wait for the thing to come round, use the bows on it. Use the spears.” He shrugged. “Wh
at’s wrong with that?”
Finally—mercifully—the counselor’s black gaze pivoted away from Brine. As it fixed upon Ardose, Brine heard the adviser say, “There is no cover in that cave.”
Brine jerked his eyes to Ardose and watched him balk, watched him take a step back. When he recovered, he said, “What do yeh mean, No cover? What’s…,” he paused, tugging at his left ear. “What’s that mean, No cover?” He glanced at the opening, then at Balthus. “It’s stone—three walls of stone—how’s that not cover?”
Balthus didn’t answer, only stared.
Ardose rubbed the back of his neck. “Are you tellin me,” he said, “you had us find this thing fer nothing? You tell us it’s there and now we ain’t gona use it?”
“We might,” Balthus said, “if you fail to slay the creature.”
“Slay the…,” Ardose trailed off, his body vibrating like a tea kettle before it blows. “You’re out’a your mind, old man. You hear me? Out—of—your—mind! We ain’t got a chance against that thing. You saw what it did to Sladge, you saw what it did when…when…Sladge…,” he swayed ever-so-slightly, seemed to choke on his thoughts, “…there ain’t no…way…,” he shook his head, or maybe it was the result of a faint, “…ain’t no…,” he swayed again, harder this time, then caught himself with a quick sidestep and said, “…cave….,” his knees buckled and he went down, landing in sand and offal.
Brine pulled Godfry close, waiting for the worst. He had been through this very experience two times already, once with Olymun along the F’kari road and once with Balthus outside the king’s chamber. In his experience, the mental invasion had filled him with an urge to take off running through the kingdom, but he didn’t know how Ardose would react.
Based upon Brine’s limited experience with the man as he escorted him across the desert, Ardose didn’t strike Brine as a run-away-and-hide sort of guy. He struck Brine as a draw-your-sword-and-cut-stuff-up sort of guy.
Ardose regained his feet and placed a hand to his head. He appeared to remember the counselor and peered over at him. He peered for a very long time.
“I s’pose we can try it,” he said, sounding anything but angry. “We can try,” he said, nodding at the hunched adviser. “Don’t hurt to give it try, I guess.” He seemed to notice Brine and Godfry and turned to face them, his knees weak. “What about them?”
Balthus stared at Ardose as though he’d asked the most ludicrous of questions. Then, like a constellation passing through the night, he turned his gaze to Brine.
“Leave them to me,” he said, and this time Ardose did as he was bade. He went staggering back into the arc of men like a child waking from a long nap, rubbing at his temples and weaving through the bodies.
Brine watched Ardose for as far as his eyes would allow. He dared not look at the hunchback on the rocks.