As we went forward, the closest frogs fell silent. Nearby I heard a splash. We had frightened one into the water. The crickets were undaunted, and continued their calls.
We had not walked more than two yards along the path when Master Farmer halted, covering his nose with his free arm. I nodded and tugged him along. Now the smell was as obvious to us as it had been to my hound back on the road. No wonder Achoo had been worrying her poor head over which scent to follow. She knew she was supposed to pursue the prince now, but we have Hunted for corpses so often that she may have thought she had to get both.
The Dog lay half in the water, half out, just ten feet from the road. Animals had been at her legs. When we pulled her from the water, we saw fishes had been at the rest of her. Her tunic was untouched in the front, no holes or slashes. There were no strangler’s marks that I could see on her throat, but they could have been destroyed. Her insignia, brass, hung on a chain around her neck. I took it in my hand and turned it over. Her name was carved there—Palisa Vintor. Her district, Arenaver. Her years as a brass badge, four strokes cut into the metal. She would have gotten her silver badge next April.
I told Master Farmer all these things, hearing my voice as if I stood away from my body. I sounded polite and quiet. I’d retreated into myself as I always do when it’s a woman, a child, or another Dog. I don’t want to show weakness. I let myself be another mot who knows how to look at the dead without making a looby of herself. “Would you help me turn her, please?” I asked.
“Are you all right?” he inquired as he gently set Vintor on her right side.
“It’s my work, Master Farmer,” I replied. I held my stone lamp close to the body. No slashes or holes on Vintor’s back that I could make out, either. “Curst if I know how she died, unless she was strangled and the signs are hid under the damage. You can put her back now.”
“These Rats are profligate with their magic,” he said, making the Sign on his chest. I did the same. “They’ve got so much they spend it like water. Good. They leave more for me. Cooper. They smothered her at a distance—probably from the bridge—and sent the slaves to hide her. They left too much magic on the Guardswoman, and the slaves’ hands left their marks. I suspect guardswoman Vintor here is one of the Dogs sent to follow the new arrivals by the Deputy Provost.”
Her purse flapped open and limp on her belt. I checked and found it empty of anything, coin or orders. Next I took off her boots to see if she’d hidden orders there. They were empty, though Vintor had slender pockets in both for just such a purpose. Had she stitched them there herself? I wondered.
I had to look inside her tunic, but cutting it open would take even more dignity from her. Instead I cut the cloth along the side seam and reached in that way. No documents. If the Deputy Provost had given her written orders, the slavers would know there was a Hunt for them, or someone like them.
“May I do my examination?” Master Farmer asked me when I rocked back on my heels and sighed. “I was asked to do more than carry a lantern and mind the horses, you know.”
“I thought, all you told me before, you’d done your examination,” I said.
“That was just what I knew after casting a general spell,” he replied. “I’ve yet to truly examine her, which means you and all those charms you carry—my tag, the spelled mirror in your belt pouch, the Goddess and Mithros charms on your belt—need to get back. That magic will interfere.”
My irritation broke the idea of being somewhere else that I used to keep myself strong. I glared at Master Farmer, thinking, Forgive me for being needed in the Hunt at all! But I backed up to the edge of the reeds on the far side of the path from the marsh. He told me when to halt. Mind my tail, Pounce said. I hadn’t seen him arrive. I want to watch.
“I’ll try not to disappoint,” Master Farmer replied, rubbing his hands together. “But this won’t be anything complicated. Just something basic I created for Dog work.” His eyes were intent as sparkling fire spilled from his hands to Vintor. It spread over her like honey, coating her from top to toe. As it filled in the spaces where the fish and the animals had gotten to her, I saw her body take shape under it—eyes, calves, nose, throat. When she seemed whole again, the fire vanished, leaving only a corpse untouched by anything. The effect was not one of solid flesh, but more like a painting that was a little sheer. It was solid enough to show no sign of scarf, belt, or cord around this Dog’s neck.
The illusion soon faded away. I bowed my head and made my prayer to the Black God.
“So mote it be,” whispered Master Farmer when I was done.
“What now?” I asked. “We cannot go forward.” It was one thing to follow Achoo. It was another to sit in the middle of no familiar place, our lad’s scent in midair with no way to follow it, a dead Dog on our hands, and no Tunstall to make decisions.
“I want to seal this poor mot off from more damage,” Master Farmer said. “If you and Pounce will move well back again?”
As we obeyed, the sparkling fire that Master Farmer had used to blanket Vintor once reappeared, as if it had only seemed to vanish before. The bits of white fire grew thicker, until the entire corpse shone. They faded. Now Palisa Vintor looked to be sheathed in glass.
“I don’t know our next step,” I admitted to Master Farmer. “On my own I’d go find the nearest village. We need to cross this marsh, and word must be sent to the Deputy Provost that one of her people is dead here.”
“Then let’s pitch camp—maybe on the other side of the road, for all our sakes—and wait for Tunstall and the lady,” Master Farmer suggested. “I don’t suppose Achoo will be happy, but she won’t like it when we take her around the marsh, either. Unless you mean to take her straight across somehow?”
I was grinding my teeth. “Cod-kicking craven churls,” I muttered to myself. “Bad enough they’ve put us off, but they’ve bum-swived every last local and traveler, burning that festering bridge.” I went to the road and considered the marsh. If I cut a long pole to test the bottom in front of me … Achoo could swim the water and walk the reed islands to follow the scent in the air. She’d done it before. I could swim the deep spaces, but not with the gear I needed for a long Hunt. Going alone was a risk, but gods rot these mewling, snake-hearted villains, they put even more sarden ground between us as we stood yattering there, and they were already a day or two ahead.
Camp, Beka, Pounce said. When you’re reduced to swearing and grinding your teeth, you’re too tired to choose well. I can feel at least one ten-foot drop-off within six feet of that bridge. There’s one that’s not just twenty feet deep, but thirty foot wide beyond those first two hummocks there. He wound around my legs, purring. My eyelids felt heavy. I barely noticed when he began to lean against my calves, nudging me toward the small road that led north. Achoo ran ahead of us, though she often looked at the marsh and whined. Master Farmer came behind us with the horses.
We found an area back from the northern road, screened by the trees, yet still within hearing of the main way. One thing I can say about camping by a marsh, the grass was thick and green. Without talking, Master Farmer and I cared for the horses and picketed them where they could graze. We were about to settle ourselves when I noticed that Achoo stared toward the road, her ears up, her eyes alert. I hand-signaled Master Farmer to look at her. Then we heard the sounds of approaching riders. Lantern light shone just over the brush that screened us from the road.
I was drawing my baton when Achoo whuffed, her tail wagging. Then I heard Tunstall’s familiar voice say, “Mithros’s balls, where’s the boar-buggering bridge?!”
“Put out another bowl, Mother, we’ve company for supper,” Master Farmer murmured. We both walked out to the road, Achoo racing to meet our companions.
Tunstall was at the remains of the bridge, dismounting from his horse. Holding a lantern of his own up high, he was cursing our prey steadily, not repeating a single word. I still do not have Tunstall’s skill in swearing.
Lady Sabine waited on Steady thre
e horse lengths to Tunstall’s rear, Drummer off the horse string at her side. The lady must have thrust the pole from which her own lantern dangled between the branches of a nearby tree, because there it was where none had hung earlier. She had a small round shield on her right arm and her sword in her left hand as she waited for us to come into view. Had we walked straight into the main road to attack Tunstall as bandits, the lady knight and the warhorse would have been on us in an instant, Drummer and Steady smashing us with their hooves while Lady Sabine cut us up.
Now, seeing Achoo, and then Master Farmer and me, she grinned and sheathed her blade. Drummer snorted and did some quick turns in the roadway to relax as Steady and Achoo watched. “Don’t mind my fellow, there,” Lady Sabine told us. “If he can’t fight, he needs to cool down a little.”
“Cooper,” Tunstall said, still looking at what was left of the bridge, “report.”
“The scent goes that way,” I replied. “And we can’t. There’s a raw Dog over there that Master Farmer preserved in glass or sommat.” Folk that aren’t Dogs exclaim sometimes when they hear one of us report the death of one of our own. Do they expect us to go down weeping? There’s the work to finish. Tearing clothes and sobbing won’t help a lost Dog. Vintor would be avenged only when her killers were hung.
“We’re betting that this Dog, Palisa Vintor, was sent by the Deputy Provost to chase one of the two slave trains that came to Arenaver in the last few days,” Master Farmer explained. “She had the misfortune to find the people who have our lad. They have two very nasty mages with them.”
Tunstall nodded, tugging his beard with his free hand. “The Deputy Provost told us Palisa Vintor went after the smaller caravan, and she had not reported in,” he said. “The other three tracking Dogs came back with reports that ruled out the remaining targets.”
“These slavers have him, we know that,” I said, offended anyone might think otherwise. “Achoo’s never wrong.”
Tunstall looked back at me and smiled. “The Deputy Provost doesn’t know Achoo. Hestaka, it’s good to see you.” Pounce jumped up onto his shoulder. “Cooper, finish your report.”
I told all the night’s events to him and the lady as they’d happened. When I finished, Farmer added what he had learned.
Tunstall sighed and spat on the road. Then he said, “Take me to Vintor.”
“You don’t need me for this,” Lady Sabine reminded us. “Where are the other horses picketed? Mine could use a rest from the saddle.”
“One moment, my lady. I’ll go with you,” Master Farmer said. He raised his hand, palm out, in the direction of Vintor’s body. For a moment he closed his eyes. Then he opened them and nodded. “You’ll be able to examine her now, Tunstall. I’ll enclose her again when you’re finished. My lady?”
My partner and I set off down the path, Pounce still riding Tunstall’s shoulders. Achoo thought that she ought to come, but I sent her back to Lady Sabine. It was silly to let my hound be upset all over again by the encounter with a dead human.
The glasslike covering that Master Farmer had placed around Vintor was indeed gone. Tunstall examined her as I answered his questions.
Pounce stayed on Tunstall, balancing easily as he shifted. “Have you an opinion, hestaka?” Tunstall asked him.
You are all weary, the cat said. You need rest, for the horses if you will not take it for yourselves. You are lucky it was but a bridge destroyed, and not fighters left to take you. They do not think much of you at the moment.
“Swive what they think of us,” I said.
Tunstall patted my shoulder. “Pounce is right. As for this poor mot …” He sighed. “We must get word to the Deputy Provost, the first chance we have. She can send people to take Guardswoman Vintor home.”
We walked back across the road and along the lesser track in silence. Pounce jumped down from Tunstall when we reached our campsite, and trotted into the woods. I was about to tell him to stay close when I realized my folly. Pounce has never gotten himself into trouble that I know of, while my own record is not so clean.
Master Farmer and I had stumbled across a favored travelers’ site when we’d left the horses there. He or Lady Sabine had cleared out a stone-lined fire pit that others had built near the edge of the trees. They had a pile of dried wood nearby and a fire already blazing where the lady, Master Farmer, and Achoo now sat. The pit was so well set in the ground that it was only when we came into the cleared area that we saw the fire. No one on the main road or across the marsh would see the flames, and the dead, dry wood ensured that the fire gave off little smoke. The scent of cooking sausages was another matter. My belly growled. I remembered that I’d thrown up my last meal.
Lady Sabine had unpacked a small basket onto a spread cloth. “The Deputy Provost gave us this in addition to the supplies already packed,” she explained. “There’s Galla pasties, parsnip fritters, lamb cakes, and nice, dark bread rolls. Ale for those who want it, raspberry twilsey for the rest. Chopped meat for Achoo and Pounce. Achoo has already eaten her share.” Lady Sabine pointed to a space behind Achoo where Pounce was eating a small pile of food. There were signs that another such pile had been next to his, but only a few bits of meat, small enough for Achoo to miss in the grass, were left. Achoo now busied herself with a bone.
I took out one of my many handkerchiefs and folded it over, then chose what I would eat. When I sat between Lady Sabine and Master Farmer, she passed a cup of the twilsey to me. Tunstall had yet to sit. He’d wandered over to the edge of the marsh to think.
“You made good time catching up, better than we expected,” I said to my lady.
She laughed. “Master Farmer here said the same thing. My family has been breeding ladyhorses for generations. They may not have liked my choice, but Father said he was cursed if a Macayhill, any Macayhill, would serve the Crown poorly mounted. Drummer and Steady are faster than any other knights’ horses I’ve known.”
“I still wouldn’t put any coin on them at the races,” Tunstall said, returning from his thinking spasm.
My lady smiled up at him with just her eyes. It was an interesting trick. I wondered if she was trying to be proper and not let the love between them creep into our Hunt. It still showed. It put a needle in my heart. Had I ever looked at Holborn that way, even in the beginning? I didn’t believe I had.
Pounce rammed himself under my right elbow. I ran my fingers into his thick, soft fur and let it warm my fingers. Thank you, I thought to him as hard as I could.
He butted my thigh with his head. Stop hating yourself because of him, he ordered me. Holborn wasn’t good enough. You didn’t even like him, not at first, not by the end. You just loved him for a short while.
“What are your orders, then?” Master Farmer asked Tunstall. “Since you’re in charge.”
Tunstall tugged his beard. “This road is traveled enough. There are always villages in marsh country—the living’s good. We’ll follow this road north and see if there is a village where we can get someone to take a message to the Deputy Provost about her missing Dog. We need a ferry across the marsh”—he looked at the horses—“or another bridge. What about it, Cooper? Are villages or bridges on one of your maps?”
“This bridge was on the map, but no others,” I said, recalling the district map from memory. “And no towns are marked hereabouts, either. Or villages, but they never mark villages.”
“From the path here, I’d say there’s a village,” Tunstall said. “Cattle tracks, sheep tracks. If we don’t have a village or ferry, we’re swived, and we’ll have to go all the way around the curst thing.”
I fetched my pack and found the waterproofed leather envelope with its precious documents. I gave it a more thorough search than I had on the ferry and discovered a second map of the area, labeled The Tellerun Valley to the Great Road North. It had more details than the district map. I spread it open and found the land between the Tellerun and the Halseander Rivers. There was an area colored blue. Written small over it was the name Wa
r Gorge Marsh. I used the first joint of my thumb, which was almost exactly an inch of length, and placed it along and across the area marked as the marsh. I checked it twice, to be sure, muttering “Pox” to myself when it came out the same both times.
“If I’ve worked the change from inches to miles right, this festering slice of mud is near forty miles long, with us right in the middle,” I told the others. “It’s eight miles wide at the widest part and six at the thinnest. There’s no road of any kind marked either on the far side of the marsh or on this side of the bridge going to the southern end of the marsh. The only village is in that direction on this side.” I looked up to see that Master Farmer was staring at me. “What?” I asked.
“I don’t think I’ve heard you say so many words in the entire time I’ve known you,” he replied. “Is it because you’re tired? Is there something in the lamb cakes, or the marsh air?”
Tunstall grinned, the mumper. “Cooper likes maps.”
“She talks enough, when you know her,” Lady Sabine added.