The Jaguar Knights (15 page)

Out in the bailey a full spring day was getting itself organized, complete
with sunshine and birdsong—just strident gulls and terns, admittedly, but better than nothing. Water was dripping everywhere and the mud was ankle deep already. Grand Master and Tam duly departed, taking with them three cat’s-eye swords.

Wolf located Sir Alden in the stable, grooming his horse. “We must dispose of the bodies.”
We
meaning
you
.

The old warrior rested an arm on the horse’s croup and regarded him without enthusiasm. “Throw ’em in the sea?”

“The King won’t want corpses washing up all along his coasts.”

“We’re short of firewood. If weather turns bad again, we’re like to freeze.”

“I understand the floors in the Great Tower are unsafe?”

Alden waited a beat before nodding. “Baron won’t like it.”

“The Baron is past caring and we cannot tolerate fifty rotting carcasses. Use whatever fuel you have on hand to burn them and treat the floors as your emergency store. So ordered in the King’s name, if that’s how you want it.”

For the first time Alden ventured a smile. “Aye, Your Majesty.”

Wolf ordered the two sample bodies moved to the icehouse as Grand Master had suggested, and then began making a gruesome inventory of the others as each in turn was carried out—guessing at ages, noting war paint, clothes, body piercings, and so on. They might have dressed like fops, they might be uglies by Chivian standards, but they were an impressive collection of brawn. All were men in their prime with the right callouses for warriors, but curiously few scars. His study had no real purpose. Mostly he just did not know what to do next. He was a swordsman, not an inquisitor.

He had assumed that Hogwood was working her way through the castle, questioning every witness in turn to make sure they were hiding nothing—a procedure likely to be as futile as what he was doing. Not so! When about half the bodies had been loaded on to the wagon that served as hearse, he was startled to see his black-robed assistant disappearing out the postern gate. He caught up with her as she neared the top of the cliff. She was walking blind, her attention entirely on something she held cupped in both hands.

“Fine morning for a stroll,” he remarked. “Mind telling me what you’re doing?”

She did not look up. “An extreme longshot, Sir Wolf. I have a tracker and I am following the Baroness’s trail. It is faint, but I seem to be obtaining consistent results.”

She was walking in the muddy track the raiders had left on what Grand Master had called the main shore road. Wolf had watched conjured tracking before, once even trailing a fugitive who had fled by boat, but this particular scent was more than five days old.

“What did you use for a drag?”

“I left it wrapped up in one of her ladyship’s dresses overnight.”

The trail descended rapidly, more like a slightly less steep strip of cliff than a road, and the footing was greasy as hot butter. Hogwood ignored the terrain, detouring safely around the boulders and chasms as if she trod in the exact prints of the warrior who had carried Celeste down this precipice by moonlight. Poor Celeste! Wolf wondered if she had been still screaming as she came this way.

In places on that death-defying scramble he made out individual prints preserved in mud or slush—marks of shoes, mostly, also bare feet, but no tracks of giant birds, or cats.

“Did you find out about the tide?”

“Yes,” Hogwood said vaguely, still staring down at the tracker. “It was at the full. Extraordinary.”

Wolf ground teeth in silence for a few moments before giving in and saying, “Why extraordinary?”

“The night of the full moon? The highest tide of the month? Baelish raiders would never beach boats then and risk being stranded for two weeks.”

“Two or three hundred strong men could move a few boats a long way down a beach.”

At that moment Hogwood slipped and almost fell. He caught her elbow to steady her.

“Don’t touch me!” She shook him off, keeping her eyes on the tracker.

He released both her and his temper. “You were ready enough to be manhandled last night.”

Here the way crossed a very steep gully. She began edging sideways down the slope. “And evermore I will be remembered as the girl who couldn’t even lay a Blade.”

He followed. “I’d have been happy to start your education, but I didn’t want you waking the entire castle shouting rape.”

She stopped abruptly at the bottom, standing in the stream itself so he almost walked into her. She was still bent over the conjurement. He thought she was losing the track, until he realized that her shoulders were shaking.

“What’s wrong?”

She gasped. “Please!” She was
laughing
! “Don’t say things like that. I have to concentrate.”

“Like what?”

“Like the idea of
you
raping
me
. Be quiet. This is important.” She started climbing out of the gully.

Wolf followed in furious silence. He was certain now that Grand Inquisitor had sent Hogwood along with the express purpose of compromising him somehow. The doctorate of conjury was a lie or a red herring. There was no other explanation for the negligee or last night’s blatant performance. Today’s derision was simply another tactic.

When the trail arrived at the beach, he said. “If you weren’t trying to stage a rape, what was the reason for that disgusting performance?”

For the first time she looked at him, dark eyes mocking. “Disgusting? Spirits, can’t you guess? I fancied a man and a Blade was the obvious choice. Women can enjoy bed sports, too, you know. Or haven’t you ever noticed?”

That was absurd. He had not been using Blade charm on her and nothing less would make a pretty girl lust after the ugliest man in Chivial.

“Decent women do not even think that way, let alone talk like that.”

“By the seven saving spirits! A Blade lecturing on morality? And how can he know what a woman thinks? Now be quiet, Wolf, or you will make me break the thread.”

He was just plain “Wolf” now, was he?

Short Cove was well named, just a scoop out of the cliffs, a hummocky,
boulder-strewn meadow with a small stream draining away into a pebble beach. The tide was out, the air pungent with odors of seaweed, raucous with the screech of seabirds.

“Very tricky harbor,” he observed profoundly, staring out at some jagged rocks not far beyond the breaking waves. “And shingle, see? Won’t find any marks of boats on that.” He looked up at the cliff and a solitary turret of Quondam visible above it. “They did go straight up, as Grand Master said! They didn’t find the road in the moonlight, just made a beeline for the fortress, right up the face of the…”

He was talking to himself.

Hogwood had not turned toward the sea, but was still following her tracker’s guidance, stumbling across the coarse bent grass of the meadow. He went after her. He should have used his eyes to better effect, for the passage of so many men had left an obvious trail there, too. It terminated in a wider trampled area, as if the invaders had milled around for a while. The newcomers’ arrival had interrupted birds, which clamored up in a noisy blizzard, screaming protests as they circled overhead.

“No!” He drew his sword, yelling in fury as he ran forward to where they had been feeding. Beyond the trampled area, the invaders’ trail ended between two rocks. On the landward side the grass was crushed and flattened; on the other it stood proud, rippling in the cold salt wind. On either boulder…things not to be looked at.

“Not the Baroness?” Hogwood said. Her face was almost green, and he doubted his was any better.

“No. The pikemen.” They had found the missing Cam Obmouth and Rolf Twidale. The birds had found them first, though. One or two tried to return and he chased them away with more oaths.

“You keep these vermin off and I’ll go and fetch some horses,” he said. “Or would you rather go?”

“Please.” Hogwood was shrunken and huddled, every inch of her conveying horror and nausea. “I should…I ought to look around here first.”

She seemed more childlike than ever. If he opened his arms she would fall right into them. And hate herself ever after. She had too much pride. So had he, after the previous night’s display. He was tempted, though.

“What is there to see?” he said, deliberately harsh. “The raiders didn’t leave by boat. They almost certainly didn’t come by boat. They traveled by conjuration.” The mystery was becoming ever more bizarre. “You’re the expert, Hogwood. Did they come all the way from…from, er, wherever they came from…by enchantment or just from a ship offshore? And why take two prisoners and then butcher them in cold blood?”

“Some sort of ritual,” she muttered, looking everywhere except at the bodies. “No octogram that I can see, but travelers have reported conjury performed in other ways in other lands. There was a fire, see?—here, between the rocks.”

Wolf shooed birds again. “Go and tell Sir Alden. I’ll stand watch.”

She nodded gratefully and hurried away.

The victims’ clothes lay in the grass. They had been stripped naked and then stretched out faceup on the rocks. Whatever had been done to them after that had left the boulders drenched with blood, but he could make out no details because the birds had picked the corpses almost to bare bones. Then the invaders had disappeared. This was quite clear, for their trail entered the area and no trail departed. The bodies had been left for the gulls and the insects, and somehow that made him angrier than anything else.

He strode up and down for the next hour, warding off the shrieking gulls and waiting for the horses, and swore dark vows of vengeance on whatever monsters had perpetrated this horror, whoever they were, and wherever they came from.

T
here was something morbidly fascinating about any very large fire, and especially a funeral pyre on a cliff edge, with yellow flames streaming in the sea wind, the harsh lamentation of gulls. Wolf had spoken the eulogy, just a few words in the King’s name, thanking the men who had
fallen in his service. He had let Sir Alden hurl the brand onto the pile to start them on their way. It seemed wrong to make Twidale and Obmouth share their funeral with their murderers, but there was no other practical solution, so he had made sure that the Chivians’ carefully wrapped remains were placed at the top, in the spirit of the old sagas, where slaves and captives were sacrificed on the balefires of warriors.

“Now it is safe to break the news to the families,” he said. “Who can guide me?”

“I’ll do that,” Alden growled. “I knew them, you didn’t.”

Wolf did not argue very hard. Later, when the pyre began to collapse, the old man rode away into the gathering dusk and the other spectators began wandering back to the castle, for the wind was chill.

Wolf remained, brooding. His mission was complete, as far as he could take it. Now he must return and deliver a very unwelcome report to the Council. He must advise the King that there was still no explanation for the abduction of Celeste and he was powerless to punish the guilty or even to defend his realm against any future attacks. No keep was secure now, no one safe against attack.

Hogwood spoke at his elbow. “You mourn.”

He turned with a sigh. “You think a mass murderer can’t be a hypocrite too? I just love funerals. I was standing here planning some more.”

She shook her head. “You are right to be bitter.”

“And you were right to be frightened of me. What exactly did Grand Master tell you last night?”

“We talked a long time. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Inquisitors forget nothing. He told you something that completely changed your mind. Until then you were scared of me. Right after that little chat you tried to throw yourself into my bed. That’s been your mission all along, hasn’t it? The massacre was just a sideshow for you. Your real job was to seduce me, and the thought of sleeping with a murderous ogre had you seriously affrighted. Then—behold!—suddenly you were eager. My looks didn’t change. What did? What lies did Grand Master tell you?”

Hogwood’s unforgettable eyes were brimming over with innocence. Or tears brought on by the wind. “I know he wasn’t lying. He
said you killed your best friend because he asked you to. Sir Hengist was horribly wounded and fated to go mad if he didn’t die first. His death was a mercy. After that you were bearing as much grief as any man could, so when other Blades had to die, you appointed yourself executioner. Whenever possible, you spared your brothers from having to share your guilt.”

Wolf clung tight to his temper, but he was furious that Durendal had dared to gossip about him to an outsider. “That’s nonsense. I just enjoy killing.”

“Not according to Grand Master. The real culprit, he says, was King Ambrose, who gave away so many Blades to the nobility in his old age.”

“No! The real culprit was that worthless incompetent Athelgar, who provoked the nobility into rebellion!”

“It was not his fault that they had Blades to defend them! He could not even arrest them for questioning.”

Wolf was very close to shouting at the stupid wench now. “He didn’t need to arrest them! He could have dealt with them the way he dealt with Celeste—put them under house arrest and use their own Blades as jailers. Then nobody would have had to die!”
And nobody would have had to kill.

“But in the event,” Hogwood said, “those Blades did have to die and you took the guilt on yourself. You never stoop to making excuses, Grand Master said, so fools don’t see that. Most Blades just ignore you because they don’t even want to think about it, he said. But some knights at Ironhall know better. Sir Bowman, for example, a highly respected former deputy commander. He wasn’t shunning you.”

“He’s a friend.”

“You have no friends. Friendship hurts you so much you don’t dare to make any more friends.”

“We grownups don’t believe in fairy tales.”

“I am not a child! Didn’t your amazing Blade vision notice even that much?”

“You seriously expect me to believe that Roland’s homily gave you a sudden impulse for a tumble in bed with a killer?”