Jeff Salyards - Veil of the Deserters

Vendurro looked at me, lower lip moving back and forth, dragging that patch of sandy hair on his chin with it, as he seemed to be wrestling with how to, or whether to, respond. Then he looked ahead to make sure no one was close enough to hear. As the company had the road to ourselves, we had spread out a fair amount-someone would need to drop back or ride forward quite a bit to make out our conversation. “I was there, as it happened. Kind of wishing I hadn’t been. But Cap, guessing he’s wishing the same right about now.”

“Where was ‘there’?”

“We was riding screen for the army. In-”

“Riding screen?”

Vendurro stopped himself. “Easy to forget the only things you know about soldiering you read in some book or other. You seen the captain sending scouts ahead, behind, all around?” I nodded and he continued. “Well, an army, they do the same thing, only bigger like. Usually send a small unit. Scour the countryside for stores of food, signs of the enemy. Sometimes sent out to destroy crops, or poison wells, or work up some other kind of mischief. That’s what the crossbow cavalry was best at-scouting, gathering intelligence, taking what needed to be taken, breaking what needed breaking.”

“Crossbow cavalry? I take it you mean this unit?”

Vendurro tapped the side of his long nose. “Yup. Nailed it true, Arki. But this is only a portion of it. Anyway, the army was on the move. This was in the hills of Gurtagoi. We weren’t at war with the Anjurians just then, so this wasn’t the army entire or nothing. Just a few battalions, set to check out reports of some movement from uppity Gurtagese bandits. Worst kind of screening there is-just getting a lay of the countryside, not expecting any scrapes, not stirring up trouble of any note. Just riding. Sleeping. Riding. Sleeping. So when we come upon a burial mound, and Cap said he wanted to take a closer look, we were half bored out of our minds and all curious as cats.”

I’d read about burial mounds, but never seen one. “You said Gurtagoi? There weren’t any tribes or clans in the vicinity, were there? If memory serves, this province had been settled for some time, right?”

“Yup. A lot of open country, still, but no active tribes that I know of. Any that lived there were wiped out or moved on a long time ago. Why?”

“Well, my studies indicated that burial mounds in active tribe lands might have something worthwhile in them. But since this was in a settled region, open or not, I’m guessing it would have been looted a long time ago, wouldn’t it? So what caused the captain to want to investigate?”

Vendurro scratched at his stubbly neck with two fingers. “Can’t rightly say. You weren’t the only one who had that thought. A few of the men said the same thing. Mulldoos the loudest. But you seen the Cap-when he gets a thought lodged proper in his head…”

“A blacksmith with tongs couldn’t pull it out.”

Vendurro chuckled. “Right. And you got to remember-well, maybe you don’t, since you probably didn’t know this in the first of all, but Cap, before he was with the Syldoon, him and his sister-” he looked up the line at Soffjian. “They were something of experts when it came to robbing burial mounds. To hear him tell it. So maybe he gleaned something in the flowers and dirt, or the slope of the land, or devils know what he saw-but he seemed real certain this mound was worth exploring for a bit. And since we weren’t in a bull-busting hurry just then, most of the men were more than happy to let the horses graze and lay in the thistles while the Cap and a few of us investigated.

“We followed his lead as we walked the perimeter. Looked like a big mound of grass most of the way, until we came to the entrance. A big old stone slab in place, bunch of squiggly carving worked into the face. Cap told us to find some logs to bust in there. Mulldoos, he looked at Cap, you know, like he does, and said, ‘Cap, what makes you think somebody else ain’t busted in here in before now? Why are we playing in the dirt? Let’s get back to camp.’

“But Cap, being Cap, said, ‘Have you no spirit of adventure, Lieutenant?’ Well, Mulldoos weren’t one to have the size of his manhood questioned, so he helped fetch some logs and pry that stone slab off the entrance. Heavier than it looked. Took some sweat from all of us, but we finally worked it free.”

“Did you have torches?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have thought to bring none, it being midday and all, and the mound didn’t look all that big, figured enough sun would come down there with us to see what was what. But Cap insisted we get some ready, which earned him another of those Mulldoos looks. But we went about it, worked something up, started inside.”

I asked, “Did it… smell?”

Vendurro laughed. “Now that you mention it, it did. But not like death or rot. Just a stale, trapped sort of smell. Like the earth had belched but never had a hole to let it out. So we hoisted those makeshift torches, started in. The dirt floor was packed tight, covered in dust of the ages, and there weren’t footprints that I could make out. Didn’t look to me like no one had broken in there before us. As we started down the incline, Hewspear must have been thinking on that and said, ‘Captain,’-you know, never have heard him shorten it, just wouldn’t sit right with him, I suppose-‘Captain,’ he says, ‘I do have a spirit of adventure. But don’t you find it peculiar that a crypt like this would have been undisturbed for so long?’”

Vendurro managed a good impression of nearly everyone, capturing the rhythm and cadence. “Well, Cap looks at him and says, ‘Perhaps, but it’s most definitely disturbed now. Do you really wish to turn back before seeing what’s inside?’

“There wasn’t one of us that said much to that. So in we went, following a tunnel down. And Cap was right, after we turned away from the entrance, the sunlight would’ve known better than to follow us, so the torches proved mighty useful.”

“Thought they might,” I said, smiling.

“Real right head on them shoulders, you got. Anyway, we kept walking until we got to the burial chamber. It was big, bigger than I would have expected. Ceiling about fifteen feet high, so Hewspear could straighten up again. Bracketed with wooden beams. The ceiling, that is, not Hewspear of course.”

“Why was it so big?”

“Well, I might’ve asked the same question, never been graverobbing myself neither, coming from a clan that didn’t do burial mounds.”

“No?”

“Nope. Burned the dead to ash, high and low. Can’t say why, for a certainty. Always just been done that way. But Cap said this mound likely belonged to a warrior of note. And if it was anything like where he was from, that warrior didn’t head into the afterlife traveling light.

“And he was righter than right about that. All along the outer edge of the chamber, all manner of things. Jars that once had oil, or mead, or who knows what else. Some flutes that got Hew’s attention-always did like his windy instruments. A small table with some sort of game board on it, the pieces caked in dust so much it was hard to tell what they were, besides lumps. Blew the dust free, choking on it, found onyx, started stuffing them in a pouch. Trays for food. Wicker baskets, drinking horns, combs and brushes, fox-fur blankets. On and on. I saw Mulldoos grab some old brass torcs, getting into the spirit of things. We were circling around, examining this and that, pocketing anything that wasn’t too warped or cracked. But Cap had already made it across the chamber to an open door on the other side. He called out, ‘Baubles. Come on, men,’ and disappeared into the next room without waiting on us.”

Vendurro stopped talking for a second, looking down at the pommel on his saddle, the reins loose in his hands. He glanced at me, and he might have shivered, though I might have only imagined the last. Or not.