Jeff Salyards - Scourge of the Betrayer

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, you quivering dullard, there’s profit to be had in the grass. Smugglers, sly merchants attempting to slide past the toll stations, pilgrims, anyone else who can be bullied and-”

He broke off suddenly, closing his eyes. After a moment, his head snapped forward. He pulled the scarf loose and touched the back of his neck, and his hand came away bright with blood. He dabbed at his neck a few more times, looked at his hand again, swore quietly, and then casually wiped the blood on my pants. I jumped and attempted to move away, but it was too late.

I looked at his neck. “You’re wounded?”

He nodded slowly, voice strangely flat, like he’d woken from a deep slumber and wasn’t sure of his whereabouts. “A wound, yes.”

“From the attack?” I asked.

“From the attack?” he said, suddenly far away. “You could say that. Yes.”

“Do you need… that is, do you need any help? Assistance cleaning it maybe?”

He paused a long time before answering. “No need to clean it. I wouldn’t trust you to do so if there were. But it will bleed no more. The wound has closed.”

Having seen how much blood coated his hands, I didn’t believe him. Realizing it was impudent and possibly dangerous but unable to restrain myself, I leaned over and looked at his neck. There was no wound at all. Only a scar. An old, white, long-healed scar.

He saw me inspecting and pulled the scarf up higher, covering his neck. “Begone, nurse-mother.”

I looked at the blood he’d smeared on me and said, “But scars don’t bleed.”

“You’re correct. The wound isn’t mine.” He mistook my confused silence for skepticism and added, “I’m many things, but charlatan isn’t one of them. The wound isn’t my own. It was inflicted on another, by my hand.”

He closed his eyes and ignored my slew of questions. Receiving no answers, I relented and waited. Braylar rubbed his temple with the knuckle of his thumb, eyes still closed, scowling. Unsure if I wanted to truly know the answer, I asked if he was well.

He didn’t respond, didn’t even move.

I waited and waited, uncertain what to do, when he finally opened his eyes again and blinked several times, like a man coming out of a darkened room into bright sunlight. “No conversation. We’re done. Go inside the wagon. Walk alongside. I don’t care what you do, so long as you’re silent.”

I started to say something, but he said, “Don’t make me tell you again. If I must silence you myself, I will.”

That’s all it took. I returned to the interior of the wagon. The bleeding scar would’ve been strange enough on its own, but Braylar’s behavior only compounded it. Every time I started to think I’d seen the oddest thing on this journey, I was proven wrong.

I looked at the red smear on my leg and then glanced at the much larger bloody stain near the gate. So much blood. Front to rear, the wagon was marked with it.

I rolled a barrel over the stain, nearly covering it, but not quite. I pushed a box over the remainder, and resolved not to think on the things that happened in the wagon yesterday. It was a hollow resolution.

We traveled the rest of the day in silence. Like a hound that had been kicked but couldn’t help itself, I kept one ear perked, waiting for Braylar to call me back to his side, but that never happened, and I was reluctant to approach.

He pinched his nose or knuckled his temple on more than one occasion, and if his face was any indication, he was sorely grieved by something.

I wondered if this was the result of the blow he received from the haft of the soldier’s axe, but while I’m no expert in judging such things, the helm seemed to absorb the brunt of it, and he had only a mild abrasion on his scalp and no apparent swelling. Still, this was all exceedingly peculiar, even for him.

The second day after the attack began much as the previous day ended, with Braylar uninterested in anything, even mundane conversation. A few directives to be silent, some clipped orders, and a handful of threats, though lacking the usual venom or verve.

I was riding inside when he quietly announced, “The boy is dead. I felt it coming since yesterday, but… he’s dead now.”

I immediately moved to the front, sat next to him, and asked, “Who? What boy?”

He looked at me like I was the one behaving strangely. “The soldier boy. I struck him across the neck as he passed, do you recall? The back of the head. The neck. Do you see?” He locked eyes with me, waiting. I glanced at his neck and the dried blood on his scarf. He nodded. “There you go. Now you have it.”

I was absolutely positive I didn’t. And almost as sure I didn’t want it.

“He lingered for a time,” he said. “But now he’s dead for a certainty.”

With a shiver crossing my shoulders, I asked, whispering without meaning to, “How do you know?”

He pulled the flail off his hip again, and I reflexively scanned the horizon for approaching horses. Seeing nothing, I looked back to him. He held one of the Deserters on a level with his own, rubbing the edge of his thumb across a spike as he stared into the small contorted face.

“Bloodsounder.” He twisted the head quickly and the chain jingled.

I was awash in confusion. “The boy’s name was Bloodsounder?”

“No, you idiot. The flail.” Eyes narrowing when I still didn’t comprehend, he added, “You asked how I know, yes? His death? Well, I’m telling you. Bloodsounder. Bloodsounder; the flail. The flail; Bloodsounder. It isn’t so very complicated.”

Sure the question would come out wrong no matter how I phrased it, I asked, “How does Bloodsounder… tell you these things?”

His lip twitched, and the twin scars with it. “I wouldn’t use that word. Tell. That implies voices, where there are none. Unless you mean in the sense of signs. Tracks in the earth can tell you what made them, how many travel, what direction they go, if you know how to read them. If that’s your meaning, then yes, Bloodsounder tells me he’s dead. In so many signs.” He closed his eyes and said, “I now know several things about the man-child I struck down. Things I’d much sooner not know.”

He inhaled deeply through his nose, nostrils flaring, and closed his eyes. “He loved pears. The smell of their blossoms in the spring, an invisible cloud. The texture of their skin, when perfectly ripe. But especially the taste. And the fact that he first bedded a lass in no bed at all, but underneath the pear tree on his farm. In their rutting, they rolled over the overripe pears that had fallen, soiled their clothes in the juice as the bees buzzed around them.”

I watched his face, eyes still pressed shut, and he looked pained as he spoke. “That same girl whose purity he stole among the pears, he married. Under the very same tree. And they had some small life together, happy, as far as small lives go. But it didn’t last long. He was recruited by the Hornmen and quartered in a castle, far from the farm, the pears, and his new ripe wife. His duties kept him on the road for most of the next year. When he was finally allowed to return, he discovered she’d been struck a mortal blow defending the farm from bandits. An arrow… ” His forehead wrinkled. “No… not an arrow, a spear, a spear thrust. Spear or sword, but most likely spear-the wound was too large to be made by an arrow. But by the time our boy had returned a Hornman, it was too late. She was alive, but there was no forestalling the end, as the wound had festered.

“He sat by her side, three days, four, wiping her brow as the wound worked its greasy green magic, burrowing deeper into her flesh, filling her with a raging heat no damp cloth would absolve. It would’ve been awful enough if she’d been screaming. But she whimpered mostly, waiting for the end, which was somehow worse. Whimpered and mewed and called out nonsensical things while the fever burned the life out of her. But one thing she kept repeating wasn’t gibberish. He prayed he heard wrong, but after the tenth repetition, he could no longer pretend he had. A name. His brother’s name. His brother who had stayed behind while he trained as a Hornling.