M McNally - The Sable City

Actually, we thought nothing of the sort, Tilda thought now. She said something different.

“You think a battle has already been fought?”

Block nodded toward the charger. “That wound on the arse is long, from a big blade. Spear or a pole-arm. But the holes on the ribs are high, and the rags jammed in them poke out and up. Arrows shot from distance, on their downward path.”

Tilda felt cold, and not just from the drear air. The man they had come here to find – all the way to Noroth and to Codia and to Orstaf – had marched with Nyham. If there had been a battle, he had been in it.

“Should we not hurry on, Captain?” she said. “I mean, he could…we have to find out what happened.”

“We know what happened,” Block growled. “The baron got whipped. A footman jumped on a knight’s horse and rode it back to here. That beast was not going any further today, and the man would not wait. The fellow went to ground and kept moving. And look here.”

Block turned and stomped to the southwest edge of the clearing no longer minding the marks on the ground, so neither did Tilda as she followed. At the edge of the tall grass Block pointed at a last shoeprint on the soft mossy ground, then out into the grass.

“Broken stalk, bent stalk, another bent further along, in a dead line southwest. Southwest. Not back north, toward Nyham’s lands. Not the direction a fleeing peasant or manor man would have gone to get home.”

Of Nyham’s seven-hundred men, two hundred had been such locals. The other five-hundred, only one of whom Tilda and her Captain were interested in, were recent legionnaires of the Codian Empire. They were deserters from the 34 ^ Foot, hired by the baron to visit vengeance upon his Duke, apparently without success.

“One of the renegades,” Tilda said, and Block nodded.

“I don’t know where the man thinks he is going now, but he is in a hurry to get there. Can’t be more than eight hours ahead.”

“So what?” Tilda said, and Block raised a dark eyebrow touched with gray at her.

“I mean, in that case…I mean it seems to me…”

“Spit it out, girl.”

Tilda took a breath, and realized her heart was pounding. The last three months of her life seemed to be crashing into this moment from behind.

“Captain, we need to be on that battlefield, now. If, if our man is dead, we need to know it. And if he is captured we have to get there before he is hung for desertion, or for bearing arms against the Duke, or whatever. Right now, sir. Lol hique.”

Block was again staring to the southwest, in the direction that the last mark of a legionnaire’s marching sandal pointed.

“Or maybe he escaped the battle. Made a run for it.”

Tilda did not like where that was going. “Then our best chance of learning where he might have run would also be at the battlefield, no? With any captured legionnaires, who themselves may be strung-up before much longer.”

Block did not seem to be listening. He was still staring off across the burry tops of the tall grass as the stalks waved gently in the chill breeze.

“Unless this is our man,” he said.

Behind him, for just a moment, Tilda dropped her jaw and glared disbelief at Block’s wide back. She reined in her face before stammering one question in two languages.

“I’m tizalk…sorry… spahalo what?”

“Five-hundred-to-one odds against it, I know,” Block said, still staring away. “Bit long to wager much. But the pay-off…”

Tilda wanted either to jump up and down, or else kick her esteemed and honorable Captain in his wide hindquarters. She managed to do neither. Just.

“Forgive me, Captain, but I think at the Island Stakes they call that a misag uyak. A Fool’s Bet.”

“Not if the race is rigged.”

Now Tilda could only stare. It was not her place to question the Captain, and even if it had been, she had no idea of what she could possibly say to that.

Block hitched back his black half-cloak, reaching inside to pluck something from a pouch at his belt. He extended an arm and opened his palm. Tilda saw a coppery gleam, and inwardly groaned.

The Empire of the Code minted as its smallest denomination copper pennies modeled on those of the old Kingdom of Tull, now an Imperial province for some hundred-fifty years. Popularly called “thumbs,” each side showed a fist with the thumb extended. Lucky side up, you could see the folded fingers against the palm. Unlucky thumbs-down showed the back of the hand.

Block balanced the coin on his own bent thumb. “Your call?”

“Lucky side to the battlefield.” Tilda said quickly, then muttered under her breath. “Nothing else makes sense.”

She thought of something only after the dwarf flicked the coin up to flip smoothly through the air, a dancing glint of decision. Tilda recalled that the old Tullish coins, like many things from what had once been called the Witch Kingdom, were made in the fashion of a lesson. Given time and circulation from hand to hand, a bit of sliding across bar-tops and bartering tables, and the soft metal started to wear. The first thing to go was the fine detail of the folded fingers, and after that it was impossible to tell one side of the coin from the other.

Good luck wears off, the Tulls had said. Bad luck lasts forever.

Tilda retrieved the mare and pony from the main path, and frowned when she found that the dagger Block had jammed into the ground to loop the reins had been one of hers. She wiped it well clean before replacing it in a hidden sheath under a saddlebag.

They let the horses get a good drink at the clearing, then Tilda boosted the dwarf to his saddle and swung into her own. She followed behind as Block pointed the snorting pony into the long grass. The white charger stepped back into the clearing behind them but went no further, and looking back over her shoulder at the proud animal standing forlorn under the tree, Tilda felt a pang. She assured herself that even on the lonely paths of southern Orstaf someone would come by before long, and a horse of that quality would never be left behind by anyone whose main concern was not for speed.

The Captain said that as they were after a man on foot who had less than a half-day head start they might overtake him before nightfall. Early the next day at the worst. If the fellow’s trail continued generally southwest they would still be in position to angle back to the battlefield without losing too much time, should it prove necessary.

Tilda said nothing in reply.

As it developed, the Miilarkians could not of course take full advantage of being mounted to close the distance between themselves and their new quarry. The tall steppe grass gave the country of Orstaf a gently rolling appearance, but down at dirt-level it was a different story. Stones cluttered the plains, and there were dry runoff channels from the snowmelt season everywhere, not to mention gopher burrows and snake holes. To ride at speed cross-country would have been to invite a broken ankle for a horse. That was the point of the numberless paths in the first place.

In the second place, tracking a lone man through the stuff proved difficult as it tended to grant passage with only a rustle and some picturesque swaying. Block often gripped his saddle horn as his pony picked its way along, holding himself flat against the horse’s dun flank with his sharp eyes looking level across the top of the grass for a single broken stalk, or even a bent one. Even for the jeweler’s eyes of a dwarf, it was remarkable he spied a sign as often as he did.

Despite that, as the gray disk of the sun traversed the dreary sky above, several were the times Block raised a hand to halt. Tilda dismounted first, shrugging out of the blanket she had draped around her shoulders while riding. She helped the dwarf to the ground despite knowing he could get down himself if he wanted, then held the horses’ reins while her Captain crawled through the brush until finding a damp bit of low ground with a print, a scuff on a rock, or some other sign that Tilda could scarcely see even when he pointed it out to her. She then boosted the dwarf back into the saddle, remounted her mare and rewrapped her blanket, and on they went as the sun crawled away to the west, toward the lush Island home thousands of miles away from this chill and cheerless place.