The Enterprise of Death Page 5

  The glowering eunuch’s disapproval meant nothing to Awa, who pitied him no more than she pitied herself and far less than she pitied Omorose. At least Omorose tried, which was more than could be said for Halim. If Awa were to be honest with herself, she would have admitted that she was relieved he remained so unapproachable lest Omorose turn to his thicker, warmer body when the wind pushed through the chinks in the stacked stones of their shelter. Quick in all her lessons, Awa had learned that if you are not the favorite you sleep alone all of the time, instead of most of it.

  V

  The Final Test

  “There’s not enough meat to last out the winter,” the necromancer told them, the storm clouds hovering above them like a displeased father over a noisy cradle that had suddenly gone quiet. The three apprentices stood in front of the door to the hut he blocked with his withered body, their meager blankets bundled in their arms in anticipation of being allowed to set up before the hearth as they had the previous winter. The necromancer nodded at the bandit chief, who marched in front of the youths with three sword blades clutched in one bony hand. He planted the blades in a line where the hard-packed earth met the stone shelf that comprised the floor of the shack.

  Omorose, Awa, and Halim looked at the sword hilts gently swaying at waist level like an iron harvest, the only crop this high, barren field would bear. Then one of them moved the slightest bit and it all happened very quickly. Omorose and Halim went forward and Awa jumped back, and as a peal of thunder came from the south they made their moves.

  She had to go back for her, Awa thought as her tough, bare feet slid down the side of the gulley leading away from the hut. She had to turn around. She had to stop running or Omorose would die. Her feet did not listen, and the twilight fell around her as her eyes filled. Awa was afraid and so she was abandoning her friend, like a disloyal beast that knows only fear, that—

  A pursuer came down the opposite side of the gulley but Awa was ready and ducked past him, snatching his femur to arrest her own dangerous momentum and sending the skeleton crashing into the ground where its left elbow blasted apart on a rock. She caught herself from falling, and seeing that no others were yet upon her, she grabbed a large stone. The skeleton scrambled up just as the rock caved in its skull, and down it went. She blasted its knee off, and with the long bone of its femur in one hand and the rock in the other she resumed her flight.

  Omorose was scared, Awa knew this, scared just as Awa was, and hurt inside, just as Awa was. Awa tried to stop herself from remembering her former mistress’s smiles, her sad eyes, the nights when she went to her old slave and wrapped her arms and legs around her and sobbed quietly, Awa not daring to move lest Omorose pull away. She would come back—Awa lied to herself and knew it, but could not do otherwise for fear that she might slow for an instant and be caught by the new pair of skeletons that now chased her pell-mell down the steep crag; after she escaped she would come back and rescue Omorose.

  Three steps separated Halim from the necromancer as the eunuch darted forward, and with the first step he drew a sword from the earth. The miserable old monster was quick but none were quicker than Halim, who had so carefully hidden his true strength and speed. Seeing the necromancer gape as he took his second step Halim grinned, for the bandit chief was only now moving forward on his left, and none were quicker than Halim as he brought the sword up underhanded, its point level with the necromancer’s stomach. The old man was not moving so fast now, his hands coming up far too slowly to intercept the sword, the first syllable of some incantation only now forming on his surprised mouth, and none were quicker than Halim—

  Save Omorose. The sword she had drawn came around to the right of Halim, the rusty point nicking the necromancer’s shoulder as it passed him and found its target. The eunuch’s knees buckled and his arm jerked, his sword twisting in his suddenly clumsy fingers, and he smacked the necromancer’s chest with the flat of the blade instead of running him through. The force of Omorose’s blow flipped Halim backwards, the cold sky above and then the upside-down image of the bandit chief running toward him and then the earth he was crashing down onto, fat red raindrops spattering the dust and snow, and then he landed, having come fully around to see one of the necromancer’s corpses swaying in front of the laughing old man, a small, headless thing with more meat on it than most of the undead.

  “Oh.” Halim’s lips made the shape as he realized she had decapitated him, and then the world grew dimmer and dimmer as he saw Omorose approach him, the last thing he felt her fingers hoisting him up by the hair.

  “Very nice, very,” the necromancer managed, and Omorose suddenly felt dreadfully weak and began to cry, her dripping tears washing some of the grime from Halim’s severed head as she carried it to her master. He had never before praised her so openly, and as if she were purring instead of sobbing he stroked her again with his words. “Excellent work, truly. You’re as unpredictable as the weather.”

  Snow began drifting down and more thunder came from beneath them, where the true storm lurked over the lower peaks. The necromancer dusted himself off and looked from Omorose to the skeletal bandit chief. With a sigh he patted Omorose’s shoulder and said, “Cut Halim’s tongue out and give it to yon sword master. He’ll catch her for us, but perhaps words will work better than other weapons on little Awa. Bring her to us, bandit.”

  Omorose’s wild, dangerous smile found its twin on the necromancer’s face as she clumsily used the sword to free Halim’s tongue. Tossing it to the bandit, she saw it fly between his jaws and then vanish as if Halim and his tongue had never existed and she were simply a young woman having a most peculiar nightmare in her harem. Then she saw the tongue had somehow adhered itself to the interior of the skull’s hollow mouth and now licked the horror’s teeth, and Omorose knew she would never wake up.

  Awa came to the end of the unbroken prominence and looked across the wide chasm—she had spent countless hours jumping around the mountaintop in preparation, but standing on the edge she realized, as she always did when she surveyed even the narrowest part of the crevasse, just how impossible a leap it would be to the far side. If she did make it, though, she could run all the way down the steep mountain instead of trying to descend the cliffs. Or so she hoped.

  Then Awa turned away from her treacherous escape route to face her pursuers, a stone in one hand and a femur in the other. There were still only two, and she hurled the fist-sized rock with a skill she had steadily honed over the previous year. She turned to meet the charge of the second skeleton without looking to see if her missile connected with the first. It did, the spirit in the stone honoring the deal it had silently brokered with Awa and flying true. The targeted skeleton’s skull exploded and its body tumbled in a heap at her feet, but its fellow launched itself off a boulder with its sword coming down to split Awa’s shoulder.

  Awa had watched them meticulously, and occasionally the necromancer even allowed her to inspect an unanimated example so that she might learn how each piece fit together and worked in harmony, and so she knew exactly how the bones could and could not move, and she sidestepped the leaping skeleton at the last moment. Its twisting shoulder blade cut her underarm as she brought the loose bone in her right hand down into the gap where its extended sword arm met its body. There was a grating sound as it landed and tried to raise its weapon, and she pulled down on her bone like a lever. Its arm popped neatly off as she planted her foot on its spine and shoved it off the cliff. Its other hand swung around to grab her face but she kept her hair shorn close to the scalp and it found no purchase as it tumbled away over the precipice. Before it even broke apart on the rocks below she had tucked its sword into the worn belt that her leggings fastened to and began trotting along the edge of the chasm.

  “There’s nowhere to run,” she heard Halim say, and her left foot twisted underneath her as a loose piece of stone slid out from under it and clattered down the side of the crevasse. A year before, the skeleton who appeared beside her would have been i
ndistinguishable from its fellows, but Awa had taught herself to look closely at the bones, and the faint fissures where his broken arms and legs had been fused back together identified him at once. The bandit chief held a sword loosely in his arm, and behind him she saw a pack of skeletons fast approaching.

  “Awa,” the bandit chief said. “Listen to me—”

  Awa did not, limping toward the prominence she had long before chosen as her leaping-off point, resolutely refusing to consider how a sprained ankle might impact her jump. He quickly circled in front of her, his sword raised. Her hand tightened on the hilt of her own weapon and she grimaced to put weight on her left leg.

  “Don’t,” the bandit said. “I have every advantage and—”

  Instead of her usual cautiousness, Awa came at him hard as Halim would have, and he fell back as their swords met and she tried to drive him over the edge. He spun around her on the plateau side, their backs bumping, and she lost her balance. His hand snatched her tunic and pulled her back from the precipice, and then their swords connected again as she used the momentum he had granted her to attack.

  Without being able to speak he had lacked the ability to instruct the children as well as he might have, and his bones had tallied many more years than she of swinging iron and steel, but still she drove him back, her teeth gritted, her sword a russet blur. He tried talking to her but the ringing of metal on metal sang louder than he could speak. At last she overextended a jab and he kicked her in the stomach, bringing her to her knees as she gagged on the pain in her gut. Instead of running her through or pinning her down he dropped to a squat and hissed at her.

  “Awa, listen to me”—he glanced over his shoulder—“you can’t get away, not now. I’ve tried finding ways to help but there are still too many of the mindless ones under his sway. The dead travel fast, girl. Now quickly, before she comes, Omorose means to kill you. She killed Halim and—”

  “You killed Halim,” Awa said, still on her knees with her head bowed but slowly curling her toes under her feet to spring up. “You brought us here, didn’t you? And if Omorose is, is confused, who can blame her? Who can blame any of us?”

  “I”—the skeleton turned its skull away from her—“I didn’t—”

  Awa’s sword blasted his wrist into powder that joined the snow now falling around them, and as both his sword and the hand that gripped it fell she pivoted on her good ankle and hobbled along the chasm. The other skeletons had reached them now and came pouring down the mountainside toward her, a flash flood of clattering bones. She was panting and her left leg stabbed her from toes to groin with every footfall but she pushed herself faster, shards of muddy ice coming loose from the precipice beside her. Then three skeletons dropped down in front of her, and she limped even faster toward them, her eyes focused on the spit of rock jutting out between her and the skeletons. A small tree grew from a crack near the top of the cliff on the opposite side of the chasm.

  “Death won’t save you from him!” the bandit chief cried from just behind her, but then she turned, the toes of her good foot pressing down on the edge of the rock. Awa leaped over the gulf, the far side rearing up through the thickening snow, and she hit the trunk of the tree chest-first. The cracking of her ribs was louder than the cracking of the wood under her impact, her legs slamming into the sharp stone of the cliff. Her arms flopped around the base of the tree from the collision but her strength had been driven out along with her breath, and after a single triumphant instant she limply fell away from the tree and the cliffside, into the abyss, her last thought of Omorose’s crooked smile.

  “I was hoping it would be you,” the necromancer told his apprentice as they stood waiting before his hut in the snow, and Omorose returned his grin.

  VI

  The Soldier and Death

  The mercenaries were three days out from the camp when the men did what Manuel knew they would, which was a day more than he had expected. The first night was free, what with Werner and the rest elated at the promise of wages away from the front line and the fat sacks of rations given to each of them. Manuel had actually gotten an honest night’s sleep once they had stopped a few leagues off, with the witch’s tether wrapped around his wrist and the hope that she would scream if she were disturbed in the night.

  The front of the witch’s hood had a tightly laced slit, which Manuel opened to give her food and drink. The glimpses he caught of her features when he did were vague, especially with the blindfold she wore under the sack, but von Stein’s parting words ensured that to Manuel’s gray eyes she bore more than a passing resemblance to both his wife and his niece. Her arms were kept pinned down by the second chain and so he had to hold the waterskins and hard loaves to her dark lips after removing her gag, but she made it easy for him by being neither resistant nor overly eager to be fed and watered. He did not replace the gag after pulling it down around her neck the first night.

  The first day proper it rained from dawn to dusk and Manuel let them keep the road, with the men taking shifts to scout ahead lest they encounter a contingent of any variety—the roads were only safe so long as one had strength of numbers. The day after that one of the men had probably noticed something, perhaps when he was hoisting the bottom of her heavy, musty sackcloth to help her relieve herself. They had enjoyed quite the laugh when Manuel had noticed her trying to squat and gone to assist, and they must have noticed how small her feet were or something, and then his already dubious claim of political hostage turned into what spattered his boots. After that they spoke more to themselves, eyeing the bundled prisoner with renewed curiosity, and Manuel did not sleep that night.

  Obviously he could not stay awake the entire trip west, and so some part of him was relieved when they made their move in the morning. Get it out of the way now, and quickly. The Kristobel cousins were key, and if he could break them then the odds were back on his side.

  “Manuel,” Werner greeted him, and from the man’s honest grin Manuel knew what he was about. “Think I’ll help’er with the business this morn so she don’t mess your boots gain. Sir.”

  “You can’t have her.” Manuel addressed the bunched-up trio of Kristof Kristobel, Kuhlhoff Kristobel, and Bernardo as much as Werner. “Von Swine’s kept the pay until we get back with a letter, which we won’t get if anything’s done to her, right? So a fat purse later or a poke with a witch now and maybe a hanged neck for the trouble, which is no choice to my mind. Put yours from it.”

  “Witch?” said Werner, and Manuel hoped he had not erred in disclosing this. He had. “Well then, I figure it ain’t my fault what I’m bout, is it? She done bewitched me. She bewitched you lot?”

  “I ain’t fuckin no witch,” said Kristof, crossing his arms. That settled it for Manuel—if he took out Werner quickly that would leave Bernardo, and with the Kristobels—

  “I will,” said Kuhlhoff. “Why not? See if she’s cold inside like they say, eh?”

  This left Manuel with a serious problem. One Kristobel simply was not enough, and he doubted—

  “Settled, then,” Werner said, and Manuel noticed the dagger in the man’s left hand. When had he drawn that?

  “Ya said we could toss fa first,” said Bernardo, pushing between the Kristobels. Manuel let his eyes flit over their camp but did not back down as the second man advanced up the small rise. Terrain was far from everything in a battle but he had the high ground for a moment, the rest having set their fire lower on the side of the hill facing away from the road, but the lack of vegetation save for hazel trees would not help her hide even if she were able to get away, and Werner was too close, far too close.

  “Right,” said Manuel, recognizing that they had left him little choice if he wanted to safely return to his vulnerable family. Werner and the rest would take turns with the witch on the hillside, leaving the wet sackcloth and chains in place, her silence of the march possibly broken by muffled screams. Manuel would want to go off a distance, maybe vomiting from the sight and sounds, but he must force himself
to watch lest they get carried away. If she were to survive the rest of the trip to Spain he would have to make sure none of them were too fierce, and that meant observing every time, especially with Werner. She was a witch, and so of course no questions would be asked when she was delivered, and then back to von Stein and payment, and back to his family. Katharina—

  Bernardo hoisted the sack-covered woman to her feet, Werner still watching Manuel closely, and in that instant the artist resolved never to see his wife again. Better not to see Katharina at all than not be able to look her in the eye, better to sleep forever than never be able to sleep well again. Fuck that, and fuck them.

  “Sacrifice,” said Manuel. “God is sacrifice. I heard that, somewhere, but it stuck. The very idea that money, money earned through evil acts, that money could be more important to Him than to act in His image, to sacrifice oneself … it’s preposterous, isn’t it? Preposterous!”

  “What?” Werner tightened his hold on his dagger. “What in fuck are you on bout?”

  “What in fuck.” Manuel nodded sagely. “Indeed. I’m talking about sacrificing the little lamb there. Oi, Bernardo, I get first go and there’ll be no fuckin tosses for it, other than who goes second.”

  Bernardo looked at Werner, who squinted at Manuel. Behind them the Kristobels relaxed their shoulders, and Manuel wondered if they would have backed him after all. Too late now, and he winked at Werner as he pushed past him. Would the rapist plant the dagger in his back or in his neck? Manuel held his breath as their shoulders brushed, but then Werner clapped him on the back.