Sing a Graveyard Song, page 6
part #3 of Enclave Book Series
“What else could it be, Papa? The very evidence that keeps you from calling it an animal points to a death-walker. This creature hunts only people. It kills them by attacking their throats and bellies. It drinks blood. It reeks of sorcery.”
“It ain’t possible.”
“What else could it be? And someone had to wake it. Someone with power.”
“Are you saying Feldie did it? Or Kortie or Leute?”
“No, not Feldie, not them. Feldie would never have loosed such evil. Besides, it would have died with her. Neither Kortie nor Leute have the depth of power that such awakening spells would take. No, Papa, it must be someone else. A sorcerer, stronger than Feldie, stronger than me, stronger than all four of us combined. A sorcerer strong enough to hide power from us, who knows how to wake the dead.”
“We ain’t got no chance of defeating a sorcerer. Besides, why would he loose a creature he can’t control? In the old legends, once the first blood rites were completed, the death-walker killed its master. No, in this I don’t agree with you. My guess is that our culprit’s a minor wielder, dabbling in what he don’t understand. So beguiled by potential he ain’t got a thought for the danger. A wielder who slipped his master wizard’s bonds. Who wanted to prove how strong he was. Who came on the spells in his study and knew enough to tie his power to the four elements to give him puissance. That’s why you and Feldie didn’t sense his power. Without power linked to the elements, this wizard’s not strong at all.”
Chapter 5 ~ Seventeenth Day / Lady’s Night / Winter’s End
Alstera and Raul spent the morning rocking over the trader’s corpse, but neither begrudged the late start to Alpage. When they left the cave, the steep scarp prevented a quick and easy descent to the village. The sun had reached its zenith by the time they regained the road. Its blazing spring heat melted the snow into steady trickles that softened the ground and rolled rocks under their feet.
The road skirted the ridges footing the mountains. It wound through pocket meadows with green sprigs pricking through the winter cover and through evergreen glens where the branches dripped onto the slushy ground. As the bright day advanced, water trickled over the road, ran in rivulets across the thawing pastures dotted with cows and sheep, and poured into streams. Rushing brooks drowned conversation. They saw farm buildings on the slopes well above the road, steep pastures fenced with meandering rock walls, and the occasional trickle of smoke. The road rose and fell with the undulating valley as it wended between the mountains.
By late afternoon they crested the last hill above the village. With journey’s end in sight, they paused to survey the houses clustered at the foot of the road. Granite and fieldstone and whitestone created a motley pattern of walls and angles and chimneys, a crazed medley echoed by the thatched roofs aged in varying shades of wheat to gray. Beyond the village the valley widened into farm parcels marked with hedges and rock walls. Broader pastures climbed well up the gentler west flanks of the encircling mountains. On the steeper east, dense forest crept down from the craggy heights and snaked several paths across the valley floor.
“Looks like a humdrum little backwater. Probably nothing exciting’s happened in years.”
“Is that not how you would have it, Raul? A quiet life with no risks? Is that not what you told me just a few days ago?”
“I said no risks that got my neck stretched, wizard, not a life so quiet I died of boredom. You going to tell `em about the dead man in that cave or me?”
“I will. Do you think I should tell them immediately?
“First off.” His sarcasm dripped like winter’s thaw. “Make a grand entrance, won’t it?”
As they dropped down the hill with long strides, two men stepped from an outlying house. They braced elbows on a low wall to watch their approach. A woman swept snow-slush off her steps. Another man emerged from the cow-byre, buckets dragging on his arms.
They reached the men. The woman stopped work to watch. “Good-day.” Alstera offered a smile they did not return. “We have had a long hike. Would you direct us to an inn?”
“Ain’t no inn in Alpage.”
“Then, perhaps someone would take us in for the night?”
“Guess ye can go to the smith for house-room.” They straightened and led the way to the village common. The forge was a lane past the well square. The men angled around the house corner and crossed a patch of bare ground to a side door. “Thereiss? Got visitors to see Jaeger.”
“After you,” Raul said. Alstera crinkled her nose at him. She dropped her pack on the covered porch, stomped muck off her boots, and stepped through the double entry into the kitchen’s warmth.
A heavily pregnant woman chopped root vegetables at the counter. Facing the door was a younger woman, bread-dough cupped in her hands, a larger ball of it on the flour-dusted table. She greeted Alstera with a smile that widened when Raul’s gilt head appeared. “Come in and welcome. My papa is out hunting. You are welcome to stay until he returns. Please, sit.”
Raul prodded Alstera to the bench closer to the fire. Their escorts dropped onto the other bench. While the younger woman rolled the dough into baguettes, she asked where they came from, and Raul set out to charm her with a comic tale of their road through the mountains. Alstera let him talk; his facile charm had often won them a welcome. Before he got far into his tale, the two men elbowed in with their own questions. Orris and Baudoin they named themselves and wanted to know the inns they’d stayed at and the people they’d met and the news they’d heard of harvests and merchants and lords with their feuds.
The other woman didn’t join in. She put the vegetables into a kettle then supported her back against the counter. Her gaze darted from speaker to speaker. Gradually the talk swung to the new enclosure laws sweeping the flat lands. The three men quickly reached a cheerless agreement to harangue against greedy nobles.
“But how can anyone, a lord included, take someone’s land just to run more sheep?” The young woman transferred the last baguette to a wooden paddle. “Especially land that’s been worked by a family for generations.”
“There’s more than one soul asked that when the lord’s men shoved `em off.” Raul eyed her slender back as she slid the rolls onto a shelf to rise. “We heard stories in every inn and tavern from here to Vaermonde. Aye, and saw the results for those who had protested. You remember, Alstera, the man with the twisted arm? Ancel by name,” he prodded.
Alstera had sunk into a reverie, not gone from the conversation but concentrating on the men’s wariness and the women’s edginess, at odds with the talk of lands and laws. When Raul nudged her, she bestirred herself to answer, hoping her paced words accounted for the seconds it had taken her to regain the thread of their talk. “Soldiers had broken Ancel’s arm when he tried to stop them from burning his house. The bone had not healed properly. I had to re-break it.”
Raul stepped in quickly, covering her slow uptake. “Ancel was lost in town. He’s a farmer. He knows basic crafts, carpentry, thatching, the like. But in town you got to hire a guild man for that work. He’s too old and too poor to buy a `prenticeship. His wife and daughters took in washing to get food on the table, and his son indentured himself to get a roof over their heads. Alstera may have healed his bones, but it didn’t give him hope.”
“A sad story.” Orris thunked his empty cider mug on the table. “`Tis wise to hold here. We may be far off the trader route, but there ain’t no lord pressing us for land.”
“Aye,” Baudoin agreed, “that’s what I told me son. He’s been yearning to slip the yoke, but there ain’t no better place than Alpage. Open land’ll be sparse in the flats. We may get snowed in for the winter, but no man’s our master.”
“It’s a good little valley,” Raul said. “Greening up pretty. A place to prosper.”
Surprised at his contradiction, Alstera shot him a look, but he was eyeing the young woman dusting off her hands. When she pulled her kerchief off, her dark hair shook loose. She glanced at Raul and blushed. Alstera ruefully tallied another heart to his credit.
Someone stomped outside, knocking snow off their boots, then the inner door opened to reveal a heavily-coated man. “Papa’s here,” the young woman said unnecessarily, and Orris added, “Jaeger’s our headman. He can fix you up.” They stood up and shifted to the table end.
The smith’s gaze narrowed on the newcomers. His dark head nearly grazed the crossbeam. As he shed his wrappings, his long body and broad shoulders seemed to fill up the remaining room. Alstera felt a frisson of alarm, outnumbered, outweighed, hemmed in on three sides by men and table. Four sides counting the pregnant woman to her right, her condition making her as strong a wall as the men. Alstera forced a smile, hoping it wasn’t as tight as it felt.
“Ah, visitors to share my supper. Welcome to Alpage. Those your packs on my step?”
Raul stood to shake the smith’s hand and give their names. “We’re just passing through.”
Orris clapped Raul on his shoulder. “Can’t pass through a cirque, young fellow. The only road out’s the one you came in on.” His heavy hand stayed in position as he turned to Jaeger. “Find anything out there?”
“Not a sign.”
He grimaced. “Odbear’s boys are gonna stand vigil with his uncle and Père Hals tonight. Tomorrow me, Baudoin, a couple of others will carry him up for the grave rites. You coming?”
“If it snows, I will. If it stays clear, I’ll look for more trails.” As he answered, the smith measured both Raul’s and Alstera’s road-thinned frames.
Orris said, “We’ll head on. If you want to talk. . .well. Getting up a game of bones before we turn in, if you want to join us.”
With that, the two men took their leave. Raul slid back onto the bench. The smith took the side that Orris and Baudoin had vacated. He surveyed them again. “So, visitors to Alpage. Curious time of year to be traveling, if you’re not traders.”
Raul bristled. Alstera touched his knee warningly and gave an answer as smooth as any of his, easy because it was truth. “We have been on the road since last autumn.”
“All the way from Seilandrac.” The young woman set bowls before the two men, giving Raul a smile. “They’re heading south through the mountains.”
The pregnant woman eased herself onto the bench and received the third bowl.
Jaeger propped his elbows on the table. “You’ve met my wife Thereiss, my daughter Magretha.” They nodded. “All the way from Seilandrac, eh? Through Vaermonde and the two Cordes and the Bois Argent. You must be footsore.”
“More than footsore, good sir. More than weary. And glad of good cooked food.” Alstera smiled her thanks to Magretha and Thereiss before warming her wind-burned face in the soup’s welcome steam.
“Starting this early, the mountain road is hard going.”
“Hard and slow. But we have made good friends. The mule-stringer Mossley set us on the road to here. He said you were fine folk who would give rest to a couple of strangers.”
“Mossley Stringer. A good man but a talker.”
Raul snorted. “Talked all day, snored all night.” He had relaxed once Magretha finished serving the bowls and sat down across from him.
Typical Raul. Give him a woman to concentrate on, and he forgets to worry what his host may suspect. Alstera reckoned it a good sign that the headman welcomed them to his table. As they ate and related their winter-long journey, she watched the young woman alternate between peeking at fair-headed Raul and blushing. He’d had an easy conquest. She only hoped he would delay his seduction until she discovered the evil that had drawn her. A step to that was the dead man in the cave. She waited until the table had been cleared before she broached it.
“Orris said you were the village elder?”
Magretha, stacking the empty bowls, giggled. “Papa’s not that old.”
Jaeger cut his eyes around on his daughter but said only, “We say ‘headman’.”
“You are the person I speak to about a death?” The heavy silence alerted her to their immediate alarm, ratcheting up from their earlier edginess.
“A death?” The smith’s blue eyes narrowed. His coiled tension was like a great mountain cat ready to spring, not surprising when she counted the shadow that she had tracked with power. Beside her, Raul had frozen. “Someone you know died on the way here?”
“Yes. I mean, no, we didn’t know them. We found them—him. We sheltered in a cave last night, above the road, and we found him there.”
“Newly dead?”
“Several days, at least.”
“Which cave?”
Alstera described it. “Do you have any idea who it might be? Is anyone here missing?”
“Aye, at least—There’s a shepherd gone missing.”
“I don’t think this was a shepherd. I think he must have been a trader. His packs were still there. Tinware and food stuffs, paper and ink. Do you know who that might have been?”
Jaeger scowled and forgot to drink from his raised mug.
“Papa?” Magretha asked. “Do you think it’s Archaim or Karel?”
“No, probably a trader like she said.” Those intense eyes returned to Alstera. “Was he just out in the cave?”
“No, back in a narrow cleft. Raul found him. We covered him with rocks this morning. That’s why we did not arrive sooner.”
“Could you tell how he died?”
When Alstera hesitated, Raul answered. “Animals had been at the body. Frankly, we didn’t look too close. Just rolled him into a blanket then covered him with stones.”
Jaeger grunted. “I’ll need to tell Père Hals. He’ll want to perform a grave rite. Odbear’s ceremony is tomorrow, so it will have to be the day after.” Jaeger glanced at them both. “Can one of you go back with us?”
Curious about the rites, the wizard volunteered. The headman’s gaze switched to her companion and back, then he stood up and stretched. “I’m heading for Orris’.”
Raul got up as well. “I’d like to get in on that game of bones.”
“Fair enough. Wrap up. It’ll be dark before we get back. The temperature drops fast.” He reached for his coat.
“Raul.” The warning in Alstera’s voice drew all their gazes. “We are going to be here a while. Do not cheat.”
He flashed a look at Magretha. “When have you known me to cheat?”
“In Peinarde. In Le Dictame. In Ruisseau. And you got us thrown off that barge before we got out of the Bois Argent.”
“Dammit, Alstera, you take all the fun out of winning.”
“Because you lose when you do not cheat?”
He grinned instead of taking offense. Catching Magretha’s eye, he winked, winning another blush. Jaeger’s eyes had widened at the exchange. His daughter’s flushed face narrowed them again.
With the men gone and the door shut against the gusty wind, the women cleaned the kitchen and set up for morning. Magretha broke the silence as soon as she plunged the bowls into soapy water. “Raul—is he your husband? Your brother?”
Alstera smothered a small laugh. “Only a friend. I would have ripped his roving eyes out of his head months ago if he had been my man.”
“A charmer,” Thereiss offered.
She set the mugs beside the washbowl. “Raul’s a charmer and more, with a silver tongue to go with his gilded looks. He is easy tempered and easily pleased, thank the gods, or we would not be still traveling together after the close confines of winter.”
“You have known each other long?”
She dried the first bowl. “Not that long. Since last autumn. We met through a mutual friend who returned to better things. Because we were two vagabonds alone, with the road stretching empty before us, we decided to travel together. I have learned much from Raul. His foxy bent kept us out of many a snare.”
“His foxy bent? You mean he is sneaky? Devious?” Magretha asked.
“He’s a thief,” Thereiss said flatly. “Did you not see his lost finger? That’s a flatlander’s punishment for theft.”
Because she’d jibed him about cheating, Alstera felt duty-bound to defend Raul now. “He has stolen nothing in my company, even though our purses are often empty. He does gamble. Since his windfalls have filled my belly several times over, I try not to pester him about it. The barge was our only brush with real trouble over the cards.”
“If he cheats at bones,” the pregnant woman said, “Baudoin will flatten him. And Jaeger is at such straits that I don’t think he would stop Baudoin from teaching your Raul a lesson, though we do offer house-room.”
“He is in straits? I thought he looked troubled when those men left.”
Magretha half-turned from her position at the sink. Thereiss laid a hand over her mounded belly before she answered. “Aye, we’ve some trouble in the village. A catamount attacked a man last night. Odbear the cooper. It killed him.”
“A catamount? Here in the village? I thought this valley was a paradise, but you live in danger here, do you not? If the land is not a harsh slaver, with its heavy snows and bitter wind, then you do battle with its beasts.”
“With the four gods’ help, we have a good life. Accidents happen, but they happen anywhere. Cut-pockets in a town, a runaway wagon on a farm.”
“Thereiss is a flatlander,” Magretha interjected. “Her family was burned out during a summer brushfire. Jaeger met her at one of the inns on the trader route and brought her home.”
“And do you like it here?”
She rubbed her hands over her rounded belly. “We have peace, and no nobles eyeing our land to add to theirs. Good soil, good sun from last of Spring to first of Harvest. What more do we need?”
Alstera’s opportunity to learn more about the trouble had sifted away. Yet as the talk continued, from track to track without a real purpose, she sensed their taut nerves. Magretha simmered with it, rolling like a hot stew ready to boil over.
The women gave her pallet-room in the kitchen then retired. The wizard rolled out the blankets then sat cross-legged, loosening her braid and watching the dying fire until she heard no more footsteps from upstairs.
