4.

 

After they had left, Bueralan pulled himself onto his horse and waited for Orlan. The cartographer’s pale-blue gaze had watched the others leave, following each into the marsh. He had stared into the trees long after they had gone.

“It’ll be fine,” Bueralan said. “They worry about nothing.”

“I did not agree to this,” the old man said quietly.

“You want to ride with us, then you don’t get to avoid the risks. Besides, this is just a bait and switch. We drop you in and later we pull you out. If it gets to be a problem, we’ll pay your ransom.”

“And if there is none?”

“There’s always a ransom.”

“In an ordinary army, yes.”

Bueralan did not reply. Orlan’s barb came on the heels of his own doubt, but he did not plan to discuss it with the cartographer. There was little other choice anyway, he told himself as he nudged his horse toward the start of the thin trail leading out of their camp. After a moment, Orlan pulled himself into the pony’s saddle and they made their way down the trail.

In truth, Samuel Orlan had not proved to be a difficult companion, not even after the first night when Bueralan had asked him to leave. He had gone out of his way to be of use, providing quiet trails, knowledge of the area, and doing his fair share of the cooking and watch. Indeed, until the night before when Bueralan had said that he planned to use him as bait to meet the commander, the cartographer had been easy-going and witty. The sisters took to him immediately, Ruk shortly after. Kae and Zean had been won over before they led the horses carefully over the barbed-wire fence that marked the Leeran border, and that had surprised him. Both had been uneasy with the inclusion of the man when he told them. Yet now it seemed to Bueralan that he was the only one who retained a healthy distance from the man.

They reached Dirtwater before the second sun had reached its zenith. It was easy to find. A large trading town, the first of three stops on the way to Ranan, the capital of Leera. According to Orlan, the town had been founded by the first settlers. They had built it believing that they were close to a freshwater supply only to find that the river behind was stagnant, more bog than stream. According to the old cartographer, enough bodies lay in there that if you drained it, you would find entire generations stretching back to the War of the Gods. Despite that, a town had sprung up with a huge wooden wall encircling it.

Not any more, though. On first sight it was clear that the wall had been stripped, leaving only the skeleton to form a ring, like a warped halo, around the overgrown village. The buildings had suffered a similar fate, though three had been made from solid logs that must have proved too thick and heavy to move, for they stood complete in lonely positions through the town, dark and immovable. On the peaked roofs of each sat black swamp crows, the murder the thickest there, though they were by no means sparse on the warped skeletons of the stripped buildings.

The road had been left in place. Made from thick stones and weaving through the village, it was the only sign left that Dirtwater had been a sizable or even successful town. Their slow ride through the village did not reveal any other signs of wealth: no livestock, no silos, no blacksmith, no stables, absolutely nothing but the husks of what had once been a life, now overgrown and owned by silent, watching crows.

“Bueralan,” Orlan said softly. “To your right.”

A man.

An old white man, more bones than skin, more gray hair than bones or skin. “You ain’t got no business here!” He stood half in the doorway, his face pressed against the door frame of one of the three solid houses, the second sun’s light barely reaching past his bare toes, bony knees, thin chest, and matted beard. “You need to leave! You both need to leave!”

“Why don’t you come out.” Bueralan swung off the horse. “Tell me what happened in this town.”

The old man shrank into the darkness of the building.

“Do you have anyone in there with you, old man?”

“Soldiers!”

Behind him, Orlan said, “Let it be. You’ll get nothing from this one.”

Bueralan didn’t reply. Instead, he stepped closer to the building. “If there are soldiers in there, they should come out.” He dropped a hand to the hilt of his axe. “I have a man to sell.”

“No one,” came the old man’s scream, “sells Samuel Orlan!”

Bueralan glanced back.

“Why are you persisting in this?” the cartographer asked, disgust evident in his tone.

“He knows you.” Bueralan took another step forward, then another. On his third step, the old man inside the hut screamed, but before he could get deeper into the hut the saboteur was there, his fingers snatching the tattered remains of his shirt, ripping it until the old man broke free with a harsh thud on the floor and scampered further into the darkness.

With his eyes adjusting to the light, Bueralan could make out faint shapes across the floor, shapes that became ridged, became bones: bird bones, swamp crows. Black feathers littered the ground around each pile and, as his eyes grew more accustomed to the light, he saw not a few piles, which the old man broke through as he scampered to the back of the building, but hundreds.

The old man had been eating them for months, for a year, for longer.

“Have you no place to go?” Bueralan asked. “The army doesn’t want you?”

“I have to hide!” He was shouting, had not even heard the words. “I can’t be seen! If Samuel can find me, then the general can! Then she can!”

“Who can?”

With a wordless scream, the old man launched himself forward. He caught the saboteur off guard, pushed him to the ground, then leaped up and burst out of the door. Bueralan was quick to follow him. His fitness was enough to bridge the gap, but as he leaned forward to crash into the old man, he heard Orlan’s voice. Heard him call his name, heard him shout it with so much force he stopped and turned.

Turned to the four soldiers who had just entered Dirtwater. Five white men and three white women. They each wore the same green-and-brown cloak, each had their hand on a sword or a crossbow.

Leeran soldiers.

It was not the first impression he had hoped for.