Chapter Nineteen

 

 

Marta smelled them before she saw them. It was the rank, soured smell of ruined meat, so thick in the air she felt like she could choke, so when she and Fermin rounded the curve in the trail, she wasn’t surprised to find the dead men. Though, surprised and horrified were too very different things. She and Fermin came to an abrupt stop.

“I…I believe those men are dead, Lady Marta,” the manservant said in a breathy voice.

Well, there was no arguing that. The men were hacked up pretty good, alright. She expected to see the bite and claw marks of nightlings on them, but instead she noted that the men had several deep lacerations and stab wounds that seemed to indicate that whoever they had fought had been wielding a sword or a spear. And, judging by the fact that their weapons had no blood on them, their opponent or opponents had definitely gotten the better of the exchange.

Marta hocked and spat, more for something to do than anything else. “Well. We must be getting close to the army.”

“Quite,” Fermin said in a strangled voice. “Excuse me for one second, Lady Marta.” He hurried away to the edge of the path then, and for the next few seconds, Marta had the pleasant experience of staring at corpses while listening to the manservant losing his lunch. Just when she was beginning to think that tolerating the tutors’ lectures back at the castle might not have been so bad after all, Fermin walked back to stand beside her.

“Well,” he said, carefully, “should we continue on then?”

Marta glanced at the man as he wiped a sleeve across his mouth and frowned. “You’re too clean.”

“I’m sorry?”

She indicated his fine tunic and trousers. “Too clean. Look at those fellows there,” she said, gesturing at the dead men. “They’re not clean.”

“Forgive me,” the manservant said slowly, “but it seems to me that might have to do with all the…” He paused, swallowing hard. “Well, the blood.”

Marta grunted. “Sure, but not all of it. I mean, look at ‘em. They’re all dirty, anyway, like they got into a wrestling match with the ground and lost. You, on the other hand, look like you bathed just yesterday.”

Fermin’s eyebrows furrowed. “I did bathe yesterday.”

“Exactly,” Marta said, giving a satisfied nod.

“I apologize, Lady Marta,” the manservant ventured, “but I don’t see what my cleanliness has to do wi—”

“A lot,” Marta interrupted. “Thing is, these folks, the ones we’re going to have to deal with if we want to find Sonya, well, they’ll be dirty. Spending days or weeks out in the woods, they’ll be downright filthy.”

“So…”

There had been a light shower earlier in the day, enough so a layer of water lay on the leaves of the trees and bushes on either end of the path. Enough, too, for the ground of the trail to soften, so it was no difficult thing for Marta to reach down and scoop up a handful of mud, which she proceeded to rub on the front of the manservant’s tunic.

Fermin’s eyes went wide and he stared at the filthy streak on his tunic with a disbelieving expression. “I…I can’t believe you—” His words turned into a sputter as Marta, who’d been busy scooping up another handful of mud, slapped it across his face.

She stepped back then, giving him a considering look, and finally nodded. “Better.”

“My apologies, Lady Marta,” the manservant said in a strangled voice, “but I can’t help but feel you’re enjoying this.”

“Well,” she said, shrugging, “you have to find your pleasure where you can, Fermin. And that’s another thing—stop apologizing. I just rubbed mud all over you, and you’re sayin’ sorry like you done somethin’. You got to be meaner than that. The folks we’re goin’ to be dealin’ with, the folks who took Sonya, they’ll be mean. And dirty.”

Fermin was too busy staring in horror at his spoiled tunic to meet her eyes, but he nodded. “As you say.”

 

***

 

The sun was low in the sky and shadows were beginning to huddle along the path, crouching among the trunks of the trees. They’d traveled for several hours since finding the dead men, and Marta was beginning to think they had somehow taken a wrong turn and missed the army. No small feat, she imagined, but one that seemed all too possible. She had read the latest scout reports, of course, and knew generally where the gathering army was supposed to be, but what little survival training she’d had in the woods consisted primarily of running from insane people—or creatures, because who didn’t like a little variety in their life?—intent on murdering her. It had taught her how to run, maybe, but not much about how to keep track of her position when the sky was barely visible for all the tree cover.

Not that it would have done her much good had she been able to see the sky. She had some notion that people used the stars to navigate, but Marta had never paid much attention to them herself, far too focused on the things on the ground—things that, more often than not, wanted to kill her—to spare any attention for the stars in the sky.

She was thinking maybe they should turn around. The path had branched a few times since they’d left Valeria, and though she’d done her best to keep them heading in the direction the scout reports had placed the army, the paths had curved enough that, for all she knew, she and the manservant might well be heading back toward the city, might find themselves at its very gates in the next hour.

She was seriously considering broaching the topic with the manservant who, up to this point, had seemed content to follow her unquestionably, taking it for granted that she knew exactly where she was going. This was quite possibly because she had told him as much, but could she be blamed if the man was so gullible? That was when they saw the man with his back propped against a tree perhaps a dozen feet off the path.

Marta wouldn’t have noticed him at all, would have walked on by without ever knowing, had it not been for his snoring. Snoring so loud that, at first, she had taken it for the growl of a nightling and never mind that the sun was still overhead.

It wasn’t a nightling, though, and that was just as well as Marta would hate to think they’d walked for hours, enough to make her feet ache, just for the pleasure of getting digested by some monster out of a children’s story. She’d never been digested before, but she didn’t think she’d care for it.

“A sentry, do you think?” she asked in a whisper, glancing at the manservant.

“He must be,” Fermin agreed, “though, if so, he isn’t a very good one. But, perhaps it isn’t my place to—”

“Mean, Fermin,” Marta scolded. “Remember?”

He cleared his throat. “Right. Sor—I mean, yes. So…what should we do?”

Marta frowned, thinking. She doubted they’d have any problem making it past the man, if that was their intention. Likely he’d keep right on snoring like a bear hibernating. But what then? Even if they did somehow manage to find the army without passing it by, she thought their chances would be better if they had done so in the company of the sentry. “I think we need to wake him up,” she said finally. “He can lead us to the army, and better to lie to one man than an army full of them all at once.”

Fermin frowned. “Lie?” he asked as if he’d never heard the word.

Marta sighed. “Yes, lie. What did you think we were going to do? Walk up and say ‘Hey, I’m Marta, this is Fermin, we’re both from Valeria, friends of Chosen Alesh himself. We seem to have misplaced one of our friends, a young girl—perhaps you’ve seen her?”

Fermin gave her a look indicating that this was far too close to what he’d been thinking, and she sighed again. “We have to be smart, Fermin. We have to be mean and yes we have to lie.”

The manservant fidgeted. “I’m…not exactly comfortable with that.”

“Reckon you’d be more comfortable getting chewed on by nightlings—or by regular people, for all I know?”

Fermin’s mouth dropped. “Do you mean to say they’re…they’re cannibals?”

“Course they are,” Marta said, “what else is there to eat out here?” she gestured expansively at the woods. In point of fact, she thought there were probably lots of things to eat, berries and leaves and bark and such, but she didn’t know any of it. Still, she doubted very much that any of the servants of Darkness had gone so far as to start eating people but she didn’t mean to be the first and now was as good a time as any to make the manservant appreciate the seriousness of their situation.

“That’s…that’s awful,” he said, as if realizing for the first time that the people they were at war with—or soon would be at any rate—were bad people.

“Sure,” Marta agreed, rolling her eyes, “they kick puppy dogs and snarl at babies too, in case it matters. Just remember, Fermin—be clever. And be mean.”

He sighed heavily, but nodded, his expression grave. “I’ll do my best, Lady Marta. You have my word.”

Marta would have liked for him to have looked a bit less timid when he said it, maybe try a snarl on himself, but it seemed that was the best she was going to get, so she sighed in resignation. “Alright, so the story goes that you’re my…” She trailed off, thinking. She was good at lying—very good. She had lied her way out of countless bad situations over the years, lied her way into coins, into food, into places to stay. Lies had, at one time or other, kept all those things from being taken away from her. Yet as practiced as she was, as good as she was, she’d never before had to lie her way into an evil army of Dark-worshippers led by an exiled Ekirani who seemed to want to kill anyone or anything he came into contact with. Wasn’t exactly the type of thing a person got a lot of practice at, and she doubted it was the type of thing you got to try over, if you failed the first time.

So whatever the lie was, it had to be good. Good but simple as all the best lies were. Then it hit her, and she nodded. “Okay, I’m a poor commoner, sold as a slave.”

Fermin nodded slowly, absorbing this. “And who am I, then?”

“Well,” she said, “ain’t it obvious? You’re the one did the buyin’.”

Fermin looked aghast. “Lady Marta, I’d never—”

“Oh, but you would,” she insisted, “and I know that on account of you did, and I’m your slave. Understand?”

Fermin frowned. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to do this.”

“Well, you’d better be, Fermin,” Marta said seriously. “Damn sure. I might not know much of this army, but I know more’n I’d like to about the type of folks makin’ it up. If they get one whiff that we’re lyin’ or we’re weak, somehow, they’ll exploit it, you understand? And exploitin’, just now, means us both dyin’ terrible, bloody deaths. A thing which, first of all, would be greatly inconvenient for both of us, not to mention the poor fools as had to bury us, but one that would, more importantly, keep us from rescuin’ Sonya. Understand?”

He swallowed hard, his face pale. “I understand.”

“Good, ‘cause you’re going to have to do all the talkin’,” Marta said. “You bein’ the master and all.”

Fermin sighed, and with a visible effort he stood up straight. “Very well.”

Marta gave the man a wink, consoling herself with the fact that should he fail—a thing that seemed fairly inevitable at this point—at least the two of them wouldn’t be alive to regret it for long. Small comfort, maybe, but a girl had to take what pleasure she could find. “Then lead on. Master.”

Fermin fidgeted, looking decidedly uncomfortable at being addressed so, but she figured if that was the most discomfort he experienced in the next few hours—or few minutes, come to that—they’d be doing damn fine. He took a slow deep breath as if to gather himself, then started toward the snoring sentry, Marta following. Fermin hesitated in front of the sentry, who continued on snoring, oblivious to the people standing before him. Fermin glanced back at her as if waiting for her to deal with it, but she only raised an eyebrow at him. He frowned, taking a moment and visibly gathering his courage with a slow, deep breath. Then, he cleared his throat loudly in a way that somehow contrived to sound apologetic to Marta’s ears.

The sentry stirred but did not wake, and judging by the bitter, soured smell of him, Marta suspected the man was sleeping off a heavy drunk. Fermin hesitated, and Marta was beginning to suspect he was going to clear his throat again, maybe even sit there doing it until he couldn’t talk or they both died of old age. He didn’t, though.

Instead, Fermin moved closer to the sentry until he was hovering over the man’s recumbent form. “What are y—” Marta began.

But before she could finish, the manservant reached out and slapped the sentry a ringing blow across the face.

Drunk or not, asleep or not, getting struck across the cheek wasn’t the type of thing a person slept through. The sentry squawked in surprise, tumbling over onto the forest floor. When he lifted himself to look at her and Fermin, his face was covered in mud and pine needles, and his eyes promised pain to whoever had dared accost him. “Who the fu—”

Marta was nearly as surprised as the sentry when the manservant slapped him again, this blow harder than the first, and once more the sentry fell to the ground. With a growl, the sentry shot to his feet, drawing a knife from a sheath at his belt. “You son of a—” he began, but his snarl was interrupted as the manservant spoke.

“Either you put that away,” Fermin said, and Marta was shocked by the calm, coldness in the man’s voice, “or I’ll kill you.”

The sentry hesitated, and Marta realized that the manservant had produced a small, hand-held crossbow though from where or how he’d loaded it so quickly she couldn’t guess. Still, it was enough to make the sentry toss his knife away, swallowing hard. “Look, I don’t know what you want but—”

“Then shut up, and I’ll tell you,” Fermin growled in a menacing voice far different from the placating, formal voice she was accustomed to. She was surprised even further when she risked a glance at the manservant’s face. Gone was the usual expression of constant apology and servitude he normally wore. Somehow, he had transformed into a dangerous, cruel man, the kind who might actually have come to the woods intent on joining Shira’s army. It was an incredible transformation, one Marta never would have believed had she not been there to see it—in truth, she was still having a hard time believing it despite the fact that she’d witnessed it with her own eyes. And suddenly, she decided that maybe she wasn’t the world’s best liar.

“Grab the knife.”

Marta was so confused, that she didn’t realize Fermin was talking to her until he spun on her, raising his free hand as if to strike her. Fermin no longer, then, and that much was certain. “D’you hear me, girl?” he growled, and Marta blinked, not having to feign the fear she felt.

“Y-yes, sir,” she mumbled, “sorry.” She hurried forward, retrieving the knife from the ground. Fermin remained silent until she was back behind him once more.

Then, he grunted in what might have been satisfaction, turning back to the sentry. “This is my slave, bought and paid for, understand?”
“O-of course,” the man mumbled.

“Now, we’ve come to join the army, come to serve the Dark Goddess. You know where it is, or you been too busy sleepin’ and bein’ a worthless sack of shit to notice?”

“O-of course, I know where it is,” the man said quickly.

“Well?” Fermin demanded. “Show me.”

“Y-yes, sir. Th-this way,” the man said, starting into the forest.

Fermin followed, and Marta was so stunned by the change that had overcome the manservant, that she didn’t realize she was standing still, her mouth hanging agape, until the manservant glanced back at her. “Well?” he demanded. “Let’s go, girl.”

And Marta did. After all, their goal was to reach the army, to search for Sonya,. But in one of those rare moments of honest reflection, she had admit that she obeyed so quickly, jogging to catch up with him, simply because she was scared of what he might do, if she didn’t.