Five Bloody Heads Read online

  It rattled him. It rattled all of them.

  A hand found his elbow and lifted him. “I found the babe.” Night’s face was lost in the shadows of his cloak.

  The babe was in the ditch by the side of the road. Its small head had been crushed flat. Its plump little hands were still curled in pink fists.

  The rain fell even harder. The drops exploded into the layer of water sheeting the ground beneath their feet.

  Seana clutched Spear’s arms. “Look at me. We have to do something. We have to.” He could not tell whether her face was streaked with tears or rain.

  He broke away from her and stumbled, his knees weak, feeling as if they would buckle at any moment.

  Longbeard was shaking his head over and over. “This is madness. Are we really going to go up against beasts like this? How can we even track them in this rain? Job’s not worth it. Let’s just take the gem. Revenge won’t fix the world for that girl, and getting killed won’t fix anything for us either.”

  Spear turned around slowly. The rain bit like needles on his upturned face. The others stood heads bowed, slouched, arms dead at their sides. The rain would never wash this horror from them.

  Valda was gathering her mother’s entrails in her arms and dragging it back to her body. No tears fell from her eyes.

  Little Boy was still on his knees, hacking and gagging. Seana stood with her arms wrapped around herself. Her body shivered uncontrollably.

  Spear fell again to his knees. Death he knew. But this… this kind of depravity birthed an unvoiced scream. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. He wanted to smash something, break apart the false veneer that surfaced this world, but he felt as if his hands were empty vessels and to bang them against the false world would only shatter them.

  The bodies, the tilted cart, the ravens, his broken troop. The world spun. He could do nothing. He was completely useless. So much blood. He had come too late. He could not erase what had been done.

  Then his eyes fixed on the ceramic pots filled with cooking oil. They lay half buried in the grasses, the tops still sealed, only one of them cracked.

  He might not be able to erase what was done but he could at least sear the image of horror from his eyes.

  Fifteen minutes later, the corpses and their gathered pieces had been wrapped in oil-soaked blankets and tucked beneath the cart, out of the cold rain. After a persistent effort with flint and steel accompanied by a litany of curses, the rags caught fire and flames swarmed. Black smoke billowed beneath the planks of the cart before spilling out and racing against the rain.

  Spear hoped the dead would burn down to the bones. He hoped the fire would burn hot and hard before the rains quelled them. He hoped the family could at least have that.

  They found Biroc at the line of trees, bow unstrung, sitting with his back to a pine, facing away from the road.

  “What now?” asked Seana.

  Spear thought of the camp, depressing in the shadows of the ravine. Valda stood at his side, her fist tightly clenched, the gem within easy reach.

  Suddenly, Bones scampered towards them, with wet leaves and needles sticking to his shins. “I found it,” he said. “I found a trail. Five horses. Almost washed away but old Bones found it. Heading west. Towards Grymr’s Hold.”

  Without looking up, Spear felt all eyes on him. Without looking up, he spoke.

  “Tighten your armor. Ready your blades. We’ve heads to collect.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AFTER TWO HOURS of walking through the trees and following the tracks of the five horses, Spear and the others came to where the forest ended suddenly. The trees had been hacked back to a wide field of stumps, and in the middle of that clearing a walled fortress, Grymr’s Hold, squatted on a small rise. The heavy rains had finally given way to a thick mist that unfurled from the sky.

  “What do you mean ‘Wait here’?” asked Longbeard.

  “Just me and the girl,” said Spear. “The rest of you wait. We shouldn’t be long.”

  “Don’t be too long. You stay away too long and I’ll come looking for my share.”

  “I finally get a chance to pinch one of Grymr’s wenches after weeks in the woods,” said Biroc, “and you tell me to wait here. Not fair.”

  “You’re too fat for the serving girls,” chided Bones. “They take off running when they see you.”

  “As long as my fingers can pinch, I’m never too fat.”

  Bones made his finger droop. “Your fingers are probably the only parts of you still working properly anyway.”

  “Just me and the girl,” Spear repeated forcefully.

  Despite the broad wash of the midday sun against the mist, a wind sent shivers up Spear’s spine. The breeze had been barely noticeable while he had pressed towards the hold, but now that they stopped the chill seized Spear.

  Grymr’s Hold was once a famous clan stronghold in the borderlands, a willow-fenced outpost for the People Who Sang the Great Tree, a place where others once traveled long distances to barter and trade for the special healing salves that the clan warlocks concocted. Then, about a dozen years ago, a lung sickness decimated the stronghold, killing the entire clan and even the animals. Story was that Grymr, a half-blooded trader in furs and ointments, had been the first to come across the deserted compound; after ridding it of the corpses, he claimed it as his own. Over the years he had built it into a trading post, brothel, and roadhouse to serve the various outlaws and warlords. Lately, pilgrims on the road to see She Who Has Risen had been seeking a night or two of refuge within the fortified walls, and, fortunately for them, Grymr treated all coin with the same smile and bow.

  Spear led the girl through the field of stumps. He remembered stories of this place when he was a youth. He had even tasted one of the famed apples from the groves surrounding their strong holding. It was sweet and juicy, and the crisp fruit had crackled beneath his teeth. But now that he stood where that apple had come from he could not imagine this field filled with trees, thick with white blossoms or heavy with ripe fruit. Instead, stumps, jagged cut and gray, poked up from gray grasses, heavy with slime. A field of death. What was once here was lost forever.

  “You need to stop calling me, girl,” said Valda as she and Spear closed on the compound.

  “I hope you hid those gems well. No one’s to be trusted inside Grymr’s Hold,” said Spear.

  “And anyone is to be trusted outside the hold?” She laughed and rolled her eyes.

  “What do you want, girl? Valda. You and your people should have never left the safety of your village. Traveling along a road known for bandits and scoundrels was a horrible idea. Only the sword speaks in the borderlands, and your father didn’t even have that. Lambs among the wolves.”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” she hissed. “It doesn’t matter if we made a mistake. Doesn’t matter if my father could not fight for us. Not any more. I just want their heads! That’s all I want!”

  “Then what? What happens then?”

  “Who cares?”

  “I could leave you here, afterwards. Grymr is not as heartless as he seems. Won’t be an easy life, likely brutal, but it will be a life, of sorts, at least.”

  Valda turned to him, her face swollen and bruised. “There is no afterwards.”

  They covered the ground quickly between the forest and the compound and reached the foot of the hill. Pick axes thumped against the ground. A dozen men, their bare skin splattered and streaked in wet gray mud, hacked a trench around the base of the rise. Iron shackles encircled their ankles and long rusted chains snaked between them. A few overseers sat on horseback, crossbows in their laps.

  Grymr had been constantly fortifying his hold. First the walls and now this moat. A trader turned warlord.

  No one looked up to acknowledge the two travelers.

  “We were trying to make it here,” said Valda as they followed the switchbacks that cut up the hillside. The hold was considered a neutral ground among the clans, warlords and pilgrims, and i
f one could make it inside the walls, Grymr’s men would hold the peace. “But the donkey was stubborn. We lost a half a day.”

  They reached the top of the hill and came to the gates, ajar enough to let travelers pass through one at a time. Two men, armored and thick-bearded, rose from stools.

  “We don’t have to do this,” said Spear. “Killing these men won’t bring your family back and it won’t make your life any better.”

  “Big bad bandit suddenly a coward?” Val chuckled. “Couldn’t stomach what you saw?”

  “Just saying you may not get what you’re looking for.”

  She laughed more openly. “Does anyone ever get what they’re looking for?”

  “Let’s cut a deal. Give me the gems. Only four of them. You keep one for yourself, and I’ll bring you back to your village. Guarantee your safety. My sword is yours. You can return to your people. Put all this behind you. After a time, you’ll learn to get on. It won’t come to haunt you so much. Live your life out.”

  “If you won’t do this, I’ll find someone who will. I’ve no need for cowards and thieves. Seen enough of those in my life. Only thing I need is someone who wants my gems bad enough they will kill for them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “THAT’S ONE OF them,” muttered Val as their eyes adjusted to the dim lit of Grymr’s mead hall.

  Spear followed the line of her thin finger. On the opposite side of the hall, at the far end of one of the two long oak tables, near full with pilgrims and traders gathered for their midday meal, a hulking man spread on a bench. His red beard was twisted into a single braid that fell over dark armor. His eyes, wild and bloodshot, were buried beneath a sloping brow, and his nose was flattened mess, broken and rebroken over the years. In one hand, he held a large mug filled with frothy ale, something only found in trading posts like Grymr’s Hold. His other hand wrapped around the waist of a Dhurman woman who squirmed in his lap. Her laughter reminded Spear of the braying of an animal.

  Spear knew who he was. Red Tail. A clansman who had served in the armies of Dhurma, returned to be scorned from the North and now serving for coin in the borderlands. He could have been under any warlord but the crudely stitched shape of a wolf’s head on his leather armor indicated that Red Tail had thrown his lot in with Cruhund.

  “All the men,” he said to Valda below the din of voices, “they had that same armor?”

  She nodded.

  “With the same wolf emblem?” Spear chewed at his lower lip. Why did it have to be Cruhund’s men that he would have to hunt down? He stared back out the door into the courtyard. Were there others in the keep? Had he made a mistake coming in alone?

  “Gems not worth it to you suddenly? You scared?”

  “Quiet, girl.”

  “You are scared, aren’t you?”

  Spear grabbed Valda by the upper arm and pulled her close to him. “Your needling me does nothing. I suspect despite the mask of bravado you wear that a little scared girl hides in there. And you think, quite wrongly let me tell you, that somehow your words are going to do more damage than my fist or the end of my blade. You think your words are so barbed and poisonous that they will urge me into action. Listen up, and listen close. Your words are worthless. They won’t make me do this or that. The empty fucking chittering of a bird in the trees. Nothing you say, no matter how pointed you think it is, can chip away to find anything beneath. You know why? Because there isn’t anything more than you see. I gave you my word. You hold up your end of the bargain and I hold up mine. For you, this is about revenge, honor, family, stopping monsters. Those things don’t make me draw my sword.” He scoffed. “For me it’s about five gems in the palm of my hand. Five gems. Plain and simple.”

  “So what we are we doing talking then?” asked Valda. “Go cut his head off and win your first gem.”

  “With what? A spoon? I had to leave my sword at the gate. They even took that little knife you had hidden on you. Even if I kill him in this hall, no way we would get out alive. Grymr built his reputation on the fact that his hold is a place of safety, where enemies can sit elbows rubbing while they fill their bellies and fondle his whores. He’s not protecting honor. He’s protecting his business. Now you sit down, girl. We settle into a meal. Gods know I could use one, and we listen. Ask a question here or there. Find out where the others are. Then we bide our time and, when it’s right, we come for their heads. They can’t stay here forever.”

  Still holding her arm, he dragged her to an open spot on one of the benches. His scowl compelled a trader stinking of wet fur to grudgingly scoot over. As much as Spear wanted an ale or even some mead to wet his mouth and wash out the dirt and grime of the day’s travel, he instead ordered a bowl of mutton stew and a loaf of hard black bread for him and Val to share. The serving girl, her greasy hair wound in an elaborate braid, stared dimwittedly as Spear dug his fingers in his coin purse. Six coppers he counted out. Six greasy coppers. The same coins he had stolen from Val’s family. He looked at Val but she stared in the direction of Red Tail, her head craning to see through the tangle of arms and mugs and the haze of pipe smoke.

  “Not a word,” he said to her as the stew arrived.

  The fur trader next to him was nearly finished with his ale when Spear elbowed the mug over and quickly offered to buy the man a new one.

  “Most of these ruffians would have made me buy them a new cup,” said the man bent over, the froth of his fresh drink on his upper lip. “Days of the honor in the borderlands are dead.”

  “Hard times. Me and my daughter, we been traveling through to find She Who Has Risen. Ruffians everywhere. Been lucky so far,” said Spear. “How’s trade with you?”

  Spear let the man talk for a while before slipping in his question. “The hold here, is it mostly filled with warlords’ thugs?”

  The man narrowed his eyes. He hesitated before answering. “A handful. They come in for whores and drink during the day and then retreat to their camps at night. The rest are traders and pilgrims willing to meet Grymr’s price not be robbed. Lucky for me most of these Northern thieves see no value in furs. But, to tell you the truth, most of the toughs here, they’re just muscle for those who are trading in metals or Dhurman goods.”

  Spear nodded his head down the table to Red Tail. “That one doesn’t act like a bodyguard. What do you know about him? Did he come in alone?”

  The trader scowled. “I don’t want any trouble. Doesn’t bode well to caught between things. That much I’ve learned in my days.”

  “Where’s his companions? The others who came with him.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  Spear touched his coin purse and shook it.

  The trader cast a look at Red Tail and then leaned in close to Spear. “For a bronze piece, I might know something.”

  Spear ground his teeth together. He wanted to grab the man by the hair on the back of his head and smash his face into the table. “For a couple of words, two coppers.”

  “A bronze piece won’t kill you,” said the trader. “Then I’ll talk.”

  As soon as the coin dropped in his hand, the man told Spear that Red Tail and one other had come in the late hours of the previous night. They had grabbed women and mugs and climbed the stairs to one of the rooms above. He had seen riders leaving the hold with the breaking of the dawn and thought that they had left, but Red Tail had stayed behind, drunkenly climbing down the stairs, his arm wrapped around the Dhurman whore.

  “So he’s alone?” asked Spear.

  The trader cackled. “Not so alone. Look like he’s been smitten, and half-blinded with ale. A price for love in this hall.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “CRUHUND’S MEN? THAT’S who did this?” Bones sat on his haunches, holding a chicken upside down in either hand. Before him, the fire from their makeshift forest camp crackled.

  “Red Tail,” said Spear. “I know him from before.” Spear and Val had found the bandit campsite an hour or two before sunset and Spear had jus
t filled his crew in on what he had found out at Grymr’s Hold.

  “No mead?” asked Little Boy. “You could have brought back something. A little mead would have been nice to hold off the chill of another miserable night beneath the trees.”

  Longbeard stood next to him, nodding. Valda sat away from the bandits, out of earshot, on a small rock outcropping looking over the hills in the direction of Grymr’s Hold. She had not wanted to leave. She had wanted to finish the business with Red Tail in the mead hall. But Spear had dragged her out after getting all the information he could pry out of the trader.

  “We’re no match for Cruhund’s men,” said Bones. The chickens Spear brought back squirmed in his hands. “Hard ones those are. Bloodthirsty bastards. Maybe, Longbeard’s right…for a change. We should pry the damned gem out of the girl’s grubby little fist and get on our way. They left a fucking mess back on the road.”

  “You sure he’ll leave at dawn?” Longbeard stared back through the trees towards the hold.

  Spear nodded. “Late enough in the day and with the amount he was drinking little chance he would try to make for the keep tonight. Get caught out in the dark. The trader said Red Tail’s business is done. Won’t stay around much longer. Maybe another day if he’s feeling loose with his coin.”

  “Another day in the trees.” Little Boy rolled his eyes.

  “I still say we take the gem from her,” whispered Longbeard. He looked over his shoulder to where the girl sat. “She’s gotta have the other ones on her. She’s just a child. Might scream a bit but she won’t put up much of a fight. Then we all can kick up our heels in Grymr’s Hold.”

  Bones lifted one of the chickens to his shoulder and then slammed it down hard, its small head cracking on a large stone. “I’ve heard things about Cruhund, and not just from you, Spear. His own men rotting at the foot of his keep. Crow food. He’s dangerous. And anyway, if we go after his men, won’t he come after us? He’s gotta have three times as many as we do. Couldn’t run fast enough. Certainly not faster than horses. Getting the gem from the girl would be easier.”