Erik advanced, and this time de Loungville threw his shoulder into him, knocking him back a step. ‘You stand fast when I tell you!’ he shouted at Erik.
Turning to face the three men, he said, ‘What company?’
The man named Culli said, ‘Well, Captain, we’ve been sort of looking out for ourselves lately.’
‘Did you hit that caravan a half day’s ride north of here?’
A grin of broken and blackened teeth greeted the question. ‘Well now, it wouldn’t be the truth if we took credit for it all by ourselves. There were another six or seven boys in on that one. But they joined up with some men who wanted to raid that fort at the village. Fat man, rode a big roan horse, he took them all together.’
‘Zila,’ said de Loungville. ‘I’ll settle up with him someday.’
Culli continued, ‘We was watching from the woods and got in to grab what we would when they started to leave. We saw these two women getting out of a burning house, so we decided to have some fun.’ He nodded at the still-living but stunned Finia and the dead Embrisa. ‘We didn’t mean to be so rough, but these was the only two we could find, and there’s five of us. We’ll pay you gold if they was yours, Captain, to make up for it, you see. We won’t even say nothing about the two boys you already killed. We only killed the one. Two for one seems more than fair. Give the other a couple of hours to rest and, why, she could service all six of you and a couple of us in the bargain.’
‘On your knees,’ commanded De Loungville. Biggo, Natombi, and Luis forced the three men to their knees, holding them fast.
‘I want that one,’ said Erik, pointing at Culli. ‘I’m going to stake him out facedown over an anthill and watch him die screaming.’
De Loungville turned and struck Erik as hard across the face as he could. Erik staggered, fell to his knees, and could barely retain consciousness from the unexpected blow.
When his vision cleared, he saw de Loungville come up behind the first man. With an economy of motion he pulled his dagger, grabbed the man’s hair, and pulled back his head, cutting his throat with a single slice.
The other two tried to rise, but Biggo and Luis kept them under control. Before Erik could regain his feet, the other two men had been executed. Erik took one staggering step, then shook his head to clear it. He came to stand over the body of Culli and looked at de Loungville, who said, ‘See to the woman.’ When Erik hesitated, he shouted, ‘Now!’
Erik and Roo moved to where Finia lay, eyes staring vacantly at the sky. When they knelt over her, her eyes seemed to focus for the first time. Recognizing Erik and Roo, she said in a whisper, ‘Is it over?’
Erik nodded, and Roo took off his cloak and used it to cover her. Erik helped the woman get to her feet, and she wobbled as she rose. Roo put his arm around her, to steady her, and she looked over at Embrisa. ‘I told her to do as they said. She scratched and bit them. She was screaming and crying, and her nose stuffed up; when they covered her mouth, she couldn’t breathe.’
Erik inclined his head to Roo to take her to where the horses were. He took off his own cloak and wrapped Embrisa in it. Lifting her, he carried her as if she were asleep. Softly he said, ‘Now you’ll never find that rich husband.’
Erik was the last to reach the horses, and found de Loungville holding his reins. He handed the girl’s body to the sergeant, mounted, then took the corpse as de Loungville handed her up to him. After the sergeant had mounted his own horse, Erik said, ‘You let them off easy.’
De Loungville said, ‘I know.’
‘They should have died over a slow fire.’
‘They deserved to suffer, but I’ll not visit that on any man.’
‘Why? Why do you care what happens to scum like them?’
De Loungville moved his horse alongside Erik’s, so he was almost nose-to-nose with Erik when he answered. ‘I don’t care what happens to scum like them. You could cut off a piece at a time over a week and I wouldn’t give a whore’s promise for what it would do to them. But I do care what it would do to you, Erik.’
Without waiting for an answer, de Loungville moved away and shouted, ‘Let’s get back to the village. We’ve got a hell of a ride before we catch up with the Captain.’
Erik rode after him, not sure what de Loungville had meant, but feeling troubled by what he had said.
They reached Calis’s camp an hour after dark. As before, he had ordered a complete fortification dug, and as de Loungville and the others approached, a guard challenged them.
‘Well done,’ said a weary de Loungville. ‘Now, lower the gate or I’ll rip your ears from your head.’
No one in Calis’s company could fail to recognize that voice, so without a further remark the drop bridge was run out across the trench surrounding the camp. The horses’ hooves clattered on the wood and iron as the riders crossed, and when they reached the center of the camp, Calis stood waiting.
‘Zila and the bandits joined up and fired the village. Most got away.’ He glanced at Erik. ‘They killed a girl and we killed the five of them that did it.’
Calis nodded, motioning for de Loungville to join him in his command tent. Erik took the reins of de Loungville’s horse and led him with his own to where the remounts were waiting. It took him better than an hour to cool down the horses, clean hooves and saddle marks, and bedded them down with fresh fodder. By the time he was finished, he was aching to his bones, and he knew it was more than just the fatigue of the ride and fighting. The killing of the men had been so effortless.
As he walked back to where his companions were erecting their tent, he recalled what he had done. The first man he had struck had been an obstacle, nothing more. He hadn’t been trying to decapitate him, only to brush him aside. Luis had said something later about its being a terrible blow, as was the cleaving of the second man Erik had faced, but Erik thought it a distant act, as if someone else had been doing the fighting. He could remember the smells: the smoke of the burning village and the campfire in the clearing, the stench of sweat and feces mixed in with the iron bite of blood and the stink of fear. He felt the shock of the blows he delivered running up his arm, and the pounding of his own blood in his forehead, but it was all distant, muted, and he couldn’t find it within himself to grapple with and understand what had occurred.
He knew he had wanted Embrisa’s killer to suffer. He knew he wanted the man to feel her pain a thousand times over, yet now he was dead, feeling nothing. If Biggo was to be believed, the man was being judged by the Death Goddess, but whatever the truth, he was feeling none of this life’s pain.
Maybe de Loungville was right. Erik thought he was the one who was now suffering, and it made him both sad and angry. He reached the tent and found that Roo had taken Erik’s section of tent and erected it, so that the six-man dwelling was up and waiting for him.
Erik looked at his boyhood friend and said, ‘Thank you.’
Roo said, ‘Well, you spend enough time looking out for my horse.’
‘And mine,’ said Biggo.
And everyone else’s,’ said Luis. ‘Do you think we should pay this boy for being so good to us?’
Erik looked over at Luis, whose sense of humor was rarely in evidence, and saw that the often short-tempered Rodezian was looking at him with a rare warmth in his expression.
Biggo said, ‘Well, maybe. Or we could do his bit with setting up and tearing down the tent, like we did tonight.’
‘I can manage my own weight,’ said Erik. ‘No one needs to do for me.’ He heard an irritation in his voice that was unexpected. Suddenly he discovered he was feeling very angry.
Biggo reached from his bedroll across the narrow aisle separating the three bunks