The Path of Sorrow Page 6

  The innkeeper dumped the tray unceremoniously on the table and stood back, wiping his fingers on his greasy apron. Silence reigned until he sniffed and turned away back to his kitchen, muttering obscenities.

  “Nosey bastard,” said Felipe. He reached for the bread, twisted off a chunk and dipped it warily into the soup. “Right,” he said through a mouthful, “now we can talk. Fulk No Man’s Son, our cherished leader, has sent us away to find a small boy.”

  He swallowed, wincing at the bitter taste, and continued talking while the others got stuck into their share of the meal. “The boy is special, in some way, but he didn’t tell me everything.”

  “That’s just like him,” growled Jean, “he has no faith in his own men.”

  “He knows we’ve been plotting,” said Felipe. The others stared at him.

  “How?” snarled Guillaume, glaring at his companions. He was always quick to assume the worst, and obviously suspected treachery.

  “Steady,” Felipe said reassuringly, “there are no traitors here. Fulk knew thanks to that accursed second sight of his.”

  “Then why are we still alive? If Fulk knew we were planning to depose him, why hasn’t he killed us?”

  Felipe spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. I cannot fathom the depths of his mind, and I don’t know the limits of his power. For all I know he may be listening to this conversation.”

  “It’s easier to send us off somewhere to die,” suggested Jean in his rumbling North Country accent. “He might hope we will die on the journey. Perhaps he has sent assassins ahead of us.”

  “The thought had occurred to me. All I know for certain is that he is sending us far away.”

  “How far?”

  Felipe smiled. “Temeria.”

  Other men might have gasped or lost their tempers. Jean and Guillaume were battered veterans of any number of wars and stratagems, and life had long since lost the ability to surprise them.

  “That’s it, then,” said Guillaume, taking a swig of Bracket’s unpleasant ale. “He’s trying to get rid of us by sending us off on some hopeless sortie halfway across the world. He could have come up with a more convincing reason, though.”

  “Too right,” said Jean, who was well into his third cup, “what’s all this horseshit about finding a boy?”

  “Like I said, Fulk hasn’t told me everything,” replied Felipe, “but he did tell me that the boy is the last survivor of a certain tribe. The rest were all massacred a few weeks ago, for reasons he either doesn’t know or didn’t see fit to tell me. The only hope of reuniting the Winter Realm, so our dear leader assures me, is finding and bringing him, safe and unharmed, to the Temple.”

  He reached into a leather case hanging from his belt and drew out a folded sheet of vellum. “The boy’s whereabouts, or at least his whereabouts as of yesterday, are quite clearly pinpointed on this map. Fulk appears to have some way of tracking his movements.”

  Guillaume snorted. “Presumably this wonder whelp isn’t going to stay in one place, waiting for us to come and get him.”

  “Fulk says that he will keep me informed of the boy’s progress. How he will do this over a distance of several thousand miles, I have no idea.”

  For a while there was silence, broken only by the sound of ale sloshing down two thirsty throats. Felipe, who never touched alcohol, confined himself to drinking from his water bottle.

  “Our Grand Master,” said Guillaume, pausing to belch, “is a fucking idiot. Either that or he’s mad to think we can’t see through his plan. He knows we have been conspiring against him, and he knows we want rid of him and a proper Grand Master installed in his place, so he sends us away to get our throats cut looking for some non-existent brat in a desert thousands of miles away.”

  “Fulk speaks of uniting the kingdom,” added Jean, “how is a small boy supposed to do that?”

  Guillaume thumped the table, making the cups jump and spill ale over the bread and cheese. “He can’t! I say we ignore Fulk’s nonsense and ride north. There are good men up there, masterless men since so many lords were killed in the recent wars. If we rallied a few hundred of them under your banner we could make you King, Felipe!”

  Felipe shook his head. “I have not the stuff for it, and we must do as Fulk commands, at least for now.”

  “Why?” Guillaume demanded belligerently. “Why must we do anything for that blind, base-born degenerate?”

  “Well, for a start, your hair is on fire.”

  It was true. Guillaume’s sparse reddish hair had taken on a new glow as sudden flames leaped from his scalp. He roared and fell backwards off the bench, vainly beating at the flames with his hands and bellowing for his comrades to put it out.

  Jean had the presence of mind to stand up and tip the contents of his water bottle over Guillaume. The spectral flames hissed and spluttered out, leaving him virtually bald, badly singed, and entirely speechless.

  “I warned you he might be eavesdropping,” said Felipe. “Gentleman, the Grand Master is a sorcerer. You must learn to guard your tongues, and possibly your thoughts as well.”

  Guillaume was helped back to his seat, and for the next few seconds he turned the air black with curses and obscene descriptions of what he would like to do to the Grand Master.

  When he was done, and his companions were pressing more drink on him, Felipe cleared away the remains of their dinner and spread out his map on the table.

  “Before you are all lost to ale, we should plot our journey,” he said firmly. Ignoring the chorus of groans, he began to do so, stabbing with his knife at relevant portions of the map.

  4.

  Much later, the Templars were asleep at the table, heads resting on arms in puddles of ale they had spent the past hours swilling. The pitch-dark interior of the inn was silent apart from their gentle snores and occasional grunt, for the innkeeper had long since doused the candles and there were no other guests.

  Bracket had gone up to his bedchamber as soon as the lights were out, but not to sleep. Instead he lay on his narrow bed and stared at the candle burning on his windowsill. When the wax was burned down to the third of the notches he had scored in it with a piece of charcoal, he got up, dressed hurriedly, and crept back downstairs.

  He entered the taproom on tip-toe and breathed a sigh of relief on seeing that his guests were still dead to the world. A gentle clink of metal broke the heavy silence as he moved quickly to the door, fumbling with the set of keys at his belt.

  “Going for a spot of fresh air, Bracket?” said Felipe.

  The innkeeper squeaked and the keys slipped out of his fingers, landing with a muffled thud on one of the foul wolfskin rugs.

  “You should be asleep!” he yelped as Felipe’s massive form unfolded out of the darkness. A light flared as the Templar struck a tinder from the box he carried and used it to light one of the dormant tallow candles.

  “Should be, but I am not,” said Felipe, raising the candle so his scarred face appeared pale and grim in the shadows, “unlike my comrades, who I have never known to sleep so sweetly, or with such military precision. They all passed out at the same time. What drug did you put in their ale?”

  The innkeeper backed away until he was pressed up against the door. Felipe could only see his outline in the gloom, and there was something odd about it. He raised the candle higher to get a better look.

  “What the Hells are you wearing?” he demanded, “is that a wolfskin you have draped over your shoulders? My dear Bracket, you make a very unconvincing wolf.”

  “Shut up, fool!” Bracket hissed, bending to retrieve his keys. Now Felipe could see why he had dropped them: long strips of sharpened iron were tied to the tops of his fingers, giving them the appearance of claws.

  Bracket was indeed wearing a wolfskin, and not only that. The dead wolf’s head adorned the innkeeper’s, strapped in place on top of his skull, its rotting eyes staring glassily into whatever afterlife was reserved for the spirits of wolves.

 
; Felipe was too astonished to move, allowing Bracket time to scoop up the keys and wrestle with the locks.

  “I forgot you don’t drink, curse you,” he snarled, turning one key after another, “not that it matters. I will give you the same choice.”

  “What choice? Come away from that door, man.”

  The innkeeper ignored him, and there was the hiss of steel on leather as Felipe put the candle down and drew his sword. He advanced towards Bracket, who spun to face him.

  “The choice I give everyone who comes here!” rasped the innkeeper, his red-rimmed eyes seeming to glow with a fearful light, “join The Sons of the Wolf, or die. You and your comrades, when they wake up—never fear, I have just sent them to sleep, not poisoned them—will be told to choose.”

  Felipe was baffled rather than afraid. “What nonsense is this? Your wits are cracked.”

  “You think so? I overheard you talking of kings earlier, and how a strong man is needed to unify the realm. I am a poor man, Felipe de Gascur, and it seems to me that the Great Houses have ruled this land for too long. The next King will not come from the nobility, but from the people, and he will be blessed by the Wolf!”

  “A king blessed by a wolf.” Felipe gave a wry smile. “My history is not what it should be, but I recall people used to believe in such things, long ago. The wolf-cult ruled this island for a while, before the Founders arrived and stamped it out.”

  “It is time we went back to the old ways, Templar! We should never have abandoned them!”

  Felipe edged a little closer, and tried to keep Bracket talking. “Is this why you’ve turned your inn into a little fortress? Gods above, I see it now! You mean to set yourself up as some sort of petty chief.”

  Bracket bared his broken teeth. “I am the Wolf!” he cried, and half-turned to wrench the door open. Cold night air spilled into the stuffy taproom as he threw his head back and uttered a piercing howl.

  As an impression of a wolf it was pretty poor, but echoed by a chorus of howls from outside. The howls were mingled with shrieks of laughter and the sound of running footsteps.

  “Come,” roared Bracket, flinging the door wide, “there are fresh recruits here, or fresh meat!”

  Felipe had heard enough. He grabbed a pitcher lying on a nearby table and upended its contents over Jean de Riparia.

  “Up, man! Get on parade!” he roared, cuffing the drugged knight about the head for good measure. He hurled the pitcher at Bracket. It hit him squarely in the back of the head, exploding into fragments and knocking him off his feet, bleeding and half-stunned.

  Felipe ran to the door, hoping to slam it shut before a horde of demented savages in wolfskins arrived, but was too late. The howls were now close enough to be deafening. A huge figure appeared in the doorway, taller even than Felipe, with shoulders like a bull and a wolf’s head crowning his skull.

  The giant spied Felipe and growled deep in his throat, lifting his huge axe. Big and threatening as he was, he was just a clumsy slow-moving peasant, while Felipe was a killer. The Templar’s blade darted like a snake and sliced the man’s throat, spilling blood and cartilage all over the floor.

  Felipe stepped back, falling on guard as the dying man crumpled, impeding his fellows clustered outside the door. A couple of the bravest surged forward and vaulted over their comrade’s body, thrusting with their spears.

  Giving ground, Felipe chopped through one spear and severed the owner’s right hand from his wrist, but could not move in time to avoid the other’s spear pricking his thigh. Cursing, he fell back again and yelled at his slumbering comrades.

  “On your feet! To arms!”

  The knights began to stir. Guillaume, who was strong as an ox, coughed and raised his head a little.

  More of the wolf-men were pouring through the doorway now, urged on by Bracket. The innkeeper was sitting upright with his back to the wall, pointing and screaming in Felipe’s direction while blood from the cut on the back of his head trickled down his neck.

  “Kill that one!” he yelled, “I gave him the choice, and he raised his sword against us! Drag out his guts! Feast on his innards!”

  His followers hurled themselves at Felipe, careless for their own safety as they slashed at him with axes, spears, and the false claws tied to their fingers. He fought back with almost equal savagery and far more skill, cutting a deep groove into one man’s belly, shattering the jaw of another, careful to keep the distance of his sword between him and the wolf-men.

  Felipe tried to get between them and his slumbering companions, but there were too many and they forced him back, back into a far corner of the taproom. One leaped at him with the agility of a real wolf, bearded face twisted with hatred, and reached out to slash at him while in mid-air. Felipe cut the man’s legs away below the knee, but as he fell the tips of his hooked claws caught on Felipe’s sleeve and lodged in the links of his mail.

  He was forced to switch his sword to his left hand. A spear jabbed through his suddenly awkward guard, failing to penetrate his mail, and then two of the wolf-men were on him, clasping him about the neck, while another tackled him around the waist. Submerged under their weight and stinking breath and wolfskins and howling, bearded faces, Felipe struggled vainly to stay on his feet.

  “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” Bracket’s voice was a high piercing whine with an edge of hysteria to it.

  Several times during his long and violent life Felipe had experienced the sensation that he was definitely about to die. It had occurred three times on the battlefield, and once during a tourney when he got trapped beneath a horse, but always the same calm, detached feeling. He experienced it now, and was prepared for death when the Grand Master intervened.

  The three wolf-men holding him suddenly released their grip and collapsed, writhing and clawing at their throats as they fought for breath. Felipe wasted no time in studying their contorted, gasping faces. He plunged his sword through the chest of one, stamped on the necks of the other two, and fell back on guard to await the onslaught of their fellows.

  It didn’t happen. The rest of the wolf-men, seven in all, were also buckling to the floor as they struggled against the invisible band tightening around their throats. The exception was Bracket, who looked about him in horror as his followers collapsed, struck down by some mysterious foe he could not see or comprehend.

  For several minutes the wolf-men writhed and bucked like maggots on the end of a hook. At last they lay still, their faces black and swollen, tongues protruding, eyes threatening to burst from their sockets. The breath had been crushed out of them.

  When it was over, Felipe crossed the taproom, carefully stepping over the bodies, and stood over Bracket. The innkeeper stared up at him, his lean face grey with terror.

  “How…how did you…?” he stuttered.

  “I didn’t do anything,” said Felipe, touching Bracket’s neck with the tip of his sword, “but I think I know who did.”

  Bracket tried to crawl away. He stopped as the sword pressed hard against his skin and drew a tiny bead of blood.

  “Stay right where you are.” Felipe’s eyes glittered in the darkness as he glared down at the innkeeper. “I have lots of questions for you, and I have all night to extract answers.”

  FULK

  Fulk fell back into his concubine’s lap. His face was slick with sweat, and his body trembled as though gripped by a fever.

  “Ten men,” murmured Edith, running her fingers through his soaking hair, “you just killed ten men. What a sorcerer you are, my love.”

  Fulk swallowed and took some deep breaths before answering. “It is nothing to be proud of,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, “I had to do it. Felipe was about to be killed.”

  “Perhaps it would have been better to let him die.” Edith glanced at the mirror that stood in front of Fulk’s bed.

  The mirror was an oval of polished glass suspended in an iron frame. Edith was much in the habit of sitting in front of it for hours, admiring her reflection and brushing her
silvery hair, but Fulk had used it for a very different purpose.

  In the centre of the mirror was an image of the interior of The Gelded Wolf, where Felipe could be seen bending over the innkeeper to begin his rough questioning. The image was clouding over, for Fulk had spent a great deal of mental effort in sustaining it, and now his concentration was broken.

  “More sorcery, my love,” Edith said eagerly, “I wish to watch Felipe work upon the innkeeper. Will he torture him, do you think?”

  “Probably,” Fulk replied wearily, “Felipe is a skilled torturer and knows all the tricks. I have no desire to watch him at work, and cannot do any more today. I have no strength left.”

  “You had strength enough to kill all those men!”

  “And the effort has drained me. You cannot imagine how difficult it is to perform sorcery of that sort over a distance of twenty miles. Let me rest.”

  Edith relented, and took to gently patting her lover’s perspiring face with a silken cloth. “Tell me about the innkeeper and his strange followers. Why were they all dressed up as wolves?” she asked. Had they run mad?”

  Fulk made a sound of exasperation. “Do you not listen to anything I tell you? Without a monarch to unify it, the realm is sliding back into the chaos that existed before the arrival of the Founders. The King’s Writ no longer carries any weight.”

  “But that man, Bracket, is just an innkeeper! Surely a commoner can’t harbour any pretensions to lead.”

  “Why not, if people are willing to follow him? He has resurrected the wolf-cult, which used to be popular in these parts. It dominates local legend. Those men I killed were peasants from nearby farms.”

  His voice had a bitter edge to it. Traditionally, the knights of the Temple were supposed to guard and protect the people living close to Silverback. Now he, the Grand Master, had murdered ten of his supposed charges. Guilt added to his weariness.

  Edith shook her lovely head. “I know about the wolf-cult. My grandmother used to frighten me with stories about it. The cultists practised human sacrifice and ate human flesh. If the cult is on the rise again, you must destroy it. Many wrongs can be righted, Fulk, if you climb on your horse and lead your knights out of the mountain.”