Weapon of Flesh (9 page)

“Good!”  Flindle extended his huge scarred hand.

Lad stared at it, then at the man’s face, misunderstanding written plainly on his features.  Did Flindle want the knife back now?  Was this some test?  The palm was held vertically, not flat as if he were expecting to be handed something.  Then a memory surfaced; he had seen many of the burly lumberjacks clasp hands in a short ceremonial greeting.  But this was not a greeting, rather a parting.  Could it be that the same ritual served two purposes?  Lad slowly extended his own hand in the same manner, and Flindle snatched it and squeezed so hard that Lad had to return the pressure.

“Take care, then, Lad.”  The big man turned away then, and began pumping the huge bellows that fed air to the forge.

Lad felt an odd tugging in the pit of his stomach, watching the man tend his forge alone.  Though it felt like hunger, he knew it could not be, for he had eaten a large breakfast.  He turned to go, but glanced back again, his hand drifting to the twisting in his stomach.  He felt like he should say something, but he knew not what.  He felt that maybe he should stay and work longer for Flindle, but he could not.  There was one word he had heard others say many times when parting, though he didn’t know if it was appropriate now.

“Goodbye, Flindle.”

The big man’s head snapped up from his work, and a stiff smile stretched his features.  “Goodbye, Lad.”

Lad attempted to mimic the smile, but it felt strange.  He had never smiled before.  He turned away and let his feet carry him toward the mess hall where he knew he could buy the bread and jerky that would sustain him back to the crossroads and beyond.

“The boy leavin’?”  One of the teamsters was leading two heavy draft horses up to Flindle’s stall.

“Yep.”  The smith thrust four pieces of bar stock into the glowing forge fire, glancing in the direction in which Lad had left.  “He’s a strange one, ain’t he?  All fired up about workin’ for me, he was.  Does a better job than anyone else I’ve hired in the past two year, then decides it’s time to leave when he ain’t even got enough saved up to feed a starved dog for two days.”

“Sounds like he’s on the run,” the teamster said, hitching the two horses to the rail.

“That’s what I thought, but I dunno.”  Flindle looked down at his hand, the one he’d clasped with Lad’s.  It ached a little.  He was a blacksmith, and there was a blacksmith’s strength in his hands, but shaking hands with Lad had been like matching grips with a hand of stone.  “I don’t know what to think about that boy.”

Three dark horses thundered up to the crossroads, the riders reining in to bring the lathered mounts to a halt.  Almost thirty hours hard ride from Twailin had left the horses near exhaustion and the riders sore and tired; so far, they had seen nothing resembling their quarry.  Targus slipped down from the saddle, his eyes scanning the ground even before his feet came in contact with it.

“Walk the mounts out while I have a look at this, Mya.  Jax, draw some water for them.”  Targus knelt to the hard-packed dirt while his apprentices moved wordlessly to comply.  His eyes read the ground like a scholar’s would read a text, and the history of the last few days unfolded before him.

Six horses with riders had passed from west to east in a hurry five days ago; they had stopped long enough to water their mounts, and then continued on.  The same six had returned a day later, traveling in the opposite direction, more slowly.  A wagon had passed from east to west the previous day as well, but Targus and his apprentices had passed that one on the road, and it was not the one they were looking for.  The six horses going first one way, then the other, bothered him.  They had not ridden as far as Twailin, for there hadn’t been enough time between their two passages to reach the city.

“They were searching for something,” Targus muttered quietly, mulling over his explanation of the behavior of the six mounts.  “Or someone...”  This did not bode well.

There was other wagon traffic evident upon the rutted track; one heavily laden wagon with a team of four draft horses had come from Twailin and turned up the logging camp road five days ago; and several had gone the other way, laden with timber, no doubt, and returned less laden, probably with supplies for the men that worked the camp.  Other traffic had taken the southern track toward Melfey, but they had all come from Twailin.  There were no tracks from the east that turned off the main road.

“A lot of traffic,” his elder apprentice said, stepping up beside his master.  “Someone was in a hurry.”

“Yes, Jax.”  Targus felt the crease along the edge of one of the hoof prints.  “In a hurry going west, but not so much of a hurry going back east.  And equally laden in both directions.  They didn’t find what they were looking for.”

“A search party?”  The apprentice knelt beside his master, studying the tracks with an experienced hand.  “Not from Twailin.  There must be trouble up ahead.”

“There
was
trouble, and it has escaped them.”  Targus stood and walked a slow, careful circle around the crossroads, stopping at the watering trough to wet his face beside the slurping horses.  As his soft leather boots scuffed the earth around the northeast corner of the two crossing roads, he stopped.  Something here was not right.

There were no tracks, but a few grains of dirt were pressed down into the hard soil more deeply than they should have been.  Something had stood here, or been placed here, and then picked up.  Targus walked a slow circle around the spot.  There were no tracks around it.  He looked up, but there were no overhanging tree limbs from which something could have been dropped or picked up.  The undergrowth beside the road was undisturbed.  A squirrel chittered at him from a nearby tree, snapping his attention.  Targus frowned down at the mystery written in the dirt; he did not like mysteries that he was unable to unravel.

“Something?” Jax asked, tracing a wide circle around the spot that Targus was studying.

“Less than something, but more than nothing.  A riddle without an answer.”  He outlined the spot where something had stood with his finger.  “Something stood on this spot without leaving a scuff or print, and did not leave a track while coming or going.  What possibilities are there to explain this, Apprentice?”

“Something that flew, or a wizard using a transposition spell.”  He also looked up at the lack of overhanging branches.

“Or something that doesn’t leave tracks or doesn’t walk, but has weight enough to leave an impression when it stands in one place long enough.”  Targus’ younger apprentice walked up to the scene and cocked one eyebrow, one slim finger running along her shapely jaw as she knelt to examine the spot.

“And what might do that, Mya?”  Targus’ voice was flat, unreadable, but his face was alight with his youngest apprentice’s audacity.

She shrugged and stood.  “I have no idea, Master Targus.  You have told me that there are people trained in stealth who can walk without leaving a track.  The Grandfather, for one, does not leave a mark when he walks across the courtyard; not even in the dirt of the stable yard.”

“True, but I doubt there are any grandmaster assassins roaming the countryside.  We search for a wizard, and a boy your age who has been magically enhanced as a killing weapon.”  Targus stepped right into the middle of the spot that he had been examining, and walked past his two apprentices.  Both looked down reflexively, and each could see the clear scuff of their master’s boot.  Their eyes met and an infinitesimal shrug of Jax’s shoulders was answered by an equally minute nod from his younger peer.  They moved to the horses and mounted.  By late that night they should be in the village of Thistledown.

 Chapter
VII

“S
tableboy!” Targus snapped, stepping out of the saddle as his mount came to a halt in front of Thistledown’s one and only inn.

“Yessir!”  The boy came running up and eagerly took the reins from Targus.

“Walk them out, groom them and give them a mash.  They’ve been running hard, so take your time.”  A silver crown arced through the darkness and the boy snatched it out of the air like a bat picking off a stray moth.

“Yessir!  Right away, Sir!”

“Jax.  Mya.  With me.”

The two apprentices handed over their mounts and mumbled acquiescence, following him up the steps to the inn’s door.  Their knees wobbled after so long in the saddle, and a night’s sleep loomed at the top of the stairs like a proverbial pot of gold.  That treasure vanished as readily as any leprechaun’s secret stash as soon as they entered the inn’s common room, however, for they could all see that something unusual had happened here.  There was information to be gleaned from this place before any of them got a single wink of sleep.

The bartender stood with his arm in a sling and bound in splints, his free hand lazily polishing a mug while he talked with a man wearing the garb and odor of a swineherd.  Two barmaids scurried to and from the tables, all of which were seated to capacity; all of the occupants looked like locals.  Mya also noticed that several planks in the main room’s back wall had been recently replaced.  Either they’d been broken in some kind of disturbance, or their replacement was coincidence.

Targus did not believe in coincidence.

“Innkeeper!”  He moved to the bar, his face open, his smile friendly.  “I would purchase a meal and a room for myself and my friends, but I see that your inn is full to bursting.  Have we happened into Thistledown in the midst of the spring festival?”

Mya almost smiled at her master’s manner; having seen it dozens of times, she knew the magic he worked on such people as these.  This, even more than his ability to track any living creature anywhere in the world, was Targus’ most valuable skill.  He could blend into any surroundings like a native and often talked the locals out of everything up to and including their daughters’ virginity.  But right now there was no time for fun; he was working, and his only goal was their quarry.  She marveled at his skill, memorizing every movement, every nuance of his voice, learning his skill of persuasion with every move he made.

“’Tis no festival that put my arm in splints, good Sir,” the innkeeper stated, lifting his injured limb for all to see, as evidence to his claim.

“I thought it may have been a simple scuffle, as often breaks out when spirits are high, that resulted in your injury, good Innkeeper.”  He placed a gold crown on the bar.  “We would have a sip of your ale before dinner, and listen to the tale of what happened to put you, such a capable man, into such a state.”

“A madman came through here not a week ago and did this damage you see, good Sir,” the innkeeper said, motioning his nearest barmaid to fill three tankards for the new arrivals.  “Or mad
boy
I should say, for no older than your young lass there was he.”

“Oh, now I’ll not believe a mere boy could lay a hand on you, much less deal such a blow as to put your arm in splints!”  Targus quaffed a swallow of ale and smiled winningly.  “The fellow must have been wielding a fair length of stout oak to mark you thus.”