Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [28]
“Best be on our way. Whatever that may be.”
All that day they headed more south than east, following the river and luck as well, to make a grim camp at sunset. Meer spoke only to the horse and mule, and in his own language at that, leaving Jahdo to bad dreams of seeing some member of his own family killed beyond his reach to stop it. For Meer’s sake he kept hoping that the bard was wrong and his brother still lived, but some days later they found that Meer’s inborn magic had revealed the truth.
It was getting on late in the afternoon when the river, which had turned due east, grew suddenly wider, suddenly shallow. They might be drawing near to the ford Evandar had told them about, Jahdo supposed. He was beginning to think of finding them a campsite, when the boy saw black specks wheeling against the sky at some distance and, as far as he could tell, anyway, on the other side of the river. Meer stopped walking.
“What’s that?” he snapped. “Do you see birds? I hear them calling a long way off.”
“I can see them, sure enough. There be a lot of them. I don’t know what kind they are. They fly too far off, but they look really little, not like mazrakir.”
“Good. Well, let’s see what they’re up to. Lead on.”
Some yards on they came indeed to the ford, and on their side tall white stones marked its spread, just as Evandar had told them. Although the water ran shallow enough for Meer and the horses, Jahdo had to pick his way across the rocky bottom in water up to his waist, but he didn’t dare ride one of the pack animals and leave Meer to guide them. Since the river fed off the mountain snowpack, he was chilled deep by the time they scrambled onto the grassy bank at the far side. Meer felt his damp tunic, then laid the back of one furry palm against the boy’s cheek.
“We’d best keep walking. Warm you up a little.”
“Well and good, then. Do you still want to see what those birds are?”
“I do. I have dread round my heart, but I must know the truth.”
Meer’s fear turned out to be more than justified. As they traveled on, heading more south than east, the distant bird cries resolved themselves into the harsh cawing of ravens, wheeling and dipping over some unknown thing.
“It might just be a dead deer,” Jahdo said.
Meer only grunted for an answer and strode onward, swinging his stick back and forth before him like an angry scythe. After some hundred yards the horse and mule suddenly tossed up their heads and snorted. Their ears went back and they danced, pulling on their lead ropes.
“Oh, by the blessed name of every god,” Meer whispered. “Do you smell that?”
“I can’t. What?”
“Count your human weakness a blessing, then. It’s the smell of death, much death, death under a hot sun.”
Jahdo felt his stomach clench.
“Let’s go back a ways and leave the horse and mule behind. Jahdo, forgive me. If I could go on alone and spare you what’s sure to lie ahead, I would, because you’re not a Gel da’Thae colt, raised to this sort of thing, but without you, how can I tell if my brother lies there or not?”
“Well, true spoken. I’ll try to help.”
They retraced their steps a ways and found a good campsite near the river, then unloaded and tethered the animals. Meer had Jahdo find pieces of old rag, soak them in water, and tie them round their noses and mouths before they set out again. As they walked, Meer prayed, a low rise and fall of despair.
First the sound of the birds, and all too soon the stupefyingly foul smell of rotting flesh, led them down the grassy bank, then east of the river for some hundred feet. The land there rolled back rising from the river to a high wooded knoll that climbed like a grave mound behind the carnage. For a long time Jahdo could only stare at what he saw; every time he tried to speak he gagged from the smell. The air bludgeoned him, even through his pitiful mask; it shoved a dirty fist down his throat; it wrenched at his stomach with filthy fingers. Yet he was too horrified to vomit, which was perhaps the worst thing of all. I have to go through with this, he told himself over and