The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [127]
“Dere be a vel downtrail, het Demsted,” the boy informed them, “ ’boot one league. Du’t be-gitting one room-hoos dere. Mine fader-bruder Ansgif’l git du’alla one room,” he added cheerfully.
“Danx,” Stephen replied, guessing at the local expression of gratitude. “I wonder—have you ever heard of a mountain named eslief vendve?”
The boy scratched his head for a moment.
“Slivendy?” he asked at last.
“Maybe,” Stephen said cautiously. “It’s farther north and east.”
“Je, very far,” the boy replied. “Has ’nother namen—eh, net gemoonu—not ’member? Du ask mine fader-bruder, je? He is talking better Almannish.”
“And his name is Ansgif?”
“Je, at room-hoos, named svartboch. Mine namen is Ven. Du spill ’im du seen me.
“Mekle danx, Ven,” Stephen said.
The boy smiled and waved, then continued on his way, vanishing into the fog, though they continued to hear the sound of the bells on his goats for some time.
“What was all that?” Ehan gruffed after the boy was out of earshot. “I started off understanding you, but then you started talking like the boy, and it all turned to gibberish.”
“Really?” Stephen thought back. He’d only been adjusting his Almannish based on the boy’s dialect, guessing at how the words ought to sound in his version of the tongue.
“Didn’t understand a word after you said hello and asked him if there was anyplace to spend the night.”
“Well, there is, a town called Demsted in the glen up ahead. We’re to look for an inn called the svartboch—‘Black Goat’—and his uncle Ansgif will rent us a room. He’d heard of our mountain, as well, and he said it had another name, one he couldn’t remember. He said to ask his uncle about that, too.”
“Is it going to be like this from here on out, people gabbling near nonsense?”
“No,” Stephen said. “More likely, it’ll get worse.”
Their day did get worse, if not in the way Stephen had predicted. A bit after the pass dropped back below the snow line and began its slow downward snaking, Stephen was drawn from reviewing his reasoning on the location of the mountain he sought by a strangled cry from Ehan that immediately brought his wits back to his feet and sent a jolt through his heart and lungs.
Peering in the direction Ehan was pointing, he at first found it impossible to sort out what he saw. It was a tree, especially noticeable because it was one of the few he had seen in many leagues. He didn’t know the variety, but it was leafless, and the branches gnarled and twisted by the mountain winds. But there was a large flock of birds perched in its branches.
Birds, and people, climbing…
No, not climbing. Hanging. Eight corpses with blackened faces depended from thick ropes tied to the boughs. Their eyes were gone, presumably eaten by the crows that now cawed and muttered at Stephen and his companions.
“Ansuz af se friz ya s’uvil,” Ehan swore.
Stephen swept his gaze around the narrow pass. He didn’t see or hear anyone, but his hearing was still damaged, so that was no surprise.
“Keep watch,” he said. “Whoever did this may still be nearby.”
“Yah,” Ehan said.
Stephen approached the corpses for a better look.
Five were men, and three women, of various ages. The youngest was a girl who could hardly have been more than sixteen, the oldest a man of perhaps sixty winters. They were all naked, and each seemed to have died by strangulation. But they all had other wounds: backs flayed nearly to the bone, burns and abrasions.
“More sacrifices?” Brother Themes offered.
“If so, they aren’t like the ones I saw before, at the fanes,” Stephen said. “Those had been eviscerated and nailed to posts around the sedos. I don’t see a sedos fane here, and these people look as if they were simply tortured, then hanged.”
He thought he ought