The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [176]
One wonders what they are up to.
—FROM THE AMENA TIRSON OF PRESSON MANTEO
If you wish to know what a man really is, give him a crown.
—PROVERB FROM THE BAIRGHS
A SPAR HEARD the death knells before he ever saw the town of Haemeth.
The sound carried in long, beautiful peals along the waters of the White Warlock River, startling a flock of hezlings into furtive flight. The southern sky was dark with smoke, but the wind was going that way, so Aspar couldn’t smell what was burning.
She’s a stranger. Would they ring the bell for a stranger?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know much at all about village customs on the north side of the Midenlands.
He urged Ogre to a trot. The great horse had strengthened steadily during the ride down the Warlock, grazing on rye and early fengrass, and after only a couple of days he was nearly his old self. This was cause for hope, but Aspar tried to keep away from that dangerous emotion. Winna had been far sicker than Ogre, and no medicine could bring back the dead.
The road wound along the low lip of the river valley, and after a few moments, Haemeth finally came into sight. Situated on the next large hill, it was a town of surprising size, with outlying farms and steadings spread out into the lowlands and along the road. He could see the source of the woeful music now, too, a spindly bell tower of white stone capped in black slate, so peaked that the whole thing looked rather like a spear.
A second tower, this one thicker and crenellated on top, stood on the highest point at the other end of town, and it seemed as if the two towers were joined by a long stone wall. Most likely the wall went all the way around the town, but since Aspar was looking up from below, all he could see was a handful of rooftops peeking over the top.
The smoke was coming from several huge pyres that had been built down by the river, and now that the wind had shifted a bit, he knew what they were burning.
He kicked Ogre into a gallop.
More than a few heads turned toward Aspar as Ogre brought him up to the crowd, but he ignored the shouts demanding that he identify himself, swinging himself down instead and striding toward the fire.
It was difficult to count the corpses, heaped as they were, but he reckoned there were more than fifty. Two of the blazes were already so hot that white bone was beginning to pop and fall into the coals, but in the third he could see faces beginning to blister. His heart labored as he searched for Winna’s sweet features, smoke stinging his eyes. The heat forced him to step back.
“Here,” a burly fellow shouted. “Watch yourself. What are you doing?”
Aspar turned on him.
“How did these people die?” he demanded.
“They died because the saints hate us,” the man replied angrily. “And I’ll know who you are.”
About six men had gathered behind the fellow. A couple of them had held pitchforks or long poles for working the fire, but other than that they didn’t seem to be armed. They looked like tradesmen and farmers.
“I’m Aspar White,” he grunted. “The king’s holter.”
“Holter? The only forest within six days of here is the Sarnwood, and it don’t have a holter.”
“I’m the holter of the King’s Forest,” Aspar informed him. “I’m looking for two strangers: a young woman with blond hair and a dark young man. They would’ve come in with two cowherds.”
“Don’t have much time to look for strangers,” the man said. “Seems like all we have time for these days is grief. And for all I know, you might be bringing us more of that grief.”
“I mean you no harm,” Aspar responded. “I only want to find my friends.”
“You work for the king, then?” a third man put in. Aspar glanced at him from the corner of his eye, unwilling to take his gaze completely off the more threatening fellow. The new speaker was sunburned, with close-cropped hair, half gray and half black, and was missing an upper right tooth.
“The way I hear