The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [72]
“Yes,” the man sniffled. “It might. I pray it might. Great lord, great lady—”
“I’m tired of your talking now,” Vaseto said. “Another word, and your throat will be cut.”
They disarmed the rest of the bandits and remounted.
“Shouldn’t we take them somewhere?” Neil asked.
She shrugged. “Not unless you’ve got time to waste. You’d have to stay and wait for a judge. Without weapons, they’ll be harmless for a while.”
“Harmless as a lamb!” the man on the ground seconded; then he screamed when the dog lunged at him.
“No more talk, I told you,” Vaseto said. “Lie there quietly. I leave my brothers and sisters to dispose of you as they see fit.”
She trotted her mare down the road. After a moment, Neil followed.
“You might have told me about the dogs,” Neil said after a few moments.
“I might have,” she agreed. “It amused me not to. Are you angry?”
“No. But I’m learning not to be surprised.”
“Oh? That would be a shame. It fits you so well.”
“Will they kill them?”
“Hmm? No. They’ll stay long enough to give them a good scare, then follow us.”
“Who are you, Vaseto?” Neil asked.
“That’s hardly a fair question,” Vaseto said. “I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Neil MeqVren,” he said.
“That’s not the name you gave the countess,” she observed.
“No, it isn’t. But it is my real name.”
She smiled. “And Vaseto is mine. I’m a friend of the countess Orchaevia. That’s all you need to know.”
“Those men seemed to think you are some sort of priestess.”
“What’s the harm in that?”
“Are you?”
“Not by vocation.”
Which was all she would say in the matter.
Midday the next day, Neil smelled the sea, and soon after heard the tolling of bells in z’Espino.
As they rode over the top of a hill, towers came into view, slender spires of red or dark yellow stone rising above domes and rooftops that seemed to crowd together for leagues. Nearer, fields of darker olive green contrasted sharply with golden wheatland and delicate copses of knife-shaped cedars. Beyond, the blue sliver of the sea gleamed beneath a pile of white clouds.
To the west of the city stood another jumble of buildings, this one more somber, with no towers and no wall. That would be z’Espino-of-Shadows, he reckoned.
“It’s big,” Neil said.
“Big enough,” Vaseto replied. “And too big for my taste.”
“How can we ever find two women in all that?”
“Well, I supposed we’d have to think,” Vaseto replied. “If you were them, what would you do?”
Hard to say, with Anne, Neil reflected. She might do almost anything. Would she even know what had happened to her family?
But even if she didn’t, she was lost in a foreign country, pursued by enemies. If she had any sense, she’d be trying to get home.
“She would try to reach Crotheny,” he said.
Vaseto nodded. “Two ways to do that. By sea or by land. Does she have money, this girl?”
“Probably not.”
“Then I should think it would be easier to go by land. You ought to know—you just came that way.”
“Yes, but the roads are dangerous, especially if those men are still hunting her.” He shifted in his saddle. “The countess said something about a man who had his head cut off, and was yet still alive.”
“She told you about that, did she? And you’ve waited this long to ask me about it?”
“I want to know what I’m up against.”
“I would tell you if I knew,” Vaseto said. “Not the usual sort of knight, but that’s obvious. As the countess said, the fellow was still alive, after a fashion, but not exactly in a condition to speak.” She wrinkled her brow. “Don’t you object to this at all? You seem all too eager to accept a most absurd notion.”
“I have seen shinecraft and encrotacnia enough this past year,” Neil said. “I’ve no reason to doubt the countess and every reason to believe her. If she told me they were the eschasl themselves come back from the grave, I would credit it.”
“Eschasl?” Vaseto said. “You mean the Skasloi? You Lierish can certainly mangle up words, I’ll give you that. In any event, the men we’re talking about are human, or started that way. We did find the more ordinary sort of corpse, as well. If I had to guess,