The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [178]
It raised its head, sniffed the wind, looked around, and saw a dirt road. It could smell the droppings of other mules, recently passed that way. In its six years of life, it had learned that roads meant men who gave you nose bags of grain, stables in winter, and piles of hay. With a snort it set off walking down the road, though unfortunately, it continued on east rather than turning back toward its former herd.
Between them Laz and Richt got the remnants of the caravan organized. They had six captured horses as well as the nine mules who’d been hobbled in time, those carrying the caravan’s food. As they worked, four more mules returned; with their panic over, they had found their way back to their herd. One of the men who’d deserted with Drav had been killed, leaving them his mount and falcata as well. Two of Laz’s original outlaws were dead as well, and another had a mangled arm.
Horses or not, with badly wounded men the caravan could travel neither far nor fast. Some miles down the road stood one of the southernmost barrows in the middle of a stretch of open land. Fortunately, it stood some twenty feet high and perhaps a hundred yards across. Boulders and stones poked out from the thin soil on its sides and lay scattered all round, as if perhaps its walls had once been higher. At the top grew a pair of straggly trees, bent and twisted Cerrgonney pines.
“That’s someone’s grave,” Laz said. “A lot of someones, mayhap.”
“It be so,” Richt said. “We do call it the Ghost House.”
“It’s also the only high ground for miles. We’ll never reach the downs by tonight.”
“True enough. Say you we camp on the barrow?”
“I do. Gather up your dead so we can bury them there.”
“No need of that. Our folk, when the soul does leave the body, we value not the body at all. The wild things shall have their share of the flesh. Leave them lie with the other dead, out in the open air.”
Laz stared. He couldn’t decide if he admired the custom or found it revolting, but at the moment it hardly mattered.
“We’ll take Dougie, though,” Laz said. “For Berwynna’s sake.”
“Good.” Richt shook his head. “Never have I seen a lass such as her. I do think mayhap it be true, that the dragon be her da.”
“Oh, it’s true. I’ll swear it to you, and this is no time for me to be making jests, is it now?”
Richt shook his head again, then hurried off to give orders to his remaining men. They stripped the bodies of Aethel and their other dead comrades, then laid them out in the meadow. Dougie, however, they buried in the side of the barrow when they reached it. Mic helped the muleteers dig a deep trench. They put Dougie’s claymore in his hands, wrapped him in his plaid, and laid him in, then began to shovel the dirt on top. Berwynna watched them without speaking or weeping.
“He’ll lie with other brave men,” Laz told her. “Only the best would have been honored with one of these barrows.”
“Just so.” Berwynna’s voice sounded thick with tears, but none fell. “Tonight I’ll be finding me two sticks or suchlike that I may tie together for a cross. He did believe in Lord Yaysoo, and he shall have a cross for his grave.” She turned away, and at last she wept, her shoulders shaking as she doubled over. She clapped her hands over her face as if she were trying to shove the tears back inside. “My apologies,” she sobbed out.
“What?” Laz said. “Ye gods, tears are the best thing for grief. Weep all you want. They’ll heal you.”
“Naught will do that.”
“Mayhap not, naught but time.”
Berwynna sat down on the ground by Dougie’s grave. Laz walked away to give her the only gift he could, privacy.
By the time that the men got their improvised camp into some sort of order, the sun was setting, throwing long shadows over the western downs,