I got everybody scowling by asking, “Who could be using this? Where could it go?”
Elmo suggested, “How about you shut the fuck up?” He indicated the caucusing crows. “One of them just asked a dumbass question, too.”
‘Dumbass’ was the Croaker referent of the day.
I am nothing if not unable to take a hint. “One-Eye, you saying all this nature is fake? The bug bites sure feel real.”
“Seventy per cent. Just to hide the road.”
Elmo signaled a halt.
One tight turn under leaves turning golden had us facing an unexpected phantom bridge. It spanned the Rip where the massive collapses had filled the gap two thirds of the way.
“Nobody do anything till I say it’s all right,” One-Eye ordered. “Including you, Croaker.” He babbled about lethal residual magic, the half-lives of curses, and the magnitude of the sorcery needed to drop the walls of the gorge.
The more I stared the more real that bridge became.
The top hundred feet was a complex of mutually supporting wooden beams perched on two massive stone piers. The taller pier rose two hundred feet from the scree. The worked blocks making it up fit so finely that mortar had not been necessary.
Serious sorcery helped, surely, or time would have taken considerably bigger bites.
One-Eye said, “There are no booby trap spells.”
Elmo said, “I don’t like it. It’s too damned convenient.”
I grumbled, “So some villain four hundred years back built a bridge just to lure the Black Company into a trap?”
One-Eye argued, “If it was convenient we would’ve found it a long time ago. We’d be five hundred miles east of here, now.”
Whittle volunteered to go over first. If he found no trouble we would set a cold camp on the other side.
WE MEANT TO give Whittle a forty yard lead, keeping him within bowshot, but at twenty yards he began to fade.
The crows got all raucous again.
“The illusion is old,” One-Eye said. “It’s getting patchy.”
WE FOUND A shack twenty yards beyond the end of the bridge. Inside there was firewood cut for cooking and split for heating, with tinder and kindling. Elmo nixed a fire. Grumble grumble. Mountain nights got chilly, but no need to attract the attention of the people who stored the wood.
It rained enthusiastically all night. The roof leaked only a little.
Come morning Elmo sent three guys back to report. I made myself scarce and deaf so none of them would be me.
Elmo told me later, “You are so lucky you count as an officer. I’d beat you bloody if you were a grunt.”
We ate a nasty cold breakfast. One-Eye gave the shack a going-over. All he found was a coin so corroded its provenance could not be determined. Elmo announced, “Now we scout. Croaker, how about you wait here for whoever the lieutenant sends.” Phrasing a suggestion but sounding all officious. One-Eye, Whittle, and Zeb the archer nodded.
Selfish bastards. They just wanted to make sure I did not get killed and leave them to self-medicate when they caught the crabs or came up with a dose of the clap.
One-Eye grumbled, “There’s that stubborn look, Elmo. He gets that look, somebody is about to come down with the drizzling shits.”
“Screw it, then,” Elmo said.
I smirked. I got my way, I did, without a word of argument.
WE WALKED A ways. The road was hidden by leaves and brush and faded spells. While you were on it, though, there was no missing it.
Some of the crows stuck with us. They never shut up.
“A secret bridge and a secret road,” I mused. “Used, but not much.”
“It’s old,” One-Eye said. “Way old.”
The world is filthy with old things. Many of them are deadly.
The road did not have that smell.
It was on no modern map. Were it, we would have been long gone.
The road inclined upward for a mile, then began a gentle descent. We encountered our first obstacle after eight or nine miles. Deadwood had clogged a culvert during the night. Run-off had overtopped the road and washed away some fill.
Elmo said, “This won’t be hard to fix. Pray there’s nothing worse.”
The road was wide enough to carry everything we had.
The crows shrieked, scattered. I jumped like somebody had slammed me with a hot iron spike. I squawked, “Spread out! Get down! Get under something and don’t move. Don’t even breathe.”
I took my own advice.
I had just stopped twitching when I heard the scream that had set me off repeated.
It was not audible. It was inside my head, a paean of agony, rage and hatred. It approached unsteadily but should pass to the south.
“Taken!” I breathed. One of the Lady’s enslaved sorcerers. Whisper has been after us forever, carrying a bushel of grudges. This airborne sack of pain, grief, and hate, though, was not one I recognized.
Taken are hard to kill. Whisper was harder than most. Yet death is the only escape for the Taken.
Each was once a massively wicked sorcerer who fell prey to the Lady. They never forgot who and what they were but could do little to resist. They were the most damned of the damned.
This latest reeked of aggravated despair and self-loathing.
The scream faded. One-Eye called, “Allee-allee-in-free!”
Elmo observed, “Must be a new one.”
One-Eye bobbed his head. That stupid black hat flopped off. I said, “She wasn’t hunting.”
“She?”
“Felt that way. It don’t matter. Taken is Taken. Elmo, we’ve hiked far enough.” I was not used to all this walking. And the farther we went the farther I would have to walk back, uphill all the way.
“We’ll stay here. We’ll work on the road while we wait.”
Whittle reserved his opinion, as did Zeb. One-Eye did not. Elmo paid no attention. One-Eye is always whining about something.
A FEW RIDERS caught up next morning. They said the Company was on the move. The enemy had not yet noticed.
Elmo told the riders to take over fixing the road. He and his crack team would go find the next obstacle.
The dick.
Our corvine escort never rematerialized. We heard nary a caw.
THE MOON WAS near full in a cloudless sky. The screaming Taken passed again, unseen but strongly felt. I could not get back to sleep. I imagined ghosts slinking through the moonlight. I heard things not there sneaking toward me. I had caught more from that Taken than just a scream.
We found another little bridge next morning. It spanned a steep run where the rushing water was barely a yard wide. One rough-hewn replacement plank had not yet begun to gray.
We smelled smoke soon afterward. Lots of smoke, wood and something with a sulfurous note.
I guessed, “There’s a village ahead.”
Whittle volunteered to scout. Elmo sent One-Eye instead. One-Eye could make himself invisible. He could use birds and animals to spy, given time to prepare them. No breeze stirred a leaf while he was gone, which explained why the smoke hung around.
One-Eye reported. “There are a hundred homesteads scattered around a valley. Motte and timber bailey, in the middle, town around it. Wooden blockhouse where the road leaves the woods. It isn’t manned. People are in the fields but they’re not working. They’re watching the sky.”
A FARMING COMMUNITY hidden in the mountains? Sketchy. Whittle guessed, “Dey’s maybe bein’ religious crazies.”
The cleared ground was a mile wide and several long. The road dropped in near the north end. It wandered the open ground beside a modest river. The river had been dammed in three places, creating one large and two small pools. The large one served watermills on either bank, a flour mill and another, its purpose less obvious. As reported, a blockhouse guarded our approach.