The Pleasure of Memory Read online

  “Damn me,” he whispered.

  “What was that?” Gerd stood beside him with his fists on his hips staring up at him. He had a strangely curious look on his face.

  Beam turned away from him, focusing his attention on the road ahead. “Nah, it can’t be,” he lied to himself, “There’s no way they’re out there. I’ve been watching it too closely.”

  “Watching what?” Gerd asked.

  Beam threw him a look. “The road, fool.”

  “The road?” Gerd scratched at the cobwebbing of hair on his head and looked up the road ahead of them. “You been watching the road? Watching it for what?”

  “Take a breather, old man.”

  “A breather?” Gerd asked with a snort, “What are you talking about? Man, you got a strange look riding your face there. You having a brain fever or what? I seen brain fever before. Why, it’ll stop a man dead in his tracks before he even knows what happened. Usually happens in full sun just like this, too. It don’t make no sense, but that’s—”

  Beam threw a hand over the bum’s mouth. A familiar burn flickered in his stomach, that peculiar marriage of acid and ice that feels like a kick in the gut. Something wasn’t right. He scanned the ocean of grass rolling off to his left and considered the terrible possibilities.

  Gerd slapped the hand away and spit into the dirt. “What the hell is that?” he yipped, dragging the back of his hand over his mouth, “Don’t you ever touch me like that! What the hell’s the matter with you? You lost or what?”

  Beam looked over at Gerd. Despite the man’s protestations, he was still grinning, though it wasn’t as enthusiastic as usual; he could only see two teeth in it.

  “You don’t got to worry,” Gerd said quickly, “I can get you back to Parhron City. By hell, I been this way a thousand times, maybe more. You just keep walking up this here road and sooner or later, you hit the city gates. It’s easy. Ain’t nothing between us and it now. Nothing at all. Hell, the Parhronian border’s only a few hours up the way there.”

  Beam ignored him as he studied the road. It was as still as death, nothing moving but the heat ghosts simmering across the gravel up ahead. There were no other signs of life. He glanced back at the road following him. It was equally empty, just two dusty wheel ruts and their fading footprints.

  “It’s nothing,” he told himself, “A broken bottle. A shard of mica reflecting the sun. Maybe a cast off piece of tin. Nothing to get jagged up about.”

  “Jagged up?” Gerd said with a laugh, “Why hell, I been walking these goddamned roads for fifty-seven years now, longer’n you been off the tit. Takes a hell of a lot more’n you and a brain fever to get me jagged up.”

  Beam was a heartbeat away from slapping the old man into silence when he saw it again, a quicksilver flicker near the crest of that same low hill a quarter mile up the road.

  He slugged his thigh. It wasn’t his imagination! It was damned well real!

  He shucked the heavy pack from his shoulder, but it didn’t come loose. Instead, it snagged on the crossbow strapped across his back and sent him stumbling clumsily to the side. With a growl of impatience, he regained his stance and jerked the pack free. It landed with a metallic thud on a puff of dust. He dropped to a knee and dug a small field glass from the pack’s side pocket. Then he stood up and leveled it at the road ahead.

  Even with the lens, he could see little of interest, only a passing dust devil, and a pair of crows tearing at something dead on the shoulder. As he swept it left across the plains, he realized there could be a hundred savages crawling toward him beneath that grass from as many different directions. Maybe it was complacency, maybe simple stupidity, but he’d never considered that the savages would risk following him so far up the Nolands and into civilized territory. Their treaties with the Allies seriously forbid their entry into the Neutral Outerlands.

  And yet, here he was, and he was quickly becoming pretty damned sure that there they were.

  He lowered the glass and cursed.

  “What now?” Gerd squealed, “Good gods, you’re a moody bastard! I sure as hell hope you’re not getting crazy on me! Just so you know, I ain’t too fond of ravers.”

  “It’s too far north,” Beam whispered.

  “Too far north again?” Gerd snapped back.

  Beam looked at him. “They’d never follow me so close to Parhron. It’d be…it’d be a suicide mission, that’s what it’d be.”

  “Well, what the hell is that supposed to mean? Suicide mission? Who you talking about? You paranoid or what? Gotta be a brain fever. Maybe you need some shade.”

  “Will you shut your mouth for a bloody minute?”

  Gerd recoiled at that. “Well, I’ll tell you what, you’re really something! I thought I was the crazy one here. For the gods’ sakes, I don’t even know what you’re talking about, and I got me a suspicion you don’t, neither. Should’ve known something wasn’t right about you when you didn’t have no wine. Can’t trust a man what don’t drink wine. Shouldn’t never have done what I did, joining up with you back there. I knew there was something ain’t right with you the minute I laid eyes on you.”

  Beam studied the road through the glass again. This was two hundred miles north of their borders, north of Vaen. A savage entering the Nolands was damned well unheard of, at least in these modern times. Besides, if they really were after him he’d never have seen them coming. There’d be no flash of metal, no warning cry, only the cold surprise of an arrow burying itself into his spine.

  He dropped to his knees and stowed the field glass back in the pack. His mind was raging with the same suspicious notions that’d kept him alive during his years in the scrubs. “You deserve it if they are out there,” he growled to himself, “You’re a dull-witted bastard.”

  “Who you calling dull-witted?” Gerd cried behind him, “My gods, I wish to hell I knew what you’re getting so twisted up about. You ain’t making no sense.”

  “Will you shut up?” Beam snapped over his shoulder, “Just shut your mouth for one goddamned minute. Can you do that for me, Gerd? Can you just stop talking?”

  Gerd froze at that. His face looked almost serious. “What is it with you?” he said carefully, “What’re you getting all crazed up for? For the love of Calina, now you’re starting to make me mad.”

  Beam leaned onto a knee and buried his eyes in his hand. It’s probably a bladesmith or tinker, he thought, just another traveler making lunch on the roadside. Gerd was right, he was just being paranoid, that’s all. There was no way they’d follow him up here. Hell, anyone who saw the savages, whether soldier, farmer, or traveling salesman, anyone who spotted them here in the Nolands would fire on them without so much as a by-your-leave.

  Yet, even as he struggled to rationalize it, he knew argument was futile. He possessed an intuitive sense for danger, something like a sixth sense, a product of his natural rogue’s instinct that manifested itself as a kind of alarm bell, and he’d honed that gift to a fine edge during his years smuggling. What he didn’t understand was why hadn’t he sensed this danger sooner, before the flash?

  It had to be this new emotion, this goddamned joy. It’d lulled him into lowering his guard, and he cursed himself for ever having succumbed to its weakness.

  He stood up. A breeze riled in from the plains, stirring the tanned, seed-laden grass beneath it. Somewhere off in the distance a crow barked. Nothing was obviously out of the ordinary, and yet his alarm bell was clanging like a town afire.

  Then he spotted the second sign.

  It was directly before him not a hundred yards out in the plains left of the road, a solitary spot in the grass moving ever so slightly out of tandem with the surrounding whirls. Then it stopped and there was nothing left but the dull grass standing lazily at attention. Still he watched it. He didn’t move, he didn’t breathe, he didn’t think. He only watched the grass.

  Another whirl of grass bubbled up a hundred feet south of the first, and with it, his worst fears blossomed into truth. It was all true! They were out there! Worse, he could now see that there were three areas of grass moving in a line parallel to the road.

  He turned away from the plains. The sun suddenly felt like a blacksmith’s furnace, the air thick and useless. He drew in a studied breath and closed his eyes and tried to persuade himself to a calmer, more controlled state, a trick learned from the monks of his childhood, one he’d used a thousand times over his career. Anxiety and fear were as much the enemy as the savages. It was critical to maintain control of his weaknesses at all times.

  He reopened his eyes in time to see another flash on the road.

  The summoned calm promptly deserted him. “Goddamned hell!” he barked.

  “By gods, now what?” Gerd screeched behind him.

  Beam raced through his options. The cold truth was there’d be no standing and fighting. Not by himself. Where the hell was he supposed to make cover? He might use the bum as a shield, but the man was so scrawny he’d be almost useless for the purpose. There was only one viable option: Flight.

  The bastards had already cut off the road to the north, which certainly meant they had the road behind him covered as well. He considered the solid wall of the old forest lumbering along on his right. It was his only hope for escape, the only place offering any semblance of cover. He had to make a run for those trees before they forced his hand.

  He grabbed the strap of the heavy, blocky pack and clumsily hoisted it up over his shoulder, and then he started walking. A few dozen yards ahead was a steep swale that dipped away toward the forest on his right, and though a vast thicket of dense brambles lined the bottom, it might allow him to drop out of sight for a few precious minutes as he made for the woods. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  “Gerd,” he said ov
er his shoulder, “Come up here.”

  The old bum was loitering a few feet back like a toddler throwing a sulk.

  “Gerd!” Beam said, slapping his leg, “Keep up, will you?”

  The old man scratched his ribs through a failed patch in his old robe, but only continued his dawdle.

  “Goddamn you, Gerd! Listen to me! We need to go!”

  “What?” Gerd said, throwing his arms out dramatically, “So the brain fever’s all gone now, is it? You just start barking orders again and old Gerd’ll—”

  Beam grabbed the old man’s sleeve and dragged him forward. “By gods,” he whispered, “You listen to me. We’re in danger. Do you understand me? Someone is following us. We have to move quickly. When I give you the sign, I want you to run for those woods over there.”

  The vagabond yanked his arm free and threw a finger out toward the forest, yelling, “Them woods over there? What, are you insane? You know what them is? Them’s the Forbidable Forest! There ain’t enough wine in Parhron to get me to go in those—”

  Beam seized his arm and dragged him closer. “Damn me, Gerd,” he whispered into his face, “If you don’t shut up and listen to me, I’ll slap those last three teeth right out of your mouth!”

  “Four!”

  “What?”

  “Four teeth, not three. I got one more right here.” Gerd threw open his mouth and jabbed a dirty finger at the rotted half of a rear molar.

  “Oh for the love of...” Beam hauled the old man into a paced walk. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

  “Well, it ain’t right,” Gerd said as he stumbled along in tow, “It’s insulting not to count all a man’s teeth. You said three, but I got four!”

  “Four then! I’ll slap all four teeth out of your mouth if you don’t run for those woods on my command. Do you understand me?”

  “All right, already,” Gerd said like an adolescent appeasing a parent, “Being followed, he says. Lordy gods, you meet all kinds out here. Lousy brain fever my ass, you’re just nuts.”

  Beam counted out the time it’d take to remove the weapons belt, free his crossbow, span, and load it. Even without cover, he knew he could get a couple bolts off before the savages could apprehend him. If he couldn’t avoid going down, by gods, he’d take as many of the savages with him as he could manage.

  Just another few paces and they’d make their break. He plotted the course in his mind: Down the swale, through the brambles, a quick jaunt to a line of shrubs dressing the feet of the forest. Once there, he’d slide behind that particularly large redwood leaning out toward the road and make his stand. He prayed the old bum would keep up.

  The vibration announced the attack an instant too late. The arrow slammed his pack from behind. Beam spun away and landed hard on his hands and knees, biting his lip in the process. The weight of the pack nearly pulled his arm out of socket.

  “Holy Calina!” Gerd screamed behind him.

  “Gerd!” Beam yelled up from the dirt, “Get down here before you get hit!”

  “Look at that!” Gerd shrieked, pointing at the fallen pack, “For the love of gods, looky there! That there’s a Vaemysh arrow, ain’t it?”

  “Gerd! Get down here!”

  Gerd was dancing in the two-track and waving both hands at the feathered shaft as if casting a spell to chase it away. “That’s impossible, ain’t it?” he hollered, “Can’t be no savages this far north! It’s in violation of the treaty, ain’t it? The Allies ain’t gonna like that! They ain’t gonna like that at all!”

  Beam crawled forward and grabbed for the man’s ragged robes, but Gerd pulled back too quickly for him to get purchase. Dancing around in the road, shrieking with his arms out and his fingers wiggling their spell at the grasslands, he looked to be in the grip of his own brain fever.

  “That ain’t possible!” the old man bellowed, “It ain’t possible! Can’t be no savages in the Nolands! What the hell are you doing? You trying to fool me or what?”

  Beam again scrambled for the old man, but the weight of the pack sabotaged the climb back to his feet. He was barely standing when the next volley arrived.

  The second arrow whistled in from the southeast, passing perilously close to his shoulder before sailing off toward the forest. The third slugged into the other side of the pack from the north. The impact threw him into a spin. He landed hard on his shoulder. The square pack thudded to the ground a few feet beyond him with a broken strap and two arrows sticking out of it at a perfect right angle.

  He grabbed the broken strap and dragged the clumsy pack behind him as he crawled along the dirt rut toward Gerd. The old man was fully in the fits of hysteria now, spinning around with his hands circling the air as he preached the impossibility of savages in the Nolands. Beam was within a foot of grabbing the old man’s leg when the fourth arrow hit.

  Gerd’s mania choked off in mid-shriek. He stumbled backward, but didn’t fall. For a moment, he just stood there looking down at the arrow buried in his chest, his terror replaced by a gape of utter disbelief. He looked over at Beam, mouthed something incomprehensible, and then slowly tottered backward. He landed on his back in the trough of the dusty wagon track with the same meaty thud a body makes when dropped into a makeshift grave. Beam knew the sound well.

  “Gerd!” he called as he crawled up the length of the old bum’s body, “Gerd!”

  The shaft of a Vaemysh arrow rose up from the old man’s chest above a swelling circle of red. Gerd’s eyes were wide and fixed, his mouth agape with all three teeth showing.

  Four, Beam corrected himself. Four teeth, not three.

  He slugged the dirt. He cursed and slugged it again. He’d been selfish and a fool not to have followed his own instincts and run the bum off at the very get-go. Instead, he’d brought the poor old fool into harm’s way. In that moment, all the ghosts of Beam’s past rushed in around him. Brother Dael and Sawtooth Jack, his Mother and Brilla and Hannible Frick, and all the others now long dead stood staring down at him in the reproachful sunlight, and the collective sense of guilt was nearly crippling. He couldn’t bear another ghost plaguing him now; he was crowded to the point of suffocation already. It seemed as though his life had been a thirty-nine year exercise in remorse and shame and self-reproach.

  Another arrow spared him from his suffering. It pounded deep into the pack parked in the dirt at his boots. Beam lurched away from it and in the process rolled over the shoulder of the road and tumbled roughly down the steep bank of the swale. He landed in the brambles a dozen feet below the road. Moments later, he emerged on the far side of the patch in the clearing between the brambles and the forest. A palate of blood and crushed berries stained his hands purple and red. Tiny thorns peppered his fingers and palms, but there was no time to attend to the distress of flesh or clothes.

  He cupped the sun from his eyes and looked up at the road. His precious pack was lying up there on the shoulder, as close as thirty feet and as far away as the sun. Gerd’s body rested on its back beside it with a feathered shaft rising up from his chest like a macabre flower, a grim silhouette against the clear blue sky. It was a dark and wretched sight, and yet it served him an instance of blinding clarity. None of those arrows had missed him. None of them were supposed to hit him. The Vaemyn hadn’t intended to kill him at all, only to stop him. If they’d wanted him dead, he’d be up there moldering in the dirt with Gerd right now. They wanted him alive!

  Beam’s carefully constructed rules of priority abruptly shifted. Death wasn’t something that worried him overmuch. He didn’t necessarily cherish the notion of entering that dark house, but he also wouldn’t be afraid of it when the time inevitably came. Being captured alive by the savages, however, was another thing altogether. That scenario would never be an option, and no amount of gold in the world could persuade him to risk it.

  Surrendering to the faithless truth, he reluctantly bartered his hard won treasure for a beating heart and turned for the forest.

  As he ran, he cursed the Vaemyn, cursed the gods, and cursed the horrible injustice of it all. Most of all, he cursed himself for ever having yielded to that most miserable and useless of emotions, joy.