The Path of Anger (7 page)

Seated beneath one corner of the cart, his legs folded under him, was a boy. Arms crossed on his knees, he stared at the knight with grey eyes and a solemn expression.

‘Your leg was a really ugly mess,’ he commented.

‘As bad as that,’ murmured Dun-Cadal.

‘There were bones sticking out in places,’ the boy said very calmly.

‘And you . . .’ His head ached and he had trouble moving, his body numbed by days of inactivity. But little by little, he regained his senses. ‘
You
brought me here . . . ?’

The child nodded without revealing the lower part of his face, hidden behind his arms.

‘The horse,’ he said. ‘With the help of a horse.’

He had a round face, just barely out of childhood, with tousled hair and a pale complexion. Dun-Cadal let himself fall back, short of breath. His head felt heavy and his vision was studded with tiny, fleeting stars. The blue sky rippled in his vision for an instant and then grew still.

‘You need to go easy,’ the boy continued. ‘You’ve been lying there for eight days.’

‘E-eight days . . .’ stammered the knight.

He tried to swallow but his throat was too dry. Seeing him so, with his head tilted back, gasping like a fish out of water, the boy seemed amused. He stood up and approached Dun-Cadal slowly.

‘I left you something to drink, there,’ he said, pointing to a small flask made from a sheep’s stomach placed next to the knight. ‘It’s all I could find. There’s more salt water than fresh hereabouts.’

Still eying his rescuer, Dun-Cadal sat up on his blanket with some difficulty, holding his injured ribs. He did not know what age to give the lad. Twelve, thirteen . . . perhaps fourteen years old, but not more. He was wearing a plain beige shirt, open at the collar, worn-out black trousers and boots held together with pieces of string. Brown locks floated across his brow and his face was so smeared with
dirt he might have plunged headfirst into the mud.

‘Thank you,’ Dun-Cadal mumbled as he took the flask with a shaky hand.

He drank a gulp and almost spat it out immediately. It tasted foul but his thirst was so great he forced himself to swallow, grimacing. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his sword planted in the ground, not far from a pile of weathered crates half-covered with an old dark green cloth.

‘You’re a knight, aren’t you? A knight of the Empire,’ said the boy, his smile vanishing.

Dun-Cadal nodded carefully. His neck was too stiff to move it normally.

‘And you are?’ he asked.

The boy did not reply. He looked down at the dry earth where a slight breeze rolled bits of gravel across the ground between his boots. Dun-Cadal waited patiently but nothing broke the silence so he spent a moment scanning his surroundings in search of a landmark to indicate his position. The lad had evidently dragged him some distance to extract him from the marshes he had been mired in. In the distance he could see the oaks of the forest bordering the Seyman river. On the far bank lay only swamps bristling with tall grasses and rushes rustling in the wind. An odd heat haze shivered above their wind-blown tips. He wondered if Azdeki had managed to build the bridge and cross the river . . . and then he remembered Azdeki abandoning him, and he felt his anger rising.

‘The Empire crossed the Seyman four days ago,’ the boy announced, as he rummaged through some crates lying at the rear of the cart.

So Azdeki had built the bridge.

‘And we took Aëd’s Watch,’ Dun-Cadal sighed.

The revolt had been put down and Captain Azdeki was the hero of the battle of the Saltmarsh. He grimaced with his chapped lips. How ironic . . .

‘No,’ replied the boy tersely, coming over with some sort of box in his hands.

He sat cross-legged beside the knight, the box nestled on his lap.

‘They tried but they didn’t succeed,’ he said evasively, before adopting a bossy tone which did not suit him at all. ‘Now give me that flask.’

‘What do you mean, “they tried”?’

Seeing Dun-Cadal would not give him the flask if he did not answer, the boy reached out and snatched it, looking incensed.

‘What are you going to—’

‘I’m not going to poison you,’ the boy said grumpily. ‘It’s something you need to drink to get better. Otherwise you’ll never be back on your feet.’

Of course the boy wouldn’t poison him. Dun-Cadal had seen his sword planted in the ground not far away. The lad had already had eight days to kill him if he wanted to. But the fact that he was going to such lengths to aid a likely enemy was intriguing. The entire region was at war . . . Dun-Cadal could not afford to forget that and place his trust in anyone. He had to be cautious.

‘Are you from the Saltmarsh?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

The boy slid the box lid open and his nimble fingers plunged inside. They emerged as a fist clutching a wriggling green shape. As he placed it over the flask, he added:

‘But I saved you from the rouargs.’

‘How?’ asked the knight, disbelieving.

‘It’s a secret.’

Two long wriggling legs appeared from the boy’s closed fist. He squeezed and a steaming yellow liquid ran into the neck of the flask. Dun-Cadal understood what the boy held in his fist and looked away in disgust, saying:

‘Godsfuck . . . that’s a frog . . . you’re making a frog piss in the flask and I
drank
. . .’

‘It’s an
ashala machal
, a frog that lives in the rushes,’ the boy said as if reciting a lesson. ‘When they’re frightened they urinate and it’s very good for when you’re ill.’

‘It’s revolting.’

‘Maybe.’ The boy smiled as he returned the frog to the box. ‘But the whole time you were unconscious I made you drink it. If your fever broke, it’s thanks to this. And I made an ointment from the mucus on their skin. The salt from the marshes was starting to eat away at the wound. But with the ointment, the pain was soothed. And their urine acts like a tonic so that you’ll get better.’

Dun-Cadal swallowed. He’d drunk some nasty things in his time, but agreeing to gulp down
frog’s piss
was asking a bit much.

‘And you expect me to drink this—?’

‘Do you want to die out here?’

They glared at one another while the boy held out the flask to him. No, of course he didn’t want to die out here. No more than he wanted to linger here. In the lad’s grey eyes he saw a determination that forced him to smile. The boy was willing to do anything to make him drink this concoction and, in his present state, trying to avoid it wasn’t a very good idea. To be sure, he could resist. He could even kill the lad, despite his wound. He was an Imperial general after all, not some small fry . . .

But there was something in the child’s eyes, a longing and an anger that aroused Dun-Cadal’s curiosity.

He drank a mouthful and it was now clear where the water’s foul taste came from.

‘Seriously,’ he murmured, narrowing his eyes, ‘who are you?’

The lad’s gaze was lost in the distant mist as he gathered up some pebbles lying at his feet and began to pitch them distractedly into the weeds.

‘You must have a name. What do they call you in these parts?’

‘I have no name.’

‘No name?’ Dun-Cadal asked in surprise.

‘Not any more. I lost it,’ the boy sounded aggrieved and his pebble throwing became more vigorous.

‘What about your family?’

‘Dead. There’s a war going on here, in case you didn’t know,’ he said sarcastically, scowling at Dun-Cadal. ‘I escaped Aëd’s Watch a long time ago . . .’

‘Why?’

The boy reflected for a moment. Recalling painful events? Or searching for an answer that would seem credible? The general reminded himself that his young saviour was a child of the Saltmarsh, probably a rebel sympathiser and possibly a traitor to the Empire. Not killing Dun-Cadal was one thing, but the lad might still be trying to gain his trust for some reason or another.

‘Because of the war . . . I was frightened.’

As he swallowed another mouthful of the doctored water Dun-Cadal watched the lad carefully.

‘And the cart? Was it yours?’

‘No . . . it’s old. It’s my shelter. I was hiding out here and then one
day I saw you lot going by. You were attacked by the rouargs . . . and now here you are.’

The boy stopped pitching stones but his eyes remained lost in the distance, as if his mind were elsewhere.

‘There were three of them,’ remembered Dun-Cadal. ‘You fought off three rouargs all by yourself?’

‘I told you, I have a secret.’

He sprang up suddenly.

‘You need to rest. I’m going to try to find something for us to eat this evening. There are frogs as big as your fist, hive frogs we call them. They’re a bit like chicken.’

As the boy went to the rear of the cart to look for a bag, Dun-Cadal called out to him:

‘Lad! I appreciate your help, really I do, but I must rejoin my troops, they need—’

The boy turned round, passing the bag’s bandolier over his shoulder.

‘Not yet. You’re still too weak.’

And then he disappeared behind the cart.

‘Lad! Hey! Lad! Come back!’ the knight called.

But shout as he might, there was no reply. He fell back wearily against his blanket and allowed his eyelids to droop, his head feeling incredibly heavy. He tried hard to think about what he should or could do to locate the Imperials’ camp, but his fatigue overcame him and he slept.

When he awoke, the sun was setting behind the leaning cart and the boy was lighting a fire. Dun-Cadal struggled to rise up on an elbow. He felt as if his entire body had been trampled beneath the hooves of a furious horse. His wounded leg drew his attention in particular, wrapped in a bandage that was starting to smell like rotten meat. The boy saw he was awake but said nothing. Indeed, they exchanged no words at all until the boy brought him a small bowl filled with grilled frog legs. Witnessing the knight’s disgust, he stifled a giggle.

‘You find this funny, do you, lad?’ the knight sighed. ‘Seeing one of the invaders subjected to your . . . awful taste in food . . .’

‘The Saltmarsh has always been part of the Empire,’ replied the boy as he sat back down by the fire.

Dun-Cadal was surprised, almost letting go of the frog leg he was lifting to his mouth.

‘Happy to hear you say that,’ he said before biting off a piece of meat.

It did in fact taste like chicken. When he managed to forget the unpalatable appearance of the frog it came from, it wasn’t too bad. Night had fallen and only the glow from the wavering flames lit the boy’s face. His usual severe expression had softened.

‘This is how I’ve survived out here,’ he explained, pointing at the dish of frogs. ‘There are fourteen species in the western part of the Saltmarsh alone. In the entire region, there must be . . . thirty, forty different kinds of frog. They all have their uses. Some help to make poisons, others, remedies . . . With their skin, their drool, their urine . . .’ He pointed at Dun-Cadal’s bowl again. ‘And some can be eaten . . .’

‘Is this what they teach at school in Aëd’s Watch?’ Dun-Cadal asked sarcastically as he chewed.

The boy bowed his head pensively as he slowly plunged the branch he was holding into the heart of the fire.

‘So, lad . . . tell me what happens next.’

‘Next?’

‘Yes, next. You saved me from the rouargs and then you cared for my wounds as best you could. And although you think the Salt-marsh has always been part of the Empire, you are and you remain a Saltmarsh lad. So what will you do next? It seems to me I’m your prisoner . . .’

The boy let the burning piece of wood go and looked away.

‘Your friend’s horse is over there behind the cart.’

Dun-Cadal rose higher on his elbows, taking care not to move his broken leg, and saw the Tomlinn’s mount’s ears visible above the cart.

‘True. So that’s how you dragged me here . . .’ he recalled.

‘I wound a rope around your waist,’ explained the boy, miming how he had harnessed the knight. ‘Then I passed it under your arms. I attached the ends to the horse . . . and here you are . . .’

‘And here I am,’ repeated Dun-Cadal.

He stared at the boy while he finished his frog legs. He wasn’t very hungry, despite having gone eight days without eating, no doubt due to the pain. But as he swallowed the tender meat he slowly recovered his appetite.

‘You’re really something, lad,’ he said.

For the rest of the evening, Dun-Cadal tried to get the boy to speak but it was like talking to a wall. As he was drifting off to sleep, his last thought was a terrible one . . .

What if the lad turns me in to the rebels tomorrow?

That fear haunted him over the following days. His leg was still healing, the pain from his ribs burned him and every breath he took was torture. Whenever he tried to stand up, he thought he would faint. The boy changed his bandage three times and on each occasion he was able to take stock of the damage. The large, leaking wounds had been crudely sewn up in several places where the bones had broken and torn through the skin. It was not the work of one of the Empire’s finest surgeons, but the lad had done the best he could.

Several times the knight had sought to draw him out about himself, but to little avail. Dun-Cadal was more skilled at wielding a sword than asking questions. And several times the boy left their improvised camp, riding away on Tomlinn’s horse to some Saltmarsh village.

Dun-Cadal tried to wait patiently during his absence, going over every possible strategy available to him if the lad betrayed him. But why then would he go to so much trouble to treat his wounds? Worrying over the paradox bore a hole in his skull. He tried to find a solution, any logical sequence that would allow him to guess at the lad’s real goal, until he finally decided to let matters take their course. Destiny was already written, he had no real control over the future. There was no fatalism or surrender in this idea, simply a quiet acceptance of events.

Days passed and no rebels showed up to arrest the wounded general. Although the lad said little, he continued to take care of his patient as best he could. Dun-Cadal contented himself with that. When he was strong enough to stand on his feet, using a plank from the cart as a crutch, the knight told himself he had spent more than enough time in the marshes.