Page 100 of Swordheart
“Must your Temple put rats oneverything?” grumbled Sarkis, dropping the body into the trench in the ice.
“Our god is a rat! It’s what we do!”
The second body followed the first into the ice, sans decorative rat.
“Right.” Sarkis dusted off his hands while Halla dragged pine branches over the bodies. “There’s that sorted.”
“It doesn’t look very well disguised,” said Zale dubiously. “It looks like somebody chopped up the ice and then put branches over it to hide something.”
“Yes, well. Doesn’t your practical rat-god teach you how to hide bodies?”
Zale sighed heavily. “No,” they admitted. “Although I am starting to believe that was a severe oversight. I shall bring it up with the bishop.”
“You do that.”
“I’m sure it’ll be better after it snows a bit,” said Halla.
They climbed back on the wagon. Brindle clucked to the ox and it began moving, following the track deeper into the woods.
“Don’t we want to go back?”
“Can’t turn a wagon here, sword-man. Got to find a wide spot.”
Halla frowned. “There must be one nearby. You don’t make a wagon road without having at least a place to pass. Otherwise if you meet someone coming, one of you has to back up for a long way.”
Sarkis grunted. He had never given it a great deal of thought. The supply wagon for his band, once they were big enough to have one, had been handled by the quartermaster. Beyond determining if a road was wide enough for a wagon, Sarkis had little to do with it. He’d always praised the woman as a miracle worker, he just hadn’t realized what sort of miracles she’d been pulling off.
“We could cut down some of these trees,” he said. “Make a space to turn around.”
Halla and Zale both looked at him as if he had casually suggested burning the forest down.
“… what?”
“To cut another property owner’s trees without permission is worse than poaching,” said Zale. “Men have been hanged for it.”
“If they try to hang me, they’ll get a surprise,” said Sarkis.
“Yes, but…” Zale looked at Halla helplessly. “Without explaining three hundred years of forestry laws, I’m not sure how to express this.”
“You’re allowed to collect fallen deadwood,” said Halla. “That’s everybody’s right. But cutting a living tree is like killing a shepherd’s sheep. Theybelongto somebody.”
“We’ve already killed a couple of people. I don’t think cutting trees is going to be that big a sin.”
“No, but…” Halla waved her hands. “Whoever owns these trees didn’t do anything to us! And if it’s a tenant, they have to inform the landowner if they’re clearing and if the landownerfinds the trees cut, they’ll think they’re stealing and they might turn out the tenant! People have lost their homes for less!”
“Takes a long time to cut a tree with a hatchet anyway,” said Brindle. “Lot of chopping. Lot of noise. Lot of noisenext to dead humans.”
“Fine, fine.” Sarkis held up his palms in surrender. “We don’t cut down the trees.”
“There’s got to be a turnaround up here somewhere,” said Halla.
The sides of the road began to rise. Brindle shook his head, but kept the ox plodding forward.
“There’sgotto be…” Halla started again, and then trailed off. Her lips were pressed together, the thin upper lip jammed into the full lower one. Sarkis realized, with surprise, that she was angry.
“Of course I’m angry!” she said when he asked. “Someone didn’t do their job! You build a road, you have to put a spot to turn around. It’s just… it’s what youdo.There’s got to be a spot.”
There wasn’t. The embankment on either side grew steeper and steeper, until it was nearly shoulder-high on Sarkis, even sitting on the wagon. Trees leaned over the road, their bare branches laced tightly across the sky.
