Page 99 of Swordheart
“A human should try harder.”
CHAPTER 32
“I can’t believe there’s corpses in my wagon,” said Zale the next morning, hunching their narrow shoulders up around their ears. “I keep thinking about them being right there. Under the seat.”
“I’m wondering how we’re going to get themoutof the wagon,” said Halla. “Without being caught.”
“You know,” said Sarkis, “I’ve killed hundreds of people—possibly by this point thousands—and I’ve never had this much trouble with two dead bodies before.”
“Perhaps you should take this as an incentive to give up killing,” said Zale.
“It certainly takes a lot of the fun out of it.”
“Who knew that it would be so difficult to find a small pond?” moaned Halla. “There’s hundreds of them. I know there’s hundreds of them. But wherearethey?”
“One north of here,” said Brindle, not turning his head.
“Eh? How do you know?”
“Smell it.” Brindle tapped his nose. “Smells like ice.”
“Ice has a smell?” said Zale.
“Gnoles say humans can’t smell,” muttered Brindle, rolling his eyes. “Not just saying.Yes,rat-priest. Smells like cold tin.” He tilted his head back and sniffed. Halla could see his black nostrils working.
“I’ll go look,” said Sarkis, sliding off the wagon.
He came back a few minutes later. “It must be farther back than I thought, because I didn’t see it. But there’s a track into the woods a little way up from here that we can probably get the wagon down.”
When they reached the gap, Brindle looked at it thoughtfully, then nodded and steered the ox toward the overgrown track. “Good road,” he said after a moment. “But not used much.”
“Could be one of the pig roads,” said Halla. “I mean, notmadeby the pigs, but this is the acorn wood everybody fattens their hogs up in, and then you have to go get them out again. And if they don’t want to come out, you need to get a wagon up there so you’re not carrying a slaughtered hog for miles. But you only need it a couple times a year.”
“Are we going to be tripping over all the local swineherds?” asked Sarkis.
“I doubt it.” Halla shook her head. “It’s too late in the season. Everybody slaughtered their hogs already. Any left out now are starting to lose fat.” She frowned. “I won’t swear there’s not a sounder of feral hogs in the woods, of course…”
“There are,” said Zale. “We get reports at the Temple. Somebody tried to bring an action against a pig farmer saying his boar went feral and mauled their son, but without tracking down the boar to check the brand, they couldn’t prove whose boar it was. And the army says it’s not their job to kill livestock and the paladins won’t do it unless the boar’s possessed and the Squire here doesn’t hunt, so…” They shrugged. “The case was dropped.”
“Pond,” said Brindle, nodding ahead of them.
“You smelled this from the road?” said Sarkis, impressed. The pond was little more than hollow filled with leaves and slush. Tracks in the frozen mud showed that the pigs had been using it to drink.
“Surprised you didn’t, sword-man.”
“Well,” said Sarkis, looking at the pond, “I suppose it’ll work. If the pigs dig them up, they’ll vanish just as effectively into a hog as a pond.” Zale made a small noise of dismay.
Sarkis had to use the camp shovel to make a hole in the slush. It was normally for digging small, impromptu latrines andoccasionally for covering over campfires, but it did well enough. Brindle got out the hatchet and set to work beside him. Between the two of them, they slowly chopped out a corpse-sized hole in the ice, while Halla collected pine boughs to cover over the bodies.
Zale looked slightly green, but unlocked the wagon and pulled the door open. “I am starting to feel like a murderer,” they said.
“This wasn’t murder,” said Sarkis. “It waskilling.And they started it.” He grabbed one of the sheet-wrapped bodies by the head. Brindle grabbed the feet.
“Hold on,” said Halla, as they were carrying it toward the ice. She pulled out a knife and sliced off a bit of the sheet’s hem.
“Eh?”
“There’s a dancing rat embroidered in the corner. Bit of a giveaway if anyone finds the bodies.”
