Curiosity also drew him toward the raft and cage. He had barely caught a glimpse of the large M?r bat as it had been dragged in a tangle of ropes and chains from the swamp. The victory had been celebrated with boisterous cheers and the battering of swords on shields, as if a major battle had been won. Though, according to the fireside chatter later, it wasn’t much of a fight. A chance lightning bolt had shattered the cottongum where the beast had unfortunately roosted during the storm. A clutch of six Vyrllians had stumbled upon it, discovering it weak and dazed, a wing burned clean through. Still, they had peppered it with a flurry of arrows before netting and roping it.
Kanthe had watched the beast be caged with a pang of pity. The captured bat was the size of a small pony. And even bleeding from wounds and pained by burns, it had thrashed and screeched, struggling for freedom.
He had understood that desire all too well. And maybe that was what drew him now. A mix of guilt and pity. Unfortunately, he was not the only one who gathered toward the caged prize.
“Let’s take a look at it,” Anskar said, hopping deftly onto the tall raft. “Before we drag it upward.”
Anskar vy Donn was the head of the Vyrllian detachment. Kanthe’s head barely reached the height of the man’s chest. And the vy-knight was as muscled as an ox. He had not only inked his face and shaved head in crimson, as was traditional, but also his legs and arms, both of which were also tattooed in black thorny vines. Kanthe had heard he added another thorn for every man he killed.
Maybe that’s why the king had secretly assigned the vy-knight to be his bodyguard, though it was never stated as such. Still, Anskar had been his shadow throughout this journey, seldom letting him out of his sight, even when Kanthe was wiping his arse. Despite that, Kanthe had come to respect the man’s hard, but amiable nature. By now, Anskar already felt more like a stern older brother than a bodyguard.
Kanthe climbed up onto the raft to join the knight.
Anskar lifted a flap of leather covering tied around the cage. Kanthe bent to peek under it.
“Not too close,” Anskar warned.
“No worries there. I’d like to keep my nose where it’s at.”
From two steps away, Kanthe peered into the shrouded darkness. It took him a breath to discern the darker shadow within. He spotted no movement. Maybe it’s already dead, succumbed to its injuries. It would be a mercy, considering its fate from here.
He glanced to the top of the school. The Cloistery was similar in shape to Kepenhill, only a quarter smaller. Twin flames smoked at the top. Alchymist Frell had already abandoned his pupil, climbing toward the summit. Frell had wanted to meet with the head of the school, a prioress who had once taught the man. Kanthe had tried to follow him, but Frell asked for his patience, abandoning the prince on this rocky shore.
Kanthe returned his attention to the cage—only to discover a pair of red eyes glowering back at him.
So not dead. But more likely—
The shadow burst toward him, crashing into the ironwood bars and rocking the entire pen. Kanthe fell backward, landing on his backside. He scooted farther away as teeth snapped and gnashed at the cage. A slavering poison, glowing in the darkness against the black wood, seeped down the bars’ lengths.
Anskar laughed and jabbed his sword at the face of the beast, driving it into the shadows again. Once it retreated, he let the flap of leather fall back over. He then faced Kanthe, towering over him.
“Looks like our guest is mending itself right smartly, don’t ya think?” The vy-knight held out a thick, calloused hand. “Up with ya. Can’t have a prince of the realm sitting on his arse in front of half the town here.”
Kanthe accepted the offer and allowed himself to be pulled back to his feet. “Thanks,” he mumbled, his cheeks heating up.
He turned to discover the commotion had drawn others to the raft. A circle of faces stared; a few heads whispered to one another. They were mostly townspeople, but their attention was not on the cage or the prince, but on the pair who had approached and stood silently next to the raft.
It had to be a rare sight.
A boulder-shouldered Gyn from across the seas stood bare-chested in the rain, his flesh branded with strange sigils. The mute made even Anskar look like a dwarf. He stood glumly, his heavy brows shadowing small, dull eyes. He held aloft a canopy over the head of his companion.
The Shrive leaned on a gnarled length of silvery bane-alder, whose sap was said to weaken the borders between this world and the mysteries beyond. Its length was as equally branded with sigils as the massive Gyn.
During the journey, Kanthe had kept well clear of the man, sensing both enmity and danger curled within his withered form. The Shrive’s tattooed brow looked especially dark under the drape of his cloak’s hood and set against his pale skin. And though the man was thin-limbed, saggy jowls hung from cheek and chin, as if all the fat and flesh had been sucked from him, leaving only this wrinkled drape of skin over bone.
No doubt an Iflelen, Kanthe thought, but at least it’s not that bastard Wryth.
The Shrive’s eyes, ashine with avarice, were not on Kanthe or the cage, but on the poison pooled atop the raft’s planks. He pointed his cane. “Do not wash that away,” he rasped to Anskar. “I will bring my vials to collect what I can. Though I’d prefer to dissect the venom glands while the creature still lives.”
“If you wish to wander in there, Shrive Vythaas,” Anskar said, “you are more than welcome. But I’m not risking any of my men. Besides, this beastie is already claimed in the name of vengeance, and I made a blood oath to honor it, to burn the first bat to the gods. Especially as the thunderous god Tytan so graciously dropped this sacrifice in our path.”
The Shrive lowered his cane, looking none too happy.
Kanthe knew the holy man had been sent here by will of the king, to gather poison and distill it into a weapon of great malignancy. But once their party dispensed with their first obligation—to deliver the highmayor’s daughter here and make a blood sacrifice atop the school’s pyre—then the great hunt could begin in earnest. They would slaughter as many of the M?r bats as they could over the next turn of the moon. By that time, Vythaas should have a mountain of poison glands with which to perform his experiments.
But patience was running thin, and not just for the Shrive.
A gruff voice shouted at them, “What are you all waiting for?”
The crowd skirted apart for a portly belly. The man who approached could pass for a wine cask that had sprouted legs, arms, and a gray-whiskered face. It didn’t help that he wore a set of oiled breeches and tunic that was a smatter too small for his bulk, allowing an edge of his hairy stomach to protrude over a thick leather belt, which tried its best to hold back the rest of his ale-swelled gut.
Highmayor Goren shoved between the Shrive and the raft. “Day’s a-wasting. We need to get that foul cur to the blasted top of this rock. I want that beast charred to smoking ash before the last clang of Eventoll.”
The man was accompanied by his daughter, a gangly-limbed girl about Kanthe’s age, with mud-brown hair that she tried to brighten with a few silk ribbons. Though only a smidgen above homely, she carried herself as if a stick had been planted square up her arse at birth. During the trek here, she had never dared to extend a slipper out of the sledge. Instead, she stayed nestled among her tall stack of chests, likely full of dainties and perfumes.