Saberhagen, Fred 03 – Stonecutter’s Story

“That was my question. Perhaps they sought the release of one of your prisoners?”

Umar appeared to find that a preposterous idea. “One of these scum? I would’ve given them one for nothing if they’d asked.”

“So, they showed you what their Sword could do, purely for your entertainment it would seem, and then they simply went away again?”

“That’s it, Excellency. That’s just what happened.” Umar nodded, glad to have the matter settled and understood at last.

Wen Chang, somewhat to Kasimir’s surprise, abstained from pressing the line of questioning further, and apparently lapsed into thought.

Kasimir chose this moment to again identify himself as a physician and surgeon, and volunteered to tend whatever injured might be on hand. He had surmised correctly that here, as on the road job, there would always be at least a few men partially disabled.

The foreman, still smiling as if he now considered the matter of the Sword closed, immediately accepted the physician’s offer. Kasimir was conducted into a shady angle of the quarry wall, and shown two patients lying there on pallets. These men had suffered, respectively, a head injury and a broken foot.

Kasimir opened his medical kit and went to work. The man with the head wound complained of continual pain and double vision. His speech came disconnectedly, at random intervals. Usually it was addressed to no one in particular and made little sense. He also had difficulty with his balance whenever he tried to stand. There was nothing, Kasimir thought, that any healer could do for him here, and there would be little enough even in a hospital.

The only attendant on duty in the rudimentary infirmary was a permanently lamed prisoner who handled other odd jobs as well for the foreman. This man stood by while Kasimir bandaged the second patient’s freshly damaged foot.

This time Wen Chang had come along to watch the physician work. Leaning against the shadowed rock as if he had no other care in the world, the Magistrate observed to the lame man in a sympathetic voice: “There must be many accidents in a place like this.”

The crippled attendant agreed in a low voice that there certainly were.

“And no doubt many of them are fatal.”

“Very true, Excellency.”

Wen Chang squinted toward the quarry’s mouth. “And those who die in these sad accidents are of course buried in the sandy waste out there.”

“Yes sir.”

“And how long has it been now since the last fatal mishap?”

“Only two days, sir.”

“Oh. Then it occurred upon the same day that the two strangers paid their visit?”

The attendant said no more. But under renewed questioning the little foreman Umar, who had also come along to the rude hospital, admitted that that was so.

“A very busy day that must have been for you.” Then Wen Chang looked up at Lieutenant Komi, who was standing by alertly, and announced in a crisp voice: “I want to take a look at those bodies.”

“Yes sir!” Komi turned away and started barking orders to several of his men.

Umar began a protest and then gave it up. He had more overseers under his command than the foreman of the road-building gang, and these were somewhat better armed. Still, they did not appear to be a match for the Firozpur occupying force.

Within a couple of minutes some of Komi’s soldiers were making the sand fly with borrowed tools, at a spot out in the sandy waste about a hundred meters from the quarry’s mouth.

They had encountered no difficulty in locating the two-day-old burial site-the grave had been shallowly dug, and from a distance flying scavengers were visible about the place. At closer range tracks in the sand were visible, showing that four-legged beasts had been at the bodies too. Kasimir as he walked closer to the grave saw that a pair of human feet and legs had been partially unearthed by the scavengers and gnawed down to the bones. He opened the pouch at his belt containing things of magic, and began to prepare a minor spell to help disperse the odors of death and decay.

The first body unearthed by the soldiers was naturally the least deeply buried, the one with the gnawed feet, that proved to be clad only in a dirty loincloth. Undoubtedly, Kasimir thought as he began to brush the last dirt away from the inert form with a tuft of weeds, it was that of a quarry worker. In this dry heat, decay might be expected to move slowly; a few whip-scars, not all of them fully healed, were still perfectly visible on the skin of the back. The head had been badly injured, perhaps by falling rock, so that not even a close relative would have been able to recognize the face.

Kasimir was about to ask what else there was to look for when Wen Chang, who had squatted down beside him, grabbed the body by an arm and turned it over. A moment later the Magistrate nodded minimally and let out a tiny hiss of satisfaction.

It still took the physician a moment longer to take notice of the thin, dry-lipped blade wound entering between the ribs. If that wound had any depth to it at all, the edged weapon that made it must have found the heart, or come very close to it.

The physician nodded in acknowledgment.

The Magistrate stood up, and with an economical gesture ordered the first body dragged to one side. “Keep digging!” he commanded, and the soldiers did.

In only a few moments a second body, which had been buried right under the first, had come into view. Again the only garment was a loincloth. The back of this man had also been permanently marked with the lash, and his head too had been virtually destroyed, by some savage impact that had well-nigh obliterated his face.

This time Kasimir was the first to discover blade wounds; there were two of them in this corpse’s back, and they might have been made by the same weapon as the wound in the first man’s chest.

Wen Chang, showing little reaction to this discovery, stood with hands clasped behind his back, nodding to himself. “Keep digging, men,” he ordered mildly.

The third corpse, found almost exactly under the second, was paler of skin than the first two, and showed no visible evidence of beatings. As if, thought Kasimir, this was not the body of a quarry laborer at all-though who else would be buried here? But the third body like the first two was clad only in a single dirty rag around the loins.

The face of the third man also had been obliterated, in a way that might be the result of the impact of heavy rocks. And there, under his left arm, was the entry wound of what might have been a sword.

Wen Chang lifted one of the limp arms, relaxed past rigor now, looked at the hand, and let the arm fall back. “A somewhat unusual accident,” he commented dryly. “Three men killed in virtually the same way. I suppose that a number of very sharp objects, as well as heavy ones, fell upon them as they were laboring in the quarry?”

Umar had been hovering nervously near the resurrection party, alternately approaching and retreating, and Kasimir could not have said whether the foreman was aware of the discovery of the blade wounds or not.

However that might be, Umar chose not to understand the Magistrate’s comment. “You see? These are just dead prisoners, we have them all the time. Who are you looking for? I will summon all my workers to stand inspection for you if you like. Maybe the man or men you want can be found among them.”

“I will tell you presently who I am seeking.” Wen Chang sighed, and shot a glance at Kasimir that seemed intended to convey some kind of warning. “But first, the two men with the magic Sword-which way did they go when they left here?”

“That way,” said Umar immediately, pointing out into the desert, toward nowhere.

“I rather suspected as much. You may rebury these poor fellows now.” He seemed about to add some further remark addressed to Lieutenant Komi, but then simply let the order stand.

Wen Chang, Kasimir, and Umar walked slowly back toward the foreman’s shaded observation post, while the officer stayed behind to supervise the re-internment.

“I would offer you hospitality, Excellencies,” Umar was beginning, “I would bring out refreshment for you, had I any worthy of the name to offer. But as matters stand-”

“You were wondering who I seek,” Wen Chang broke in. “They are two men. The name of the leader, or the name I know him by, is Golovkin. I had information that he was foreman here. And that he was the man the Sword-bearing strangers came to visit.”

Kasimir, who had never heard of any such person as Golovkin before, shot his mentor a curious glance. But the Magistrate ignored him and continued: “This Golovkin is about forty years of age, tall and powerful, black of skin and hair. Missing an eye. Unless I am badly mistaken, he is the man who wore, before he gave it to you, that foreman’s belt that fits you so poorly. I intend to track him in the city of Eylau. Well? Have I described your predecessor in the office or have I not?”

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