Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(60)

"You'd better be a human, Jes, when someone opens the gate," Lehr glanced over his shoulder when he spoke - to meet his brother's bland, human face.

"I like this mare," Jes said as he rubbed underneath the cheek strap of Cornsilk's sweaty headstall. "She's pretty."

Lehr pounded on the gate again, but no one answered. He backed up a few steps and leapt up to catch the top edge of the gate. He swung his legs and hooked a heel, then rolled over the top and landed on his feet on the other side.

Two- and three-story buildings looming over narrow streets gave the town a claustrophobic air, which was not helped by the utter lack of movement. Lehr looked around warily, but saw no signs of watchers.

He pulled the heavy bars off the gate and opened it.

"I haven't seen anyone," he told his brother. "Keep alert."

The Guardian gave him a smile full of teeth and led Cornsilk onto the cobbles of the town road. "Can you tell if the Travelers were here?"

Lehr walked back to the dirt path around the gate. He took a deep breath and sat on his heels to contemplate the ground. It took him a while, because there had been a rainstorm sometime in the past week that had blurred and thinned the traces he was looking for.

"They're here," he said, coming back to take Cornsilk's reins. "They came in and never left."

The Guardian looked around the silent town. "I'm not sure that is a good thing."

Lehr had been feeling the same way, but he wasn't going to admit it. He tried to dismiss the eerie feeling of the town as a side effect of Jes's Order - but if that were so, why did he have such a strong urge to move closer to his brother?

He kept his eyes on the road, trusting that the Guardian would keep watch so that he could concentrate on following the traces the clan had left as they walked on the narrow, cobbled streets.

They came to an inn with a stable attached, and the Guardian caught his arm.

"Wait here a moment, I want to check something," he said then disappeared inside the stables. He was out almost as quickly as he was in. "The horses are all dead," he said briefly. "Killed, but not by disease. They've been dead at least a week judging by the maggots. No effort made to butcher them. There were a couple of people in there, too. One dead of stab wounds, the other of disease. I didn't get close enough to tell how long they've been dead."

"Let's find the Travelers and go home," said Lehr, increasing his pace down the road. He didn't think they'd find the Clan of Rongier the Librarian alive, but he had to find them anyway. He owed Brewydd that much.

As they got farther into Colbern, the stench grew worse. There were barricades across some of the streets, futile stacks of household goods to keep plague victims away. They saw scavenger birds, rats, and once, a feral dog, but no people.

They found Rongier's clan in one of the small squares of land left open for grazing and forage of such animals as the townspeople kept. The Guardian knelt beside the first body and sniffed, without touching.

"They've been dead for a week, more or less. Like the horses."

Lehr crouched by a woman who lay facedown, her pale hair reminding him too closely of his mother's. She, like the rest of Rongier's clan, hadn't died of plague. They'd been killed by the people they had been trying to help.

He touched her hair - as long as her face was downward, she was a stranger. "Someone thought they might carry the disease like the horses you found in the stable, and, I suppose, the cats, dogs, chickens, and goats we haven't seen."

He turned her body over gently, as if she might be hurt if he were too rough. He'd seen her cooking beside his mother, and straightening the shirt on a toddler, but he didn't know her name.

He rose to his feet and walked by the bodies, putting names together for the death roll running in his head. "Here's Benroln," he said.

Lehr could tell by the dead villagers who surrounded him - and by the way his body had been mutilated - that the clan leader had given good account of himself.

"Isfain," said the Guardian in such an odd voice that Lehr looked up. Isfain, he remembered, was the one who had been set to watch Jes when he'd been held by the foundrael.

"Are you all right?" Lehr asked.

The Guardian nodded. "I thought I wanted him dead," he said, then walked on to the next body. "Kors."

They were all dead, men, women, and - heartrendingly - children. The red-haired twins who had always been up to some mischief or other were laid out formally, their throats neatly cut. The toddler who had sucked her thumb whenever she caught his gaze was crumpled in a little broken ball.

There were townsmen among the dead here, too. A few armed with swords might be guardsmen, but most of them had been armed with cudgels or tools. Desperate men do desperate things, was one of Papa's sayings.

Lehr turned from the body of a dead man who held a sharp saddler's knife and almost stumbled over a woman's body.

Her ice-blue eyes had gone to the crows, but he recognized the sharply defined nose and wide mouth. Igraina, who had taken special delight in ordering him about and used the opportunity to flirt with him gently. Beside her was the clan smith, Lehr couldn't remember his name, but he remembered the man's shy smile.

By the time they were finished, the Guardian was leaving frost behind on the ground where he walked. Lehr couldn't tell if it was because he was angry or sad. There was no one left for the Guardian to defend or to seek vengeance upon. From the empty streets they'd seen coming through the city, the people who'd done this were most likely already dead.