The Ghost's Crusade

IX: Tiernan (cont.)

On horseback without the weight of soaking wet underpadding, the distance from Baedorn's wall to the abandoned campsite was far shorter than he remembered it being. The rain, of course, had obliterated any sort of trail that might have been found. Whether or not the suspects had planned on that happening was likely going to remain unknown, but given the random highland rains in the fall months Tiernan suspected the bastards had simply caught a lucky break.

As they rode beneath the branches to cut through the woods back to the camp Tiernan's horse reared. A bedroll dropped from the sky and landed square in Drystan's lap. Moments later a gray-coated Enkiri descended from above and landed in front of them without a sound.

“I guess it is true what they say, Enkiri really do fall from trees,” said Tiernan, more irritated with himself that he didn't bother to look up than the fact Akkali had just ambushed them. He had been raised better than to ignore what was overhead. “You wouldn't happen to know anything about somebody's tongue being nailed to a door, would you?”

He could have sworn he saw her eyes darken in color for a moment as she looked up at him, studying his face intently as she decided whether or not to lie. “That was a Returner guildhall and the price on my head is over twenty thousand Imperial librii now—probably my weight in gold literally, I'm sure. Being the intrepid investigator you are you can extrapolate from there.”

“You're an escaped slave?” Tiernan was genuinely surprised at her admission. For her mouthy nature and knowledge of hand-to-hand combat he had her pegged as a wild Enkiri, perhaps part of one of the smaller bands that lurked in the forests nearer to Wardenfell's western borders. There were few freed slaves that would openly attack an Inquisitor, and even fewer were the ones that knew how to fight with any proficiency that were not also part of some band of cutthroats. “And you don't think nailing someone's severed jaw to a door is rather... excessive?”

The look she gave him right then chilled his body from the chest outward more quickly than he could blink and look away. “No more excessive than having someone's tongue cut out for their being so rude as to run away from a master that rapes them before weekly confession.”

Tiernan had no answer for that. He wasn't even certain he believed what she said. If the treatment of the Enkiri slaves in Haren was that bad and that widespread, certainly the church would have stepped in long ago.

Picking up on his hesitation, she shook her head and sighed. “You really need to get out of your closet, Inquisitor. The real world is quite the senseless, nasty place.” Akkali crossed her arms against her chest and changed the subject immediately. “I kept an eye out for his zealots.”

“Oh, my zealots,” Tiernan repeated in a dry tone. “Clever phrase there. Very clever.”

Immediately she countered him with an evil grin. “I am nowhere near as clever as the man dumping patchwork corpses in your alleyways at night.”

Drystan cut him off before he could say exactly what was on the tip of his tongue regarding her needlessly cynical attitude. “Wait, what?”

Akkali seemed slightly amused that the Inferi didn't already know that bit of information. “I found a heap of them the other day, several days old. I couldn't be certain because they were well on their way to flesh soup, but they looked like they had been sewn together out of mismatched parts. They were all human parts, certainly, just not... homogeneous.”

The Inferi looked back over his shoulder at the city walls, then at Tiernan. “Did you read any of those coroner reports?”

Well-practiced in having to recall information while leagues away from his desk, Tiernan could remember most of the reports filed by his Inquisitors regarding the corpses in the street offhand. “Nothing so far mentions anything like that. Things in Baedorn slip through the cracks often, but I know one of my men would notice the fact someone had stitched on an arm or a leg. We've no details on the ones they found before we arrived, but nothing like that has shown up while the Inquisition has been investigating.”