The Knave of Souls - Fantasy - Sequel to The Jack of Souls

Chapter 58 - A Cure for Fleas

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A CURE FOR FLEAS

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Harric stood. He couldn't breathe. It felt a like someone had set a huge stone on his sternum.

Numbly, he picked up the spitfire and stared at the blazing tree, which had already spread its fire to several beside it.

A funeral pyre. To keep his body from capture.

And the north wind—the blessed north wind!—would blow it hot and push it away down the canyon, toward Bannus. If Harric did it right, not only would he cheat Bannus of the trophy collar and of a peasant priest to hang at a crossroads, but a big enough fire would drive the immortal back down the canyon.

The mocking priest-hunting song blared suddenly much louder than before, as if the hunters had finally climbed above the falls onto his trail. That meant they were no more than a mile behind.

Harric struggled to lift the enormous axe. He managed to heave it up onto Geraldine's back, but in the process nearly mashed the little basket there.

"Spook!"

The lid jumped as if the little cat were trying to get out, but the priest had fastened its strings so it wouldn't open.

"Not much longer, boy," Harric said, as he shifted the axe and lashed it to the saddle. "You'll be safer in there."

Spook mewed, but Harric ignored him. As soon as he'd secured the axe, he coaxed Geraldine from Kogan. At first she resisted, but then one of the trees beside Kogan's torch tree went up with a whoosh and she turned with little urging. The flames were spreading with surprising speed, and the heat was a palpable pressure on their skins. With a smack on her rump, Harric sent her cantering up the trail, Spook mewing all the while, and pulled the loaded spitfire from his pack.

"They won't get a finger on you, Father," he said.

Harric set the stock of the weapon to his shoulder and angled it into the tree above Kogan. The weapon bucked and spat out a blazing comet that splattered in the dead understory.

Fire already engulfed a half dozen trees above the trail at Kogan's feet. The dead understory seemed greedy for fire, and the north wind just as eager to feed it. Heat hammered his bare cheeks as he recovered his pack and spitfire and retreated up the road. At thirty paces, he dropped the pack, reamed and loaded the spitfires, and sent blazing comets into the trunks above and below Kogan's resting place.

Harric reamed and fired, reamed and fired, widening the wall of flames. When the trumpet end of one spitfire began to smoke and flame like a resin torch, he set it to unlit trees at either hand and worked the other until its pipe hissed with bubbling resin.

Horns sounded again, so close he thought they must be rounding the last bend, but he could no longer see the trail beyond a raging wall of fire and smoke.

Whole trees went up like torches. Heat beat him back another ten paces and sweat blurred his vision and the roar of the flames grew deafening. He thought he heard shouts and curses beyond the roaring flames. Horses whinnied. A tree engulfed in flames crashed on the trail where Kogan lay, sending a gout of sparks into the sky.

Through an eddy in the smoke, he glimpsed Bannus and Gygon as they thundered toward the flames as if they would leap the fallen tree and trample over Harric.

Fingers fumbling, Harric stuffed a double charge of resin in one spitfire and sighted down the trail. Violet eyes, mad with hatred, locked with Harric's across the fire.