8. Every Man must choose his Way
"And then," Gavroche announced, "then we'll ambush them from behind, while they're trying to ambush us. That'll teach them, bet it will!"
"It's not going to work," Javert stated, watching the thin columns of greyish-white smoke ahead without breaking stride. They were the only signs that four days ago Rosendale had been overrun.
The men of Norgard had left the village soon enough, after herding off about a quarter of its cattle and sheep, but they had not left the valley. Beyond the forest along the Greengrove road, they had met up with another part of the army that had not participated in the attacks at all, but made camp instead, a wide, sprawling encampment encircled by palisade fences, and their patrols, always four or five men on foot, two messengers on horseback and one of Norgard's giant lizard spawn, were making sure that nobody strayed too far from their native village.
It had been a complete surprise move. Although, as Javert knew from Sophia, scouts had reported a growing colony of mercenaries up in the mountains as early as half a year ago, nobody had expected Norgard to strike that fast, before the merchant train's arrival even. Orvar had said it was not only foolish, but plain madness to attack when expecting a whole train of highly trained merchant guards in a matter of a fortnight. And this was what irked Javert to no end: Why had they done it after all, then? For every crime that was committed, there was a motivation, a reason. There was a reason for everything, even for the tiniest detail. But why this early attack, then?
"They must have run out of resources," Orvar had assumed when the two of them had hidden in the undergrowth by the Greengrove road this morning. "There is no other explanation." Javert had nodded to this; it had made sense. But on the other hand… there existed an actual settlement up in the mountains, certainly able to keep a large number of men alive. And moreover, why should an army just make camp in the valley and then do nothing at all? He had spent very little time in the field himself, and his knowledge of military matters was limited, but Orvar had been a soldier, and Orvar had estimated that there were between four and five hundred men out there in the meadows, only part of the force of the mountains, just waiting for whatever signal was about to come. Did they mean to waylay the merchant train? Could there be so much use in that? All merchant unions had storehouses at Moorcastle, safe behind city walls, as well as south beyond the border; they would bring very little gold as they passed the valley, certainly not enough to make it worth a whole campaign with its immense expenses, and the true wealth, if it could be called thus, flowed into Rosendale not in the middle of summer, but in autumn when the harvest was brought in and taken to market at Moorcastle. Furthermore, mercenaries grew restless when kept waiting for too long. Was it really in Norgard's interest to have them pillaging and looting all over the valley and beyond, with no chance of rebuilding their ranks in time once they were joined by the remaining army to invade the Kingdom? For now this host had left Norgard, there still were over a thousand left there, from what the villagers had learned from spy reports.
Too many questions in this crime. Too many missing clues and answers. And the only one who could have helped them, their man in Norgard, was dead. There was another, apparently, who had given them word of his discovery and immediate death, but this mysterious man had not sent anything since then, not ever again. For now, there were no answers to all those riddles. No answers at all.
Gavroche's sigh mirrored Javert's thoughts quite well. "Is it true that they burned the bridge that leads out to the border?" the boy asked after they had went on in silence for a little time, a silence filled with nothing but the sound of their marching feet on the road. The Crown of Stone was looming into a flawlessly blue sky ahead.
"I'm afraid so." Where the Hyavanda River marked the Kingdom's south border, a deep ravine a few miles to the south of Rosendale, a wooden bridge had spanned the chasm, leading into the deserted borderlands of the Seafarers' realm of Hyavand, wide woodlands and rocky hills all the way to the Jade Sea many leagues away. But scouts had found that the old bridge had been destroyed at the same time as the villages had been overrun. The contingent of riders passing through Rosendale and doing so surprisingly little damage there had been given a different errand to fulfil.
Another question to which there was no answer. Of course, south might be a choice for an escape route as well as north, but why cut it off so completely? Trading with Hyavand was vital for the Kingdom. Did Norgard mean to destroy its enemies in this way? Moreover, the merchant train would be kept in the valley this way, increasing its population and especially filling it with able warriors. There had to be a plausible reason behind this all, but what was it?
"So we're locked in."
"Metaphorically." Damn it, there had to be some logic in this!
"You and your long words." At least it was an attempt at humour. Quite against his normal nature, the boy had been unusually subdued all day. Javert thought he knew the reason, but he had not yet touched the topic. Surely the boy would speak when he was ready.
Their boots kicked up clouds of dust that lay over the road like thin veils for a little while before they disappeared again. Rain had been scarce in the valley recently.
"Look!" Gavroche called, but Javert had spotted them earlier already: Through the high grass to the right, between the sparse scattered clusters of bushes, a group of men were approaching, and they were heading straight towards them. Cédric Enjolras, Nicolas Combeferre, Jean-Claude Courfeyrac, Louis Joly and Eugène Bahorel. See there, all the ringleaders together in one place. Except Joly, of course, who had apparently lost his eternal companion, Emile Lèsgles. But Bahorel could be counted as a ringleader in his own right, though of a different kind, so it was true for the rest. Every single one was armed with a knife or dagger, and Combeferre additionally carried a bow.
The mercenaries had taken away what weapons they had found, but they had not truly bothered to search properly. At least that foolish Enjolras had lost his sword to them, which had given Javert a little satisfaction at least. After all, an idiot with romantic dreams of heroism who had a sword was a dangerous thing. He had successfully evaded both capture and being disarmed himself; he still wore his own sword buckled on in addition to his dagger, and he had kept his quiver safe as well, along with the bow Gavroche had been allowed to carry.
But the most noteworthy thing about the rebels was that for once it was neither Enjolras nor Bahorel who was leading them. It was a wolf.
Javert quietly waited for them to reach him, observing the wolf's nervous prancing. Running ahead, the animal would then turn again and caper back like a hectic goat, yapping and whining impatiently. It was one of the younger animals, a slender female with dark fur that had caught Javert's attention a few months back already for both her vivaciousness and her complete lack of shyness, one of those who needed no persuasion in sausage-shape at all to slip into houses. Born inside the stable of a farmhouse Enjolras and his friends inhabited, she had come into close contact with humans so often at an early age already that she probably considered them just another category of wildlife that wasn't edible but nonetheless was able to provide quite a lot of edible things. A few paces from the road, the wolf suddenly leapt forward, briefly put one of her paws on Gavroche's knee in a peculiar kind of greeting, then nudged Javert gently. Squatting down beside her, he ran his hand over the animal's head. When he compared himself to any creature, he usually thought of a hound, but inside every hound slept a wolf.
"Hello there, pals," Gavroche cried merrily, though there still was a more serious note to is voice.
"Good morning," Enjolras replied stiffly, although it was going on midday already. Javert knew he was glowering at him without even looking up. Some people just were so predictable.
"You'll be on your way to check the slings, I take it?" Courfeyrac inquired, sweat moistening his sandy-coloured curls and gluing them to his forehead and temples. "See if you caught any rabbits?"
"Just like you." Javert got back up, but made sure not to hurry. Not for silly boys with delusions of grandeur, not for fools who naively believed they were heroes. Keeping his face straight was hard enough with them sometimes. And it seemed that it was much the same for those foolish lads; Enjolras was giving him his usual bright-eyed glare. Javert knew that some of the girls at the village would sigh and melt at that look, but all it really was, was plain ridiculous.
"Perhaps it would be best if we went together," Combeferre suggested. He was wearing a frown as well – and his blue neckerchief, despite the heat – but not the kind of unfriendly frown Bahorel was wearing as he looked up at Javert suspiciously. Concern, if he was any judge.
Enjolras shot his friend a sideways glance as he thoughtlessly brushed a long blond strand out of his eyes, and his eyebrows wandered down a fraction before he shrugged. "Well, tell him."
"No need to." Javert waved it away lazily. "The wolf means to show you something, so you decided to forget about the slings for a moment. And you're worried it might be something important, so… you ask me to accompany you." You need someone to handle it for you, he had meant to say originally, but he was not the kind of man to pick fights, especially not in front of the boy.
"Yes," Combeferre agreed, "exactly." His smooth, youthful features were earnest, and it seemed he did not notice the droplet of sweat slowly running down out of his brown hair down over his temple.
"Agreed." If the wolf really had found more than just a tasty morsel of meat or a particularly large stick she had not managed to drag along to her siblings all by herself, it was best if Orvar learned from someone less excitable and more trustworthy than Enjolras.
"Where are we going?" Gavroche asked as they set off through the grass, leaving the road behind.
"Wherever our furry friend is leading us." Into the forest, Javert suspected.
"Do you think someone got caught in a sling?" The idea seemed to cheer the boy up immensely.
"No," Combeferre answered immediately. He and Enjolras were walking alongside Javert. "They're not strong enough to trap a man."
For some time they marched on in silence, only interrupted by the wolf's excited noises and the rustling of the grass around their feet. Strangely, the wolf did not head straight towards the Rosendale forest, but more or less alongside it, past the Crown of Stone, until they reached a place where the ground sloped steeply downwards suddenly. Rock interrupted the line of forest ahead, and abruptly the level of the trees was twenty feet lower down, as if something had fallen out of the sky and struck a steep crater into the landscape, about an eighth of a mile in diameter. It was stood with trees just like the higher ground around it, yet they appeared oddly gnarled, their scanty leaves of a sickly sallow colour, and thickets of thorn bushes clustered around their winding roots like grotesque crouching shapes.
"Good Lord!" Courfeyrac exclaimed as they stumbled down the slope. "She's taking us to Golrath's Hollow!"
"Damn this all," Bahorel muttered. "No one ever goes there, not even animals!"
Glancing at the pale, partially barren branches looming into the air in bizarre forms, Javert understood why the villagers believed this place was cursed. This part of the forest, despite its skeletal pallor, seemed darker even than the groups of high, near-black fir-trees that dotted the Rosendale forest. And while the woods normally were filled with the merry voices of many a bird, this hollow was cloaked in heavy silence, except for the wind singing in dead branches.
Gavroche watched the wolf's tail disappear through a narrow gap in the undergrowth, his lips pressed together firmly. "Do we really have to go in there?"
"You can wait here if you don't dare to." This should take care of the problem.
"Of course I dare to!"
Javert smiled inwardly as he stepped through the narrow gap in the bushes first, ducking beneath pale overhanging branches, their twigs like tiny claws that reached out to become entangled in his hair. He knew how to deal with the boy in a number of subtle ways.
Dry twigs crunched beneath his feet as he moved forward to allow the others to step under the intricate canopy of skeletal branches, a few yellow leaves dangling from them loosely as if they were to fall off any moment, dangling lifelessly like a corpse on the gallows. Behind him, two of the students – Courfeyrac and Combeferre, if he identified their voices correctly – were conversing in a muffled undertone, and although he could not catch the exact words they were saying, it was easy enough to tell that this twilight under pale trees made them uncomfortable.
Nobody ever came here. There were stories about this place to scare children, and not only them, rumours of a nameless fear, an ancient terror that lingered still… He had been here once before, when he had come to this world. From eternity's embrace, he had arrived in a green forest, but suddenly he had stood on a crest of rough rock, and gazed down into a hollow of gnarled trees that had suddenly yawned beneath him as if the land had been smitten with a giant mace. For some time he had sat down on the rock, elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, and wondered why the structures beneath him look so oddly as if the massive stone had been melted down to slag and then slowly dried again, taking bizarre shapes at some places. Was this the crater of a volcano that had now long been asleep? Strange that there was no mountain, though, not even a slight hill. He had asked Sophia later on, on one of those evenings when they had sat in the kitchen together with a cup of warm milk, before she had said goodnight and went upstairs as usual, leaving him to sleep on the kitchen bench, by the fire.
It was then that he had first heard the story of Nardilon and Golrath, of Galahir and Grogarad, while the flames had painted bizarre dancing shadows on the kitchen wall. The Captain-Mayor and the Sorcerer, the hero and the enemy. He had listened with interest back then, though it had been nothing but a fable to him, a legend to be told by the fireside. But now, once again in the place where Nardilon had fought his last stand and Golrath had woven his dark enchantments for the final time, he was not certain anymore. After all, at the core of every fable there lay a tiny grain of truth…
And there was something else, too. "It is said," Sophia had told him on this same evening, that one who comes here and first sees the Crown of Stone, then Golrath's Hollow, will become a hero and a great leader of men."
"Nice to hear," he had replied, unfolding his blanket for the night, "but I saw Golrath's Hollow first, then the Crown of Stone. What of such a man?"
She had been silent for a while, and he had turned to see what was the matter. Her face had lain in darkness, he recalled, and only her eyes had gleamed oddly in the firelight. "They say… that he will fall under the shadow."
For some time there had been no sound but that of embers consumed by flames. Then she had reached up to touch his shoulder, which she barely managed to do without standing on tiptoe. "But don't let it unsettle you. I would hate to see a man like you frightened."
"I would hate to see a woman like you superstitious," he had answered, and thought no more of it.
He will fall under the shadow…
"Curse those creepers," Joly muttered angrily, violently pulling free of a tangle of vines that lay spread out over the ground like a web. "This is the first time I'm here, and I swear it will be the last as well!"
"This place ought to be cleared up," Enjolras proclaimed, and although his clear voice should have rung out in the silence, it sounded strangely muffled, as if the barren branches swallowed its sound. "Scoured of all evil."
"And how would you do that?" Courfeyrac inquired, bending low under a thicket of overhanging twigs. "Burn it down?"
"Burn it down!" Bahorel repeated. A voice that should have been filled with malicious glee remained dull instead, hollow, bereft of its characteristic tone of large-scale mischievousness. "Destroy it, once we've destroyed Norgard!"
The fool! The mindless, brainless fool! Javert's hands clenched into fists, and he allowed them to, so they would not clench around the moron's neck instead.
"It would be too dangerous," Combeferre put in. At least one who possessed some sense! "The fire might spread all over the forest."
"Hack them down, then," Bahorel suggested impatiently. "And see that something proper grows here instead."
"Nothing does," Combeferre pointed out. "Look around you. If it could, wouldn't it have done so already? Grass grows all by itself, and so do flowers. Most green things do."
There was a gentle rasping sound as Enjolras loosened his dagger in its sheath. "This is a place too evil for flowers to grow."
"It's so creepy," Gavroche murmured, clutching Javert's bow to himself tightly and glaring up at the pale canopy of trees defiantly.
In response, the wind sighed in the branches, and a dry leaf fluttered down gently to land before Javert's feet. But he did not heed it. For a moment he had caught a scent carried on the wind, a scent branded forever into his memory… Rushing forward after the wolf, he yanked aside what seemed to be a curtain of dry yet black ivy, barely holding it open for Combeferre to slip through after him. His sleeve caught on something, but he pushed on, not heeding the snapping of twigs as well as the tearing of cloth he heard. The hound had found his target. All of his own accord, his hand wandered to the hilt of his sword –
"What's the matter?" Combeferre asked behind him, accompanied by a rustling and cracking as he made his way through an overhanging tangle of twigs, the wolf closely beside him now, panting eagerly. Javert did not need her lead any longer.
"Whiskers!" Gavroche protested from somewhere among the students. "Slow down, you with your nasty long legs!"
But he would not, not now. Not when the wind was beginning to pick up again, and that accursed scent increasing… He followed it instinctively, like a hound, just like he would have done in his former life. Yes, there could be no doubt of it. That warm, heavy smell, sweet at the same time as foul, that smell that would fill his nostrils and cling to his clothes long after he had left the place where it lingered, that smell that would follow him even into his dreams and turn them into nightmares…
"Ack!" Bahorel exclaimed. "That bloody place reeks like Satan's behind!"
"I think I recognize that smell," Joly said. Of course. As a medical student, he would have come across it before.
"So do I," Javert stated dryly, without turning or slowing down. "Boy, stay back. This will be no sight for you."
"Why?" Gavroche protested from somewhere behind him, breathless. "What is it?"
Another wave rolled over him, drawing at the same time as nauseating him. "The stench of the morgue."
Before him, the thorny undergrowth suddenly opened into a small clearing, or what would have been a clearing had it not been covered by an intricate canopy of pale branches, intertwining like serpents, cutting off the light of day and leaving nothing but an eerie twilight in which the stems of the trees seemed to faintly glow. In its middle, a mound of rock arose, its surface as strange as those edges of the hollow, in places as bubbly as if the ores of the earth themselves had been boiling. And there, at its foot, a shape that had once been human…
The wolf whined and retreated towards the students.
Javert did his best to breathe through his mouth, but still the smell of decay was like a violent blow to his already churning stomach. Countless times he had been forced to inhale the stench of rotting flesh, and still he had not quite grown used to it. As far as he knew, nobody did. But he had learned to ignore it as well as it was possible. He would not allow anything to keep him from his duty.
And now he was back. He was in the middle of Golrath's Hollow, in the forests of Rosendale, but he might as well still have been in Paris. There was a suspicious death to investigate.
Approaching the corpse cautiously, he inspected the leaf-strewn ground around it attentively, searching for anything that should not have been there. Flies buzzed around his head, plump, black creatures, the only living beings that seemed to prosper in an accursed place such as this, but he did not heed them. After no time at all, they could be found around every dead body. What had happened here, and why? And to whom? The man – or most probably a man – lay stretched out on his back, but his features were disfigured beyond recognition, brown and black and glistening with a reddish-brown fluid one might easily have mistaken for blood, but Javert recognized it as a common by-product of decomposition and paid no further attention to it. The face was changed beyond any chance of identification, but there was something else that told him who this man had once been: Spread out around the head, soiled by the fluids of decay but still clearly recognizable, was a mane of long hair as red as copper.
"You there, Combeferre." Best to use one who was more or less reliable. "Get back to the village as fast as possible and tell Orvar we've found Dolorin."
"He can't," said Joly, coming up beside him, horror written clearly on his brow. "He's taken the boy away a little to be sick."
Indeed the sounds of coughing and retching could be heard from a small distance. Silly thing! Had he not told him quite clearly to stay back?
"God," Courfeyrac breathed. His voice was muffled, yet this time not because of the eerie surroundings but because he was covering mouth and nose with his shirt collar. "So those bastards murdered him after all."
"Why, though?" Enjolras asked. See there, the lad who normally thought with a sword that could be waved dramatically to accompany revolutionary paroles was suddenly using his head. "Why should they kill him? Of what use is he to them dead? Did they think he would become one of the Captain-Mayors of old? It doesn't make sense; Orvar is a far more dangerous opponent to Norgard by far. I'm sure Dolorin would have stepped back for Orvar if it had come to that. I mean, if there's anyone they should fear then it's certainly not Dolorin."
"You have a point there, laddie," Javert conceded. This thought precisely had troubled him for some time, ever since Dolorin had gone missing, and it had troubled Orvar himself as well.
"So why the devil did they kill him, then?" Bahorel insisted. "He was a scholar, damn it, not a warrior!"
"Act of intimidation." It was the only logical conclusion. "And in precisely the place where, according to legend, Nardilon died. They mean to scare us by murdering him just there – though perhaps he was dead before they brought him here, we'll yet have to see about that." It would be well nigh impossible to prove, but it stood to reason. Dragging a struggling man as far as this place in the middle of the night, and without being seen or arousing attention in any other way, certainly was difficult, and simply tying up and gagging him would hardly have worked. Had they hit him over the head, then, or intoxicated him, or strangled him to temporary oblivion, or had they killed him at his own house already? This might be possible; unlike many other villagers, Dolorin did not belong to one of the large family clans that lived all under the same roof, making even a large house appear crowded. Instead, he had inhabited a small wing of a farmhouse alone with his books and scrolls. An easy target, an easy prey.
Overcoming Orvar would be a lot harder. He shared an abode with several other veterans and slept with an unsheathed sword beside his bed, as Javert knew. And as for Sophia… She owned the largest farm of the village; any intruder would have to get past all her workers' quarters first. There was no reason to worry, and Sophia had told him quite firmly that she would feed him to her greedy swarm of pigs if she found him camping out on her doorstep. Besides, the outskirts of the village were well guarded now, and there were guards positioned at strategic places among the houses as well. An assassin sneaking into Rosendale would not come far.
"A scholar," Enjolras repeated slowly, and Javert raised his eyes from Dolorin's still form to regard him a little impatiently. "What did Dolorin know, then, that might be dangerous to Norgard?"
"How to chain Grogarad," Javert replied, not without an obvious small does of sarcasm in his voice. Trying to be clever, Enjolras, are you? He squatted down beside the corpse, turning his back on the young revels firmly. No, there was nothing unusual about Dolorin's garments, just the normal brown and grey, though there was a tear along one sleeve that might be hinting at a struggle. Had Dolorin been sitting up late into the night, still dressed, studying one of the ancient scrolls from the archives? There was a tear in the blackened skin beneath, too, yet that might be just a result of decomposition. The topmost layer of skin was coming off, uncovering the leathery one beneath that was growing slippery and hard. And there was another large tear at the shoulder, and –
Now this was peculiar…
"Do you believe in Grogarad at all?" Bahorel asked after a pause. "Because Orvar says –"
"A fable," Javert interjected. "A symbol of evil. Yes, I know what he says, and I completely agree with him. Shut up about legends and tell me why Dolorin would wear what seems to be a shawl in the middle of summer."
"Poking fun at you, Céd," Courfeyrac observed, quite needlessly. The young fool should have gotten the message when Javert had voiced his agreement with Orvar at the latest.
"Maybe he had a cold?" Joly suggested, squatting down beside Javert and obviously trying to breathe as little as necessary. "I'm sure he never got any medication for it, though, since I know Roshild's patients as well as she does." The lad worked for the village's doctor and chemist, very eager to learn what she could teach him about herbs and concoctions and showing her some tricks of his own in return. "Had he had a bad chill, she'd have had me bring him the usual mixture, no doubt."
Javert nodded. "So you tend to believe in the other possibility too, I take it."
The lad swallowed, nervously straightening his short, wavy brown hair. "Yes, I think I know what you mean."
"But I don't," Bahorel admitted openly. "What the blazes was he doing with that scarf?"
"Being murdered with it," Courfeyrac said bluntly, but his voice shaking with fury. "D'you think they hanged him and then cut him down?"
Almost. You're improving, dunderhead. "Strangulated with it, more likely." He would have to remove the scarf to prove it, though, if the mark was still visible on the swollen, rotting neck at all. There was another way of finding out, though, a method he had learned from a physician at the morgue once. Leaning over the corpse, he was reluctant to do it at first, but then gave himself a sharp mental prod. Come on, you sluggard, you coward, you have touched plenty of dead bodies before! Reaching out, he placed his forefinger delicately beneath one of the sallow, sightless eyes that looked like they might dissolve into slime any moment and tugged down the slippery skin, revealing a patch of surprisingly pink flesh… and just what he was looking for. "See those tiny red dots? They come from ruptured blood vessels. You don't find that on a hanged man, except in cases of lopsided hanging sometimes, and there's nothing hinting at this. He was strangulated on the ground, though if in this spot or somewhere else I can't tell." Letting go, he barely resisted the urge to wipe his hand on his trousers. "In this case, it probably doesn't matter anyway.! They knew who must have done it; the answer Norgard was quite sufficient, and it would even do for the King, if they ever managed to get the report out of the village.
Reaching out once again, he plucked out a strand of red hair. It left the skull easily, there was no need to yank. "Some proof for Orvar," he explained. "That's all I can do for now."
-.-
The rest of the day went by quickly; he and Enjolras were summoned to Orvar and spent considerable time being interrogated while a handful of fearless men was sent to Golrath's Hollow to retrieve the body. There was some argument about the burial; while Sophia insisted on a proper funeral pyre like for the heroes of old and then a mound out on the meadows, Orvar wanted to keep it as simple and discreet as possible not to draw anyone's attention. He went as far as calling Sophia a careless, drama-loving person, to which she responded that he was an overly suspicious dummy who might be able to tell a sword's point from its pommel but hardly was fit to fill Dolorin's place as the Mayor of Rosendale. In the end Orvar managed to overcome her resistance, and Sophia returned to her farm muttering angrily and made Javert take her mounted guard shift on the western fields.
When he returned home at last, night was falling already, and he was grateful to be able to throw off his clothes at last and spend some time soaking in warm water, washing off what he felt was the smell of death still lingering about him. Gavroche offered to prepare some supper and bustled around the tub in what he probably thought was a very important manner and managed a rather good impression of Yorel smugly balancing a dish laden with his finest trifles. Perhaps the kitchen was a bad place for the tub, Javert mused as the boy accidentally dropped a spoon into it, but then again, the other side of the room, beyond the table, was used as bedroom, and moreover was currently piled with clothing that had partly returned from the laundresses this afternoon, partly still had to go there the next day – one was out for several hours and Gavroche managed to let chaos reign in no time –, and dragging the tub upstairs, along with the buckets of hot water to fill it, would be a bothersome thing to do. So Javert lay back and closed his eyes, doing his best to ignore Gavroche's clanking and clattering and hoping to be spared of any more sudden confrontations with cutlery.
The water was comfortably warm, and soon he dozed off, registering only very barely what was happening around him. The sound of bare feet on the wooden floor, pattering this way and that, the store cupboard being opened and closed, a chair being shifted, Gavroche muttering about cheese… The wind whispering in barren branches, speaking with many voices, speaking of Nardilon and Golrath, and of Dolorin… and Dolorin was looking at him out of empty eyes… "I'm not dead yet," those blackened lips whispered, and the mouth that had become a hole in the swollen face smiled for a last time, "I will never die…" But all around him, the wind was laughing, laughing with the voice of a Sorcerer reborn…
He will fall under the shadow…
"Come on in, we were just about to have supper. I'm sure Whiskers won't mind."
Javert sat up suddenly, sloshing out water over the rim of the tub. There were voices coming from the door, and soon enough Gavroche came around the corner into the main room… followed by his sister. Oh, damn, did that really have to be now? The boy could have warned him!
"Don't mind him," Gavroche beamed. "He's just having a little nap in the tub, my Whiskers."
"I don't," said Eponine generously. She wore her usual old skirt and blouse and carried her bow over her shoulder. "Hello. Go on bathing, I really don't mind."
Maybe you don't, but I do! "Hand me a towel, boy," Javert growled. Gavroche was not supposed to let anyone in while he was bathing, especially not a woman! Once the girl was gone he intended to have a stern word with the boy, a very stern word indeed!
"Here you are." Gavroche skipped over merrily, and quite unabashed. "Ponine, don't peek."
"I'm not peeking." Eponine had sat down on the window seat, pulling her bare feet under her, and was peering out through the curtains. "Marten just went past with a funny hat."
"That big straw hat of his?" Gavroche giggled.
"Yes, with a sunflower's head on it, and quite a bit of the stem, too."
While they were busy peering out and snickering, Javert used the opportunity to hastily climb out of the tub and wrap a towel around his waist. Too bad he had not prepared any fresh clothes yet. Slipping past Gavroche and hastening up the creaking wooden stairs, he thought he heard Eponine comment that he was less hairy than she had expected. That goose! Hissing a curse, he entered one of the two narrow rooms of the upper floor, the one where he, among other things, kept his clothes and equipment. The old cupboard taking almost the whole width of the room's opposite wall had belonged to the house's former owner already, and Javert sometimes wondered what had been kept in there that an oddly stuffed smell still seemed to linger inside.
He rubbed himself dry, then selected a few items from the various shelves inside the cupboard, which took longer than expected since Gavroche had obviously once again done what he called tidying up, but what in fact meant rearranging everything at random so it took Javert some time to find what he needed. Where had that red shirt gotten to? He was certain he had not put it with those that needed washing, so it could not be downstairs. Had Gavroche made another pathetic attempt at stealing it, perhaps? Already devising a ghastly punishment for the boy, he went over to the other room, where he finally found it among Gavroche's jumble of socks and underwear. The boy kept nicking it for some reason, and he suspected it was because the boy had once heard Sophia say how it suited Javert's dark complexion.
Returning to the main room downstairs, he heard Gavroche give an account of the day's adventures in a tone of horribly forced cheerfulness. "The worst stench ever, I swear! Nic Combeferre nearly puked on my boots."
"The other way 'round," Javert corrected wearily, sitting down at the foot of the stairs. He wished the boy had not had to witness this all, especially after what he had gone through in those past days. How much could a child witness before something inside him broke apart?
How much had he seen himself, back in those dark days when he had grown up?
"Don't prattle," Gavroche complained, placing a plate on the table a little more violently than necessary.
"I wouldn't have believed you anyway," Eponine said tartly. "Because Nicolas already told me."
Gavroche poked out his tongue at her.
He was trying to be his usual noisy, cheerful self, but it was obvious enough that he was pretending. Strange that he had not spoken of what Javert suspected was the main reason. Gavroche had seen people slain in combat before, and often enough he had been scared of the dark and all alone. But this time…
And it could happen again. Any day. Any hour. Any moment.
As Eponine said goodbye and left heading towards Roses' End, he escorted her to the door, but absent-mindedly. A thought was beginning to form in his head, a thought that could not be chased away.
On the other hand… The boy needed to be protected, to be safe. The boy needed him more than ever.
Just as much as Rosendale needed him.
During the simple meal waiting for them, Gavroche chattered merrily as ever, but the occasional tightening of his lips and from time to time a hint of a glitter in his eyes told Javert all he needed to know. And then, as the last glimmer of light faded outside, Gavroche's pretended happiness faded as well, and he grew silent, his eyes, pools of darkness in the waxing shadows, staring into nothingness.
They rose quietly to wash the dishes and put everything in order for the night, and Gavroche did not even splash Javert with soapy water, as he always did sooner or later. His expression was serious now, and in the gathering darkness he seemed smaller and paler than ever, and so fragile suddenly…
"Get ready for bed," Javert told him gently, lighting the lantern and placing it on the table, beside the candle. Normally the candle was sufficient for what light they needed to brush their teeth and undress, but he knew Gavroche was frightened of the dark. Deep down inside, everybody was.
And he had not even protested when he had sent him to bed. A sure sign of something being wrong, Javert knew.
As Gavroche crawled under his blanket at last, wrapping it around himself tightly, Javert was still struggling with himself. What to choose? Whom to choose? He knew what he had to do, but could he do it at all? There was no way to take the boy with him, not without endangering them both. Could he leave Gavroche to Sophia for some time?
Sophia would understand. Because Sophia would see the path he saw, just as well as he did.
There was only one choice, really.
"Whiskers… What are you doing?"
"Preparing you a cup of warm milk." He tossed another ember into the flames in the hearth and placed a pot with half the milk they had still left in the hole above. It was his own breakfast milk, but it did not matter. Not now.
There was only what was now. And after that… another life, another reality. So distant and yet so clear.
There was but one path. The choice was made without him truly choosing.
"Warm milk? For me?" There was a moment's silence behind him, probably out of surprise. "Can I have some cinnamon in it? I think there's a bit left."
"And honey. Whatever you like." It was like saying goodbye.
"And no skin, please." Gavroche giggled softly.
"No. Absolutely no skin." Certainly not tonight. "Gavroche, I –" Even facing away from the boy, it was hard to voice his thoughts. He could picture Gavroche's face, pale in the semidarkness, younger than his years and frightened, and he could practically see the expression change… "What if anything should happen to me? You… you had best go to Sophia, she would… do what's necessary and… she'd take care of you, you know that."
"Yes, I know. But Whiskers, nothing will happen to you, d'you hear? Nothing." His voice trembled as he said it.
I can't tell him. I just can't tell him.
Reaching out to take the small glass jar of cinnamon from its shelf, his eyes fell on another, practically a viol, containing a white powder…
"Because you can do anything." Oh, this child-like trust in his voice, this belief! Javert knew that Gavroche was thirteen years old, more or less, but sometimes he seemed so much younger.
"I wish this were true," he replied quietly, mixing honey into the warm milk, then adding the last bit of cinnamon. Because if it were, then there would really be no need to be afraid, and for all of the valley. If it were, then he would saunter into Norgard and confront whoever needed to be confronted and drag him before the King, and then go home and spend all afternoon building little waterwheels with Gavroche at the brook. Life could be so much easier if he could.
Well, maybe I can't do anything… but there's still something I'm capable of, and I intend to do it. And then build the bloody waterwheels, or whatever it was the boy came up with.
He fished a large mug from the lower shelf and emptied the milk into it, then hesitated. Once again his gaze returned to the white powder, looking so harmless and innocent…
"It's a bit cold in here."
Javert frowned. If anything, it was hot in the house; it had been one of those days in late June where there was no breeze, just clouds of heat seemingly spread over the land, a heat that lingered long into the night, and besides, the fire of the hearth and that beneath the large old water cauldron had warmed the air inside even more. It was not cold, definitely. "Wrap yourself in your blanket," he suggested.
"Doesn't help."
Stirring the contents of the cup absent-mindedly, Javert drew a deep breath and blew it out again. This was not good, to say the very least. This cold was something in the boy's mind, something that… had to be countered with something else in his mind. Yes, that was the solution. He let go of the spoon and pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it across the room to the boy. "Wear this. Yes, to bed, I don't mind. And keep it until… until I tell you I want it back, alright?"
There was silence behind him for a little while as he returned to the mug. Then Gavroche mumbled his thanks, and Javert heard him climb out of the bed, then the rustle of the shirt as he picked it off the floor…
Now or never.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Gavroche was just pulling it on, red fabric clouding his eyesight, and used the opportunity to snatch the powder off the shelf. He tipped just a little of it into the mug, then continued stirring, vainly attempting to banish the feeling of guilt into the darker recesses of his mind. It was for the boy's best, but still it felt like betrayal.
"Will you sit with me for a bit?" How high and thin the boy's voice seemed! The bed creaked as Gavroche climbed back in, then he continued, "Don't think I'm frightened. It's just… I'd just like to… yes, well, to hold your hand for a bit. Call me childish, I don't care. But get your bum over here, will you?" Again he was trying to assume his usual cheeky tone, but this time it did not work at all, even less than it had during the rest of the day.
I can't do this, Javert thought, feeling his lips tighten. I can't. He has never needed me more.
But I have to.
Taking the mug to the boy, he sat down at the edge of the bed. "Here, drink this. You'll feel better, and you'll sleep and forget about everything 'til tomorrow morning when the sun is high up, how's that?"
Gavroche looked up at him with glistening eyes, wrapped in his blanket tightly as if to keep the cold out. As Javert smiled at him, he gingerly smiled back, then propped himself up on his elbows. He really was wearing the red shirt now; his collarbones were visible as sharp lines in a collar that was far too wide for him, even after he had buttoned the shirt almost to the top. To think that he normally slept in his underpants and joked about what a noble thing they were… "Where are they now?" he whispered, instead of an answer. "Is it true that they will come back one day?"
"I couldn't say," Javert replied honestly. Please, just drink your milk and fall asleep! Why did that question have to come just now, just now when time had run out?
Gavroche accepted the mug and zipped a little, but his features did not brighten. "Muri said she would make me a wristband, but she never had the chance, and now I've got nothing to remember her by."
"As long as you hold her in your heart, you can't forget her." It sounded hollow, an empty phrase. Javert had inwardly prepared himself for the moment when Gavroche would speak of the loss of his playmates, Balan and Muri, but now when the boy did so at last, there was no consolation he could offer.
No. He would only make it worse.
"Drink your milk," he said. "Drink it up and then lie down and close your eyes. I'll stay with you 'til you're sleeping." And then…
Gavroche nodded and did so, and Javert took the mug back and pulled the blanket over his little friend, then tousled his hair. He had to tell him, or to say at least something, he had to… but what, and how? "Listen, whatever happens, wherever I go… don't worry because I'll be back, alright? And everything will be as always. Now sleep… sleep…"
When the boy breathed steadily and evenly at last, he rose to his feet once more. The powder had done its work. A medicine meant to give a deep, dreamless sleep, Gavroche had had to take it in early spring when he had been out in the cold barefoot for too long and caught a bad fever accompanied by hallucinations when waking and haunting nightmares when sleeping. Once again it would prevent the boy from waking too early.
With a sigh, Javert made himself turn away and sit down at the table with his back to the sleeping boy. By the light of a candle he composed a message to be left behind, raking his hands through his hair as he tried to summon up what comfort he could give the boy. Yet however hard he tried, his words still seemed wooden to him. He only hoped that after the initial shock, Gavroche would understand.
At last he dropped the feather again and left the table to hurry upstairs, avoiding all steps that creaked. Gavroche was sleeping deeply, but he had to be careful all the same. It did not take Javert long to gather up what he needed and stuff it into a rough bag that he could carry over his shoulder. Then he picked a black shirt and vest and took his heavy black cloak from the back of his cupboard. It seemed that he was going to need it a lot sooner than he had expected. Apart from that, bow, quiver, sword, dagger…
No. He would leave the dagger here for Gavroche. After all, the boy would want something to remember him by, just like he had wished for a token from the friend he had lost in Lower Rosendale.
Quietly Javert placed the sheathed dagger on the table beside the message, then blew out the candle. The moon shone in through the window above Gavroche's bed, covering the sleeping boy with a silver sheen. He lay on his back, one hand on the pillow, the other resting on the blanket, atop his chest which gently heaved with his quiet, even breathing.
Forgive me. I don't mean to.
Forgotten on a chair lay Théodore, his button eyes fixing Javert with an unspoken reproach.
I don't mean to.
Lowering his bag to the floor, Javert picked the bear up and for a moment nuzzled his face into the soft rabbit fur. At least there was someone to stay with Gavroche, even if it was only a toy animal. But he knew from his own experience that such a toy was a consolation to a child who was alone.
There was one more thing to do before he left. It took shorter than he had expected, and surprisingly he did not even feel regrets about it. When he was done, he cleaned up the table, put the mirror away and blew out the candle.
He will fall under the shadow…
Time to go.
He placed the key to the door on the table where Gavroche would find it, then quietly slipped out into the night without looking back.
-.-
A shadow detached itself from the darkness and became a man as it stepped out into the moonlight. "Sophia? It's me."
Well hidden in the shadow of the last house by the west road, another figure stirred, a small shape carrying a bow, with an arrow nocked. "You're going to Norgard, aren't you?" It was not a question.
"What choice do I have?"
Behind him, a tall horse became visible, black except for a star-shaped dot of white on its forehead, treading quietly because its hooves were wrapped with scraps of cloth. The animal made no sound, just nudged his shoulder with its muzzle.
"All the choices in the world," she answered earnestly. "Whatever happens, never forget that."
They needed no more words. Briefly they took each other's hand in farewell, then he rode off into the night.