Chapter 13: The Compass
Without any more words, we split up – the Hellion to go retrieve the treasure from Blondie's corpse, and me to retrieve the compass from Bressac's. I move quickly, and eventually make it over to where Bressac is lyin' on his side in the mud. His rifle's lying nearby, but one look tells me it's wrecked – good gunsmith could fix it maybe, but out here, it's useless. As I come up on the corpse, though, I realize it ain't really a corpse.
He's still breathing, a little. Giant's club smashed his arm and shoulder to splinters, with bloody fragments of bone sticking through the skin. It busted in half his ribs to boot. But I can still hear a faint, rattling gasp.
"Bressac?" I call quietly.
"Hhhhh," he whimpers.
I take another look at his wounds. No way we can move him in his state, and this ain't somethin' I can fix with bandages.
"I'll make it quick," I tell him.
"Hh," he whispers, twitching a little. "Ghhkhh…"
I turn him over – he moans as I do it – and strip off the pack, then quickly check his pockets. He's got bullets and powder for his gun, and a couple of coins. I take it all. Then I push my knife under his ribs, into the heart.
When it's done, I wipe the knife off on his coat, then rummage through his pack for the compass. Miraculously, it still works – his body took the impact from the club, and left the compass more or less undamaged. Once I'm sure it still points north properly, I pocket it.
I look behind me, and notice the Hellion still by Blondie's carcass. Sayin' prayers or something, maybe. Whatever she's doing, it gives me an extra minute, so I take the time to look through the bag I took off the voice. Opening it with one hand – I need the other to hold the torch – is tricky, but I eventually manage to do it.
When I see what's inside, I chuckle – they are gemstones. Three emeralds, square-cut, and a small ruby cut brilliant. Should be worth quite a bit. The ruby's small enough to swallow, so I gulp it down with some water from my canteen – I figure no one's gonna check my guts unless I'm dead, and if I'm dead I won't need the money. All I gotta do is remember to check my shit real carefully for the next couple days, then once it comes back out I wash it off and keep it for myself. As for the emeralds, I put them back in the bag. I figure if the Hellion fucks me over, I'll at least have something to give Rodin, so maybe I still keep my head. If she keeps her word, I'll just hand them over along with the treasure and call it a bonus.
I look back at the Hellion and see that she's finished with Blondie and is coming toward me. I walk over and we meet in the middle, near the island.
"The compass works?" she asks without preamble.
"Yep," I respond, and toss her Bressac's pack. "And your half of the food's in here, with some bandages and a couple extra torches."
She briefly inspects the pack, then shoulders it. "Which way are we going, then?"
"Hold the torch for a spell, and I'll explain."
Once we've managed to pass it over without burning ourselves, we squat down, and I pick up a stick and start drawing a crude diagram in the mud as I talk – I ain't an artist, but it'll do for an illustration. I start by sketching out a bendy line, with a circle at one end.
"Okay, look. Here's the Old Road. It runs between the Hamlet" – I tap the circle – "to the north, and the next town two days' ride to the south. We hit you at a bend in the road, here" – I draw an X above a crook in the line – "where the road curves east a bit to go around a defile. Now, once you and Blondie lost us, you started going north until you made camp. But when you left camp this morning, you was goin' east stead of north."
The Hellion sighs deeply. Her expression's grimmer than usual.
"So I was leading us the wrong way," she says to herself, her voice soft and bitter. "I should have listened to her…"
"No point worrying about that now," I shrug.
"So, the two of us just go north then?"
"Ain't that simple," I say, shaking my head. "See, I can't tell just how far east you went – this here's a compass, not a map. Hamlet's not so big – we go straight north, we might walk right past it and end up in the ruins north of town, and that's time lost coming back even if nothing kills us on the way. Or, if we're really unlucky, we end up in what's left of the old manor northeast of the ruins – the Darkest Dungeon, they call it. And don't nobody come back from there."
"I thought you said you could lead me to town!"
"Shut up and listen, wouldya? Look, Hamlet's north, and you went east by mistake, yeah? So we go northwest. That means we eventually hit either the Hamlet or the Old Road. We hit the Hamlet, great, no more problems. We hit the Old Road, all we gotta do is walk north along the road and we eventually reach town. Either case, you hand over the treasure once you're there, then we part ways. Simple."
She looks suspicious and frustrated as she stares at the crude map. From the looks of things, she's having difficulty following me – maybe she ain't good with directions. So much the better, then.
"If you hit us on the Old Road, your friends would still be camped there waiting for you," she points out. "So how do I know you're not leading me right to them?"
Damn; I'd hoped she'd miss that detail. Still, I can probably fast talk her. If I make my directions as confusing as possible, there's a good chance she'll be too proud to admit she's lost.
"Look at the map again," I say, tapping it for emphasis. "We set up the gun to the south. That's why we go north and west – so we come out above them beyond their picket line." I pick an arbitrary point and draw an arrow suitably far away from the X. Then I randomly draw a bunch more lines while using the fanciest words I can think of and speaking as quickly as I can. "Going off the compass rose, I say maybe we go two forty, thirty radians about a mile a half or two, so as our approach vector comes in oblique. Then when we hit the median, we quickly bank down about ten or so fore we push on, just to be safe."
Her eyes glaze over, and I can tell I've lost her.
"Whole thing shouldn't take longer than a day and a half," I continue. "We camp in the woods once night hits, and if we get up at dawn we'll make the road before noon. Then we're golden."
She stares at the drawing for another second, then slowly nods.
"All right, then. That makes sense."
I suppress a grin. I ain't Bressac and I can't bring her right back to the cannon any more than I could take her right to the Hamlet. But, I can try to make sure we go more west than north, so we still end up close to the gun where the others might find us.
Way I see it, then, this whole thing could pay off one of two ways. Best case scenario is we run into the boys. Rodin and Clairwil won't have moved on yet, seeing as they're waiting for Guy, Bressac and me to return, but they'll have sent out patrols to secure the area. We run into a patrol, it'll be four or five to one – more if they bring reinforcements – and even the Hellion can't beat those odds alone. Once she's dead, the treasure's ours.
It's also possible I overshoot, or they got sloppy with their perimeter, and we don't run into them. If so, I'm still okay, cause all I gotta do then is keep my word and take her all the way to the Hamlet. Then she hands over the treasure and I double back and link up with Rodin.
There's a couple of ways, though, this can go wrong. One is we run into somethin' nasty on the way. Even together, if we run into a fight like the last one, we're done for. But that's an occupational hazard in the Weald, and I run that risk no matter what I do. Two is she goes back on her word and kills me the second we hit the Road or the Hamlet – or gets greedy and refuses to give over the treasure.
That second possibility's the real danger. After all: if our situations were reversed, I'd kill her the second I hit town and she stopped bein' useful. I expect as much from her – I've killed men for less than the promise of the treasure she got. I take her to the Hamlet, all I can do is bank on her honour mattering more to her than her hate. And that ain't a gamble I'm willing to bet my life on.
Besides, even if I were willing to bet my life on her honour, there's still the fact I want to get even for her killing Florent. I could maybe forgive her for killing Jean, since he and I never talked much, but Florent always had my back, even if he thought with his cock more than was good for him. Yeah, fine, there's no profit in vengeance: if it comes down to a choice between getting even and getting paid, I'll take the money. But I'm hoping I won't have to choose. Still, Hellion's no fool. She'll expect me to lead her into a trap – doubt she'll sleep tonight either. I'll need to play it careful.
"So," I ask her, "you ready?"
"You're going in front," she says, as she climbs to her feet. "So I can keep an eye on you."
Like I said – Hellion's no fool.