by Randy Nargi
“What in Dynark’s name happened to you?” Bander asked.
The steed still wore bags and a saddle—a very finely crafted one. But as he looked closer, Bander saw a smear of blood near the pommel. That didn’t look good.
He stroked the horse on the side of its neck, speaking in a calm voice. “Where’s your master?”
The steed sniffed and lowered its head. His head, if you wanted to be precise. The horse was a stallion, and it was obvious that he was well-trained. In fact, Bander wondered if the steed hadn’t actually understood his question. The steed snorted and looked off to the west as if trying to tell Bander something.
Earlier that morning Bander had been on the road between Whill and Gilweald when he had heard a whinny coming from a place where no horse should be: the forest. A dense forest of twisted spindly trees covered with thorns. Heartnut orchards long since gone wild. Not some place you’d ride into. Not willingly.
Bander took a deep breath.
He wasn’t especially fond of horses. They were too unpredictable. And, truth be told, he felt slightly sorry for any animal that had to bear his weight. Over 230 pounds. The size of a stag.
But there was something about this Valer steed.
Blood on the saddle.
He ran his finger over it while the steed made impatient noises.
“Let’s go, boy.”
They found the campsite ten minutes later. It was a clearing not far from the main road. The horse led him right to it.
Bander immediately saw the bodies.
Two men. But very different. Both in life and in death.
The first man died from a crossbow bolt punched through his cheek and up into his brain. Judging from how much of the man’s face was missing, he was likely shot at close range. Which surprised Bander a bit because the man looked like a sellsword. A seasoned one, at that. Generally, trained fighters out on the road don’t allow anyone to get near enough to fire a crossbow at extremely close range.
The sellsword had been a big man, and he wore well-maintained leather armor and expensive boots. His blade was missing, but the scabbard was a work of art, with intricate designs carved into the leather.
It took a minute, but Bander recovered the bloody crossbow bolt. Nothing special. Certainly not military issue. No sign of poison either.
Still leading the steed, Bander walked a small loop around the perimeter of the campsite. The ground had been torn up pretty badly and some of the shrubs broken. A pretty big commotion certainly. And not too long ago. The embers in the fire pit were still warm, but barely.
Bander found the other man sprawled on his back, a dozen yards away from the first. His chest had been crushed—like an anvil had been dropped on him. Broken ribs jutting through flesh. Organs splashed out. A mess. But it wasn’t from an anvil. It was from a pair of horse’s hooves.
Bander looked over at the steed, but the animal refused to meet his gaze. The horse was sniffing the air and surveying the forest.
The man with the crushed chest also had his throat cut. Probably out of mercy. Better a slashed throat than suffocating to death because your lungs have been mostly stamped to pulp.
There was a lot of blood on this one, but Bander could tell that he didn’t obtain his clothes at the same place the sellsword did. This second man wore tattered pants and a threadbare shirt, both caked with filth from many days on the road. Or from living in the old orchard. He wasn’t wearing a cloak, but he did have two empty short blade scabbards at his belt and a quiver of crossbow bolts peeking out from under his shoulder. Bander extracted one of the bolts and examined it.
It was a brother to the bolt that had killed the sellsword.
So that was that. The crossbowman—who was most likely a bandit—had surprised the sellsword and shot him in the face. Then the Valer steed had lashed out at the bandit and mortally injured him.
The pieces were falling into place.
An early morning robbery gone wrong.
Bander looked around at the campsite again. Checked the footprints and hoofprints in the dirt. Thought about it some more. And then wondered, who slashed the bandit’s throat? And who took the sellsword’s blade?
There must have been more combatants.
The steed snorted and turned his head, tugging at the reins. Bander held firm, but he looked over to where the horse had been trying to go. It was a narrow game trail leading north through the overgrown orchard.
And there, clear as day, was a dark splotch on the trunk of one of the trees.
As Bander moved closer, he saw that the mark was a bloody handprint.
Over the past 30 years there had been many occasions when Bander had regretted not getting trained as a tracker. This was one of them.
He was able to follow the trail well enough. With all the broken branches, flattened foliage, and drops of blood, a half-blind beggar could have done that. He even determined that at least one man and one horse had passed along this path since he could make out both boot prints and hoofprints.
What Bander couldn’t ascertain was exactly how many men he was chasing, and how much of a lead they had.
Both pieces of information would have been welcome.
No matter how far ahead the men were, Bander knew he had to move quickly. But he also knew that he had to move quietly. He wasn’t inclined to walk willingly into an ambush. Even with a Valer steed by his side.
In the end, he got lucky.
The horse heard the men first.
His ears swiveled toward a sound that Bander couldn’t hear and the animal froze.
A moment later Bander strained his ears and heard faint voices, the sound carried by the breeze.
This would be tricky. There were a lot of unknowns. How many men were up ahead? In what condition were they? How were they armed?
The trail wound up along a slight rise. As he drew closer, Bander got a better sense of the voices. There were at least three. Male. And they were arguing loudly.
The steed must have sensed the tone of the conversation because his ears pinned back and he started to pull towards the sound.
“Easy, easy. Just follow my lead, if you will,” Bander whispered to the horse.
Because he was in the company of a 2500 pound animal, Bander knew that a stealthy approach just wasn’t an option. He would have to just hope that these men didn’t have crossbows at the ready.
Bander strode confidently into the clearing at the top of the rise.
“Anyone lose a stallion?”
He saw a horse tied to a tree and four men. One of the men looked close to dead—slumped on the ground and too injured to move. Next to him another man sat on a rock eating an apple and arguing with a second who was binding the wounds of a third man. These latter three were caked in dirt and dressed like the man back at the campsite with the crushed chest.
It didn’t take Bander more than a moment to piece together the puzzle: three bandits and their captive.
For their part, the men didn’t waste any time in discussion. They grabbed for short swords and cudgels and sprang to their feet.
But Bander was already moving. He dropped the steed’s reins and exploded forward, which put him within kicking range of the man with the apple. No way to get a clean kick to the man’s lower body, so he settled for a quick sweep that knocked the bandit off balance. As the man stumbled, his blade flew from his grasp. Bander shuffled to the right and smashed his elbow into the bandit’s face, right between the eyes. Crack. It wasn’t a killing blow, but the man wasn’t going anywhere soon.
A big black shape reared up in Bander’s peripheral vision and he heard the two other bandits cry out.
Bander turned and saw the steed spin and lash out with his back legs, perfectly aiming the kicks at the closest man’s head. The bandit jerked in the air and was dead before he hit the ground.
The last man dropped his sword and staggered back.
“Hold!” he cried. “I yield.”
Bander was prepared to let the ma
n live, but the horse had other ideas. He leapt forward and slammed into the bandit, knocking the man to the ground.
“Stop!” Bander called.
But the animal ignored him. As the bandit tried to escape, the steed trampled and kicked the man until he stopped moving.
Bander felt a tinge of remorse for the bandits, but he also knew what the steed was feeling. He had experienced it plenty of times himself. It was almost like a rage. All you wanted to do was destroy those who hurt you or someone you cared about.
The animal breathed out sharply through its big nostrils and walked towards the man who had been beaten, nickering quietly.
His owner. He must be.
The man was in rough shape and barely conscious. One eye was swollen closed and the rest of his head looked like it had been used as a training dummy.
“Arran…” he croaked, as the horse nuzzled him. Then the man caught a glimpse of Bander and his eyes widened in fear.
“I’m a friend,” Bander said. “I found your horse in the old orchard. He led me here.”
“Take me to Gilweald,” he said in a whisper. “To Prichard’s. Arran, too. Don’t let him out of your sight…”
“Prichard’s? Is that a healer?” The man needed a healer—and soon. Bander doubted he’d make it through the night.
“Prichard’s. Everyone knows it. Not far. ”
Bander had never heard of the place, but to be fair he hadn’t spent much time in Gilweald.
“What’s your name?”
“Phaler Jeigh. I’ll reward—” A coughing spasm cut him short. Some of what he coughed up was bloody. Not good.
“Don’t speak.”
Bander tended to Phaler Jeigh as best he could. The man suffered from broken ribs, a serious gash on his shoulder, a crushed cheekbone, and a host of other injuries. Bander cleaned and bound the wounds and held a canteen up so that Phaler Jeigh could drink. Then he made the man as comfortable as possible while he quickly checked on the bandits.
He needn’t have hurried. They were all dead. Every one. Even the man with the apple. Bander must have hit him harder than he had first thought.
This was a mess.
Bander took a deep breath and took stock of the situation. On his hands he had three dead bandits, two live horses, and a well-dressed man who was on the verge of expiring, but asked to be taken north to Gilweald.
Of course Bander would do it. There was no question of that. Plenty of times he himself had been on the verge of death. Plenty of times some stranger had helped him out. So Bander knew where he was going next. He just didn’t know how he was going to pull it off—especially with an injured man.
The second horse, the one tied to the tree, was not a Valer steed. He was a normal riding horse, a bay gelding. This gelding, like the steed, wore a finely crafted saddle and bags, and if Bander were to hazard a guess, he’d venture that this horse was the sellsword’s.
On the ground near the gelding was a tangle of rope. Probably used to tie the injured man to the saddle. After working through—and dismissing—several possibilities, Bander admitted to himself that he would have to do the same thing. Short of building a cart—there was no other way to transport the man to Gilweald.
Bander set to work making preparations. He took anything useful from the dead bandits’ bodies and then pitched the corpses down into a ravine on the other side of the rise. He watered the horses and checked on Phaler Jeigh.
The man was still breathing, but not doing much more than that. He certainly wouldn’t be able to sit up in the saddle, so Bander thought about how he might safely lash Phaler Jeigh to a horse.
As he worked, Bander wondered who Phaler Jeigh was—and why the bandits had kept him alive.
The man was in his late 40s, well-groomed with a tidy beard streaked with grey. Based on the quality of his clothes and boots—and the fact that he owned a Valer steed—he was certainly wealthy. Maybe a nobleman. Bander didn’t see any signet rings or anything with a family crest, but that didn’t mean much.
But that didn’t feel right. A nobleman would have been accompanied by more men. A full retinue. Phaler Jeigh looked like he was traveling light—intentionally.
Well, there was no time to ponder it now. He would have to get going if there was any way he’d make it to Gilweald before dark.
Chapter Two
It was nearly midnight before Bander and his cargo passed through the gates of Gilweald. A half hour more and they would have been locked out for the night.
“Is he dead?” One of the guards manning the city gate held a lantern up to inspect the body draped across the Valer steed’s saddle.
“Just about,” Bander said. “Bandits in the old orchard. Before he lost consciousness, he told me to bring him to Prichard’s.”
The guard’s eyes widened. “Melanthris Jeigh must know him, then.”
“I imagine so. Before he lost consciousness, this man told me that his name is Phaler Jeigh.”
The guard whistled in disbelief.
“Where am I going?” Bander asked.
“I’ll show you.”
“Shouldn’t we find a healer?” Bander asked.
“They have their own,” the guard said.
Gilweald was either a large town or a small city, depending on how you defined ‘city.’ It had maybe three thousand people, most of whom made the goods shipped a hundred miles west down the Meredel to Rundlun. Bander probably could have found Prichard’s on his own, but not nearly as quickly as being escorted by the gate guard.
His destination was in the nice part of the city on Tayton—a street with gem cutters, jewelry shops, goldsmiths, and the like. Prichard’s stood three stories tall and looked much larger than a typical shop. It took up most of a corner near a small park.
“Around back,” the guard said. He led the way around to an alley edged by a tall stone wall with a large iron porter door in the middle of it.
The guard used the knocker, and the sound echoed throughout the alley.
“Is anyone even awake to hear that?” Bander asked.
But less than a minute later a little viewing door slid open at eye level, and a thick-featured face appeared in it.
“Yes?”
“Injured man,” Bander said. “He asked to be brought here. His name is Phaler Jeigh.”
The man behind the door didn’t hesitate at all. Bander heard the sound of heavy bolts sliding back and then the door creaked open.
The guard turned to leave. “You’re on your own now. Good luck.”
Bander was about to ask him what he meant by that when the man behind the porter door ushered him in.
“Hurry,” the porter said, holding up a lantern of his own. He was a short, stout man who probably needed go up on his tiptoes to peer through the viewing door. “This way!”
Bander led the horses, and they made their way towards the back door of the building. Then Bander untied the unconscious Phaler Jeigh and carefully carried him inside.
“Can you carry him to the parlor?” the porter asked. “It’s not far.”
Bander nodded, and the porter was joined by other men and women, roused by the commotion.
“Fetch the mistress!” the porter called to a younger man. “And Wydon.”
They wound their way through a dark central corridor and then to a medium-sized reception chamber. Bander caught a glimpse of walls decorated with paintings and tapestries.
“Right here!” the porter said. They walked past finely carved wooden benches and cushioned chairs towards the far end of the room and a lounging couch upholstered in dark-green velvet. The porter directed Bander to place Phaler Jeigh on the couch.
“Easy, man.”
Phaler Jeigh was not particularly heavy, so Bander simply eased the unconscious man on to the couch. By that time, a gaggle of other people—servants by the looks of them—arrived in the room, lighting lamps and hovering around Phaler Jeigh.
The porter touched Bander’s arm and beckoned him away. “Let’s g
ive them some space. Come with me.”
As they walked back through the central corridor, Bander asked, “What is this place?”
“Prichard’s.”
“I’m not from around here.”
The porter didn’t respond. Instead he kept walking, down a short flight of stairs into a kitchen and then into what Bander guessed was the staff’s dining room.
“Wait here. Mr. Coverstone will want to speak with you.”
He lit some candles and then departed.
Bander sat down and stretched his legs. It felt good to rest. He was happy to wait. It had never bothered him. And, truth be told, he was curious about this place and who Phaler Jeigh was.
Twenty minutes later, he heard someone enter the dining hall. The candle light revealed a tall man in his 60s with a hawk-like face. He looked Bander up and down.
Bander didn’t bother getting up. He was comfortable enough where he sat.
“My name is Gard Coverstone. I’m the steward here at Prichard’s. The family owes you a debt of gratitude, it seems.”
“Did he make it?”
“Wydon is cautiously optimistic.”
Bander guessed that Wydon was a healer. It was significant that these people had a healer on the premises.
“I didn’t catch your name, sir?”
“Grannt. Leocald Grannt.” It was the alias Bander typically used when he was on the road. Leocald Grannt had been a moderately well-known playwright when he was alive, but that was about 300 years ago. Today not many people recognized the name which suited Bander’s purposes just fine.
Coverstone nodded. “Melanthris Jeigh will want a word with you in the morning.”
“And who is she?”
“Mistress of Prichard’s and Phaler Jeigh’s sister,” he said. “Where are you staying, sir?”
“Nowhere yet. I came directly here—as you can probably imagine.”
“Indeed. Well, the Ryden Arms is just down the street. Ask for Timon and instruct him to put your room on the Jeigh’s account.”