Remove the Shroud: The King's Ranger Book 3

by AC Cobble

  Rew lowered his own weapon and glanced back at the fortress five hundred paces behind them. He stalked closer to the watcher, and in a flash, leapt up and gripped the back of the man’s tunic. Rew yanked and spun, hauling the man down off his perch, spinning and flinging him against the ground. The man gave a startled squeak. There was a loud crack when his head impacted the dirt, bending his neck and snapping it.

  Picking up the man’s fallen crossbow and standing, one weapon resting on each of his shoulders, Rew waited to make sure no one had heard the commotion. When all remained quiet, he started toward the fortress.

  He crouched down, twenty paces from the wall, and watched. No one seemed to have noticed the violence which had taken place at the outposts, and the schedule of the watchers on the wall was the same as he’d observed before. There were four men posted at the corners of the fortress, and there was one man walking a slow patrol between those towers. The sounds of activity on the inside traveled on the cold night air, but it was subdued. Men finishing their supper and preparing for bed, he guessed. Whatever they’d been constructing in their courtyard, it seemed they were finished or had paused work for the night.

  There was no way to know how many men could be inside—enough that he couldn’t fight them all—but he could continue to thin them out a little more. Shortly, they would find the results of what he’d done in the outposts, and after that, they would discover the bodies at the farmhouse. Within hours, no matter what he did, the chance of stealth would be gone.

  Rew cradled one of the crossbows patiently. The guard on patrol made his way back around to the tower closest to Rew. The guard paused there, sharing a quick jest with the man stationed in the tower. Their bodies were dark silhouettes, illuminated only by the glow coming from within the fortress.

  Raising the crossbow, Rew sighted at one of the men and pulled the trigger. The weapon thumped, and the quarrel flew up to the tower, taking the bandit in the chest. He stumbled back out of sight.

  The second guard stepped to the battlement, peering out into the darkness and calling out loudly, as if checking on his fallen brethren without understanding what had just happened. Chuckling to himself, Rew dropped the first crossbow and picked up the second. He sighted again at the dark shape staring out futilely into the black and pulled the trigger again. This time, his aim was off, and the bolt flew low, skipping against the top of the battlement and flying up into the guard’s groin. The man let out a high-pitched, keening wail, and his hands grasped his wounded manhood.

  Rew blinked in surprise. Sounds of alarm were rising from within the fortress, but Rew’s eyes were fixed on the wounded guard. The man was stone still, his hands clasping his crotch and the quarrel that protruded from there. Tight, pained sounds were coming from him, but he didn’t seem to be able to form words. Shaking his head and whispering a half-hearted apology to the man, Rew threw down the second crossbow and retreated into the night.

  Fourteen of the outlaws were dead or incapacitated. He wondered how many were left.

  8

  They got some indication the next morning.

  Rew had returned to their canyon, checking to ensure it was hidden from any nighttime patrols that came out following his attack, and had then gotten a brief rest. By dawn, he was up again and had taken the party with him to observe the reaction at the fortress.

  Their strategy was predicated around the outlaws not hunkering down inside of the walls. They needed some of the men to come out to investigate, but not too many of them. With just five in their party, there was no way Rew and the others could assault the fortress. Even without the advantage of the walls the outlaws would have, there were simply too many of the bandits, and unlike a commander during normal warfare, Rew couldn’t risk losing a single member of his party. They’d agreed, if it came to an outright fight, they would flee. The danger of taking on too many of the bandits at once was too high to be considered.

  That didn’t mean they were in no danger, of course. As they watched through the gentle mist that rose off the grass in front of the fortress, they saw two dozen men atop the walls. They all clutched bows or crossbows, and every one of them was highly alert.

  “Well, that was to be expected,” murmured Rew to the others. He handed Zaine his brass spyglass. “You’ve the best eyes. What else can you see?”

  Hiding behind a tree, she leaned out, peering through the spyglass at the fortress and the land around it. “Not much. I’m trying to count, but they’re moving. Twenty-five, thirty of them on the walls, all heavily armed, though they don’t seem to have much armor. I can’t see anything inside, and I can’t see any—ah, I think I see one you killed last night. There, behind the bushes?”

  Rew saw where she was looking. “Good eye.”

  “What do we do if they don’t come out?” wondered Cinda.

  “Every few days, that wagon was going back and forth for provisions, which means they don’t have a stockpile of food in there,” surmised Rew. “They can’t last long without fresh supplies. The question is, do we wait a few days, picking off those we can, or do we move on? The coin we took from the wagon may be enough to get us a ride on a carriage, assuming we can find one. It’d get us to Stanton at least, and from there, we might be able to access the king’s account at a bank.”

  “We’ve started this, and we ought to finish it,” declared Raif.

  Cinda absentmindedly summoned and released her necromantic fire, the white-green flames reflecting in her eyes. Or were her eyes changing? Rew frowned. Her gaze stayed locked on the fortress in the distance. “My brother is right. I don’t want to leave them here, angry and prepared to take it out on locals or travelers on the road, but on the other hand, we can’t wait forever. How long do you think they’ll hold before they have to come out? We meant to kick the hornets’ nest, but could it have been too much? Not knowing who we are, we could have scared them into a panic. You have to admit, killing the guards on their walls last night was bold. Maybe it was too much, and they’re hunkered down now?”

  “I think they’ll venture out today,” guessed Rew, scratching his beard. “The leader of an outlaw crew cannot appear weak or timid, so they’ll have to come looking for us. How would it look to the men that we’ve killed fourteen of them and they’ve got guard duty tonight with us still out here? I guess half the force will come out during daylight to scout the surrounding terrain, while the other half remains inside and on watch. That’s too many of them for us to assault, but we can keep a close eye and hope an opportunity presents itself. If they split up further while they’re searching for us…”

  “We’re not going to finish them unless we take some risk,” remarked Raif. “I’m not saying we try to assault that fortress, but we’ve got to find a way to take on anyone coming outside.”

  “Surviving this is more important than winning the fight,” chided Anne. Meeting Rew’s look, she added, “We’ve proven what we meant to prove, and we’ve gathered enough coin to speed our journey. This was just a test, remember? We’ve more important work to be doing.”

  “It’s all guesswork until we see how these bandits react,” said Rew. He looked around then pointed to another clump of vegetation several hundred paces to the side of them. “Let’s reposition there. From that vantage, I think we’ll be able to see inside the fortress when they open the gates. It’s not a perfect view, but if we spread out a little and have different angles, we should see most of the area between the gate and the main building if they open wide. There’s something odd about the great hall and the stockade they were building in the courtyard. I want to get as good a look as we can at what’s going on in there.”

  They retreated and moved well back out of visual range of the fortress then approached the new location. Rew, moving cautiously, placed each member of the party in a fan so that they all had a different line of sight. He kept one eye on the walls of the structure as he moved, watching to see if anyone detected the movement within the woods. He didn’t think the guards
would be able to see them, but if the party was spotted, they only had a quarter league of a head start if it came to a chase. Not enough that he was comfortable with their odds of getting away cleanly.

  It was two hours past dawn when they finally saw action from within the fortress. The gates cracked open, and three men strode out. They were armed like foresters with long bows and shortswords. Rew held his spyglass to his eye to peek inside the fortress, but he saw nothing there before the gate started to close. He turned and watched the three men. It was apparent they were following the exact same path the men did on the supply run. They had to be going toward the farmhouse.

  Rew glanced back to the fortress to see if the three men had been sent out as bait, if maybe someone on the walls would be watching to see if anyone would follow or attack, but all appeared as it had earlier. The guards on the wall were still vigilant, but none were taking any more interest in the countryside than they had been except to watch their companions headed to the farmhouse.

  The gates thumped shut, and from Rew’s observation point, he could not see anyone else leaving the fortress. Was it possible someone had already snuck out before dawn? He frowned. Men could have been sent out to look for him in the night, but they hadn’t moved the bodies of the guards in the outposts, and the party hadn’t seen anyone near the canyon or in the fields since daybreak. If there was a patrol out there looking for them, they weren’t doing a very good job of it.

  Feeling nervous, Rew collected the others, and they moved back away from the fortress. He was guessing where the three men were headed and did not follow them. Instead, they circled around wide, figuring the men would go to the farmhouse, find the dead, and then scurry back to the fortress. Rew aimed to bring his party to the trail about halfway between the two sites and set an ambush for the bandits as they returned. Just three of them ought to be quick work.

  Hiking briskly cross country, he asked Cinda, “Ready to take a more active role?”

  “I’ll do what I can, but don’t count on my casting.”

  “If you’re feeling shy…”

  “Not shy, Ranger. As I said yesterday, I’ll do what is necessary. It’s a concern about whether or not I can. I’ve gotten comfortable summoning the funeral fire, but casting enough of it far enough to hurt someone is a different matter.”

  Rew gripped her shoulder but did not respond. The girl needed a mentor to guide her through casting necromancy. He could not serve in that role, but he could make sure she got some practice. Even if her fire did not harm the bandits, it would startle them something fierce, and it would prove what Cinda was capable of. That had to be worth something.

  Two hours later, they reached the path the supplies had moved along, and Rew stopped the group. He bent down, looking for fresh signs of passage, and found them. Footsteps through the dew damp grass were obvious. He scratched his beard, warned the others to keep a sharp eye out, and then followed the trail. They moved another two hundred paces before he paused again. He’d found a bare patch of soil and could identify three different boots that had recently passed. He glanced back behind them. When they’d followed the bandits to the fortress, the bandits exhibited incredible caution. They’d hidden the people they’d killed then separated the remains of what they’d stolen. They’d passed through a variety of terrain including the stream to obscure the signs of their passage. Now, after several of their companions had been killed in the night, these men had strode right through a muddy patch of dirt? A child could follow these signs.

  “What?” asked Anne nervously.

  “It’s too easy,” muttered Rew. “They’re going right where we expected, and there’s still just the three of them. That doesn’t make sense, does it? King’s Sake, it’s like their asking us to take these men.”

  Raif shrugged. “They are bandits, not tacticians or scholars. These men aren’t trained like you train your rangers. I do trust your instincts, and if you feel something is wrong, we should proceed cautiously, but we won’t get a better opportunity than these three men out here so far from the fortress.”

  Rew grunted, dropping his hand from his beard to the bone hilt of his hunting knife. “Why only three men? One is sufficient to relay information to or from the farmhouse. I killed seven of them last night, so they cannot think three is enough to fight us off.”

  “You say there are just the three tracks, though?” questioned Cinda.

  “Three that I can see,” said Rew, frowning down at the bootprints in the mud. “But just because I can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

  Cinda shrugged, as if to say that he was the King’s Ranger, and that if he couldn’t see it, in her opinion it wasn’t there.

  “They’re outlaws,” remarked Zaine. “They don’t care about their losses. Three is enough to see if anyone is still out here. If those men don’t come back, they’ll know. These men are sacrifices to gather intelligence, nothing more. Believe me, Ranger, whoever is leading these bandits doesn’t care a fig for the lives of his men or the risk they are in. It’s how thieves think. No loyalties except to gold.”

  “Assuming they are simple thieves,” grumbled Rew. “I am not sure we should pursue this any longer. As Anne said this morning, we’ve proven what we came to prove.”

  “It’s about more than just completing the king’s test,” argued Raif.

  Cinda nodded. “If we leave off, these men will still be here, and how many more innocents will die because we didn’t act? Let’s follow a little longer and see what we see. Our eyes are open, and if it’s too dangerous, we turn away, but let’s be sure of it.”

  Rew glanced over the rest of the party, and all but Anne nodded. He guessed the sour expression on the empath’s face was very close to what he wore on his own.

  “If you don’t want to follow these men, let’s lay in wait for them,” suggested Raif. “It’s likely they’ll come back this way after they reach the farmhouse, and we can take them then. If there are more than the three we expect, we can simply let them pass.”

  “Very well,” said Rew, and he led them along the path the three had taken, looking for a suitable spot to stage an ambush. Ahead, he saw a copse of trees, thick with undergrowth, just three dozen paces from the trail they were following. “Perfect. That’s close enough we can be on the path in seconds, but the bush is thick enough all five of us could disappear without—King’s Sake!”

  In the copse, he saw movement. It appeared as if a shrubbery had detached itself from the soil and strode out of the brush. The shrubbery knelt and raised a bow.

  “Ambush!” cried Rew.

  Behind him, he heard a clang like a metal spoon had been rapped against a pot.

  “Blessed Mother, that stung,” growled Raif.

  The camouflaged man who’d emerged from the trees fired his bow at them. Rew ripped his longsword free from the sheath and slashed at the arrow, catching its wooden shaft and knocking it away from their party.

  Raif yelped, and Rew saw him stagger forward, a line of crimson blood leaking from his cheek. Another arrow hit the fighter in the back, punching shallowly through the armor and lodging there. Raif, crying out, spun, trying to reach the arrow with one hand and draw his greatsword with his other. Men were rising from the grass like shadows, and Rew cursed. He’d been looking for a place the children could hide and had overlooked spots where more skilled woodsman lurked. King’s Sake, how had he not seen them? It’d been as if they were invisible. He growled, looking around for a way out. The bandits had turned their own plan against them!

  “Follow me,” instructed Rew. He reached out and grabbed Raif, dragging the boy after him as more arrows flew toward the fighter. “We’ve got to find cover.”

  Zaine cried out and stumbled. Anne and Cinda clutched her and dragged her onward. A feathered shaft sprouted from the back of the thief’s leg. The bandits’ bows didn’t have the force to knock clean through Raif’s armor at long range, but the shafts would be deadly enough to the rest of them. Rew imagi
ned the arrow that had struck Zaine was embedded in the bone of her leg, which must have been terrifically painful.

  The girl soldiered on, half-hopping, half-carried by the other women. The fear of death was in her eyes, and the continuing hail of arrows was all the motivation Zaine needed to hurry.

  Rew dragged Raif to the side, knowing the two men would draw most of the arrows, and Raif at least had some protection. Only a few more shafts fell toward them before they reached a slender creek carved into the wild landscape. The water bubbled in the creek bed well below the ground around it. Watching several incoming arrows arc toward them, Rew shoved Raif down into the creek bed then leapt after him, his soft boots splashing in the ankle-deep water, the bank of the creek rising half a pace above his head.

  “Cinda,” barked Rew. He turned and saw the spellcaster leaning against the far side, her hands clasped over her ribcage where an arrow was stuck in her torso. Rew hissed, “Blessed Mother.”

  Anne splashed over to the girl. Cinda’s blood immediately staining the empath’s hands as she felt Cinda’s wound.

  Rew glanced at Zaine, who was crouched down, leaning against the other bank of the creek, blood soaking her leg from the calf down. “Fire as often as you can, if you can. Don’t worry about hitting anything, just make sure they know you’re here. Raif, pop your head up and try to keep an eye on what’s coming, but make sure to duck down right quick. Don’t leave yourself exposed for more than a breath or two, just enough they know you haven’t snuck off. If they’re about to overrun you, holler as loud as you can.”

  Raif nodded, raising his sword, shifting uncomfortably as the arrow stuck in his armor dragged against the dirt bank of the creek.

  “You hurt bad?” asked Rew.

  “It barely broke the skin,” said Raif, “but…”

  Rew reached over and grabbed the shaft of the arrow. He wiggled it and then tore it free of Raif’s armor, giving the boy freedom to move.