“I am aware of the supply problem,” Damicos replied. He sighed, wishing the Ostoran hunter Ica Mistshaper had been hale enough to accompany his expedition. The man was legendary in Dura for taking game with near-effortless skill.
“It can’t be helped at this point,” he went on. “Even if we had time to stop and hunt, the larger dangers make it too difficult. We have enough food for several more days. The good news is that we are nearing our destination, and one way or another I mean to acquire additional supplies up ahead.”
Hundos cocked an eyebrow. “Captain, there may not be any city out there.”
“There is,” Jamson said. He always insisted on being part of any council with the sergeants, and Damicos had thus far humored him. “There must be. Have faith, gentlemen. The gods love boldness and faith.”
“You saw the grave marker,” the captain told his sergeants. “There are people out here, and I anticipate contact soon. When that happens, it is critical that we are in a position of strength, for battle or for negotiation. And strength is impossible if we keep losing men at this rate. So until we reach our destination, no more hunting or foraging away from the body. We need every available man.”
The column moved out as soon as the burials were complete. Damicos estimated, and had it confirmed by Kairm, that they were marching parallel to the river. It had curved west again, draining the watershed of the distant mountains. They marched slowly and alertly, with flankers out on the sides and scouts ahead.
It was one of these flankers that spotted a man in the forest, watching them from the shadowy hollow of a tree. The forest had gone strangely quiet, and when the soldier gave a shout Damicos nearly toppled from his saddle in surprise. He spurred ahead to assess the danger, drawing his sword on instinct.
It was no Ostoran that stalked them, he saw as his charger came to a halt within view of the lightning-blasted tree’s hollow shell. The man was thin, bare-chested, and tattooed with dark red lines that snaked all over his face and arms and torso. He wore the primitive garb of a barbarian clansman.
“Archers!” Damicos shouted as his lieutenant and a few other men reached him.
The barbarian, realizing that he was discovered, leaped away through the underbrush. Stevos the Sickle ran up with a javelin ready to cast, and the Ukan brothers were right behind him with their slings. But before Damicos decided whether he wanted the fleeing man brought down, the barbarian raised a hand up over his head and an entire flock of screaming birds swooped from the trees above in an instant to attack the soldiers.
Their feathers were black and gray, about the size of jays but with claws and hooked beaks that scratched wildly at the faces and exposed necks of the troopers. The men crouched and batted the flying creatures away, more surprised than threatened by the eerie and vicious attack. After a moment the flock scattered into the trees behind the column as suddenly as they had come, and the forest was again strangely quiet.
The captain, Lieutenant Leon, and the skirmishers looked around at each other, speechless. The barbarian was gone, not a twig stirring behind him.
Sergeant Hocano’s troop approached, and more came up after them with weapons ready.
“Lieutenant, double the flankers and scouts in the vanguard,” the captain ordered. “If there are any more barbarians out here, I want to know about it before we take another step.” He eyed the trees warily, sword still in hand, uncertain if he should expect another attack by wild creatures or by men with painted faces this time.
The scouts searched the area, but came across no further threats. Kairm found a few footprints made by the bare feet of the barbarian and followed the trail as far as he could with several soldiers to back him up. He returned after ten minutes.
“There may have been three or four of them here, but no more,” he reported. “They were waiting, watching us approach. Then they ran off and the tracks disappear as if they knew we would follow. They somehow obscured them completely.” His grizzled face was troubled and uncertain.
“It’s the first time we’ve seen barbarians on this campaign,” Damicos pointed out. “I suppose we should thank the gods that we’ve been so lucky.”
“That’s just it, Captain,” Kairm replied. “I’m surprised we encountered any of the savages at all. Usually they avoid this region and it’s only the beasties you have to worry about. This was a small enough band, just a few scouts or messengers probably, but they’d have come here for a reason.”
“You think it had to do with us?”
“I can’t see why or how. What did the man look like?”
Damicos and the skirmishers gave a description, and Kairm’s face grew even more perplexed.
“It just doesn’t add up, Captain. I’m flummoxed. The crimson tattoos you’re talking about, that’s Wolfsbane clan. But they were wiped out ten years back. They no longer exist!”
Damicos looked at Leon, but the lieutenant just shrugged, utterly mystified.
“We’ll proceed cautiously,” Damicos said. “We should be nearing our destination, and I don’t want this to distract us or slow our march unduly. But we’ll keep all skirmishers up front, and keep a wary eye out.”
They continued on the path Kairm had set, and after a while the strangeness of the barbarian encounter dissipated.
Half an hour later, though, Lieutenant Leon came up next to Damicos again and asked to have a word. Jamson, who had been conversing with the captain about their route, tactfully went to speak with Kairm instead.
“Did you recognize anything uncanny about that savage that was spying on us?” Leon asked.
“Everything about him was uncanny,” Damicos replied. “What are you getting at?”
“I was just telling Cormoran about what we saw, the wolfish way the savage looked. And Corm agreed with me—I think it was the same kind of barbarian that we ran into near the coast, after the barons’ fight!”
Damicos recalled the encounter on the road leaving the beachfront battleground several weeks previously. A small handful of barbarians shadowing them, just like now—and the one they had captured had the dark red tattoos as well.
“I think you’re right, Leon. But why in Tova’s name would they have followed us all the way into the interior like this?”
“They couldn’t have, sir. There’s no way. Just a strange coincidence, that’s all. It has to be.”
“Too strange for me to believe.” Damicos was silent for a moment, lost in thought. “You remember the way the barbarian near the coast threatened us, even with his dying breaths?” he asked the lieutenant. “Something about dark gods driving us into the sea.”
“Yes. And then he died, right there in front of us. Almost as if he’d been struck by an invisible arrow.”
Damicos shivered. “I don’t usually take the savages’ superstitions to heart, Leon. But these fellows—what did Kairm call them, Wolfsbane?—they seem to have a different kind of spirit about them than Pelekarr’s raff girl or any others we’ve seen.”
“Aye. Back from the dead to haunt us, if Kairm’s account is true. Do you think… do you think the savages watching us today might have had anything to do with the fellows that died last night?”
Damicos didn’t answer. But he thought about it long after Leon had left to check on the vanguard scouts.
Three hours later they reached Kairm’s Cliff, just at midday.
“There you are,” the trapper proudly announced as they came out of the trees onto the shore of a small body of water and looked up through the break in the foliage. “There’s my cliff face. Told you it was here.”
The cliff was an impressive sight, Damicos had to admit. The ground rose steadily in the northwest, sweeping up and around to the top of a rocky pinnacle. But the other half of what had once been a sizable mountain was gone, splintered into a million fragments and washed away by the river that churned down past the cliff’s base. That left a sheer face of gray rock stretching up, up into the sky, towering over the forested valleys that converged with the
river below.
The river slowed and widened where they had stopped, blocked by some ancient remnants of the split mountain. It formed a large pond, surrounded by reeds and brambles on all but a few narrow patches of its bank. The serene waterway was a refreshing sight after the endless forest they had come through.
The wide river-pond also marked a change in the landscape. Where there had been endless deciduous forests, now the trees became largely old-growth fir and pine that thickly forested the slope that led up to the cliff. The Southwhite was shallower here than at the point they had crossed farther down its course, as it gained tributaries and eventually joined the White and made its way past Belsoria’s port to the sea. The view they now had showed plainly that they were about two days from entering the vastness of the snow-capped mountain range which Kairm claimed was utterly unexplored.
“There are no gigantic sea serpents lurking in this pond, I hope,” Damicos quipped at Kairm, only half-joking. Nothing would surprise him anymore.
“No, sir. But I wouldn’t bathe in its waters,” the trapper replied. “It is the Southwhite, docile as it appears here, and pearl-pike sometimes swarm in these mountain lakes later in the fall.”
“Duly noted,” the captain said. “No skinny-dipping allowed, sergeants; tell the men. Swimming in full armor only! With bronze cod-pieces.”
The men laughed, and Hundos made a crack of his own about not being able to find any in Garrim that were big enough. The mood was immeasurably lighter, now that they had real evidence they were near their destination.
They proceeded along the pine-crested shore of the pond, admiring its pristine beauty and watching ahead for any sign of life. They were near the valley where Kairm had claimed to hear human voices, and to have found the artifacts that he’d brought back. And as the column emerged from the trees and followed along the water’s edge, Kairm pointed out tracks in the mud.
“See that hoof-mark, and that one there? They’re set awfully deep. Either this mud was softer when the track was made, or someone was riding on top of the beast.”
Damicos didn’t dispute the ominous claim, but reserved judgment until he got a chance to see someone actually riding something. The idea seemed ludicrous; a human might as well expect to ride the moon across the sky as to harness one of Ostora’s many vicious beasts.
“And see here,” Kairm added a few paces further on. “The paw that made that track belonged to a saber-cat as big as your horse, captain. We’ll have to watch for them.”
“Indeed. If this is the local watering hole, it might be wise to camp a good distance away. Perhaps by the cliff, as you did before. What do you think?”
Kairm didn’t reply. He had suddenly gone silent and was silently watching something up ahead. Damicos brought his horse to a halt and stared.
At the far end of the pond, perhaps a hundred paces on from their position, a huge beast stood next to a small cataract that fed into the pond. It looked like a demonic mixture of a bull and a giant, hairy-limbed spider, with a single cubit-long horn protruding from its snout and a large hump on its back. It was motionless, staring across the water at the oncoming infantry column.
And so was the man sitting on its back.
CHAPTER 20: ONWARD INTO THE TREES
The mercenaries rode out at dawn, and midmorning found them several leagues from the fort and its carnage.
Their dead had been buried on the riverbank; a brief ceremony in the gray pre-dawn light, personal farewells, the useful armor and weapons distributed among the friends of the fallen. The apes had been left in a pile outside the walls for the kites and ravens. A hasty meal was gulped down and then they left, leaving the gates hanging open behind them.
Now, moving through the great forest, Keltos was alone with his thoughts. The horror of the night before was still fresh, but the raw edge had dissipated, leaving only a cold numbness that he didn’t try to sort through. He knew, when he reviewed the events of the past night, that he’d had no choice in what had been done. And gods above, he would have wanted the same done for him if the positions had been reversed.
But he held on to the guilt willingly. Things like that should be hard and grim, he thought, so that they stayed with you and you didn’t forget too easily. Time might ease the sting, but the memory and its pain should be kept—you didn’t just discard such experiences because they had been necessary. The inner balance of justice inside him demanded a heavy remembrance.
Besides, Mokar, the god of justice, was a hard deity. One with strange ways and far-reaching requirements. He nodded to himself as he slapped away a biting fly that had pestered both horse and rider throughout the morning. Perhaps it was Mokar’s will that he suffer a little in his soul, so that the memory of the girl’s sightless eyes wouldn’t fade into obscurity so quickly.
So Keltos brooded as he rode, hating all insect life.
Before midday they found the beginning of the trail and began following it northwest. The captain kept mounted scouts ahead and skirmishers out on the flanks, and they moved fairly quickly, guided by the men who had initially found the trail.
The going was easy, the ground level. There was no need to break a trail through the virgin timber; the settlers had done the hard work weeks ago.
The afternoon passed with no signs of danger. Several small streams were crossed. Towards evening the skirmishers began to look for game, and several wildfowl were brought down with slings or arrows. One archer, the woman Harnwe, even took a young elk, its antlers still covered with the soft hair that Perian called velvet. That night the men feasted on the fresh game, posted their sentries, and slept well.
The next day passed without incident as well. The trail grew easier and easier to follow. Muddy ruts from cart and wagon wheels, human footprints and many hoof prints from livestock.
It seemed indeed as though the entire settlement, or a large portion of it, had simply vacated the fort and moved west en masse, covering their trail for the first stretch to throw off pursuit. They had evidently abandoned that effort once enough distance had been covered. There was no sign of haste in the tracks and the skirmisher scouts reported finding no corpses or signs of battle along the way.
There were no signs of barbarian movements, either, although Perian scanned every inch of the country they passed through looking for them. This territory, she informed Pelekarr, was a disputed area. Both the Four Lakes clan and the Mammoth People claimed it, but there had been no open hostilities between the clans for some time.
“Could these people, the Ostoran villagers, have been taken captive?” the captain asked Perian at one point.
“By whom? One of the clans?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It would take a small army to control this many, and we would have seen some sign of battle. Besides, it’s not the way of my people to take fighting men captive, yet we’ve seen no bodies. If there are captives, it would be more likely that your people took them, not mine.”
Keltos considered the implications of this idea as his plodded along behind the captain. In the end, he decided it was unlikely. The most plausible scenario at this point was a mutiny—the entire settlement had simply decided to leave the baron’s colony and set up on their own. Why else would they be moving west, deeper into the wilds of Ostora’s uncharted frontier?
That possibility carried its own problems, however. He frowned and kept frowning the rest of the day, until Makos jabbed him in the ribs and asked him if a flea had bitten him where the sun never reached or if he was actually attempting deep thought.
So passed the second day of travel, and then the third. Westward, always westward. The trail seldom deviated from its westerly course other than to temporarily bypass some obstacle unsurmountable by the wagons. The terrain was basically flat, with slight rises here and there, and generous breaks in the trees that sometimes approached what could be called meadows. It was well-watered country; no great rivers were encountered other than the White, which t
heir course paralleled. But the small streams continued, and here and there a sizable pond was glimpsed through the trees.
Finally, at sundown on the third day, the last scouts came in while the company was setting up camp. Their report was brief and to the point: there was a large lake ahead, so large the far shore could not be seen. And there was a new stockade on its shore, with freshly felled tree stumps nearby. The trail they were following led right to it.
“They did not observe you?” Pelekarr inquired. “Excellent. With any luck, we finish this job tomorrow. Let us hope they have a good explanation for their actions. If not, let us hope they do not prove… stubborn.”
“Aye, captain. But what if they do?”
Pelekarr shrugged. “It will be as the gods will it. Sergeants, look to your men. I want armor and weapons ready for full duty on the morrow.”
A boy fishing in the lake was the first to see them coming the next morning. He dropped his net and sprinted for the half-finished gate of the new fort. Two great logs had been set vertically into the earth, and another log laid across the top to form a gateway, but no doors had yet been built.
The boy yelled with every step he took, and soon the gateway was bristling with men, most holding weapons of one sort or another. The women and children stayed behind the walls, but heads could be seen furtively peeking over the ramparts. A fierce argument seemed to be going on between three men in the front of the crowd as the mercenaries advanced.
Some voices were raised in anger, others sounded despairing. The mob of villagers seemed indecisive, and that was exactly how the captain wanted them. Uncoordinated and easy to disperse.
As they approached, curving around a small inlet, Keltos saw that the new settlement was but half finished—a great semicircle, both ends running into the lake, with a smaller secondary wall connecting each end of the semicircle along the beach, leaving a short strip where fishing boats could be drawn up on the shore. A water gate was obviously planned but had not yet been constructed. Within the half-finished stockade walls could be seen hastily-constructed huts and makeshift tents where the settlers were living until permanent houses could be built.
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