by Glynn James
The men looked at each other over the tops of their mugs, none of them wanting to be the one to tell Briar what they had seen and heard the previous night. He looked into the faces, one at a time, until the youngest of the guards spoke up—a boy barely old enough to pull back his bow.
“West,” the boy said. “Cygoa.”
Briar shivered at the sound of the word. “Near the causeway?”
The other hunters nodded to confirm what the young boy had said.
“The four of you. You are coming with me. Finish your tea and load your quivers.”
He turned and stomped away as the men followed his command. Briar walked to the edge of the camp and looked down the ridge toward the causeway. He stared at the trees, waiting for his eyes to adjust and detect motion in the forest. It didn’t take long for his hunter’s sight to zero in on the enemy camp that had grown since the previous sundown.
The four hunters arrived and stood behind Briar, waiting for his next command. He felt their presence and turned to face them.
“We're going to climb down the ridge and get more specific numbers we can share with Jonah. He needs to know what is happening before he engages.”
Without waiting for a reply, Briar started down the ridge with four hunters in tow. He moved from the cover of one trunk to another until he could see that the Cygoa camp consisted of hundreds of warriors, no doubt with more on the way. He stopped behind a massive boulder and looked at his men. They shuffled from one foot to the other, each man white-knuckling his bow, eyes shifting from their paltry weapons to the army gathering below.
“The five of us are not engaging. For that matter, neither is the rest of our hunting clan. Relax. I want to provide Jonah with as much information as we can before we leave for home.”
The young boy who had been the only one to speak up sighed and nodded at Briar, but the rest of the men stood with their eyes focused on the bloodthirsty Cygoa warriors.
Briar looked again at the enemy camp, and he felt a twinge in his stomach.
“Why are so many here and not at the south causeway?”
It was as if the answer had begun as a knot in his gut and now grew into a full-on headache. The other hunters shifted, and he could tell from their movements that they understood what was happening as well. Briar answered his question out loud before his men could.
“It’s a ruse. This is where the attack will come from.”
Briar turned to run back to their camp, and his men followed. He darted back up the ridge, and as he approached the summit, a dozen Cygoa warriors stepped out from behind the trees. When he saw the man leading them, Briar felt the blood rush to his face.
“You son of a bitch.”
“You should have gone home, Briar,” said Loner. “You should have left this war to Jonah and his other clans.”
Briar’s four hunters raised their bows and then immediately dropped them as the Cygoa warriors encircled their small party.
“You desert and now you fight for the enemy. How noble.”
“Survival has nothing to do with nobility or loyalty. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.”
Briar saw the Cygoa warriors gripping their weapons and tightening the circle around his hunters. Loner’s unit had not reached for rope—they carried no binds or shackles.
“I can’t let you report back to Jonah or anyone else in the Elk clan. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Do what you must, but stop justifying it.”
Loner gave the signal.
The Cygoa warriors screamed, raised their weapons, and closed in on Briar and his men.
Briar felt the cold shock of an axe blade as it sliced through his skin and lodged in his shoulder. He felt another tear through his right calf muscle. The steel weapons opened him up, and now Briar felt like one of the deer he had spent his entire life hunting.
He rolled over and saw Loner standing above him, smiling.
Briar looked to the sky as blood burned his eyes and the Cygoa warriors chopped his body into pieces. He drifted away, his men screaming as the warriors butchered them.
Although not the way he had anticipated, Briar was going home.
Chapter 43
Jonah stopped walking, placed his feet apart in a wide stance, and gripped his axe with both hands. Ghafir was on his right and Solomon to his left; just the three stood in the middle of the causeway facing the road ahead. Twenty feet away, Carlossa waited alone.
The man was much taller than Jonah had expected, standing at least half a foot over him, and his armor was something that Jonah had not seen before. He glanced at the darkened material fashioned into a flexible mesh, just like a butcher’s glove that he had seen Logan using once. Metal, he thought, molded into a million tiny hoops and weaved together like it were wool. And this man wore a suit of it that hung to his knees.
Carlossa nodded and stood staring at him for a moment, and Jonah was about to speak when Carlossa beat him to it.
“I’ve been looking forward to this moment,” he said, with a nod. “Many are the tales that have drifted west on the tongues of travelers. Tales of the great leader, Jonah of the Elk. I must admit I expected you to be taller.”
Jonah smiled. “And I thought you would be shorter.” Carlossa’s smiled wavered for a moment, then it was back again and he nodded. “As sharp of wit as the travelers say.”
“Let’s not waste time here,” said Jonah. “What are your demands? Let’s get those over with so I can tell you to turn around and go home to the north.”
“Ha!” said Carlossa with a laugh. “Straight to it, then. Well, would that we could turn and go. No, our arrival here is not a thing that can be reversed. And nor would we, if we could. The lands here are much too rich for us to turn around and return to a scant living in the north. Not now that we have so much of the land under our control.”
“Then we face a problem, don’t we?” said Jonah. “You are on our lands, and we are taking them back. Leave or be removed. It’s quite simple.”
Carlossa continued to smile. “Not much of an offer, that,” he said. “Let me think about this... No, let me not. We’re not here to bargain with you, Jonah. I have quite specific orders.”
Jonah frowned. “And what may they be?”
“Kill you,” said Carlossa. “And take your head back to the lord of the Cygoa.” The man stood perfectly still and straight, not shifting or moving in any way. Jonah had to admit to himself, the man’s demeanor was a little unnerving.
Jonah still smiled, though he found little humor in the conversation so far. “That’s it? No asking us to join the Cygoa, and no bargaining? Just take my head?”
“Yes,” said Carlossa. “I suppose that is an offer, of sorts. Your people could hand you over so we can end this with only a single death. That would make this easy. But of course you wouldn’t give them that choice, would you?”
“No,” said Jonah. “I wouldn’t. I’d have no guarantee you wouldn’t hunt them down anyway.”
“We would,” said Carlossa. “To a man, woman and child. All of them. Even after your death. We’d hunt them all.”
“As much as I said. No offer at all, really. You hate us that much?” asked Jonah. “Just because of the past? We’re not our fathers.”
“But you are,” said Carlossa, looking past Jonah and the others toward the barrier at the end of the causeway. “The very same. Among your kin are the elders, warriors who slaughtered our grandmothers and grandfathers, and caused our mothers and fathers to flee for their lives, decades ago. Some among the Cygoa today were alive, then but many of the T’Yun still walk among your people. We’ve seen them. The old. Your elders will be the first to die after your warriors fall. There are few of that age among our kin, since most were killed in their homes by your brave ancestors.”
Jonah looked at Carlossa, trying to weigh up the man. What was it that he wanted other than his head? He had crossed the causeway to meet him, and the man had come alone. Was that a show of strength or
just bravado?
“Why meet me here if you have no real bargain to offer?” asked Jonah.
“Just because I wanted to meet you before I face you over this causeway,” said Carlossa. “It’s difficult to judge another in the fury of battle. When we cross this road to face you, we will come in numbers. It would be difficult to speak to you when my men are trying to take your head.”
“Then we have nothing else to discuss here,” said Jonah. “If you are not willing to back off and leave us be, then we will face you.” With that, Jonah turned and started to walk back across the causeway. Solomon and Ghafir turned with him. They walked for twenty paces before Jonah glanced back to see that Carlossa hadn’t moved.
“I have one other thing to ask you, though,” Carlossa said, still smiling. The man still stood straight, not in the slightest bothered by the three of them.
“What is that?” asked Jonah,
“How fast can you run, Jonah of the Elk?” and with that, Carlossa lifted his hand to his mouth and whistled. The sound was high, and piercing, and carried across the causeway and the lake.
Jonah frowned, and looked to Ghafir and Solomon, who both shrugged, but then he looked back, past Carlossa, and across the causeway to see movement from the trees. A dozen dark shapes burst from the bushes and onto the causeway, running at a speed that no man could move.
Dogs , thought Jonah. He glanced behind him to where the barricade blocked the way –hundreds of yards away—as a dozen large, black dogs tore across the causeway toward them.
“Run!” shouted Jonah, and turned away from Carlossa as the man began to walk in the other direction, laughing as he went.
Chapter 44
Jonah heaved a breath of air and felt a stab of pain in his chest. He looked up, his gaze blurry with exertion, but he managed to focus on the palisade ahead of them. It was another two hundred yards, and he could almost feel the dogs at his heels. To his right, Solomon stumbled and nearly went down, but Ghafir was next to him and pushed him back upright, shouldering him into movement once more.
Jonah glanced behind him and saw that the dogs were barely fifty yards behind them and closing fast. They wouldn’t make it. The dozen baying hounds would catch them before they could make the safety of the wall, and even if they could reach it before teeth were snapping at them, they would never be able to haul themselves up fifteen feet of wall. If they went for the water, it may delay the dogs, but the three of them had geared up with armor before they went out to meet Carlossa. They’d be pulled under by the weight of the armor. It was no good. Behind the hounds, in the far distance now, he saw the figure of Carlossa standing on the causeway with his arms folded.
All over before it has even begun , he thought. Outwitted by an enemy just because you were foolish enough not to think faster . But, how could he have known that the Cygoa could train dogs? Hardly anyone tried it anymore. Most dogs were wild things no more tamable than wolves.
Than wolves.
That thought jumped into his mind as he turned toward the palisade, still running as fast as he could. The blur of white fur sped toward him across the causeway. His eyes were filled with sweat, and stinging, but he blinked as he ran, trying to make out what thundered across the blacktop. But it was past him, and rushing toward the dogs, before he could focus. White fur. A blur of it, but still clear enough. He looked behind him and then slowed. Ghafir, just a few feet away from him, reached out to grab him, to haul him onward, but then also stopped to look back behind them.
In the center of the causeway, now just twenty yards away, was a mass of white and grey fur, four legs bunched together as it raised its front legs up and higher than the dogs. Every one of them had stopped the chase, and they were backing away. They still growled, but their heads were low in submission to the creature that dwarfed them all.
Seren’s wolf.
Ghafir acted before Jonah could, before he could even think. The man’s bow was out and firing, one arrow after the next, thudding into the dogs as they stood in a line across the causeway, unable to chase their quarry a step further for fear of the wolf that now held them at bay, giving Ghafir the time he needed to fight back. The dogs, it seemed, may have been trained to chase a man down, and to obey their master, but they had not been trained as a pack. This was something new to them. A single wolf, double the size of the dogs, held them all at bay, for each dog feared only for itself. They didn’t recognize—yet—that one charge from all of them could end that fight, even against the larger foe.
Sorcerer? Was that her name? It was something like that. The she wolf that Seren somehow managed to tame. He knew she would never fight off all of the dogs, but she was certainly stopping them in their tracks. But if they decided to charge as one, it would all be over quickly.
Then an arrow whisked past him from behind, and another. He turned, holding up his axe, ready to strike whatever new enemy was coming, but saw Seren and several hunters running toward them. Seren shot as she ran, more arrows thudding into the growling dogs. Then the hunters reached them and stopped on the causeway, loosing arrows at the dogs, but Seren was past him and still going forward, moving to the side of the causeway so she wasn’t a target.
Jonah collapsed to the ground, exhausted but unable to look away. Only three of the dogs managed to survive the arrows, baying and whimpering as they panicked and ran back along the causeway. One of the dogs even ran into the lake and started swimming away as fast as it could.
He leaned over and placed his hands on his knees, breathing deeply. Once more he had been saved by others. Just how many lives did he think he had? When his breath returned, he looked up to see Seren crouching next to the she wolf, petting her and fussing over her.
Jonah shook his head.
Saved by a wolf, and it witnessed by everyone. He knew Seren had worried that her wolves would not be accepted, that she would have to take them and leave, and he had no answer to give her at the time other that he would try to make people understand, even though he had been unsure of it himself. A difficult thing after the wolves that had killed many.
Now he had no doubt that the she wolf would be a hero and the talk of the camp for days.
Chapter 45
“Here they come,” said Declan. The younger man stood a few feet away from Jonah, up on the platform behind the barricade that stretched across the causeway. The ground was twenty feet below them on the other side of the barricade, and a four-foot-high barrier provided cover for those up on the platform. The one thing the barricade did not have was an easy way in. A large gate stood in the middle, barred from behind by a thick trunk of wood. It was difficult enough for them to let people in in a hurry, let alone be broken down. This, Jonah hoped, meant that if they kept the edges of the barricade guarded, the Cygoa would have to scale the wall to get in, unless they wanted to swim out into the water for ten feet, where it was already deep.
Jonah nodded as he looked out over the long stretch of road that crossed the lake. At the far end, a row of shield bearing warriors emerged from the forest and began to form a line. The shields were large, he noted, at least six feet in height and certainly not made for fast moving combat. They would form a shield wall all the way across and make their way to the barricade hidden behind it, he thought. That was the only way to stop them being peppered by arrows, for he had two dozen hunters on the platform, all ready with three or more quivers of arrows, and there were two dozen more on the ground behind them, ready to fire volleys if needed. Behind those waited a host of over two hundred other warriors, shields and weapons, ready should the palisade fail. It was not the full strength of the clans, but they could not guard just the northern causeway. Donast and the Nikkt guarded the southern causeway, and they had warriors at the camp and several other small outposts.
The attack would come across this causeway , he thought, and unlike the Cygoa, we can’t field everyone.
As he watched, more warriors left the tree line and joined the force now building upon the road until there we
re three rows of tall shields. He felt a churning in his stomach watching the Cygoa gather in numbers. How many were in the forest? He had no way to know their strength. They had not been able to send scouts out to gauge the enemy force without high risk of losing them, and the ones he had sent north days ago hadn’t returned. For a moment, Jonah’s thoughts went to Briar and the others. Why had they not returned? Were they taken by the Cygoa?
The wall of shields started to move, slowly trudging along the causeway toward them, and with that, more warriors, this time armed with bows, left the cover of the forest and joined the queue. There were a lot of those bowmen, and Jonah frowned as yet more joined the gathering horde.
“How many do you think?” Declan asked when the last of the bowmen had joined the warband moving along the road. No more warriors left the tree line, and it made Jonah frown. There were a lot, but it didn’t seem as many as he had expected.