Owen fixed a bayonet to his rifle, just as had Rathfield. Owen benefited, however, from having had years dealing with wild creatures. Instead of stabbing heavily as one might with a man, intent on driving him into the ground, Owen’s strokes came quickly. He slid steel into their breasts, then pulled it free. His rifle butt came around to fend them off, driving them back so they could bleed out.
Two wolves came over the wall at Nathaniel. He caught one with his rifle’s butt, hitting it a straight-on blow right between the eyes. It fell back, twitching. The other one came on and bit him in the leg. It tugged, teeth finally piercing deerskin and the flesh beneath, and pulled Nathaniel down to one knee. He drew his tomahawk and killed it, but it took four blows to sever its spine, and that didn’t loosen its jaws.
The wolves kept coming. The low wall had done its part, but had collapsed near the middle. The wolves leaped over the dead and through the gap. They turned left and right, snapping at men’s flanks and legs. The fight might have been lost there, save for Ian Rathfield.
If Kamiskwa had been a demon, Rathfield returned to the line a man possessed by demons. He shrieked inhumanly, his face a mask of fury. He waded into the wolves, heedless of their worrying his legs, and smashed them with his musket. He knocked two flying, then a third, and shattered his musket’s butt on a fourth’s skull. That didn’t matter, however, because he just reversed the weapon and stabbed with the speed of a scorpion. When a wolf finally got hold of his rifle’s sling and tugged it out of his grasp, he bent down, grabbed one of the stones that had been in the wall, and hurled it two-handed, splattering that wolf’s brains.
Screaming defiantly, he stepped over the wall, kicking dire wolf bodies out of the way. Makepeace came quickly up beside him, but the wolves had already decided to retreat. A handful limped away into the darkness, their howls short and pain-filled.
Owen and Makepeace sorted out the bodies, slitting throats. Kamiskwa, using an obsidian knife, cut the jaw muscles of the beast with its teeth in Nathaniel’s leg. As he did that, Nathaniel reloaded his rifle—both because it needed to be done and it let him think about something other than the pain.
Rathfield, fists balled, stared into the darkness after the wolves.
Nathaniel nodded to Kamiskwa. “Thanks. We’ll be needing to find us some mogiqua.”
“I have dried leaves I can make into a tea. After brewing, we can use the wet leaves for a poultice.”
“Best be getting Colonel Rathfield on the outside of a swallow or three.”
“Agreed. He is tired.”
The way he said it, Kamiskwa meant the man was in shock. Nathaniel guessed it was the simple ferocity of the fight more than it was pain. Everyone save for Kamiskwa had gotten gnawed on, but none of the others were still locked in the fight.
“Colonel.”
No response.
“Colonel Rathfield, sir.” Nathaniel slowly stood. “Colonel, I’ve got me the first watch. You go and rest now.”
Rathfield turned slowly, his eyes eventually focusing on Nathaniel’s face. He looked him up and down. “Woods, you’re wounded. Get that taken care of.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but you’re more gnawed on than I am, and I have a rifle. Kamiskwa will fix you up.”
Rathfield looked down at his empty hands then found the splintered remains of his musket on the ground. “It will take some work to fix that.”
“We’ll see to it, sir.”
The Norillian nodded torpidly. He turned and watched Owen and Makepeace stretch the wolves out and begin skinning them. “Is this a time to be taking trophies?”
“Ain’t quite looting the dead.” Nathaniel jerked a thumb toward the bodies. “Iffen they’da kilt us, they’d have eaten what they could, left the rest for crows and the like. I ain’t much for eating wolf—don’t know many who is—but them furs is worth something. So we’ll take what we can use, leave the rest for the scavengers. It’s the way things is done here.”
“I see.” Rathfield pointed to the wolf he’d brained with a rock. It had been one of the larger ones, and had a coat that ran more to black than gray. “Please, save me that one, and the one I broke my musket on. I will do the skinning if you’ll show me the proper way. I think the Prince would like a specimen. And there are men of my acquaintance in Norisle who’d not believe lest they run their fingers through the pelt.”
“I reckon we can do that.”
By the time Owen and Makepeace had finished skinning the wolves and dragging the carcasses away from the campsite, Kamiskwa had bandaged Rathfield’s wounds and made him drink mogiqua tea. That put the Norillian to sleep, so the others skinned the two wolves he wanted saved for himself and piled the skins near the fire. They’d killed seventeen of the animals, which made it the largest pack Nathaniel had ever heard of, and that wasn’t including the three killed previously.
Owen took over for Nathaniel. “If he complains we skinned his kills when he wakes up, we’ll tell him we wanted to get the carrion away from camp.”
“I don’t reckon he’ll remember much.”
Owen raised an eyebrow. “You’re smiling, and I’m guessing your amusement is at my expense.”
“Ain’t it at all, Owen.” Nathaniel shook his head. “I was just remembering what I thought of you when I met you and how that changed. The Colonel, he done changed my mind a bit this here night. I kinda figured that once he went down, that was all the fight he had.”
Owen glanced over at where the tall man lay stretched out. “Given what they say about him being a hero, I shouldn’t be surprised, but had you asked me before how he’d act, it wouldn’t have been like that.”
“I agree.” The Mystrian hunter frowned. “You remember Rufus Branch?”
Owen rubbed at the back of his head. “Tried to crack my skull with a musket and tried to murder you. Makepeace’s brother shot him in his hindquarters. He’s long gone.”
“Three year now, and ain’t lamented.” Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed. “Thing of it was that he was sneaky and more inclined toward lazy and coward than otherwise, but the few times he got into the thick of it, he’d fight like he weren’t human. Reminded me of the Colonel.”
“What do you think does that?”
Nathaniel shrugged. “Used to think it was what a coward does when he just cain’t be no more scared. I mean, some of ’em, they’ll just curl up in a ball and whimper. But there’s a set—always the ones who don’t seem to have a terrible great liking for themselves—just lose their minds. I ain’t much for that, even if they’re on my side in a fight. Don’t mind a man killing a lot, just want him thinking while he does it.”
“You think Rathfield a coward? Deep down? That doesn’t make any sense. He won the battle of Rondeville all by himself.”
“Did he? Or is that just the way the story gets told?” Nathaniel scratched at his throat. “He didn’t seem to remember how the moon was that night. I reckon if you don’t write down the details of this little set-to, ain’t none of us gonna remember it none too good, neither. And the way he told it at the meeting, he was all but dead when they found him. He’d not amember nothing. What if the men who found him made up their own story and when he done waked up, he just went along with it?”
“Rather than be labeled a coward?” Owen’s eyes narrowed. “But if that’s true, why would my uncle send… No, never mind. The question is, why did my uncle hope he’d die out here?”
“I reckon there ain’t but one man can answer that question, and he’s a mite far away for the asking.”
“I have no complaint about that.” Owen forced a small smile. “You go get yourself some sleep.”
The next morning Nathaniel woke up stiff and sore, but not nearly as bad off as he expected. He made sure not to let Rathfield get any clue as to how achy he was, since the Norillian wasn’t moving very quickly himself and appeared disinclined to want to talk much. Rathfield said nothing about the wolves and agreed to help Kamiskwa harvest mogiqua for poultices and more tea.
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br /> The others set to preparing the wolfskins for preservation. Using dull knives and stone scrapers, they took off every bit of flesh they could find, then lay the skins out to dry in the sun. Because of the canyon’s orientation and depth, they didn’t get nearly enough sunlight, and they didn’t have enough salt to even begin to cure the skins, but they did what they could.
When they finally lost useful sunlight for drying, they explored and discovered that about five hundred yards toward the southwest, the canyon narrowed considerably. Wide enough to allow a pygmy mastodon through, or a couple of wolves shoulder to shoulder, the canyon would have caught a wooly rhino fast. They set about harvesting small trees, trimming them, sharpening the ends and sticking them into the ground, pointing to the southwest. They cross-braced them so even seriously determined dire wolves couldn’t drag them out of place. While a jeopard would have leaped over the triple rank of spears without a thought, the barricade would be enough to keep the wolves out.
They spent three more days in the canyon. An abundance of the fern called mogiqua by the Shedashee encouraged their decision to remain. As a tea, or just chewed raw, it had a bitter taste and numbed aches and pains. Mogiqua poultices did the trick on wounds, preventing infection. The bites closed quickly and it didn’t appear as if they would scar too badly.
By the morning of the sixth day, everyone was ready to head out. Because the skins had not had time to properly cure, they opted to bind them up tightly and stash them in a small cave on the south side of the canyon. It never got any sun and would stay cool at least until their return trip. They blocked the entrance with stones and defecated nearby to keep animals away.
Though the trail they’d started following had become older, it hadn’t become any more difficult to read. The two men they were pursuing were making no effort to hide their trail, and were moving on with a fair amount of haste. While they found campsites with cold ashes, their quarry hadn’t left behind any bones to indicate that they’d hunted or trapped while traveling.
Nathaniel straightened up from where he’d been examining a footprint. “We hain’t gained nothing on them, but over that next rise, I reckon we might get a gander at where they’re heading.”
Rathfield, who carried the remains of his musket slung over his back, nodded. “Then, by all means, let us not waste the rest of the day.”
They came up through a narrow valley and at the highest point, where it opened widely to the west, they all stopped. The mountains gently merged with forested hills, which gave way to flat plains covered in lush green grasses. Nathaniel thought it might have been a trick of his vision that he saw black dots on the plains, but were that true, and at that distance, they would have had to be full-grown mammoths or wooly rhinoceri. The plains faded endless into the distance and Nathaniel suddenly felt very small.
Kamiskwa came up beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “There are stories of Gushneypak.”
“Green Ocean?”
“Yes. There are Shedashee tribes living out there. We call them the foolish ones, Torenkii. They are always on the move, following the herds.”
“You have to go where the prey is.”
“That’s not why they are foolish.” Kamiskwa rested a hand on the knife at his belt. “They consider their villages to be islands in the ocean, but they forget what lives under the green.”
“What?”
The Altashee sighed. “The reason these mountains were raised, my friend, was to keep what lurks out there from bursting free. You think that the city we found was their furthest outpost, but you mark the distance from Aliantis and where it sank in the ocean. But you’re wrong.”
He pointed off toward the west. “They came from out there, and this is as far as they got, before the land itself swallowed them, and the grasses wove a net that would forever keep them buried.”
Chapter Nineteen
10 May 1767
Happy Valley
Postsylvania, Mystria
Two days further on through the forest, they reached a broad valley within the hill country. A river ran through it, heading toward the southwest and, presumably, the Misaawa River in the middle of Tharyngian territory. How far away that was Owen couldn’t begin to guess. Just the idea that it might be as unspoiled as the land they’d traveled through filled him with awe and a little bit of dread.
When he’d first come to Mystria, the untouched nature of the land had surprised him. In Norisle and on the Auropean continent all the prime land had been lived on for centuries. Certainly there were wastes and barrens, salt marshes and tall mountains where none but the insane or shunned lived. Otherwise, one could not travel more than a mile without spotting a sign of human habitation and five miles without finding a village of some sort. Aside from the Shedashee, few humans had seen these lands and fewer still dwelt in them.
His dread came from knowing how the hand of man would transform the land. Though he had lived in Mystria only three years, he’d already seen what had once been wooded vales clear-cut to feed the need for building materials and firewood. Elsewhere he found abandoned homes near exhausted fields. When the land would not produce anymore, people just loaded up wagons and moved west. Though the Westridge Mountains created a huge obstacle, men would find their way past it and the virgin landscape would suffer.
Happy Valley surprised him because it didn’t display the same sorts of signs he’d expected of human habitation. Down in the valley itself lay an orderly collection of small houses surrounding a village green. At the eastern end stood a rectangular, palisaded fort, but no one watched from the walls or the tower built atop the main building. The gates stood open and the way weeds had grown up, Owen didn’t imagine the gates were closed all that often. The hillsides had been terraced and cultivated, but some fields had clearly been allowed to lie fallow. He couldn’t see any clear-cut tracts in the surrounding woods, and a series of canals had been dug to carry wastewater from the fields to the river well downstream of the village itself.
Owen cradled his rifle in his arms. “What do you think?”
Nathaniel shook his head. “I reckon they went in there. Don’t know if they stayed, but the people will know.”
“Makes sense.” The village’s people went about their daily lives without any apparent concern. A small mill sat beside the river toward the southwest, and the village smith opposite. A stable and paddocks had been built there as well. A large barnlike structure stood beside the stables, but Owen couldn’t make its purpose out, even though people regularly went in and came out. Shepherds and sheep dotted the hillsides, grazing on open land between the terraces. Dairy cattle grazed closer to home on the green. Another oblong building with two smoking chimneys had been built near one of the waste canals. Owen took it for a laundry because of the lines strung out from around it where sheets and clothes flapped in the light breeze.
Rathfield came up beside the two of them. “I suggest we go down and make ourselves known. This might be our Postsylvania or not, but regardless, it should not be here so I shall have to speak with them.”
Nathaniel ran a hand over his chin. “Seems to me, Colonel, that given them a talking-to might wait for until a return trip, or leastways until we have knowledge of the men we’re trailing. We don’t know what they took from the ruins, but I do think finding out would be a good idea.”
Rathfield frowned for a moment, then nodded. “Splendid point, Woods. Perhaps you or Strake might address them. If they are religious, Bone could do it.”
“I reckon that would be the thing.”
Owen turned back toward the village so Rathfield couldn’t read his smile. While he wasn’t completely certain Nathaniel’s observation about the source of Rathfield’s heroism was correct, there was no denying that the man had returned to his annoying habits once he began to feel better. Owen did believe, however, it wasn’t because he wanted to irritate his fellow travelers. It felt more as if Rathfield believed that by rebuilding himself as a Crown officer, he could distance h
imself from the creature he’d been during the fight.
They set off again.
Owen, though he felt no desire to do so, sympathized with Rathfield. When he’d been captured by Guy du Malphias, his host had tortured him. Owen had always thought of himself as being brave and stoic, but the Ryngian subjected him to tortures beyond countenance. However brave Owen had thought himself, whatever courage he thought he possessed, du Malphias had stripped it away. He had no idea how long the man tortured him, but he did know two things. First, it wasn’t as long as he would have hoped and second, in the end, he’d told du Malphias everything he wanted to know.
The only way Owen had been able to recover himself was to escape. Because he’d been successful, his escape appeared to be a story of incredible fortitude and bravery. In reality, it had been foolhardy and, save for the working of Mystria’s ancient magicks, he would have died and no trace of him ever would have been found. Had it not been for his companion, a pasmorte known only as Quarante-neuf, he never would have made it, and he’d not seen his friend since.
Is that what Rathfield is doing? It seemed so and Owen almost pitied the man. If things had happened at Rondeville as Nathaniel had speculated, then Rathfield awoke fearing he would be thought a coward, and found himself being lionized as a hero. The temptation to keep the truth hidden would be incalculable. In whom could he confide? His wife? Owen recalled Catherine’s whisper that Rathfield’s wife had taken her own life. Had she known the truth of his situation and been unable to live with the disgrace?
Or had she threatened to expose him and he killed her? Owen glanced back and couldn’t see a murderer in the man. Then again, the man who fought back mindlessly against the wolves would have been capable of anything.
They came up over the last hill and cut across empty fields toward the road paralleling the river. It really wasn’t much more than a cow path that led nowhere, since there was nowhere to go outside the valley. A couple of shepherds saw them and waved, but made no move to intercept them. Others below noticed them, however, and a reception committee formed itself up. Three men straddled the track near the edge of the village. Boys and girls hung back about another twenty yards, and an old man started across the green toward them.
Of Limited Loyalty: The Second Book of the Crown Colonies Page 15