The Clearing (Medieval Tale Book 2)

by Lina J. Potter

  Trost heard someone coming. He grabbed Hleig’s sleeve. The two slipped silently into the bushes. A few minutes later, they gave a low whistle and stepped out when they recognized Erik. He went for his knife, but put it back when he saw their faces.

  “Hleig, who is this?”

  “Trost. The jeweler’s nephew.”

  “Why didn’t he stay behind?

  “He is helping me. How many men do you have?”

  “Ten. How many pirates are there?”

  “Six boats landed, each with twelve men. We caught two of them.”

  “Let me see them.” Erik made Sim Grismo repeat everything he knew. In the end, he was somewhat relieved. None of the pirates knew that Earton was guarded by Virmans.

  He turned to Trost. “Young man, I have a serious job for you.”

  About two hours later, Trost crept toward the pirates’ campfire. He was shaking, but he hoped no one would notice. Under his shirt, he had several packets that Jaimie had given him. He hoped he would have time to use them.

  Suddenly, he felt something sharp between his shoulder blades. “Who are you?”

  “Uncle Erk sent me. Is Big Jim here?”

  The knife moved. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep walking. And keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Trost nodded. He took a few steps forward and found himself in the circle of firelight. The pirates’ faces were evil and cold. Trost swallowed and tried to control his shaking.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Erk’s nephew.”

  “What nephew? I don’t know about any nephew.”

  “My mother is his sister, Arina.”

  “Where is Erk?”

  “His children are sick.”

  “Is that so?”

  “There is red rash[5] in the village.”

  Big Jim said nothing.

  “I didn’t catch it, so he sent me to wait for you.”

  “Why didn’t he come?”

  “He and my old man sat for a while.” Trost made a gesture to indicate that they were too drunk to walk. “They didn’t want to go through the forest at night.” Some of the pirates nodded. The gesture was one they were familiar with.

  Big Jim winced. He had done the same many times. “Is the plan in force?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the situation in Earton?”

  “The manager sent everyone away. You can go take what you want.” Trost’s voice was calm.

  The pirates exchanged glances. Big Jim cleared his throat. “I’ll divide you all into groups tomorrow. Half will stay here to get the amber, and the other half will go to the castle.” They soon forgot about Erk’s “nephew.” He slipped over near the cooking fire, where a big pot of meat was bubbling.

  I won’t risk it now, while they’re all awake. I can do it in the early hours, before they eat breakfast.

  The packets under his shirt tickled his skin.

  The countess’ guards were watching the pirates. Leis squinted. He saw them break into two groups. He saw the boy. Eveers were a strange people, and Leis had no great hopes that the boy would succeed in getting to the fire.

  If he can’t manage it, we will ambush them. If he does, we won’t have to.

  The minutes ticked by. As far as Leif could see, Trost hadn’t been able to get to the fire. He wasn’t overly concerned. He had several good fighters preparing to ambush the pirates from more than one direction. They were cutting into the trunks of trees, preparing to push them over onto the path at just the right moment. In the confusion, they would be able to take down some of the pirates with their crossbows. If any of them tried to climb over the trees, they would get them at close range with their axes.

  We can wait as long as we need to.

  Erik had taken some of the Virmans with him on a breathtakingly fast march to where Leif had his ship moored. It was small but maneuverable, the perfect vehicle for attacking the two pirate tubs. Before Erik left, he and Leis had conferred about the tides. At high tide, Erik and the Virmans would sail in and attack the two pirate ships from behind.

  The rest of the Virmans stayed behind with Leis, ready for hand-to-hand combat. It was almost time.

  It happened at the hour of the wolf – in the hour before dawn – when sleep is heavy and sweet and guards begin to drowse. As far as the pirates knew, they were on a perfectly safe beach where they had been many times before. They lay wrapped in blankets, dreaming of unguarded castles and treasure.

  Moving silently, Trost made his way to the cooking fire. He emptied one of his packets into a pot of water.

  Leis couldn’t count on Trost to succeed. Even if he did, the captain of the guards doubted how effective the herbs would be – in a life or death situation, a man can fight even with an aching gut. No, he would not rely on healers and young boys. He had another plan.

  Several of the Virmans undressed and swam out to destroy the pirates’ rowboats, cutting them off from their ships. In that time and place, pirates did not generally use rowboats, preferring to bring their ships as close as they could to shore to ensure a fast retreat. Earton, however, had a dangerous coast and poor anchorages. Treasure was another factor in their decision to come to shore in small boats. They were expecting to have a lot of booty, which would make their ships too heavy to get back out over the reefs.

  If the pirates had been able to see in the dark, they would have seen strong-swimming Virmans, their light hair tied with dark rags to make them invisible. Behind the pirate camp, Leis awaited the signal.

  Meanwhile, Trost did his best to go unnoticed and make his way to the edge of the camp. The Eveer’s nephew might not have been a hardened warrior, but he wasn’t naïve, either. He knew he might look like a peasant boy in the half-dark, but once the sun rose he would be in trouble. When the boatswain failed to return, they would question him.

  He looked down at his hands. A jeweler’s hands were nothing like the hands of a peasant. The calluses were in all the wrong places. Trost had little faith in his acting skills. He needed to disappear before things went downhill for him.

  Suddenly, he heard the cry of a seagull. It came from somewhere on the water. The camp guard turned to look, but he never had a chance to grab his weapon. The Virmans were expert at killing, and Leis’ soldiers had no love for pirates, either. Leis had ordered the younger and less experienced men to surround the camp and prevent any pirates from breaking away toward the village or the castle. Then, faces coated with clay and strips of cloth tied around their upper arms to distinguish them from their enemies, they broke on the beach in a silent, dark, terrible wave. Earton’s defenders made no sound, dispatching their enemies with cruel efficiency.

  At first, the only sound was the wheezing of wounded men. Soon, however, a knife missed and one of the pirates gave a shout. At that point, Erik, who had requisitioned one of the strange new fire missiles from Leif’s ship, yelled to his men, lit the fuse and tossed the missile into the middle of a group of pirates who had just woken up and still didn’t know what was happening.

  Flames leaped up. The pirates began running in all directions, but they were lit from behind by the fire, and the Virmans were able to pick them off with arrows.

  Trost, who was observing the scene from under a log on the beach, thought it looked like wolves attacking a flock of sheep in a pen. Some of the Virmans swung axes and short swords. Others used their bare hands. Leis’ men were knocking pirates down and tying them together, but the Virmans simply killed them outright. Some of the pirates put up a fight, but their numbers were few and they were outmatched in skill. Soon, the battle devolved into a handful of skirmishes, and eventually it dwindled down to two centers of resistance around the pirate captains. Erik went after one of the captains, while Leis turned on the other. Neither pirate lasted much longer.

  A few of the pirates turned and tried to run to the boats, but instead they ran right into the arms of wet Virmans who were chilled from their swim an
d ready to warm up in a fight. The men left behind on the two ships ran back and forth on the decks and called to their comrades, but there was nothing they could do. None of them relished swimming through the dark, cold water just to try their luck against a band of enraged Virmans.

  As soon as the tide came in, both ships turned to escape, but just then a sleek Virman ship lunged out from behind a cliff and rode the swells over the reef. Every sailor in those parts feared the sea wolves of Virma, and the pirate ships had too few men to fight. When the Virman ship raised a flag that offered surrender or death, the pirates chose the former. Once they boarded the ships, the Virmans discovered just five men on each and quickly secured their prey.

  It was all over by sun-up. All of the pirates were either dead or tied up, and Leis walked the beach as he calculated his profits and losses.

  His profits included: two almost undamaged ships; three dozen prisoners; ten dead pirates; the Grismo family; and the amber, which had been shown to him by Erk. It was not a bad haul for one night.

  His losses were also significant: fifteen men killed (five Virmans, five of his own soldiers, and five peasants, who were killed when some of the pirates tried to run into the woods); and fifteen wounded, some of them with serious injuries. To this tally, Leis added a cut he had taken to the left shoulder. It was unpleasant, but he didn’t think it would kill him.

  All in all, he felt lucky that more blood had not been shed.

  The Virmans were exceedingly pleased with the attack. They were all salaried fighters, but they suspected that the countess would be generous with prizes. She was and odd woman, but they had never known her to be tightfisted.

  They had lost five of their own, but death was something they were used to and none of them took the losses too hard. The men had died with honor and would feast with the gods. The job of the living was to count the spoils and chase down any straggling pirates. As the sun rose in the sky, their minds turned to plunder.

  Erik, covered with his own dried blood and that of other men, caught up with Leis. He was limping, but his blue eyes shone with adventure and his smile flashed brightly. “How are you?”

  “Counting the profits,” Leis laughed. “Will you tow the ships?”

  “We will. Where is Leif?”

  “He may not know about any of this yet.”

  “Well, we did well. I lost three men and eight are wounded. You?”

  “We lost fifteen. I haven’t counted the wounded yet. Have you bound your prisoners?”

  “How can you ask?” Erik was jubilant.

  Helke was on his knees in prayer. He had Caleb with him, but Trost was somewhere out there in the night. The old Eveer prayed to his gods for one thing only: that his nephew survive.

  Keep your hands on his head. Direct his feet away from danger.

  Next to him, Caleb prayed as well. There was nothing else they could do, so they waited. Suspense is the worst torment of all.

  The pirates lay on the beach, tied up like firewood. Big Jim was lucky to be dead, since his men would have found a way to strangle him for getting them in this mess. Darvin was alive, but he had lost one ear and a chunk of his scalp, which made him look pitiful. The other pirates looked no better.

  The Virmans refused to touch the bodies of the dead pirates. Instead, they untied a few of the survivors and watched as they piled up their own dead.

  Trost crawled out from under his log. When he caught sight of some of the uglier casualties – men with heads split open and guts spilling onto the sand – he turned as green as a young pine tree and retreated into the bushes, where the others heard him retching. Two Virmans sitting nearby looked in his direction and shook their heads. All of them had been there before. When he started to scream, however, they jumped up and ran in his direction.

  Bill Rummy had been hiding in the bushes, scared out of his wits. To be precise, his feelings were a mixture of fear, anger and hatred, all directed at the Virmans, his captain, and himself. Bill had been hit in the face when the fighting started. Knocked out, he fell into the bushes. He would have crawled away, but unconscious men don’t crawl. When he came to, it was too late to run. The camp was overrun by Virmans and strangers he had never seen before. All of his own men were either dead or tied hand and foot and sitting under guard.

  He considered crawling away, but he didn’t have any idea where to go, and there were too many Virmans standing around. If he made the slightest noise, they would finish him off. So, he lay in the bushes and waited to see what would happen. Then, all at once, the kid that had been talking to the captain the night before came stumbling into the bushes and vomited right in Bill’s face.

  Bill’s first thought was that he couldn’t hide anymore. And he couldn’t run – they would catch him easily. He was angry.

  I’ll kill the little bastard! I can only kill this one, but that’s my revenge!

  His hand went for his knife.

  Trost was saved by pure coincidence. When he ran into the bushes, he was bent over double and that made him harder to aim at. And to add to that, Bill was still dizzy from taking a hit to the head, and Trost suddenly vomited all over his face. Since he couldn’t see, he lashed out blindly. Instead of hitting the boy between the ribs, the knife slashed his side. The second blow would have finished the boy off, but just then the Virmans appeared behind him. All of Bill’s plans and calculations were finished off once and for all with an axe to the head.

  The Virmans carried Trost back to the beach. Their faces became grim when they saw his side. After bandaging him tightly to stop the bleeding, they put him on a homemade stretcher. All in all, they agreed that the boy had been born under a lucky star. He had lost a lot of blood and would have a scar for the rest of his life, but things could have been much worse.

  Erik came over to check on him. “Is he alive?”

  “He’ll live. But he should see a healer.”

  “The countess’ healer is here.”

  “He can’t do anything. He says we need to get the boy back to the castle.”

  “Why is that?”

  “A famous Khangan healer is visiting.” The Virman looked around. “And I hear that the countess is skilled in these matters, too.”

  Erik shrugged. “Fine. Once we have the prisoners ready, two of them can carry his stretcher.”

  Trost heard everything through a fog. His body ached, his head swam, and he was afraid to die. The boy wasn’t interested in fighting anymore.

  Lilian Earton spent a wakeful night. She locked herself up with Tahir, Jaimie and Mirrie and told Mary to bring them cold water for drinking and washing. Once they were alone, she started teaching her team everything she knew about emergency medicine.

  Jaimie already knew some things because Lily had worked with him on their trip back from Altver. Tahir knew a great deal about herbal remedies, but he knew nothing of disinfection, the various types of stitches and knots, and how to put in wound drains. He listened to her with rapt attention, often shaking his head and saying “Lily-jan, it’s worth dying just to have this knowledge.” Jaimie took everything in silently. He knew that Lily would teach him what to do, but that she would give no explanation about where the knowledge came from other than a reference to ancient scrolls.

  Miranda did her best to get in the way and get a good look at everything the adults were doing. Lily tried to keep her interference to a minimum, but she let her stay and watch, telling her that in dark times a person couldn’t know too much about fixing up wounds.

  Meanwhile, Hans Tremain examined the castle walls and inspected his small militia. He could see that the men wouldn’t be good for much in a fight, but the gates were closed and he hoped that no one would be inviting the pirates inside. Still, he was worried.

  I wish I had stayed with the king’s ship with its armed soldiers.

  King’s envoy was a difficult job to do right. On the one hand, an envoy had tremendous power over the people, but on the other hand, he had to navigate a treacherous path betwe
en the king and local nobles, who objected to meddling outsiders. For this reason, the king generally chose minor nobles without estates or families to serve as his envoys. He paid them handsomely to keep them independent, and they were allowed unheard-of privileges at court – a chevalier who acted as king’s envoy could speak as an equal to an earl, as long as he was reasonably cautious.

  Those privileges came with heavy responsibilities, however. Envoys had to be scrupulously honest if they wanted to stay in the king’s favor. They also had to handle secrets that could be very dangerous – revenge was a constant threat, and it was not rare for an envoy to leave his position in a pine box. Still, despite the hardship and danger, there was a constant stream of men vying for the position. The pay was good, and the social benefits were significant (an envoy’s sister would have better marriage prospects, and his brother could be granted land). Ativernese kings took care of their own, and Edward was no exception. The price for all these advantages, however, was a heavy one: constant danger and permanent loneliness.

  Hans understood these things perfectly. When he was on a mission, the people he visited and questioned treated him like an expensive vase. Aldonai forbid that he be displeased, or that they lose sight of him.

  Lilian Earton’s behavior was like nothing he had ever encountered. When she spoke to him, she was friendly and open, as if she had nothing to be afraid of.

  Does she not understand who I am? Does she think I can’t threaten her? Or does she just have a clear conscience?

  Hans didn’t know what to think. Everything he observed about the countess left him wondering. She was friendly and polite with everyone and rarely raised her voice, but her orders were followed instantly and to the letter. She was a quiet homebody, but she could have a man whipped or expelled from the estate without raising an eyebrow.

  He had seen the countess’ face when she was told about the pirates. She was afraid, but she immediately got her emotions under control and began organizing something – what was the word? – a hos-pi-tal. He had never heard of such an undertaking, but he was impressed that she jumped right in to do the one thing she knew how to do. As far as Hans could tell, she was doing a fairly professional job of preparing to receive and treat wounded men.