by Garry Spoor
Kile had no intentions of handing over her weapons, but to her surprise, Duffy never asked for them. He just directed them to one side of the makeshift camp and assigned Private Lesh to guard them.
“So, how do you think I’m doing on my first assignment as a scout for the military?” she asked, taking a seat beside Tullner, but the young soldier said nothing and seemed a bit agitated.
“Look Tullner, you didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, trying to reassure him.
“Yeah, well, it’s easy for you to say.” He replied. “They can’t do anything to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know? Although Hunters are considered a branch of the military in times of war, the military has no disciplinary jurisdiction over them. They can’t try you or punish you. You’ll have to answer to your Guild.”
“Oh, is that all,” she laughed. “If that’s the case I’ll be lucky if I survive this.”
Kile sat and watched while the men readied their equipment. Entering a hostile Coopervill from the western road was paramount to suicide, but they weren’t going to listen to her. They followed Sergeant Wargner this far, and they were bound to follow him all the way, even it if was into the ground. Why was entering Coopervill so important to risk the lives of these men? When did this turn from a simple recon mission into a military operation to recapture a town? It wasn’t as if Coopervill held any strategic advantage. There were very few places in the Denal province with any strategic advantage, but if that was the case, then why did the Uhyre desire it? Questions piled upon questions and she would be the first to admit, she just didn’t understand war.
They sat down to a dreary meal of hardtack and water. Lighting a fire, this close to the enemy, was too risky. They watched in three man shifts, although nobody slept. The night dragged on and every noise from the darkness was amplified and every shadow seemed to be stalking them.
Before the sun rose on the next morning, Sergeant Wargner left to infiltrate Coopervill with thirteen men.
With three casualties, two seriously wounded men, one man in custody, and one man to guard them all, it was all he had left. The horses fared better. Each man was able to ride, leaving three horses behind, and of course Grim, which no soldier would entertain the thought of using. Kile helped the wounded the best she could and even though she was able to bind their wounds and administer a bit of first aid, she was definitely out of her element.
The wound, Private Renop suffered to his left leg, was extensive. Kile wondered if he would ever walk again. She couldn’t help but think of Mr. Wollery, the old man who owned the dry goods store in Coopervill. He was a Hunter, but an injury to his leg ended his career. The healers said he would never walk again, and although he moved with a noticeable limp, it was better than the alternative. Of course, that was last year, when there was a Coopervill. She had no idea where the old man was now, or if he was still alive.
Private Hilnn’s injuries were far worse. The young soldier was barely conscious. She never had the opportunity to speak with him and now she probably never will. All she could do was sit with him and wipe the sweat from his brow. The whole thing seemed pointless.
Wargner left Private Lesh in charge, the tall, lean red-haired man with the scrunched up face. He seemed a bit nervous and often paced back and forth, staring in the direction Perha Squad went. When he did sit down, and it wasn’t for very long, his legs would twitch. He wasn’t very enthusiastic as a guard either, and even returned Tullner’s weapon once they lost sight of the last rider.
They sat in silence for most of the morning, listening for any sound of the returning squad. If the night dragged on, then the day must have been moving backwards or time had stopped all together.
“How’s he doing?” Tullner asked, sitting across from Kile. It was the first words he spoke to her, since they were arrested, although, she wasn’t really sure they were arrested. She looked down at Hilnn and his breathing appeared to be labored.
“I really don’t know,” she confessed. “This is way beyond me.”
If she was being truthful, to herself and to Tullner, she would have to say, Private Hilnn was dying. Most of his wounds were internal. It didn’t take a healer to point out the obvious, if Hilnn didn’t receive any proper treatment, his chances of survival were limited, but there was also something else. There was a smell which lingered about him. She wouldn’t bring herself to say it was the smell of death, that would be too cliché, or creepy, but there was definitely a scent, which was not there before.
“Can anything be done for him?” Tullner asked.
“If Daniel was here, he would know what to do,” she replied.
“I feel so useless, just sitting here waiting. Can’t you… I don’t know. Get us some information?”
“On what?”
“I don’t know. The squad, the town, whatever is going on around us. I feel… isolated.”
“I know the feeling,” she replied.
A noise from the east stopped all conversation. Private Lesh was first to his feet. He held his sword in a shaky hand. Tullner drew his own weapon and placed himself between the noise and the wounded.
“Hold a minute,” Kile called out. She recognized the smell and it wasn’t a valrik, it was a vir.
Corporal Duffy stumbled under the weight of another man, half carrying, half dragging the wounded soldier into camp. Lesh was the first to reach them and freed the Corporal of his burden. Kile helped him lay Private Browne down beside Hilnn. The man was barely conscious. There was a laceration across his face, which would probably leave him with a nice scar for the rest of his life. Grabbing one of the canteens, she started to wipe the blood away and clean the wound.
“What happened?” Tullner asked Duffy as he helped the man sit down.
The Corporal just shook his head. Lesh handed him one of the canteens.
“Duffy, what happened? Where’s Sergeant Wargner? Where are the others?” Tullner asked.
“I… I don’t know,” he whispered. “They were everywhere. They came from everywhere… there were so many of them.”
“Duffy, what happened to the others? Are they coming?” Tullner asked. He kept looking over at the woods, expecting to see Perha Squad marching out at any moment, but nobody came.
“Corporal Tullner… what should we do?” Lesh asked.
“I’m not sure. Our first priority is to the squad,” Tullner replied. “We have to find out what happened, if there are any survivors and if we can save them.”
“There aren’t any,” Duffy said, grabbing Tullner’s arm. “They’re all dead, they’re all dead. The valrik were everywhere, they came from everywhere. We have to go. We have to get out of here. We have to get back to base camp. We have to warn the others.”
“We can’t just leave them,” Tullner said, pulling his arm free.
“Didn’t you hear me? They’re all dead,” Duffy shouted.
Kile knew they weren’t going to get a straight answer out of Duffy, at least not yet. She would have to find out what happened herself. Leaving Tullner to deal with the Corporal, she slipped away from the camp site. She found it easier to communicate with the natural world when she wasn’t being watched. When she was no longer in sight of the others, she closed her eyes and fell into her Edge, reaching out to all the living things in the woods around them. The birds would be the most helpful, since they see everything, but others would be needed as well, and so she stretched out her awareness, calling to those she knew were in the area. She could sense the darkness in the east, surrounding the town of Coopervill. That was where those creatures were, those strange reptilian wolves. She didn’t dare stretch her awareness in that direction, not if she wanted to keep her sanity.
It didn’t take long before the birds began to arrive. There were a variety of different species, but the crows saw everything, because the crows always watched the battlefields.
“Please show me what you saw,” she asked them, and they did, and she wished they hadn’t.
> “Where have you been?” Tullner asked Kile when she returned to camp. She said nothing at first, taking a seat beside the supplies. She took a long drink from the canteen before turning to Duffy.
“Do you still have the maps?” she asked calmly, although she wasn’t feeling very calm at the moment. She felt as agitated as Lesh looked, but she knew she had to keep it together, somebody had to keep it together if they wanted to get out of this in one piece.
“What? What do you need maps for?”
“Do you still have them?” she asked again.
“Well… yeah, but…”
“Let me see them.”
“What is it?” Tullner asked, kneeling down beside her. Duffy dug into his pack and pulled out the map case.
“They’re not all dead,” she finally said, taking the maps from Duffy.
“What? What are you saying?” Tullner asked.
“That’s impossible. I saw them die,” Duffy added.
“At least seven survived. They have been taken prisoner, some are wounded, but I don’t know how badly,” she said.
Unrolling the maps, she laid them out in front of her. They were nowhere near as detailed as her maps, the maps Mr. Wollery gave her, but she didn’t have those maps anymore. The funny thing was they were probably no more than a couple of miles away, with the rest of her supplies. They would have been taken to the Guild house when Grim arrived back in Coopervill without her, the day she was captured by the valrik. She never thought to reclaim them, after she was set free by the Guild. She found herself back in basic training not more than two weeks after the trial.
“They were taken here,” she said, indicating a point on the map with her finger. “These are surface mines. I’m not too familiar with them since I never had a reason to go up there, but from what I’ve heard, they travel pretty far back into the hillside.”
“Are you sure?” Tullner asked.
“Positive,” she replied. She never had a reason to doubt the information the birds gave her before. She saw the survivors taken to the mines.
“I said they’re all dead,” Duffy shouted, getting to his feet. “I was there; I saw it.”
“You were there, but you didn’t see it,” Kile replied.
He didn’t see what happen to the others, because he ran. The crows showed her everything, and she saw him hiding, when the others went forward. Even Sergeant Wargner, a man she disliked, fought valiantly beside his men, but it wasn’t enough. She watched him fall, brought down by one of those reptilian wolves. They had been waiting for them. The moment they reached the center of town, the enemy was upon them. From every door, every window, every dark hole, pulling the horses down from under the riders. She saw Private Browne gravely wounded, left for dead. Whether he feigned it, until he felt it was safe to move, or regained consciousness at the right time, she couldn’t tell. He crawled his way from the field until he found Duffy by chance.
“We can’t leave them there. We have to get them out.” Tullner said.
“How, sir? We don’t have nearly enough men to fight our way through,” Lesh added.
“I say our first priority is to the mission. We have to get back to base camp. We have to let them know what we saw,” Duffy said.
“What, and leave our men to… to whatever those things will do to them. I can’t… I won’t do that,” Tullner replied. “If there is at least one of them still breathing, we have to do everything we can to save them.”
“There is no way to get them out,” Duffy said, looking between the two men. He was hoping for at least some support from Lesh, but wasn’t going to get it.
“There may be a way,” Kile explained. “The surface mines run the full width of the hillside. They don’t go deep into the mountains. They have quite a few venting caves around the backside. I know of someone who is familiar with the area. If there is a way through, he will know.”
“If he’s still around you mean,” Renop added.
“Don’t worry about that, he’s around and he’s willing to help. But it’s not our first problem. The first problem is getting you guys out of here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tullner asked.
“It means I’m doing what I should have done all along. I’m going alone.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Look, as a Hunter, my first job is to protect the people. I failed to do that.”
“That’s only because Sergeant Wargner wouldn’t let you,” Lesh added.
“That’s no excuse. I should have made him listen.”
“So what’s the plan?” Tullner asked.
“If this goes down, it’s going to go down fast. The Uhyre won’t be too happy when I take away their prisoners, so I’ll have to get them out of there as quickly as possible, which means, we have to get the wounded to a safe place now.”
“What safe place?” Duffy asked with a nervous laugh. “There isn’t any place safe around here.”
“That’s not exactly true,” Kile replied, pointing to another place on the map. “It’s not shown, but there is an outpost here called Moran. It’s part of the Callor province. You take the wounded there and wait for me.”
“Look. There are six of us and only three horses, how do you plan on getting us all to this outpost?”
“Five, I’ll be going with Kile,” Tullner announced.
“I’ll move faster alone,” she replied.
“I have no doubt about that, but I’m also not leaving my men behind.”
“Fine, but you do what I say, no questions asked.”
“Deal.”
“That still doesn’t explain how we’re supposed to get to the outpost,” Lesh asked.
“Grim will take you.” Kile said, looking over at the pony. “He’ll carry the wounded. Renop, can you still ride?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“Good. Duffy, you, Lesh and Renop will take the three horses. Grim will take Browne and Hilnn.”
“What about you guys?” Renop asked. He was staggering to get to his one good leg. “How are you going to get to the outpost? As you said, the Uhyre aren’t going to just let you go.”
“I’ve already arranged that… at least I think I have.”
***~~~***
8
“You have to go,” she said, removing Grim’s harness.
-I am not leaving you here alone.-
“It’s the only way. You’re the only horse who can carry two men that far. You’re also the only one who knows the way to the outpost.”
-I don’t like it.-
“Look. You don’t have to listen to any of the vir. I’ve already worked it out with the other horses. They are going to follow you straight to the outpost. If any of the vir tries to change course, they’ll find themselves walking.”
-You are getting devious, child.-
“Maybe you’re rubbing off on me.”
- If I was, we would be half way to the mountains by now.-
“Well, there’s some truth to that,” she replied.
-You will, of course, take Vesper with you.-
Grim asked, as he headed toward the other horses.
“Seriously?”
-Somebody has to watch over you, and if I’m to act the pack mule for a pair of broken vir, he’s the next best choice.-
“Wow Grim, I don’t know what to say.”
-Please, don’t get sappy on me. You’ve already flipped out once, who's to say it won’t happen again.-
So much for sentiment, she thought.
“Is there a problem?” Tullner asked when he came up behind her.
“No, no problems, just going over a few last minute details,” she replied.
“With… your horse?”
“If this is going to work, everyone must know their part,” she said, tossing her pack onto the pile with the rest of the supplies. They would have to leave just about everything behind, it was important to travel light.
“Yeah, but I still don’t know what our p
art is? You do have a plan… don’t you?”
“Sort of,” Kile replied. “I’m still working out the small details.”
She looked over to where Duffy was watching them. She didn’t trust him, and the less he knew what she was planning on doing, the better off she felt. She didn’t think he would go running off to the valrik to warn them, he wasn’t that brave, and he didn’t have motive to betray them, but for some reason, she felt it better to keep him in the dark. It took some doing, but she even convinced the horses to disobey him. They would follow Grim, straight to the Callor outpost.
They spent most of the afternoon fitting together a simple harness so Privates Browne and Hilnn could ride in comfort, that is, if comfort means being strapped to the back of a mountain pony. The last thing she wanted was for either man to fall off. Private Lesh would help, but she couldn’t be too sure about Corporal Duffy and Private Renop was in no condition to be getting on and off his horse if he didn’t have to.
What supplies they had were divided up. They wouldn’t need much, the trip would be a long one, but it would also be a straight one, a day, possibly two at the most. As far as Kile could see, the valrik were focusing their attention on the towns and not the main road. If they rode through the night and all the next day, without stopping, they should reach Moran before the following night. The only hitch in her plan was whether the outpost was still standing.
She had to delay her rescue mission to buy the wounded enough time to get to Moran, but how long could she actually wait? What would the valrik do to the survivors? It was a question she’d rather not try to answer.
By the time Grim rode out with the others, it was already past noon and the sun was quickly moving west. She waited until the riders were no longer in sight, which left only Corporal Tullner to deal with.
“They’ll be all right,” Tullner said, misreading her concerns.
She wasn’t really worried about them, they were moving away from the danger, but it wasn’t even the danger she was worried about. She was worried about herself, and what she had to do. Her little episode in the crags, bothered her. When her mind linked with those reptilian wolves, she lost her identity, and that was something she couldn’t allow to happen again.