by C. Greenwood
I looked up belatedly and offered him my plate, because he looked as worn and weak as I felt. But Dunnel refused. He had spent the day digging graves, and his face was streaked in dirt and dried sweat. More of it was matted in his hair. He regarded me with serious bloodshot eyes. I had no idea what he wanted.
He said, “I don’t know what it was that brought you to us, stranger. But there’s no question in my mind, nor I think in the minds of any this night, that we would all be dead if not for your efforts.”
I shook my head, feeling as uncomfortable as he looked and said, “I did nothing. You saved yourselves.”
He looked down at his hands. They were big and scarred, the strong hands of a farmer who spent his life working the soil. But tonight they were flecked with dried blood.
He said, “You did nothing we couldn’t have done for ourselves, but you did everything we wouldn’t have done. If we did save ourselves, it was you who gave us the courage to do it. You organized us when we were too afraid to think for ourselves. If you hadn’t caused us to hold that line—well I don’t know what would have become of us. I want to thank you on behalf of the village. Also, to apologize for how roughly I received you last night. Little did I know the stranger I refused to share my table with that day would be saving my life the next.”
“You did give me winter-fruit,” I pointed out.
A weary grin split his face. “So I did.”
I sobered suddenly and asked, “Any final count of the missing?”
His smile vanished. “Fourteen, we think. But we have hopes some of those merely fled into the woods and might yet return.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to. I was sure we both knew how unlikely his hopes were.
He said, “What do you think will happen to the captives they took? Why did they carry them away in the first place? The attack made no sense. It was as if their only aim was to destroy us and steal a handful of our people.”
“I’m afraid I have no answers,” I said. “I’ve never heard the like.”
It had been talked of all day. Everyone wondered what manner of people our strange attackers had been and from where they had come. But the question that was uppermost in every mind was that of why the strangers had targeted Hammond’s Bend. What was their goal?
Dunnel interrupted my thoughts. “I have sent a party to Selbius to bring a report of the attack before the Praetor. Doubtless within a few days, the village will be swarming with Fists. Again.”
I was pretty certain how he felt about that. The grim specter of the hanging tree still loomed over the meeting hall, but I imagined the villagers would welcome the Praetor’s men with more joy than they would a return of the invaders. The reach of the Praetor’s arm suddenly represented security in this isolated place.
Dunnel cleared his throat, and I sensed he was searching for a lighter topic. We had dwelt enough on destruction for one day.
“A remarkable bow you have there,” he said and nodded toward the weapon propped against my knee. “I’ve never seen anything of such size and detailed workmanship. You didn’t make it yourself?”
I said vaguely, “I found it someplace a long time ago.”
“I wouldn’t mind stumbling over such a find,” he said. “You know, I don’t think I saw you miss a shot last night, and I’m not the only one to remark on it. Who taught you to shoot like that?”
I said, “It’s less me and more the bow that directs the shot. Sometimes I feel like all I do is stand there and nock arrows.”
From the expression on his face, I realized I had probably said too much. I scrubbed a weary hand across my face. I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in what seemed an age, and my mind was sluggish.
He caught the gesture and said, “Forgive me. I shouldn’t batter you with small talk. You’re at the end of your strength, as are most of us. You’ll want to find a bit of rest. I promise you no one will refuse you a bed this day.”
I choked back a yawn even as he spoke. “A few hours of sleep wouldn’t go amiss,” I admitted. “But there is still work to be done…”
I looked out over the chaos revealed by the pale morning sun and suddenly felt as though I had great weights pressing down on me.
“Everything of urgency is done,” he told me. “We will rest and tend to our wounded today.”
I disagreed. Back in the old days, Rideon never would have let us sit back and rest after a raid from the Fists.
“You’ll want to post a watch about a mile out from the village perimeter to give warning should another attack come,” I said. “It doesn’t seem likely, but you and the other village heads should lay a plan of defense in case the worst should happen. Start rooting around old attics and barns to see what else you can dig up that’ll pass for weaponry, and I’d suggest fortifying the meeting hall as best you can and making it your fallback position for a last stand. It’s the most defensible building, and the only one large enough to hold all the old folk and little ones. Once you’ve done that—”
Seeing the look on his face, I cut off abruptly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is your village, and you’re the head. I’m just a stranger passing through.”
“No, don’t be sorry,” he said. “What you advise makes sense, and I’ll see that it’s done.”
I wasn’t accustomed to being deferred to, but if he wanted my opinions, I wouldn’t hold back. We continued laying plans for the days to follow until we were interrupted by one of the villagers with a question about the weapons we had appropriated from enemy corpses. I was surprised he wanted to talk with me instead of Dunnel. But when I looked to the village head, he simply nodded for me to go handle it.
I almost wished he were less willing to accept my help. I was dizzy from lack of sleep and my shoulders heavy under the weight of exhaustion. But I followed the villager, who was full of questions about forming a search party to go after the missing villagers.
We hadn’t gone a dozen paces when Dunnel called after me, “By the way, stranger, you’ve never given anyone your name.”
“Ilan,” I answered over my shoulder but couldn’t be sure whether he heard.
* * *
I spent the next two days helping with the reconstruction of the village and joining the shifts of able bodied men and women caring for the large number of wounded still too weak to be moved from the meeting hall to their homes. I’d spent enough years at Javen’s elbow to have experience changing dressings and mixing herbal concoctions to fight away infections. I felt ridiculously ill-suited to such gentle tasks, but none of the injured died under my care, so maybe I didn’t do so badly.
I also spent time quietly consulting with Dunnel on the organization of the watches and the search parties sent out to comb the near parts of the woods for the missing villagers. I even used my magic to reach out for the missing villagers but caught no sense of them. I hadn’t really expected to. The mysterious invaders’ attack had been well planned, so something told me they wouldn’t have been clumsy in their retreat. I was unsurprised when we discovered on the first day that their tracks led only a short distance into the woods before vanishing without a trace.
At the sight of their disappearance, we made an interesting discovery: a broad circle etched deep into the dirt, wide as a barn, with foreign looking runes and symbols lining the edges. The footprints of our enemies led straight to this circle, where they disappeared. The scene was enough to unsettle the villagers and started them muttering about ancient superstitions and forest phantoms.
But I could sense what the rest could not. My magic told me something had been done here, something that had nothing to do with ghosts or disappearing spells. I closed my eyes and could all but taste the fading resonance of the Natural magic, thin and diluted like wood-smoke carried on a distant wind. I could trace its trail, and it led to the circle, where it vanished as if a thick door had been suddenly slammed into place, blocking me out.
I briefly battered at the door with my magic but met
with no success. I sent seeking tendrils tracing around it, searching for any tiny crack, any way through the barrier, but I found none. There was no way in. I knew then that we had lost the missing villagers for good, and also lost any chance of following our mysterious enemy back to its lair.
The search was given up soon after.
The following afternoon, the Praetor’s Fists rode into the village. I scarcely waited for the dust of their horses to settle before bidding Dunnel farewell and slipping quietly away. I was no longer needed here, and it would be foolish to risk staying.
The village head seemed to have been expecting my departure. Perhaps he suspected more of the truth about me then he let on. And so, when I left, it was with a full traveler’s sack slung alongside the bow across my back. The villagers had been generous in their gratitude, and I had enough food and old clothing stuffed into the sack to see me through a year.
It was a relief to put my back to the little village. As much as I sympathized with the plight of the Hammond’s Bend folk, I was glad to leave the mysterious business of the unknown attackers to the Praetor’s men and turn my mind back to more personal plans.
Chapter Five
Rideon could be a hard man to locate when he didn’t care to be found. With the Praetor’s recently heightened presence in Dimming, it made sense for the outlaws to take to hiding now. I found remnants of their last camp, but it was obvious it had been abandoned for some time. I spent a day visiting the old haunts of the band. All but Red Rock. I had no desire to see that place again.
I grew frustrated. The brigands had been thorough in concealing the signs of their whereabouts, and I was beginning to wonder if they had simply vanished out of being altogether.
It was at Dancing Creek that I finally ran into a bit of luck. I found a faint, recently worn trail leading away from the stream’s edge where I suspected the men came regularly to collect water. Of course the track could have been made by a lone woodsman or by one of the smaller rival groups of brigands that occasionally took up residence in Dimming. But this was the first clue I’d come upon, and I decided to follow it.
And so I did for some time. The trouble was, I hadn’t gone far when the trail I followed branched off into diverging paths. No matter which I took, the result was always the same. They either faded slowly away into a dead end or circled around and brought me back to the same place. It was an old tactic I recognized, meant to make the trail as confusing and time consuming to follow as possible, but I doubted when our men created it, they had taken into account one of their own trying to find them.
I finally stopped for rest, leaning wearily against the side of a towering elder tree. I closed my eyes briefly and let my frustrations ebb away, breathing in the earthy scents of pine bark and decaying leaves. I was home, I reminded myself. No matter how separated I was from the others, all was well so long as I stood in Dimming’s shadow again.
A sudden sense of another presence was all the warning I had before a heavy weight descended from above. My attacker fell on me, rolling me easily to the ground. With the combined force of the landing and the weight of my assailant, my breath rushed with a whoosh from my lungs, leaving me struggling for air. I summoned enough strength to grapple with my unknown attacker for a moment, rolling around on the ground, punching and biting at anything I could reach to make him shift his weight enough for me to wriggle free. But he was larger than I, and having evidently summed up his victim in advance, had the sense to keep my hands out of reach of my knives. I tried every trick I knew to get at them but couldn’t. Rot him, he was good.
I don’t know how long this wrestling match went on before I was finally diverted from my efforts by the sound of familiar laughter and the words, “Give over, Hound, and when I’m sure you aren’t going to slice me up like a ham, I’ll let you go.”
I twisted my head around to get a look at my foe. It was an awkward angle with my belly and breasts pressed to the ground, but I didn’t need a clear view to know that twisted grin.
“Dradac!” I cried. “You scum-sucking, hog-wallowing—”
“Now, now,” he interrupted. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”
“Friend?”
Face in the dirt and breathless from my compressed position, I still managed to reel off an impressive collection of insults, all applying to the giant or his mother.
Dradac only laughed at my outrage, released his hold, and rolled off me.
Spitting dirt, I sat up and dusted the soil and leaves from my tunic.
“Do you derive all your amusement these days from dropping down on unsuspecting victims and crushing their guts out their eyeballs?” I asked.
He appeared unperturbed at my indignation. “I get a lot more laughs out of watching them wander in circles for hours, searching for a path a blind man could see.”
My face heated. “You’ve been spying on me all this time!” I accused. “You could have called out and told me which way to take.”
He grinned. “But guiding isn’t a sentry’s job, is it? What is his task? Watching, which I did very well. Anyway, you of all people ought to remember to glance up into the trees from time to time.”
I felt my face grow warmer because it was true. I’d been away so long all the old wariness had faded from my mind.
To hide my embarrassment, I scrambled to my feet, one hand going back to check that the bow and my traveler’s sack were still in place.
“Anyway, what were you playing around for?” Dradac asked. “The Hound I remember could pick her way through a briar patch, blindfolded, without taking a scratch. You weren’t lost, were you?”
“I certainly wasn’t,” I lied peevishly. “All that tramping around was a ploy to bring you out of hiding so you could lead the way to the new camp.”
He grinned slyly. “Then you couldn’t find the camp?”
“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be looking for it,” I snapped, losing patience. “Anyway, what does it matter how I found you? The point is I’m here now. Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been? Or did you fail to notice I was even gone?”
“I could hardly miss that,” he said. “I’ve been taking up the slack around camp ever since you and the priest boy disappeared.”
He sobered. “I was worried about you, Ilan. Everyone else said you and the boy priest had run off together for good, but I never believed that. Knew nothing could make you give up Dimming of your own will.”
It was typical of him not to ask any questions, but I answered what I knew was on his mind anyway. “Terrac and I ran into Fists at Red Rock. He was captured and taken to the city. I followed him.”
I was surprised how short the explanation was once I trimmed out the details.
“Terrac didn’t come back with you?”
“No,” I said simply.
Again another man might have demanded explanations but not Dradac. All he said was, “I’m just as glad he didn’t. Rideon was red to match his name when he found out the boy broke his oath and took off.”
I started to offer excuses for Terrac but realized abruptly that I didn’t want to talk about him anymore. His betrayal was still fresh, and there was another nameless emotion mixed in with the hurt. It seemed best to keep him out of my mind.
As if sensing my feelings, Dradac changed the subject. “It’s good to have you back at least. I was beginning to think I’d never lay eyes on you again.”
He stood back and, narrowing his eyes, said, “But there’s something different about you…”
He pointed to the bow poking up over my shoulder, asking, “What’s that?”
I suppressed a grimace. Why was the bow always the first thing anybody noticed?
“It’s nothing,” I said, “I showed it to you before I left Dimmingwood, remember? I acquired it the night Brig died.”
“Seems familiar, now you mention it,” he agreed, his gaze slowly leaving the weapon and returning to my face. “You’ve aged since you were gone, Hound. What happened to you in t
he city?”
I dodged the question. “I’m only a year older. You just haven’t seen me for a bit, so you forgot what I looked like.”
“No, never that,” he disagreed, but he let the subject drop. “You’ll be eager to see the others, I suppose. Especially the Hand.”
“How is he?” I asked.
“The same,” Dradac said. “He never changes.”
“And Javen and all the rest?”
“Still here, and they’ll be surprised to see you. Now should I lead the way? Or would you prefer me to spin you in circles and send you back to the maze for another try? I’ll bet you’d stumble over the camp, given another day or two.”
I smiled and said, “Just take me home.”
Chapter Six
Boulder’s Cradle was the new home of the band. As soon as I approached the massive hill of rock rising above the treetops, I wondered that I hadn’t thought it the obvious choice before. It had everything needed to keep our men through any season or weather. Its caves provided shelter for the outlaws with ample room for hoarding supplies. Dancing Creek was only a short walk away, and this part of the woods was usually thick with game.
At the perimeter of the camp, we were hailed by a sentry, but on recognizing us, he passed us through with no more than a wave and a shout of welcome. The day was drawing to a close, the sun dipping toward the edge of the horizon when we entered the outlaw camp. My arrival was greeted with a small stir. There were shouts of welcome, questions about my disappearance, and a bit of friendly back-pounding from those who knew me best.
Rideon’s greeting was surprisingly enthusiastic. I had imagined I would be in the rain for a while over my irresponsible disappearance, but when I gave a rough explanation of my hasty departure and the time I had spent away, the entire episode was generally treated as a great joke. Rideon displayed as much amusement as anybody and professed himself greatly pleased to have one of his oldest members returned to our number.