“There's been no sign, Endric. How much longer are we going to search?”
Endric only sighed. It was a fair question. How much longer would they search, separated from the rest of the Denraen? There would come a time when they would be far enough away from Listain that they wouldn't be able to rejoin him on the journey south. How much longer until the Ravers either killed Senda or made it so they couldn’t reach her?
They had until his father sent men.
The journey was worth taking. They needed assets in the south to know what the Deshmahne were after. Without that knowledge, they were at a disadvantage. If it was only power, that was one thing. If there was something else, they needed to know that as well.
“Listain knew there was something here,” Endric said.
“Maybe he just wanted to get rid of you,” Pendin said. He tipped a flask back, taking a long drink.
Endric grinned at him. Pendin rarely brought any drinks with him on patrol, not like so many men did. “Getting rid of me means getting rid of you, too.”
Across the fire, Charles laughed before covering his mouth. He was younger than both of them but was a quick study with the sword, and more than that, he was a skilled tracker. He'd grown up in the woods outside of Rondalin and had been chosen several years prior, selected partly because of his tracking ability and partly because of his potential with the sword.
Pendin frowned. “Don't say that. I've never done anything to upset Listain.”
“I think your friendship with me is offensive to him.”
“He doesn't seem to mind your relationship with Senda.”
Endric shrugged. “He claims not, but why else would he have sent her from the city? I think he was doing everything he could to keep us apart.” He hadn’t shared with Pendin how Listain and Senda were related. Did it even matter?
Pendin stared at the flames. “Do you think it has anything to do with Urik?”
“Does what?” Endric asked.
“This. All of it. Do you think Senda’s capture has anything to do with him? She had said she found him in Thealon. What if something she did drew his attention so that he went after her?”
“I think you're giving too much credit to Urik.”
“Am I? My mother sure seemed to think that he was capable of something like this. She made it seem as if she intended to use him in some way.”
Elizabeth had alluded to the fact that she believed Urik was capable of coordinating something more. What if he were using the Ravers for another plot against the Deshmahne?
If that were the case, there should've been some evidence of him.
But if that were the case, why Senda rather than someone else—unless what Listain claimed about Senda’s obscurity was truer than he realized. If it were Urik, it seemed he should be more concerned with Listain. That had been the reason he had captured him, confining him to the strange teralin throne, and had intended to use him for some purpose.
Unless Urik knew Senda was Listain’s niece.
Endric doubted that. More likely was that he knew Senda worked directly with Listain. “I don't know what to make of it. We need to keep looking, and eventually we’ll find them.”
“If we don't?” Pendin asked.
Across the fire, Charles looked up. His eyes had a haunted expression, one that reminded Endric of Listain’s face after the attack. The Denraen were soldiers, but they weren't invincible. Most of the time, they maintained peace by their presence. Rarely was there anything more.
Endric was sorry he wasn't there for the men when they needed him. And now he headed out again, this time to see what he could discover of Senda’s capture.
Was that the best use of his talents?
“We’ll give it another day or two. If we don't find any evidence of their trail, we’ll turn back and get word to Dendril.” Endric hated it, but it would have to be enough.
The next two days went much like the last, each day racing across the flatlands, keeping their eyes open for signs of a small army's crossing, but never finding anything. They made good time, traveling straight across the ground, until they found a narrow road cutting through. When they reached it, Endric paused, looking for signs of something else that might've passed through here. There was nothing. Rather than cutting across the land, he guided the men to follow the road, thinking that if nothing else, it would make travel easier.
Near evening, Endric noted a strange change to the angle of the grasses.
Before, they were all blown over, the heavy winds that gusted through here bending the blades in a uniform direction. Now, some bent the other direction, away from the direction of the wind.
He pointed to Pendin, motioning toward the grass. He slowed their horses while looking at it until they it became clear that it was more than just his imagination. “What do you think?” he asked Pendin.
Pendin shrugged. “I think we need to investigate. It's the only thing we’ve found so far.”
“That’s what I think as well.”
They headed across the grasses, cutting off the road, following the change in the direction. It was subtle, and at times Endric wondered if he were only imagining it, but the farther they went, the more obvious it became that something had passed through here.
“It’s probably only local farmers,” Pendin said.
“The tracks are too evenly spaced to be farmers,” Charles said. He’d taken the lead when they had veered off the road, using his expertise with tracking.
“Maybe they’re well-trained farmers,” Pendin suggested.
A couple of the other Denraen chuckled.
They continued through the grasses, the sun gradually setting. As they traveled, Endric started to question whether this was a good idea, thinking that perhaps they should have more men with him. This was a scouting mission; that was how Listain was able to justify it. Were Dendril to ask, Endric had followed his commanding officer’s orders. He needed patience, but he also needed information.
“The tracks are getting closer together here,” Charles said.
“What does that mean?” Endric asked.
“Usually, it means that they’re slowing. In this case…” He shrugged. “I can't tell you how many there are. More than a dozen. Possibly twice that.”
If that were true, then it wasn't the several hundred soldiers. Had they split up after capturing Senda? The commander had made no qualms about sending Endric south. What would they achieve by splitting up?
“We should move carefully,” Endric suggested. “If they've slowed, then we should slow.”
Charles nodded. He pointed in the distance. In the fading light of day, sunlight streamed off the golden blades of grass, scattering it into shades of red and orange. Under other circumstances, Endric would have found it beautiful. Under these circumstances, he was left with an edge of tension.
“How close do you think we are?” Pendin asked Charles.
The tracker squinted, furrowing his brow. He ran one hand through his messy blond hair. “I can't tell. It could be that we are almost up to them, but it could be that we’ve not even come close. Like I said, it's not clear.”
Endric motioned to stop. He handed his reins to Pendin and nodded toward Charles. “Come with me. We’re going by foot from here.”
“Endric,” Pendin began. “Are you really sure that's right? The last time you did that, you were—”
“I know what I was. Just as I know what needs to be done here. We need answers. And we’re scouting. If we come in too quickly and make our presence known, we run the risk of either getting ourselves captured or having them harm Senda.”
“What if it's only farmers?” Pendin asked.
Endric glared at him. “I think I'm going to have to report you for insubordination.”
“Only if we survive.”
“If we’re not back in the next hour, come looking for us,” Endric said. He glanced at the sky, noting the shifting clouds. With the falling sun, determining the passage of time would be diff
icult, but not impossible. Finding them in the dark would be a challenge.
“If you're not back in an hour, I'll just return to Listain and tell him that you promoted me.”
“You're welcome to it,” he said. “Just be ready for responsibility and to deal with my father.”
“He has to be better than mine.”
Endric chuckled as he shook his head, starting into the grasses after Charles. It was strange to think that Pendin might be right; his parents might be worse than Endric's father. At least Dendril encouraged Endric, or he did now. Before Andril had died, Dendril had been less encouraging, but Endric suspected his father still wanted nothing but the best for him. He would have wanted him to succeed. He had been willing to risk his own reputation to help his son.
He didn't have that same sense from Pendin's father. The man seemed disappointed that Pendin hadn't followed him into the mines. After experiencing the mines—and only twice—Endric understood why Pendin wouldn't have wanted that life for himself. Yet Pendin's mother could have found a different way for her son, only she had not.
Endric had few enough memories of his own mother, only that she had left him when he was young. Dendril never spoke of her. Endric had talked to Andril once, asking his brother about their mother, but Endric wasn't even certain how much Andril had known.
They raced forward, hurrying through the grasses, with Endric following Charles. The younger man moved swiftly, pausing every so often to study the ground, searching for patterns there. Endric waited, trying to remain patient but cognizant of the time they spent as well. The longer they remained here, the longer that they spent tracking, the more likely it was that Pendin would bring the rest of the men after him. He didn’t want to risk that, not without knowing what they might find.
As they neared a gentle rise, Charles raised his hand, motioning for them to stop.
“What is it?” Endric asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s something here that doesn’t seem right.”
“The tracks?”
Charles looked up at him. “It’s more than—”
An arrow pierced his throat, and Charles collapsed in a spray of blood.
Endric dropped.
He checked Charles, but the man was gone, already bleeding out.
Where was the archer?
He crawled forward, needing to keep low to avoid drawing attention. They knew he was here, and there might be little he could do to avoid detection. His best chance would be to remain low to the ground and move away from Charles so that wherever the attack had come from, they wouldn’t have a way of finding him.
Judging from the angle, the arrow had come from the north.
The fact that they would attack like that told Endric that they were close but close to what? Had they gotten too close to something they weren’t supposed to find? Was there something more here that he didn’t understand?
Endric unsheathed a pair of his boot knives, clutching them in each hand as he crawled. They would be more effective than a sword here, especially if he had to attack from a distance. At least with the knives, he could throw them.
He heard a sound through the grasses.
He froze.
He listened, straining to hear some sound of another attacker, but heard nothing more.
He waited.
They had to be close. The arrow could have come from a distance—but given the deadly accuracy, he wasn’t sure that it had. That meant they were likely close by, though how had they managed to sneak up on Charles and himself?
There came another rustling sound.
This time, Endric was certain what he heard. It was near enough that he could tell which direction it had come from, and near enough that he could tell that whoever had made the sound was coming his way.
He waited.
The grasses bent. It was a soft popping sound, one that could have been nothing more than the wind but was too repetitive to be only the wind. There came with it something of a sigh, a steady breathing that the attacker tried to obscure but failed.
He waited.
The other person crawled toward him. They had to be crawling because Endric didn’t see anyone above the waist-high grasses. The long blades were enough to conceal.
They would be enough to hide an entire army.
Endric’s heart fluttered.
Could that be what had happened? Had they come across the army here?
If true, they were in more trouble than he realized.
He didn’t move.
The grasses shifted near him, parting close to his face.
He sprung.
His knife flashed, stabbing into the chest of his attacker, driving the man back down into the grass.
It happened quickly, but not quickly enough. There was a steady rustling in the grass, and he knew that he’d drawn attention.
Others suddenly converged.
Endric could hear several others but found it difficult to track just how many. More than a couple. As shapes appeared, he feared that it might be a half dozen. More. Enough that he wouldn’t be able to withstand them on his own.
Grabbing his knife, he readied for his next attack. He would be ready.
The movement ceased.
They were near. He could feel the change in the temperature here, as if their presence had heated the air. He could almost hear them breathing and could practically feel the steady rhythm of their heartbeats, a drumming that drew him toward them.
Endric could wait and see what came at him, or he could fight.
What kind of choice was that?
He’d already attacked one man and been forced to kill. Did they deserve to die?
If they had abducted Senda for nefarious reasons, he had to think that they did. He was Denraen, tasked with keeping the peace. These men wanted something other than peace.
But Endric didn’t love the idea of killing.
He enjoyed practicing with his sword and enjoyed perfecting that ability, but using it, taking it to the next step where he was forced to use those skills against another man, that troubled him. Was that natural, or was that a deficiency on his part?
Endric wondered what his father would say were he to ask. Would he chide him and offer another mysterious lesson, or would there be something less than that? Would he demote him, raising another who would be more willing to fight as the Denraen needed?
Those thoughts flittered through his mind, leaving him with questions and a feeling of inadequacy.
Endric shook them off.
Where had that doubt come from? That wasn’t like him, even in his worst moments.
He didn’t care to fight any more than was necessary, but he wasn’t alone of the Denraen to feel that way. They prized the peace they stood for, but that didn’t mean the soldiers of the Denraen didn’t understand that they had another role to play, one that meant that they might be asked to fight, that they might need to kill. It wasn’t something they did lightly, but it was something they trained for and were skilled in.
More doubt crept through him, and he took a deep breath, pushing the thoughts away, and attacked.
He rolled to his right, toward what he thought was the nearest of the potential attackers. As he did, he flushed the man out, sending him scrambling back.
Endric thrust with his knife, jabbing and then slicing at the same time, swinging around with a hard arc meant to harm whoever might be there. He heard a grunt and lunged forward.
This time, he didn’t have the same advantage of surprise. He might have caught the last man off guard, but this one knew something had changed.
Endric stayed low, hidden in the grasses. That was as much advantage as anything.
When he neared, he found a knife pointed at him.
Rolling to the side, he avoided the knife and collided with another attacker.
He stabbed and this time, he caught the other man in the side. He jabbed again for good measure, kicking him away. Endric turned toward the other attacker an
d kicked again, managing to send him tumbling away.
Someone grabbed at his ankle.
Endric kicked, spinning around as he did, thankful for the lessons in hand to hand combat from Listain. In close combat like this, he wouldn’t fare so well without them. It was something he had to thank Listain for if he survived.
Someone neared, and he jabbed with his knife, sliding to his left as he did. Another attack came toward his head, and he flipped his legs around, spinning so that he caught the man in the temple, knocking him down.
How many remained?
There was no other movement.
Endric paused, his breathing heavy as he strained to listen, worried that something else might come at him. If it did, he would be ready.
None did.
He let out a breath and surveyed the grasses around him. The attack had disrupted them, leaving a pattern, a trampled patch where he and the others had been. Endric would have to move, would have to get to Pendin and the other Denraen before they were noticed.
Unless they already had been.
There was the possibility that someone else had been here, that someone had managed to get away.
If that were the case, then the rest of the army they approached would already know.
Had he placed Senda in more danger?
He’d come hoping to help discover what had happened, thinking that if nothing else, he would find a way to sneak in and try to rescue her, but maybe he would be the reason she was harmed.
Endric crouched, keeping his head low as he looked around, but saw nothing around him. There was no sign of movement.
He stared at the grasses, scanning them, looking for something, and finally found it, snaking its way toward the east.
A narrow trail.
It continued to move, quickly streaking away from him.
Endric debated. Did he return to Pendin or did he go after the escaping attacker?
Soldier Sword (The Teralin Sword Book 2) Page 18