by C. L. Werner
‘There was no luck in my finding you,’ the bounty hunter said, turning his eyes toward Pleasant. ‘I followed you from the tavern.’
‘Followed us?’ Pleasant asked. ‘Then you have reconsidered the commission from the Viscount de Chegney?’ Hope flared in the seneschal’s devious heart.
‘Reconsidered?’ there was actually a suggestion of mirth in the bounty killer’s voice as he repeated the Bretonnian’s comment. ‘I intended to take the job the moment you sat at my table.’
Pleasant’s eyes sharpened, his face screwing into a suspicious leer. ‘Then why did you refuse my offer?’
Brunner rose and stalked toward the other side of the lane. The ruffian the bodyguard had smashed with his shield was trying to crawl away. Brunner set a booted heel against the man’s broken leg, pinning him in place and bringing a fresh cry of pain from the robber.
‘You made yourself a target, showing your wealth in such a den of jackals,’ the bounty hunter shook his head. ‘I had to see what sort of rats would scurry out of the shadows to relieve you of that fat pouch of gold.’ Brunner looked down at the groaning man at his feet. ‘Though I must say I am less than impressed by the results. I doubt if I shall get more than thirty silver for these sorry cutthroats.’
‘You used me as bait!’ howled Pleasant. His earlier glee at the bounty hunter’s acceptance of the viscount’s commission had once again been overtaken by a fervent desire to see the arrogant commoner painfully put back in his place.
‘I would prefer to think of it as seizing an opportunity that presented itself.’ Brunner returned his attention to the man at his feet.
‘I trust that you will show more expediency in retrieving the viscount’s grandson,’ Pleasant declared, choking down the more choice words that threatened to explode from his mouth. ‘Time is of the essence in this matter.’
‘I just have a few things to finish here,’ Brunner said, still considering the man at his feet. ‘If time is so valuable, I suggest you attend to effecting your return to Bretonnia. You can give me the details I will require on the road.’
Pleasant bristled under the bounty killer’s tone. He, a viscount’s seneschal, was being dismissed by a hired sword? Perhaps there was truth in the rumours of Brunner’s noble birth; Pleasant had never encountered such audacity in anyone that did not have some manner of breeding in their background. With a sharp word to his bodyguard, the fuming seneschal turned away from the bounty hunter.
‘Oh, messenger,’ Brunner called after the Bretonnian. Pleasant turned to face the killer again. Brunner held a gloved hand in the Bretonnian’s direction. ‘The hundred gold crowns.’ With a muttered oath, Pleasant savagely dug the pouch from the pocket within his tunic and tossed it to the bounty hunter. Brunner caught the jingling sack one-handed and tucked it into his belt.
The bounty hunter casually set a few more sticks into the circle of his campfire and unlimbered his packhorse of its tack and harness, hobbling the animal’s legs to keep it from wandering too far. His riding horse, a magnificent bay, he left untethered. There were few things the bounty hunter placed any trust in, but the fealty of his Bretonnian warhorse was one. He could be certain that the animal would stay by his side, come fire or sorcery. Brunner patted the great horse’s muzzle with a black gloved hand and returned to preparing his camp.
As Brunner continued to arrange his packs and blankets, the bounty hunter’s attention was only minimally upon his task. This was the place Pleasant had named as the rendezvous with the kidnappers. Brunner had a deep knowledge of this region, certainly a more intimate familiarity than a rabble of Tilean mercenaries could acquire in a few months of employment. He had counted three men watching the barren glade from supposed places of concealment. He could have easily disposed of them but he had no way of knowing what other precautions the ransomers might have made against any treachery on the part of the viscount. Brunner had thus ridden into the lurking mercenaries’ supposed control, and prepared to let the Tileans make the next move.
Brunner settled himself down upon a blanket, propping his back against his saddle. The killer faced the fire, seemingly unconcerned by what might be transpiring in the trees all around him. But the bounty hunter’s steely gaze was all the time scanning the edges of the clearing, all the time his ears were listening for the sharp crack of a twig or the rustle of a branch. Beneath the cover of his blanket, Brunner’s hands kept a loose grip upon his weapons.
‘Hallo to camp,’ an accented Tilean voice shouted from the darkness. ‘May I share your fire?’ There was a note of question as well as suspicion in the Tilean’s voice. Brunner allowed himself an inward smile. His elaborately staged calmness and unconcern had disarmed the men. They were unsure if he was the man they were expecting or just some chance wanderer who had muddled along into their affairs.
‘Provided you be no Ulricite zealot, please yourself,’ the bounty hunter called back.
That reply should further disorder the villain’s mind, Brunner thought.
The Tilean strode forward, the fire revealing his olive-hued features. He was a young man, a bright slash of a duelling scar across his cheek, a thin moustache worming its way across his lip. The mercenary wore a suit of loose-fitting armour, a broadsword at his hip and a crossbow slung over his back. Even as the man strolled forward with a seemingly casual swagger, he rested a hand on the pommel of his blade.
‘I might be spending a cold night in the crook of a tree,’ the Tilean said, his eyes taking in Brunner’s figure, a smile flickering on his face as he saw the sword and other weapons resting near the reclining man. Near enough to reach should any visitor to his camp think to cause him any trouble, but not near enough to reach should that visitor have friends lurking in the dark with crossbows trained upon the warrior before that trouble began.
‘Then, by all means, warm yourself.’ Brunner offered, inclining his head towards the fire. The Tilean advanced, making a display of warming his left hand above the dancing tongues of flame. His other hand still hung at his side, casually resting on the pommel of his sword.
‘It is by Taal’s grace that I saw your fire,’ the Tilean commented, his eyes still studying what he could see of the face below the visor of his host’s helm. ‘How came you to be in this blighted place?’
‘I should ask you the same question,’ Brunner replied, his gaze piercing that of the mercenary.
‘My horse threw me,’ the mercenary answered. ‘I was acting as an outrider for a wine merchant who hopes to establish a new route through the pass to sell his grapes in the Empire. I must have ridden too far out for them to hear my oaths as the wretched pony unseated me and ran into the hills. You can be sure I will have some words with the man who sold me that gangly brute.’
A smile appeared on Brunner’s face. He had been listening to the creaks and cracks emanating from the dark, gauging the position of those who made the sounds. His watchers had drawn closer, eager to catch every word of the exchange.
‘Strange,’ Brunner said, spitting into the dust. He fastened his eyes on the Tilean once more, the mouth below the black slash of his helm split in a mocking smile. ‘Do you not find it strange that a wine merchant would employ a foreigner as an outrider, rather than a man native to the region?’
An angry snarl appeared on the Tilean’s features. An accomplished liar the man might not be, but to be caught in a lie was insulting to him all the same. The blade at his side flew from its sheath, the firelight dancing in the exposed fang of steel.
Thunder and smoke rose from the reclining figure on the blankets. Fiery pain blazed into the Tilean’s chest, pitching him backward with such force that he crashed upon his back in the campfire. The mercenary’s body rolled from the flames, his armour smoking, a wail of suffering rising from his throat.
The violent flash and boom of the discharge of the blackpowder gun the bounty hunter had fired through the fabric of the blanket momentarily startled and disoriented the two crossbowmen in the trees. The veteran killers did
not hesitate for more than a breath before snapping the strings of their weapons, sending two steel bolts slamming into the target they had carefully marked. But in the thick grey smoke, the Tileans were not able to see that their would-be victim had thrown himself into motion even as the crack and boom of the gun’s firing resounded across the night. Brunner had flung his body to the side at once, rolling away from the blankets and the saddle, away from the carefully laid out weapons to the left of his previous position. One bolt impacted in the centre of the blanket; another struck midway between the blanket and the weapons.
Brunner kicked aside the pack of provisions, lifting a pair of slender crossbow pistols he had secreted beneath the leather bags. Brunner sent one missile crashing into the chest of the crossbowman to his left before the mercenary even had time to register the fact that his prey had escaped his carefully prepared shot. The second man had a single moment to react as Bruenner spun the second crossbow in his direction. Panic seized the man and instead of dropping to the ground, the Tilean fumbled at his weapon, trying to reload it. The bounty hunter’s bolt punched through the wooden stock of the Tilean’s weapon and embedded itself in the man’s lung. The mercenary fell then, a fraction of a second too late to save his life.
Brunner strode across the clearing, fetching up his sword from the display of weapons and calmly walked over to the still writhing man he had peppered with the blast of his firearm. The Tilean was cursing freely, his body wracked with pain. As he sensed his enemy drawing near, the Tilean stretched a bloodied hand towards his sword. Brunner set his boot on the mercenary’s hand. He flipped the mercenary onto his back with his other foot. The armour was flecked in blood and pitted by the small steel pellets the bounty killer’s gun had disgorged.
‘You’re lucky,’ Brunner observed as the Tilean’s face twisted into a grimace. ‘The armour stopped most of the impact. The shot barely nipped your skin.’ In truth, Brunner had been thankful for that armour. He needed one of the men alive.
‘In case you are wondering,’ Brunner said, turning his eyes from the wound in the mercenary’s chest to the man’s face, Viscount de Chegney did send me.’ The information brought a groan not entirely of pain from the Tilean. ‘He wants his grandson back, but he prefers to pay for him with steel instead of gold.’ The bounty hunter put all of his weight to the boot crushing the man’s hand, bringing a new cry of pain. ‘Perhaps you would like to tell me where the viscount’s heir is?’
‘If I tell you, how do I know you won’t kill me?’ the Tilean snarled through clenched teeth. Brunner favoured the man with a frigid smile.
‘Because if I killed you after you lied to me and made me lose the bounty the viscount is offering for his grandson, I wouldn’t be able to kill you later for lying to me.’ Brunner ground the mercenary’s hand under his heel, twisting the broken bones against one another, wrenching another cry from his prisoner. ‘So, where are your friends hiding?’
Under cover of night, Brunner replaced his gear on his packhorse and threw his saddle onto the back of the towering bay. He spared a single glance at the man he had tied to the trunk of the gnarled old tree the locals called the Wizard’s Bones. The Tilean glared back at him from above the linen gag the bounty hunter had shoved down his throat.
‘You seem to harbour me some ill will,’ Brunner commented as he lifted himself onto the back of his charger. ‘Perhaps you have called down all manner of curses on my head.’ Brunner smiled beneath his helm. ‘But consider this. If your friends kill me, do you think they will come back here looking for you? Do you think anybody is going to happen along here before hunger or thirst does for you? Or perhaps a pack of wolves will decide to pick your bones clean before that.’
Brunner clicked his tongue and turned his steed’s head away from the clearing.
‘Just something to keep your mind occupied,’ the bounty hunter said, as he disappeared into the night.
The lonely grey tower stabbed into the night sky like the defiant fist of some fallen giant. Brambles and weeds encircled the structure, choking doorways and windows with dry brittle limbs. Massive grey stones littered the ground all about the forlorn tower, falling prey to the same verminous growths that had surrounded the fort from which they had fallen.
Cold, hard eyes gazed at the tower from the shadows of the forest. Brunner noted the faint flicker of firelight in one of the lower windows of the tower. The captured ransom collector had told the bounty killer the truth, but, then, Brunner had never doubted that he would. Perhaps the bounty hunter would even hold to his part of the bargain and return for the man before the wolves made a meal of him.
Brunner considered the tower. Once there would have been a scarlet pennant flying from the now broken roof, displaying the drake rampant that was the device of the Baron von Drakenburg. Once there would have been four sentries patrolling the rampart that peeped from below that roof, each dressed in the von Drakenburg livery, each a veteran marksman, for the Baron von Drakenburg would hire only the most capable of men. The face beneath the black helm smiled mirthlessly. Perhaps the baron had not been such a good judge of men, for he had been betrayed in the end, after all. Although, it had to be admitted, that even the traitor had been very capable.
Brunner studied the rampart again, satisfying himself that only a single man patrolled the roof, a weary looking Tilean with a crossbow who barely spared a glance towards the forest as he made his regular sweep of the battlement. Brunner watched the mercenary, studying his regular, unvaried movements. The sentry was slipping into that dire, inattentive boredom that always threatened to dull a sentinel’s wariness. With the man’s mind wandering away from the tedium of his duties, his eyes might miss a dark shape emerging from the cover of the forest. No doubt his watchfulness was not so far-gone that he would fail to see that same figure creep to the base of the tower itself. But there would be no need for the bounty hunter to test the guard’s capability that far.
Brunner made his way to a large overgrown bush, a massive thorny brute that promised no berries or leaves to any that might show interest in it, only the sting of dagger-like nettles. Brunner grabbed the bush, pulling it back from the small rise it leaned upon. As the bush moved, a dark opening revealed itself, a hole that dug its way into the rubble-strewn plain. Without hesitation, the bounty hunter worked his body past the unwholesome plant and into the darkness of the narrow tunnel. A predatory smile crossed Brunner’s features. The Tileans might have made the fortalice their lair, but they would soon discover that they knew very little about their temporary stronghold.
The mercenary wiped the crust from his eyes and refocused his attention on the dim landscape beyond the fortalice. The narrow window afforded only a slight view of the terrain, but Ursio had wanted a man stationed here just the same. He was taking no chances that any party of the viscount’s knights bent on revenge would fall upon the mercenaries without warning. Hence Ursio had placed two watch-points, one atop the tower, in the ruin of its roof, and a second here, in a damp room midway up the tower’s height. The wily captain was always a careful man. Men sneaking up on the tower might see the sentry above, and hide themselves from his vision, but having seen one sentinel, they would not think to look for a second and would perhaps reveal themselves to the concealed watchman.
It was a sound theory, but it did not change the fact that the Tilean’s post was a cold, dreary and boring one. Not for the first time, the Tilean began to recite old ballads to himself, imagining the times when he had first heard them, carousing with his comrades through the taverns of Luccini after a successful campaign.
The mercenary’s soft humming ended in a ghastly gurgle as blood bubbled into his throat. He toppled forward, his body sliding off the dagger blade that had neatly punctured the back of his neck.
‘You were off key,’ the grim figure of the mercenary’s killer stated, wiping the blood off the dagger with a bit of rag. Brunner turned away from the corpse and made his way back to the far wall of the chamber. His gloved hand
caressed a worn stone several inches above the height of his head. Soundlessly, the wall sank inward. Brunner waited a moment, then slipped into the darkness from which he had emerged to kill the watchman.
Brunner emerged from the shadows that claimed the collapsed section of tile and timber which sagged across the greater portion of the roof. He watched the Tilean crossbowman making his rounds for a moment. The bounty hunter had finished scouting the tower. He had found that there were nine villains within it. Three were bivouacked in a long chamber that had once served as a barracks for the tower, busily playing at dice, gambling with the ransom money they had not yet earned. Another had been keeping watch over the horses, though now the horses were keeping watch over his body.
Three others, one of whom he took to be the leader, were with the child and a nursemaid, busily plotting a triumphant return to Tilea and the strengthening of their depleted band. The other two had been the watchmen, the dead one below and the man death now stalked.
The drowsy sentinel finished his circuit and turned to retrace his steps. His mouth dropped open in shock as he found himself face to face with an armoured figure, its face hidden within a helmet of blackened steel. Icy eyes burned back into the young Tilean’s stunned gaze.
A sharp stabbing agony shot up the left side of the mercenary’s body and the crossbow clattered to the stone floor. The bounty hunter withdrew a bloody fang of steel, the same he had already used to send two of this man’s companions to Morr’s realm this night. The young mercenary gasped as the pain seared into his vitals and blood seeped from his side. The bounty hunter’s gloved hands gripped the wounded man’s body. He turned the sentry towards the crenelated wall. Stealth had played its part. Now it was time to let the sheep know that the wolf had arrived.