“Those were trolls that attacked,” Gallarael said defensively. She knew she’d seen a troll. “My father doesn’t command mountain creatures.”
“Trolls don’t use bows, girl,” Vanx chuckled over his shoulder. “The bandits sent to murder me were careless. They were followed right into our camp by the bloodthirsty fiends.” The emphasis he put on the word murder wasn’t lost on her. “The bandits killed Amden and the rest of the slaves before the trolls descended on the mess.”
“Oh, the poor captain, and Sterven Trent,” Gallarael leaned deeper into Trevin. “He was a good man, one of mother’s favorites.”
Trevin resisted saying the first thing that came to his mind, as did Vanx. Trevin saw that it was a struggle for the slave to hold his tongue. Then Vanx turned and spoke to Gallarael kindly.
“Your father meant to have them all murdered, and poor Captain Moyle was part of the plot.” Vanx lifted his fierce, sea-green eyes to meet Trevin’s, and then he met hers again. “When we get to Parydon you will set this all straight, Gallarael. I’ll not spend the rest of my life avoiding kingdom lands or hiding like a thief. I did nothing wrong but fall prey to the wrong woman’s advances.”
“How can you ask me to speak against my own father?” Gallarael looked back to Trevin for help. He winced, and for the first time began to see Vanx’s side of it. He too had once been in the duchess’s sights, but was saved by Gallarael’s affections. Had Gallarael not told her mother of her feelings, he would have become another notch in the duchess’s bedpost.
“He’s not your real father,” Trevin reminded. “Monster was the word you used, if my memory serves.”
Gallarael slumped in the saddle. Duke Martin wasn’t her true father, but he didn’t know it. Her mother claimed that her real father was someone far more important than the power-drunk Duke of Highlake. Still, Humbrick Martin loved her, and thought she was a child of his own loins. He treated her with more love and affection than any princess of the kingdom could have asked for, but he was a hard and vile monster to those beneath him. Her heart and mind were spinning, knowing that she might have to accuse him of trying to murder the caravan folk just to kill Vanx. To add to the confusion, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her trollop of a mother would be delighted by it all. She didn’t understand why her mother despised the duke so openly. It was clear that she felt no love for him.
A thought occurred to her and she voiced her concern.
“How do you know that Captain Moyle was involved in all of this?” She was asking Vanx, but Trevin answered.
“I’m not so sure as our friend here.”
Vanx then explained how Captain Moyle had called the halt just an hour or so away from patrolled territory. He then gave his opinion of the caravan guards and of the choice of slaves the duke had gifted to Amden Gore, not to mention the unexpectedness of his generosity.
“If that is so, about where we made camp, then why didn’t Amden or any of the other haulers object when we stopped?” Gallarael asked.
Vanx chuckled. “They were too busy worrying about getting a turn with Matty.”
It was dawn by the time Vanx finished explaining. The young haulkatten was exhausted, as were he and Trevin. After the animal was fed a generous issue of fish meal, and unloaded, a bit of dried meat was shared amongst them. Gallarael offered to keep watch while the two men napped. Vanx was leery of Trevin, afraid that he and the girl might subdue him while he was disadvantaged. To Vanx’s surprise, Trevin sensed his unease. The man gave his solemn word that he would do his best to help clear Vanx’s name. It was enough to ease his concerns and he fell into a deep sleep as soon as he lay back and closed his eyes.
As the sun crept into the sky, burning the morning mist away, Gregon ruined his dagger busting apart Matty’s leg chains. He refused to even attempt to get her shackles off. Matty knew that their presence marked her as property. Now that she had the chance to make a run at full freedom, she wasn’t about to let some lust-craved oaf ruin it. At the moment, she was trying to talk him into going back to the camp to see if they could find the slaver’s corpse and pilfer the key.
“While we’re there we can loot the corpses, or I could just kill you now and move on.”
“But, Gregon, if we get these things off of my ankles it won’t be so hard for me to do that thing you like so much.” She purred and licked her slightly parted lips with half-lidded eyes. Her heavy breasts were on full display and she squeezed her arms at her sides, making them swell.
The oaf cursed under his breath, but she knew she had him.
“We’ll go back and pilfer the lot of them bodies, wench,” Gregon snarled. “But I’m keeping the coin. I’ll use that slaver’s tools to get them shackles off your legs if we don’t find the key.” Gregon smiled a broken yellow grin. “After that, your pretty mouth better be keepin’ the promises that came out of it. If’n it don’t, I’ll bust it up.”
Captain Moyle didn’t wait for the mist to clear before sending Darbon out to search for a horse. The boy did as he was told, but only until he was out of the captain’s sight and lost in the foggy dawn. After that, Darbon ran blindly away from the camp and the mean old captain who meant him harm. Around a cut of rocky crags, and down a lush green, gently sloping hill, he ran. Through a thicket of thorny growth and past a gurgling brook, never seeing more than a dozen feet in front of him, he ran, and ran, and ran. Then he heard a noise behind him. Turning in mid-stride to see what it was, he found himself being pursued by one of the giant haulkattens. It pounced just as Darbon stumbled. The boy screamed, and then hot breath and clawed paws engulfed him as if he were no more than a baby rat to a castle mouser.
Captain Moyle found a horse and, after hearing the boy scream, figured him for dead. He’d probably fallen into a ravine, or gotten bitten by a snake. It didn’t matter, though. The fool boy wouldn’t survive in these parts alone, not for more than a few hours anyway.
The captain went back to the camp and took the time to load up a fat pack of rations, several water skins and a pair of fully stuffed quivers to go with his longbow. He waited there, thinking how much like a feast boar the slaver’s corpse smelled, until finally the sun burned the mist away.
Hearing nothing more from the boy, he hurried out of the camp to follow the haulkatten’s trail. Oddly, only a few hundred yards from the camp, he came across a fresh set of horse tracks. Upon further investigation he found that two horses had veered off to the south. The tracks were deep and defined enough that he felt certain the horses were ridden. Some of Duke Martin’s bandits maybe? Or a pair of fat bastard guards who deserted in the heat of battle? Whoever they were, they were witnesses to Duke Martin’s charade. With a sigh of frustration he marked in his mind where the tracks left the main trail. Finding Gallarael and returning her safely to her father had to be his priority. Tying up Duke Martin’s loose ends could be handled later. If it was a pair of the duke’s bandits, which it most likely was, then this trail really didn’t matter. Gallarael hadn’t left on a horse.
He doubted anyone other than the bandits would have left the trail for the Wilds. The homesteaded lands to the north were the safer route to take. As if to reinforce his thoughts, he came across one of the trails the haulkattens had made leaving the camp going north. With a self-satisfied grin, he heeled his horse into a trot, and told himself that the chase had begun.
Not long after, Gregon and Matty plodded back up the trail into the camp. The sun’s warmth was ripening the corpses, and things were starting to buzz and flap about in a frenzy of carrion delight. Crows and fat green flies leapt from their feasts in noisy clouds, and big, thick-skinned buzzards screeched and opened their wings, hoping to scare away whatever it was that had come to threaten their meal. Matty leaned forward and heaved up a gutful of bile when she saw what lay under the hungry birds: half of a man here, an arm, shoulder and head there, and a half-eaten horse between them.
She could tell that Gregon had to hold down his gorge, too. He went about shooin
g the buzzards away so he could roll the bodies and loot their pouches. Matty went to a dead haulkatten’s pack frame and starting searching it. Most of the supplies had been ransacked. She did find a small sack of coins tucked next to a head-sized piece of iron ore, but she had to leave the prize when Gregon came stomping up behind her.
“The key,” he chuckled. “The slaver kept it with his coppers. I found him and his pouch charred to a crisp. Hell, wench, his arse was still sizzling in the coals.” He wiped some gore from his hands on a jerkin he had picked up. “I hope you’re ready to hold up your end of the bargain.”
Matty kept herself from vomiting again while Gregon knelt down behind her and unfastened the steel-banded clasps. She took in a deep breath and a thought struck her like a bolt of lightning. The last thing she wanted at that moment was his filthy sex. She was sickened, but thrilled as the first binding fell away. She bent down. Using the nub of her wrist and her good hand she hefted a chunk of ore, turned, and slammed it down into Gregon’s upturned grin with all she had. The only thing scarier than the way the piece of stone tore into the man’s flesh and bone, was the way that he stood, roared, and backhanded her right off of her feet. She tried to get up and run, but he was on her like a pouncing lion. Without hesitation, he rolled her onto her back and put his hands around her neck.
She felt her throat being crushed and fought futilely to breathe. Blood ran from his broken nose and mouth in thick streams. One of his eyes looked off to the side, while the other glared murder at her.
She beat at him with her fist and her stumped wrist, but it was no use. Blackness and the need to draw breath slowly overwhelmed her. In a last-ditch effort to break his grasp she twisted and flailed, but it was too late. Her air-starved body had grown too weak to resist. Oddly, the last thing she saw before blackness consumed her was a huge shadow falling across her and her killer. After that, there was nothing.
CHAPTER FIVE
Far to the east they trace their lines
from Harthgar and Dakahn.
They’ve pinkened skin and dullard eyes
but their will is iron hard.
— Balladamned (a Zythian song)
“Can’t we go around?” Gallarael asked as they finished off an afternoon meal of dried beef and started packing up their gear. The past two days they’d seen nothing but rolling foothills marked with small copses of elm, oak and pine. Every so often, huge outcroppings of grey stone seemed to grow out of the earth like jagged boils on emerald skin. Not too far ahead of them, they could see the dark tree line of the Wildwood.
“If you want to be out here for another turn of the moon or more we could go around,” Vanx replied with a shake of his head. He had to admit the stretch of forested valley that spread out below them did look daunting. To go around it would take weeks.
“My da once told me that no one ever comes back out of the Wildwood to tell what’s in it.” This from Trevin, and though he said the words jokingly, his expression told Vanx that he was afraid.
Vanx gave the dark forest another look and grinned. He’d left the island of Zyth to explore the world beyond. He was on a quest of enlightenment, a ritual that all young Zythian men undertook as they came of age. Most Zythians traveled by ship to the distant lands of Harthgar and Zarn where their race has deep-rooted cities and safe havens. Most humans, including Parydonians, had a mistrust of Zyths. Only the fact that Vanx didn’t look Zythian allowed him to roam Parydon without having to suffer the racism and underlying ill will of men.
There was no open hatred between the races or their kingdoms, and both traveled freely in the other’s realms, but the undercurrent of the times made for many a tense situation. The Zyths disliked the way the human population multiplied and spread like a plague. The humans were ever jealous of the Zythians’ crafting skills and long lives. Still, they’d managed to get along without warring with each other; but this, Vanx had been taught, was only because the humans hadn’t yet tried to settle on the Isle of Zyth.
Vanx chuckled out loud as the words of one of his old lesson masters came to him. “Humans will take root in any place that will allow them, save for those places they fear they cannot prevail.” The only three pieces of land that Vanx knew in the whole world where men hadn’t settled were Zyth, Dragon’s Island, and the Great Fire Sands. Even the Wilds couldn’t keep the persistent humans at bay forever. Already the well-protected walled cities of Dabbldwyn and their destination, Dyntalla, were booming along the coast of this untamed part of the world. The Wildwood, though, and the heart of the Wilds, still held enough unknown dangers to strike fear in the hearts of men. It would be a very long time before the roots of the humans’ so-called progress had a good hold here. Vanx had never ventured through the Wildwood, but over the years many of his people had; partly because humans were still afraid to go there, but primarily because there are herbs, roots, and animals in the gloomy forest that are sacred to his people’s customs, and used in the casting of many Zythian spells.
Those Zyths who went and sought the sacred items came home telling stories of stunted, black-scaled dragon spawn called wyvern that could reduce one to pieces with their dagger-sharp teeth and acidy saliva, and of wood trolls and the green-skinned ogres that hunted them both. They spoke of living trees that stalked the forest on bark-covered legs, and of wolves as big as haulkattens.
Vanx saw the tusk of a wild boar one Zythian had returned with. It was a curve as long as a child’s arm and as hard as quality steel. Vanx laughed as he climbed onto their haulkatten. If half of the tales he heard were true, then Gallarael and Trevin were right to fear the Wildwood. It never occurred to Vanx that maybe he should fear it, too.
“We’ll ride ‘til sunset,” Vanx said as he strapped down the gear the other two handed him. “We’ll get close, but I think that we can wait until morning to enter the forest.”
Vanx unstrapped a pair of bows and handed one to Trevin after he and Gallarael were situated. “String it, and keep a good eye on our rear. We wouldn’t want a big old ogre running up on us unchecked.”
Gallarael gasped. She gave Trevin an uneasy glance. “Do you think-” Her words trailed off at the intense look on her lover’s face.
“We’ll be all right, Gal.” It was clear the reassurance in his voice was forced, but he said it as he tested the draw on the bow and took the quiver of arrows Vanx was handing him.
“How long will we be in the Wildwood?” Gallarael asked Vanx, not trying at all to conceal her nervousness.
“Four, maybe five days.” Vanx heeled the haulkatten toward the dark green line ahead of them, jerking them into motion. “Then another three to the Dyntalla wall, if we make it through.”
“If we make-” Gallarael’s words were cut off this time by Vanx’s laughter.
Vanx’s laughter was cut off by the sharp-knuckled fist she slammed into his kidney from behind.
Trevin gave him a look and Vanx decided that he’d teased them enough. The group was silent as the haulkatten’s smooth gait carried them closer and closer to the dreaded Wildwood.
Captain Moyle was still on the hunt. He followed Vanx’s cleverly winding trail on the north side of the main passage for more than half a day. He finally realized he had been duped when he passed a marker he’d seen a few hours earlier, only from a different direction. By the time he made it back to the main trail and found where his prey had crossed into the Wilds, he’d wasted an entire day. Ever determined to catch his quarry and save Gallarael from the slave who took her, he traveled on through the night. Eventually he had to go on foot and lead his horse using the light of an oil lantern to see the trail he followed.
After a few twists of his ankle, and a near tumble into a dark crevice that had been formed over the eons by trickling water, he decided to stop before he got himself killed.
He didn’t build a fire, even though it would serve to keep the predators at bay. He wanted one, if only to keep the chill of the spring night from his bones. Instead, he hung the lantern in som
e scrub brush some twenty paces away and rolled out his blanket close to his picketed horse. He didn’t plan on sleeping long. Years of military training and field experience made him a light sleeper. The slightest snuffle of the horse would wake him. He kept his sword lying at his side and a strung bow within reach, then lay back and closed his eyes.
The captain dreamt of war and glory and the cheers of a welcoming crowd as he led his men proudly back from battle. Gallarael was there cheering for him. Then his dream shifted to a hot, sweaty affair where skin stuck to skin, and a fan of golden hair fell in his face while his young lover moaned on top of him.
The dream quickly vanished as he woke with a start. He opened his eyes in time to see a shadow cut through the glowing fog that settled over the area. The shadow meant that someone or something was between him and the dully glowing lantern.
A glance at his horse showed that it was afraid. It stood stock still with muscles taut, save for the nervous quivering of its flanks and its heavy intake of breath. Had its reins not been tied to the scrub, it would have bolted long ago.
“MUAALG!” A wet throaty sound came from nearby. “Muaalg,” it sounded again.
Still lying on his back, the Captain eased his blade from under the blanket and made sure the roughspun wool wouldn’t catch if he had to make a sudden move. He was about to bring himself to his feet when the shadow fell across him again.
The horse whinnied in fright behind him. The sound sent Captain Moyle’s heart to pounding, and no doubt drew the attention of the beast that was investigating the lantern light.
Moyle rolled to his feet to keep from getting hoofed in the face by his terrified horse. Once he was up he patted the animal on the rump, meaning to reassure it, but it flinched, snorted, and stamped its hooves on the ground.
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