“You’ll be as safe as you can expect here,” Targon said, shrugging. “Unless they know where the ford is at, the river will cause them some pause,” he continued, “and the Blackthorn Forest is practically impassable for anyone. I myself don’t dare venture too far inside it. Though I live on its borders, it’s not natural.” Targon’s voice trailed off to a whisper.
Will nodded his head in agreement. “I’ve heard weird tales meself, lad, about these here woods. Amazing any of you have the courage to live this close to it. Now seeing it for meself up close, I wouldn’t want a tour of its innards, to be sure.”
“Well, that is why we are called wood-folk,” responded Targon. “We are used to living on the frontier, and we know the way of the wild woods. Still, I must go soon, and you are right: I’ll get me some sleep first, but what if the Kesh cutthroats arrive?”
“They can have me, for all I care,” Will said, smiling, and finally laid his head down on a wrapped piece of dirty linen. “Do you think the women are all right?”
“They are probably already asleep and not thinking of us,” Targon said, laying his head down and, in the glow of the sunshine, closing his eyes, and sleep quickly took him.
The old man watched silently from the forest as the two men on the rock finally finished their conversation and lay quietly. He wore an old brown cloak, worn but clean, tattered but well sewn at the seams, and he carried a gnarled wooden oak staff. His head was hoodless and capless, balding a bit, but other than that, unadorned. After a moment, he motioned with his left arm and laid it out horizontally bent at a ninety-degree angle like a perch. A falcon glided in from out of sight and landed on the old man’s arm. “Come, Argyll, show me what you have seen,” the old man whispered, and with that, he turned and headed back into the forest from which he came.
Targon allowed the sun to dry and warm him thoroughly before rousing himself from the large granite rock. He had slept, of course, and while not wise to be lackadaisical in their actions, the simple truth of the matter was that the entire group was too exhausted from the battle the night before and the long overnight journey to care much. Besides, Targon calculated from the lumbering slow march of the lock carts he had seen in Korwell that it would take at least two days for them to pass the old keep, assuming they moved only during the day. They were heavily loaded, and when one included the logistics involved of feeding and organizing such a large caravan, he doubted they would even make that time. Nevertheless, his family, as well as Marissa’s family, could be there even now, and that drove Targon into action.
He had a plan, and resting half a day was actually advantageous to it. The old family hunting blind was just over a half day’s walk up the Rapid River and then slightly east by a couple of miles, and he fully intended to return there once the sun had set. From there, he could make for the trade road and see if the Kesh slave caravan had passed, in which case he would follow, or yet to pass, in which case he would lie in wait for it to arrive. Either way, he wanted to use the dark of night as cover to find it and free his family. He was brave but not stupid. Thirty carts with nearly a hundred brigands was too much for him to take on in a fight, but now he intended to use a different tactic. Now he would utilize stealth and show these thieves what the word “sneaky” really meant.
“Hoi, Will,” he said, leaning over and nudging Will’s leg.
“What!” Will almost yelled, startled from his sleep, his good arm reaching for his sword.
Targon pulled back and then whispered loudly, “Quiet, you fool, you’ll wake the dead with that screaming. Don’t you city folk know how to lay low?”
Will looked over at him and then around and remembered his current situation. “Yeah, right, sorry.”
Targon half thought the aging guardsman was still dreaming about the attack, though nightmare would be a better word to describe it. “No worries, we have been lying out in the open for the entire morning, so any brigand around could have spotted us, but just the same, if they were close, I’d prefer we don’t alert them to our presence. From what I could tell, they had trackers of their own. That is how they found you at the crevice.”
Stretching out a bit, the large man suddenly stood, yawning while extending his good arm and flinching halfway through as his injured left arm reflexively tried to stretch out as well. “Ow! That hurts!” He cradled his injured arm in his good one. “Nasty cut. I’ll probably need more than just a bandage.” He finished talking, then started to wobble on his legs.
Cedric was coming to as well with all the noise, and he jumped up to help the aging guardsman so he didn’t fall. “Damn, you’re heavy,” he exclaimed as Will allowed the weight of his body to rest on Cedric’s shoulder, letting his right arm wrap around and use the young man as support.
“I think you’ve lost too much blood, Will,” Targon chimed in. “Best get you to the blind and have that wound looked at.”
With that, Targon roused the others, who were none too happy to have had their sleep interrupted after only a few hours, but they knew they were tempting their luck just sitting on a rock along the Rapid River in plain sight, and once rested, they were thinking more clearly now. The group quickly dressed, and Horace helped hold Will steady while Cedric took his turn. With a heave, Targon carried little Karz across the water, stepping on the slightly submerged boulders and then putting him on the dry ground. No need to get everyone’s feet wet again, he thought to himself. Soon, they were back at the blind, which was dark and quiet.
“Agatha,” Targon whispered, first faintly and then louder. He rapped on the door for a second and hissed her name again. “Agatha!”
He could have opened the creaky door himself, but he wasn’t sure what state of dress, if any, the ladies inside were currently in, and he called Agatha’s name first because he feared her the most of any of the ladies. He did not want to get hit in the head with her black pot. The door did open finally, but it was Marissa, not Agatha.
“Hullo, master scout,” she said, a smile on her face. “Is it time to get up?”
“Yes, Will needs help, and we have work to do. Can you rouse the others?” he asked, smiling in return.
“Right away,” she responded, and quickly shut the door again. Before he could step a few steps back, there came a nasty retort in Agatha’s raspy but distinct voice.
“Time to rouse, he says? I’ll rouse him right upside his small little head, I will.”
Targon was thankful Marissa had answered his call instead, but it was apparent Marissa had indeed done a fine job of rousing the women. There were murmurs and rumblings, and soon, it seemed the entire blind was alive with chatter as the women inside either complained or made threats of all the things they would do when they saw him again. A short time later Lady Salina appeared trying to desperately brush her hair with her hands and just ended up making it look worse.
“Is everything all right?” she asked, looking around at the silent group of men and then just realizing how loud they were back in the blind.
“Fine out here, but Will is hurt and most likely in need of a seamstress now. He needs stitches. The bandage is getting too loose, and he has lost a lot of blood,” he said, nodding in Will’s direction. “Oh, and one more thing, can any of you city folk do or say anything below a roar?”
“Yes, sorry, I’ll have them tone it down,” she said as she headed back to the shack after looking warily at a very pale Will. The group of men seemed wiser than most as they kept a good distance from the nearly invisible blind.
The noise quickly subsided, and Targon breathed a small sigh of relief before he heard the raspy voice of death again. “Well, why didn’t them blockheads say something sooner?” And quickly, Agatha appeared just as sleepy-eyed and disheveled as Lady Salina. With one look at Will, she motioned for them to follow.
“I’m fine,” replied Will a bit sheepishly. “Nothing I haven’t experienced before.”
“I
’m pretty sure you haven’t experienced death, you old lump of lead,” Agatha said as they entered the blind. “Out, all you ladies make room, injured man coming in.”
The ladies and young girls scampered out like mice being shooed with a broom. The blind was almost unfurnished, but there were two pieces of a tree log that were moved into the corner and were used as chairs. Pulling them out a bit, Agatha nodded for Cedric to help the injured Will and motioned for them to sit. “Now, let me have a looksee,” she said, sitting on the last remaining log and unwrapping the makeshift bandages from his arm. “By Dor Akun’s passing!” she exclaimed as the wraps came off and she got a good look at Will’s arm. Only Cedric, Targon, and the lady Agatha remained with them in the blind.
“That looks nasty,” Cedric said, a sour look on his face.
“Not as nasty as you, you pompous cockatoo,” Will fired back, a smile on his face, but Cedric seemed offended anyway.
“Cockatoo, what the heck is a cockatoo?” was all he could mutter.
“Not now, you two,” Lady Salina quickly said, jumping in to prevent another outburst from a surly Agatha. “Cedric, go outside and wait with the others. In fact, see to it they stay near the blind and don’t stray too far. Keep a close eye on your brother while you’re at it.”
Cedric looked at his mother and then back to Will, but one look at Agatha and he headed out quickly. Agatha worked in silence, seeming to understand the urgency of the situation now, and Lady Salina started to rip strips of cloth from the remains of a tattered blanket they had used earlier to bind Will’s wound. “We are going to need to boil some water, so we are going to need a fire, Kesh scum or no. I’m going to need a needle and some thread as well. You hear me, lad?” she said, looking at Targon.
“The name is Targon, not lad,” he responded. “I think a small fire just outside would be acceptable.”
“Much appreciated, Targon,” Will said, smiling and closing his eyes at the same time as he hunched back against the wall.
Targon left the blind, and Lady Salina followed. The rest of the group was sitting or lying around the ground just east of the blind and away from the Rapid River, which was barely audible in the background. “Cedric, Marissa, Thomas, see if you can find some firewood nearby, but don’t stray out of sight of the blind.” The three nodded and headed off, looking for dry wood. “Yolanda, you and Emelda help Celeste and Olga with the little ones,” Salina said, nodding at the small group of children, including her own Karz. “Horace, can you keep watch? I want a moment alone with Targon.”
“Consider it done, my lady,” Horace said, standing and moving to a better spot to keep an eye on the surrounding area.
“Good, thank you, sir,” she said, nodding in appreciation. “Come, Targon, may I have a word with you?”
Targon nodded and followed Lady Salina around the blind and back toward the river. Before they had reached it, they came near to the riverbank where a tree had fallen. She sat down, motioning for him to follow. Targon nodded, sitting on the same tree log she did, facing the river and looking carefully both upstream and downstream.
“I know you want to find your family much like I would like to find my husband,” she started, looking first down at her dirty dress and then back up at the shimmering, fast running water of the river, “but we need help and I fear none of us are up to the task. Will is seriously injured and needs medical attention, and we have eaten the last of our meager food supplies. I don’t know what to do, and there are so many of us. Will you not help us first before going after your family?”
Targon pondered her request, knowing full well that with each passing day, the chances for finding his family became less and less. “My heart tells me to go and to go now, but my head tells me my mother would want me to help you first,” he concluded.
Salina gently placed her left hand on Targon’s right arm. “Your mother sounds like a wonderful person, and she would be proud of you, not for what you are about to do but for what you’ve already done.”
“I fear I’ve already failed her.”
“You have not failed her, and you have not failed us,” Salina said, looking him now in the eye. “You are young and I hate to ask so much of you, but we need you now and I fear what will happen to us without your help.”
“I will stay one more day, then,” Targon responded, sighing a bit as he internally finalized his decision. “Those damn carts can’t be that fast: I’m sure I’ll catch them on the road. What do you need?”
Salina squeezed his arm. “Thank you, Master Targon, you are a true gentleman. First, we need to help Will. Sepsis will soon set in if we don’t clean out the infection and sew his cut up. The bandages worked to stop the bleeding, but the arm won’t heal if left open. I am afraid we have no sewing supplies, but we need something from somewhere. It is a long journey back to Korwell, but perhaps we can scavenge something from nearby?”
“They burned all the homesteads as far as I could tell,” Targon sullenly said, hanging his head down and thinking of his own home. “No, wait. I killed the cutthroats at my home just before the attack started. It might be intact, and if so, my mother had a few small needles and some threads she used to mend our clothes. I can’t be sure, but it’s worth a look.” now getting eager to return to his home and see if it was still standing.
“That would be worth a look indeed,” she said, smiling at him. “A more pressing need now, too, is food. I’m afraid us city folk aren’t accustomed to hunting. These are your lands, no? Is there anything nearby for us to eat?”
“Let me think about this for a minute,” he said, holding his chin now in his left arm. “Normally I try for wild rabbits, but they don’t usually come out during the middle of the day, fearful of the hawks, I think, and I doubt we’ll see any deer with this many of you city folk both yapping too loudly and stinking to high heaven of city smells, so that just leaves scant options for now, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Well, I’m sure anything you can come up with will be much appreciated by us city folk,” she said with a chuckle, “and I thought you smelled!” With that, the two stood up, Targon taking a good long glance both upriver and down it. Seeing nothing threatening, he and Salina returned to the blind and entered. Will was slumped against the wall in a semi-seated position, eyes closed, labored breathing. But breathing is good, thought Targon. Agatha shook her head and returned to cleaning the wound with a damp rag.
Targon headed into the forest, passing the three young wood gatherers as he went, but there were no words exchanged between them. Even Marissa kept quite as they trundled back with three armfuls of wood. Targon noted they were all hardwoods and dry, which was good because they sent out minimal smoke and would be harder to detect and they didn’t smell the way some willow wood and ash did when moist.
Targon was in search of something, a flower called the Arella. The flower itself wasn’t special, but the few leaves at its base were. Many years ago, when his mother and brother were sick, his grandfather, Luc, showed him how to find the flower and how to pull it by its root so as to keep the flower and leaves moist. Julia would then put the leaves in a pot of boiling water and use it to wipe their foreheads when they had a fever. She would also put a few leaves in clean water and brew a tea-like drink for them. He knew it had healing properties, and some months later, when Myrtle was attacked by a small cougar from the mountains, Grandfather Luc used the leaves, after boiling them and squashing them in a bowl, on the actual claw marks to save their sole dairy cow.
The flower, however, contrary to popular thought, did not like very wet climates nor extremely hot ones, either, so he wasn’t really going to find it near the river or deep in the forest where there was little sunlight. He needed high ground, and his grandfather, Luc, had taken him up into the Border Mountains where they found many of the plant in a high-elevation meadow. Targon knew from experience, however, that in a few places between the Rapid River and
Blackthorn Forest, along the old game trail he had used to travel between the blind and home, there were a few locations where the flower thrived. He headed to the closest one and arrived there, north of the blind, in about half an hour. Quickly, he managed to pull a total of seven of the flowers from the forest meadow and returned to the group.
He quickly stopped as he approached and took in the area. He had been gone for only an hour and already the entire area looked different. He first saw both Marissa with an armful of pinecones and Thomas with a large tree branch in his hands, stooped over and swiping it on the ground from side to side and walking backward toward the blind. Just to the east of the blind, on the forest side, a new ring of fallen tree leaves, tree branches, and grasses were piled high around the entire side of the blind, forming a semicircle.
At first, he was angry, thinking they had ruined the entire camouflage of the blind. The whole purpose of it was to look natural and remain well hidden so any deer or other game animals would approach it. Then he realized he was looking at it from his perspective with a keen eye toward hunting. He was sure any game or deer would steer clear from the area based on smell alone, but now looking at it in the dimness of the forest trees, he realized it would be hard to see that there was some sort of a structure hidden amidst the trees, bushes, and grasses unless one were to specifically look for it.
He could see Cedric approaching him now, and he continued walking to meet him near the blind. “Thought you had left us,” Cedric said, smiling and seeming content with himself.
“What is all this?” Targon replied.
“This is our new defense. Not exactly what I would have wanted after living in a castle built hundreds of years ago, but I think it will do.”
“What gave you this idea?”
“Well, Mother said we were staying here for a while and that we needed to start a fire, so I decided I’d start work on our defensive fortifications.”
Ranger Rising: Claire-Agon Ranger Book 1 (Ranger Series) Page 12