To Astrid’s amusement neither of the mages seemed familiar with this form of breakfast. They moved in different circles but, a trifle dubiously, they spooned some down as they saw the others eagerly taking some and pouring honey on it. Theodora liked it, but it was a little strange for Rani.
From the smell that was drifting through the camp Stefan next had bacon and eggs and fried mushrooms ready. The mages were more used to this, but Ayesha just took the mushrooms and eggs. Knowing her tastes Stefan had fried some in a different pan to the bacon.
The day was uneventful. With her pack on a horse and only her weapons in hand Astrid loped ahead, usually travelling alongside the road, rather than on it, keeping her eyes open all around but mainly looking for tracks. Occasionally she checked behind to see if the riders were having any difficulty keeping up with her. The road was wide enough for them to travel in pairs. She could see that Hulagu rode with Ayesha then Thord was next on his outsized sheep. No one rode beside him, as the horses didn’t quite like his mount.
After the sheep, Theodora and Rani rode. They were travelling almost knee-to-knee, or would be if Rani’s horse were not a few hands shorter. Then Bianca and Father Christopher came along with Bianca’s other horses just following and with the other animals on leads leading back from Sluggard.
Astrid noticed that the girl was thawing to the priest. She had had nervously asked about learning more and Father Christopher was in full flight as a teacher. Despite what Bianca had thought, Christopher believed that she should learn Greek first as she already spoke the common Latin. She could sometimes hear him and noted that Bianca occasionally had to quieten him down. He might be like a fish out of water as a soldier, but it was obvious that he loved teaching. Basil and Stefan brought up the rear. Stefan had his shield slung over his back and both kept turning around, and occasionally moving behind a bush and dropping back, but there was no sign of a follower. He exchanged all clear signals with her when he noticed her looking back at him.
After a while Astrid stopped and signalled them all to come closer so that she could talk quietly.
“Groups of horsemen have been joining the trail here,” she said as she pointed at the ground with her blade. “Not recently in the last few weeks, but over several months. See, they are starting to make a new path joining on to the main trail. Look. There is even the mark of a hoof.”
Looking down from his mount beside her, Hulagu nodded. “You are right. These bushes all have broken twigs. All of the breaks are old, at least a few weeks, and some point onto the road and others away from it. If we follow these to the north, I’ll bet we will find a ford somewhere above Evilhalt where they are crossing unobserved.”
It was Astrid’s turn to nod. Among the others only Thord could really see what they were talking about. The rest just had to accept their word.
“Now see if you can find where they left the road. Do you want to make a bet?”
Astrid shook her head and grinned broadly before setting off again, this time moving to the right-hand side of the roadway. “It would be unfair to take your money,” were her parting words.
Towards the end of the day, Astrid again signalled for them to stop and then to draw nearer. “I told you it would be unfair to take your bet. They left the road here. They tried to conceal where they turned on and off, but not very well. The bandits are armsmen and soldiers, not primarily scouts and hunters. This time they used an old road, not one that they were making.” She cleared away some undergrowth and dirt so that the others could see and pointed to where some large flattish stones lay near the surface on the right. “My turn to make a wager. I’ll bet that these are Dwarven work. Are there any takers?”
No one ventured to say anything.
“I think we may have found what we are looking for.”
~~~
Thord climbed off Hillclimber to look at the stonework. He felt the rough stone and looked at the edges. He was not that great an expert on the subject of stonework and couldn’t tell whose work it was but, if it was Dwarven, it was very, very old. It had probably once been well laid, but now plants forced their way between the slabs. What is more, it was a hard rock that had been used for the slabs and cobbles and, despite that, the edges showed signs of weathering and the flat surfaces revealed signs of wear from long use.
~~~
They had been travelling on the road that led on to Kharlsbane and the Darkreach Gap, the one that Theodora, Basil and Thord had come down, and Astrid now turned east onto this concealed old road. Day started to follow day as they travelled along in a growing routine. Despite winter coming on, there were still enough trees with leaves that they could scarce see much of the sky. Some of the trees she knew of from hunting or patrolling to the south. Tall celery top pines and even taller myrtle beeches were all around them. Leatherwoods grew alongside the path and they often had to force their way through their green embrace as the trees reached across the stone surface. Buried deep in the understorey, straggling laurel bushes were in their autumn flowering, their flowers pale cream from the lack of sunlight in the thick bush. When they could see above, the sky was largely obscured by low cloud and they felt continually damp as they went through occasional showers and far less frequent sunshine. The air had a damp smell and the ground under the trees had very little grass except in rare clearings where a tree had come down in the past and the forest had not yet reclaimed the sky. Even then there were more ferns than grass.
Chapter XXXV
Although she had grown up in a very different forest, Astrid felt that she was starting to understand these southern forests. Looking through a wall of leatherwoods, some still with the last white flowers of summer on them, she could see a gap in the trees over a hundred paces ahead of her. The road was headed north-east and faintly through the leaves she could make out what looked like a bridge crossing a stream, cutting across it near at a right angle. The bridge looked to lie in a clearing where one of the giant gums had come down during a storm. She could see its outspread roots still largely intact and high in the air.
The sun was near overhead and the resultant shadows were short so the whole clearing lay open and revealed in the midday light. All that could be seen were some ferns as large as a man and some small shrubs and other smaller ferns. The fallen tree, over the height of three of her at the base and scarce smaller in scale for as far as she could see, spanned the creek bed. Overhead perched high in one of its companions, a massive pine of a type she had not seen before, a mob of black cockatoos were making the day raucous. Suddenly a small mob of perhaps four hands of hoppers burst past her at speed. They swerved to the right upon seeing the horses and riders that lay behind her. Her senses prickled and she felt the short hair on the back of her neck start to rise as if she were truly her namesake animal. Something was not right.
Something had scared the hoppers, and scared them badly and, try as she might, she could hear nothing chasing them. She put her spear down and held up her hand in a motion to stop the others and propped herself behind a tree while she assessed what lay ahead. This was the largest cleared area they had seen for days. The feeling she had may mean nothing, but when she looked at the lay of the land, it was an ideal place to set an ambush. She would take a little extra caution here.
Astrid turned and looked back at her people. They had stopped and now were all sitting there just looking at her. She waved her hands trying to make them think about spreading out so that they did not invite incoming fire. Hopefully they would get the idea. She could see that, at the rear, Stefan had already hopped off his horse and he was tying it up off the trail and muttering to the others. One by one they dismounted and Father Christopher began gathering horses and leading them back. Only Hulagu stayed mounted and he was readying his bow. He had already tucked his lance from a trail position to where he could grab it more readily. Gradually, and with varying degrees of proficiency, the others began to disappear into the brush and ready themselves for an attack. Astrid winced at the lack of st
ealth in their movement as she heard a twig break under someone’s foot.
She moved back behind a tree and pointed at Stefan and waved for him to come closer, turning back to the front and peering around the tree as she did so. He was soon up with her. He wasn’t too bad out in the field, for a town dweller. She could hear him moving, but most wouldn’t. Astrid noted that the wind was coming to her from just a little east of where she was sure that north was. She couldn’t smell anything if it were coming from the bridge area, but on the other hand, whoever or whatever may be there couldn’t smell anything from her either.
From where she lay nothing could be seen. Nothing seemed out of place. It was quiet—far too quiet.
Why had the hoppers been in such a hurry? Normally they moved slowly. There was still no sign of movement from leaves ahead of her. Looking up she could see the now almost-silent cockatoos. They moved uneasily around in the upper branches and it seemed that they wanted to crack into some of the pine cones lower down in some of the trees, but didn’t seem to want to move. They seemed to be looking at the other side of the stream, upstream of the bridge and on the other side of the road to the fallen forest giant.
Stefan was now beside her. He had the sense to remain silent and wait for her to say something. She looked ahead again and realised that, if she were setting an ambush, trapping people in the open where an accident had provided a clear line of fire with over forty or so paces to the target area, enough ground that you could get off four or five shots while someone covered it, and at the same time where their line of retreat was blocked by a hundred paces of fallen tree would have to rate very highly. She wiggled back a bit again and turned to Stefan.
“I am not sure but someone may be waiting for us ahead.” She looked back at the group and thought for a moment. “See if you can bring the others, except the Father, and I suppose the Princess, she cannot move quietly off her horse, up here one by one. Keep them behind either this tree or that log.” She pointed at a lesser fallen tree close beside her—one only a pace and a half high. “Make sure none even try and look over. Make them stay quiet and still until I come back—even if it takes the rest of the day. Send the mages back down the track if they cannot hold their bladders.”
She looked back at the rest of their group. She really didn’t know their strengths and weaknesses and that was a problem. This could be life of death or it could be a waste of time. “Once you are back to them, I am going to head upstream and I will try and see what I can see. I cannot see anything from here. Now, have a quick look ahead so you can describe to them what is there.”
Leaving his spear and shield behind, Stefan wriggled his way around the trunk, although not as silently as Astrid. He was obviously less skilled as a hunter. While he was away Astrid pulled her woollen njal-bound hat out of a pouch and jammed it on her head. It was a bit warm for the day but its grey-green colour hid a little of her pale blonde hair and broke up the shape of her head. Her people always wore hats when stalking game and Astrid figured that stalking people game would be just the same.
Once Stefan was forward he went still for a couple of minutes as he surveyed the scene ahead of him. After a while he wriggled back around the tree slowly. “You are right,” he said. “It is too still there. No finches or robins anywhere. There are even no honey-eaters flying around and the edge of the trees along that creek is thick with laurel flowers pink in the sun. The honey-eaters may love the bush laurels but they are also very shy around people.”
He regained his shield and spear and, staying low and watching where he trod, he moved back to the others. When he had reached them Astrid took off anything she was carrying that was unneeded and started moving upstream and to the left, staying low as she did so, her spear in one hand and her bow on her back.
~~~
She had chosen to stay out of sight of the creek bed while she moved. If there was an ambush set for them it would most likely be placed on the other side of the river, but someone could have been left this side to cut off anyone moving up the bank—there could even be a trap to catch the unwary. Her attention moved around from the possibility of a trap to looking for a person, or signs of people. Astrid let her instinct guide her up the creek bed without really thinking of the direction. Her senses were concentrating on those more important things. Was that a hint of the smell of a spice—the hot spices that Rani liked—curry?
Astrid knew her senses were far better than those of other people, perhaps a legacy of her cat-like tendencies, but she also knew that people believed what they wanted to believe and smell was possibly her weakest talent. She sorted through the sights and the sounds and the smells. Even just the feelings she was getting—those most of all. Something was telling her of danger—of people lurking. That faint smell may have been the first confirmation, or it may not. It was safer to say that it was.
She was now moving forward on her hands and knees towards the creek. She had taken her bow off her back now and before she moved her hand she picked up either her spear or her bow and moved it forward a little. Like a stalking cat she inched through into the denser bush near the creek line, stopping frozen at the slightest sound and after each move. Her eyes probed ahead.
She was eventually rewarded, that was an arrowhead that just moved on the other side of the creek. It seemed that someone had decided that their arm was sore and had lowered their bow to a more comfortable waiting position. He had an arrow knocked, but not drawn. No one would keep that up for long and it was asking a lot just to have it permanently knocked. She looked at where it was placed. Yes the bridge was well covered from where the archer was hidden. There was a bend in the creek that allowed a small stretch of bank to face the bridge directly instead of at a slant. Anyone reacting to being shot at would either have to move along the thick scrub of the opposite bank or charge over the clearing and then cross the creek.
Now, if she was doing this—was that a rope? It was—she was sure. That would probably drop something to make it hard to ride straight through the ambush. Now, where would other people be? One to pull the rope…
It may be going behind that Bunya pine—it was broad enough at the base to shelter a couple of people behind it, but the fallen leaves under it would be spiky and uncomfortable to move around on. Still, it was the only tree large enough and in the right place at any rate. She would assume that there was someone hiding there.
Now that she had seen the arrowhead, she was able to vaguely make out the rest of the person, but no more than that. He looked like any trader’s guard in chain and with a conical helm with a nasal. Much like Stefan looked actually.
Somehow, she thought to herself, there will be more than two people here. Where are the others?
With the patience of her namesake she held herself still, ignoring the ants that were starting to crawl over her hand. She was rewarded by hearing a slap from a bush only a few paces away directly across the creek. Leaves swayed. Someone with less control than her didn’t like the insects and now they were muttering quietly to themselves.
No one else betrayed themselves by moving, but now she could draw a line between the closest bush and the bunya pine. She may have worked out only where three of them were placed, but there was more than enough room for half a dozen people to be hidden along it or even more if a couple of those trees had two behind them and not one. Suddenly she felt that odd tickling feel over her body. It could be her own mages, but someone, somewhere, was trying to sense magic here. Astrid thought that it might be time to extricate herself from here and to go back and report. She was the scout and hunter, she had done her job—now to see if one of the mages could work out how to deal with it. With as much care as she had taken getting into place, she started moving out of it.
~~~
Stefan looked at what they had available and wondered how well they would cope with their first fight as a fighting group. Rani was already moving towards him. At least her padded silk was a dull green colour and that would partly make up for her comp
lete lack of skill in moving silently or in a stealthy fashion. She may be naturally graceful and move smoothly in a tavern, but when she was in the field she had no idea where to put her hands and feet and her exaggerated crouch was almost a caricature of stealth. Her sword even hit bushes as she moved. Luckily nothing broke or made more than the softest of noise. He had at least practiced some of these sorts of engagements, ambushes and raids, in the militia. He suspected that Rani was more used to practicing for large battles where hiding was impossible and the officers rode horses or chariots without dismounting.
“What is happening?” Rani asked him. “Where has Astrid gone and why did she stop us?”
“She thinks there may be an ambush ahead of us. Stay back!” he had to grab at the mage to stop her standing up and looking ahead. Softly but urgently he continued, “She has done what she is supposed to do and has gone to find out. I think she may be right, but she is better at hunting than I am. Pardon me for saying it, but you are almost useless in the bush. If you try and find anything out you will be seen straight away. If there is a mage there, you may sense him, but he will surely know that we are here as well. Our knowing that they are ahead of us and them not knowing about us is surely our only advantage at present. They know the ground, they may have traps in place…” he petered out what he was saying as Rani had stopped resisting and now sat with her back against the thick trunk of the tree.
Stefan could see that most of his people were unused to this business. Basil was hard to see and was very still. Hulagu could be seen sitting quiet on his horse on the path, his eyes scanning all around. His horse just stood there quietly. Further back Stefan could see Thord’s sheep taking a chance to eat some of the vegetation while its rider sat with it in the shade. Behind them Bianca was being restive. At the rear of them all were Father Christopher and the horses. Occasionally the priest sat up and peered ahead, but most of the time he seemed to be sunk in prayer. Ayesha had disappeared into the bush near the Darkreach mage. He knew that because he could see where Theodora stood inadequately sheltering behind a bush and she occasionally turned to talk to someone who stayed out of sight.
Intimations of Evil (Warriors of Vhast Book 1) Page 37