The Key To The Grave (#2 The Price Of Freedom)

by Chris Northern

  I wondered how much of this Sapphire knew or guessed. And how much he would report.

  In other words, the north was volatile and not to be imagined to be at peace. But unlikely to band together into one threatening army. And into this unrestful mess my two hundred men escorted a train of goods ripe for raiding. “When you go back, send out scouts, stay aware of any Alendi or other warbands. Make a proper camp each night. Move slowly at least this far. I made it clear to that merchant Lendrin Treleth that he is not to consider approaching any settlement without my express approval. That goes for you also; initiate no contact; don't rock the boat.”

  He nodded. “I think you are wise, patron. The clans are small, isolated and touchy. The city has been here before in times past; sometimes remembered well in the stories of the tribes and clans, but sometimes not remembered so fondly.” He shrugged. “But there are often traders from the city here and usually they are treated well and fairly.”

  “But two hundred city soldiers is an army to them?”

  Meran nodded. “And thus a threat. I'll be as unthreatening as I can, with your approval, and I have the languages here should I be approached,” he worried at his lip.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “It's fine, patron, I'm sure. Twice we have been approached by locals while I was with our force. Lendrin was a little...” he struggled for the right word.

  “Arrogant?”

  He nodded. “But despite that he made clear his peaceful intent. And so did I. It's perhaps fortunate there are Alendi warbands about; I tried to present that we are a peacekeeping force, that we would protect anyone who desired it from the Alendi threat and...”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “And that we would withdraw when the Alendi threat was dealt with...”

  I closed my eyes in despair. “So the Alendi will hear of this, do you think? What do you think they will do?”

  “They may scatter, they may run and hide. For certain they will argue about what to do... there are many Alendi tribes and no warlord, no one to unite them. They know there are two full legions nearby and that the Eyrie fell.”

  “And they may want revenge, and gather and attack a small force.”

  “I don't think so, patron. Honestly I doubt it unless....”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless there is someone to unite them.”

  “Like the necromancers, for example?”

  He dropped his gaze, expecting a bollocking. Well, he didn't get one.

  “Get back to your command, Meran. Bring them on slowly. Initiate no contact. Make it clear you are passing through if challenged by any clan or community, but also that you will use force if attacked and the city will consider it an act of war. Suggest that peace and trade might be better options, that if any incite them to attack us those people are not advising them wisely and it might be better to think of us as friends and those others as enemies. Otherwise use your own judgement as you have been doing. Now, tell me what's ahead of me, north of here.”

  He shrugged. “I don't know. I haven't been this far before. All I know is rumour.”

  “Give me that then.”

  He shrugged. “It could be just stories but the tales are that opposite Darklake lies the valley of Duprane where the shamanka of that name rules a people twisted into monsters by her magic. People don't go there. If they do, they don't come back. The stories are that sometimes things come out of the valley and hunt.”

  “Where?”

  He looked apologetic. “Just in the north, patron. In the mountains. Near Darklake. As I said, it could just be rumor, just stories.”

  I shrugged. “Never mind. Scouting is what I'm doing, at least it's a part of what I'm doing.” I looked south toward Twobridges and Jocasta held captive. Scouting was a by-product as far as I was concerned.

  “Well,” I said “If people don't go there it's surely for a reason. But let's not fret about things that happen 'sometimes' in stories, eh? I'll be going north. That's as much as I can tell you for now. Get back to your command and follow slowly; send trackers after me,” I turned to the scout, “You found me once, scout, do you think you will have any trouble doing so again?”

  “No sir, but if you hide your trail leave markers. Numbers is best, sir. Scratched into a rock or tree. I'll find them until I find you, sir.”

  I nodded. “Good enough,” I turned back to Meran. “When you two get back send this one or other trackers to keep in contact with me. I'll send word and news by them and you the same.”

  He got to his feet and the scout followed suit. Well, I hadn't particularly meant for them to travel at night but if Meran was happy to do it I saw no reason to keep them with me for now, and he had reason to go, so I let them.

  #

  Dubaku was staring into the west, squatting with his feet flat on the ground in a way that looked to me to be absurdly uncomfortable. I kept expecting him to lose his balance, but he never did. The sun was low, dawning in the east; we'd waited out the night. Sapphire was preparing some food, and I was watching the town, waiting. Ishal Laharek would not stay there forever. I was torn; having acquired the cooperation of the chieftain Ernath Epwhel, I could hardly sneak into the keep, kill his people, and rescue Jocasta; okay, maybe we could do it without killing anyone but I could hardly bet on that. I ground my teeth a little; I wanted her free and I knew where she was but now I had to wait until Ishal was clear of Twobridges before I moved against him. Frustrating didn't quite cover it. I was also betting that Ernath wouldn't let Ishal hurt her in his home. Still, I'd been betting that Ishal would wait until he got wherever he was going before he started doing more than intimidating her. Well, no; not betting. Hoping. I'd been hoping he wouldn't hurt her. Now there was something I could do; I could go in there and get her, and the only thing stopping me was a man I'd just met who might well turn out to be a useful ally to the city. It didn't seem like a good enough reason. It wasn't; the real reason was that the odds were crap. True, Sapphire and I had gone into the Eyrie alone, to rescue Tahal, who was now my enemy and a traitor to the city. There had been tens of thousands of Alendi there. It hadn't stopped us. Okay, I'd been crazy and drunk. I had no idea what Sapphire's excuse was. And there had also been no allies who might get hurt in the process. If I took down one of his men, Ernath would no longer be of any use to me, no longer be of any use to the city. And we might need allies here. Lendrin Treleth was behind us, heading this way. Twobridges might make a good staging post for Lendrin Treleth in the future, he would have to move goods past it and safe passage from an ally was better for him than an expensive armed guard. I had accepted my father's commission, so even though Lendrin Treleth was an arrogant idiot I would still give him what my father had promised him. Also, the chieftain Ernath might make a good ally against the Alendi rebels and the Necromancers both. Politics. Duty. Obligation. How I hated them on a personal level, yet I must take them into consideration. The indecision had niggled at me all damn night, but I'd held back, talked to Sapphire, talked to Dubaku, thought about it. Done nothing. I hated it that she was in there and I'd done nothing.

  Sapphire came up to stand beside me, a tin plate in his hand with some mucky stew that nonetheless smelled fine.

  “Eat,” he said, “And stop fretting.”

  “Anything could be happening to her.”

  “They need her. Ishal wants what she knows, he wants her to teach him. He needs her alive for that.”

  “Kukran had me tortured for the same information. He broke Sheo, tortured and broke Kerral, Larner, Hettar, Lentro, and Ferrian.”

  “She was the same as you are now, back then. She wanted to go rushing in and get you out but held back, knowing that she would likely fail, and if she did there would be no one else to try. Wait until they leave here,” Sapphire advised. “The first night they camp in the open we can get her free.”

  I nodded, grimly, not at all reassured by Sapphire's words, yet oddly comforted by stories of Jocasta. She had come after
me. She had held back when she wanted to free me. She had succeeded. So would I.

  I took the plate and fork and ate mechanically, thinking about my countryman, Tahal. I would have to counter what magic he had, when the time came. There was no one else who could do it. I could do it even if he were using the eighty carat monster. Counters are not a function of the power behind the spell, and the chip in my forehead would be enough to do the job. That left Sapphire and Dubaku to fight, assuming it came to that. Better to attack at night, though, better to take down any sentinels quietly, sneak in and get her out without rousing anyone. The temptation to slit Tahal's throat in his sleep would have to be resisted. It wouldn't be easy. Maybe I wouldn't resist. I'd try, though, rather than risk waking anyone and having to fight my way out with Jocasta at risk.

  I looked over at Sapphire, who was standing nearby. “Can we do it? Sneak into their camp at night and get her out?”

  “It's the sort of mission I was trained for,” Sapphire admitted.

  I looked at him, expecting more.

  He shrugged. “In a manner of speaking, at least. Sneak in, sneak out, kill someone or rescue someone, what's the difference? I think they are moving,” he gestured to the town.

  We were in a clearing, on the slope about two miles north of Twobridges. I looked back, scanning for what he had seen. Horses on the move; over a dozen horses being led to the keep. Men moving to meet them.

  “When can we go west?”

  I looked at Dubaku, he had risen and moved to join us.

  “When we are done in the north,” I told him. “A month, maybe two.”

  “Good. If Tamaya was in the west, then so may be others of my people. But the north is also good; her children may be found there.”

  Top of my list of priorities, Dubaku. Top of my list. Something of that must have shown on my face because he turned away without another word and moved to the fire, ladling some of the stew onto a plate for himself.

  I turned my attention back to the town. “We hit them tonight, Sapphire. Before they meet up with anyone else.”

  “Tonight,” he agreed.

  Dannat still hadn't come to us when we decided to move. I was a little peeved by it, but there was nothing to be done. Maybe Ernath had changed his mind, or just hadn't had time or privacy, or thought that Dannat would be missed if he left. Either which way we weren't waiting. Ishal Laharek and his followers headed north, following the river, bringing Jocasta closer. We knew how long it took to reach the turn that would have led them to us if they took it, but I guessed they were heading north and would not turn as we had; there was nothing here but a ruin somewhere further up the trail, no reason for them to come this way. We also knew how long it would take us to reach the mill and how long it would take them to pass it, and so we timed it that they would be well past the turn and out of sight before we got there. Still, we moved cautiously just in case. I did not want to meet them head on on the trail. But I was sure Laharek would continue to head north as he had been doing.

  There was no doubt in my mind we would be able to follow them; again they had left an easy trail in the moist earth. A fine drizzle was our ally in this.

  #

  As we progressed, the hill country became more ragged, the hills higher and the valleys deeper and more narrow. The miles travelled bore less relationship to our progress north as the trail wound through the rough terrain, taking the path of least resistance. Ishal and his companions abandoned the river altogether about mid-day, we guessed, though up till then their trail had often led as far as a mile away from its rocky banks. It was well after noon by the time we came to the place where they at last turned their backs on the river. They had followed a narrow trail into woodland that blanketed a saddle between two barren hills to the west of the river. We followed them into the sparse cover of wide spread trees rooted in thin soil. I chafed at our lack of speed but did not want to get too close to them during the day, knowing they would always have the advantage of higher ground and were more likely to see us than we were to see them. If they checked their back-trail, as they must surely be doing, they had the advantage of knowing where they had been and so knew where to look, whereas we had little idea of where they were going. We were roughly two hours behind them and as far as we could guess they did not know about us, and that's as I wanted to keep it. I kept the seeker spell active, even though the tracks they left were clear, and when they moved to higher ground the story of their passage along the trail was still clear to read in the fresh mud.

  “How do you keep in touch with my father?” I asked Sapphire, during one of the rare times we could manage to ride side-by-side.

  “He comes to me in my dreams,” he said.

  I grunted. I should have thought of it. When I had been imprisoned by Kukran, Jocasta had often come to me in my dreams, making a place where we could talk, drawing my consciousness to her. My thoughts drifted over the subject like mist, until one thought came to me and I felt my face stiffen in anger. If he wanted to talk to me he could do the same. He clearly had the spell and the stone to do it. If he could speak with Sapphire in that way, he could speak to me, but he had made no effort to contact me.

  Well, I had never been his favourite. And honestly, I can't say I'd ever made any effort to win him over.

  “Why do you think he offered me this...” I gestured widely, trying to express the breadth of my mission without words.

  “Perhaps he thought you would be good at it.”

  “Better at being a spy than a general? No argument there.” My first command had cost the lives of almost every man under me.

  He reined in and turned his mount, stopping to view the back trail. He hadn't responded to my comment and I knew he had just abandoned the conversation as pointless. The more I thought about it, the gap between us getting bigger by the second, the more I realized how self-pitying I'd sounded. Well, hell. I'd failed. There was no way to feel good about it. But I resolved to stop dwelling on it. The past was past and cannot be changed. I'd counted myself a potentially great general; I'd read everything on the subject and had developed theories of my own. But when it came to it I was just reckless. Had been, I corrected myself, I had been reckless, spotting an opportunity had just thrown our men into the meat grinder on a wing and a prayer. No, I stopped myself again. It hadn't been a bad plan, in many ways. We had battle mages to give us night vision and douse the campfires of our enemy. We had made a mess of them in the night and routed them by dawn. If I had had better intelligence on the rest of their force, if I had known that the arrival of the other two divisions of their army was imminent, things would have been different. I had, I remembered now, been uneasy. We'd routed them from the field, and Tulian – who had been in overall command – had let the men loot, left them to spread out and finish the enemy wounded. I'd been uneasy for some time, unsure why. I only remembered it clearly now, and remembering I knew why I had been uneasy; I'd known we should be moving, getting some distance between us and the battlefield. It had been my first battle; I'd killed men for the first time, the torrent of emotions had left me tense and drained at the same time. I hadn't been thinking clearly, but I had been on edge, knowing something was going to happen. Next time would be different; next time I wouldn't be so involved, so shocked by the violence of battle. If I hadn't been a virgin I would have taken control, gathered the men and moved out as soon as the enemy were routed. Back to our camp or on to the town, either would have served.

  A low whistle from behind brought me out of my self-involved thoughts. I pulled rein and turned in the saddle; Sapphire was waiting for me to look; as soon as he knew he had my attention he pointed back down the trail. I picked out the single rider almost at once, perhaps as little as a mile away in a direct line, but probably three miles distant and far below on the winding trail we were following. I couldn't tell much. One rider. Nothing to worry about; not in itself.

  “Dannat?”

  Sapphire turned his horse about and moved closer. “Possibly.�
��

  I worried at it for a second. Dannat had missed us at the ruin – we hadn't gone so far but our tracks would be as easy to read as those we followed. The rider, Dannat or not, was about an hour behind us, so he would probably catch up to us when we stopped for the night, assuming we stopped early, say an hour before the light faded to dusk. That lost time might increase the distance between us and Ishal, which we would have to close on them in the dark. But I was in no hurry to get to them, so long as it happened tonight. And I wanted this rider to catch up to us while it was light,

  I put my thoughts into words and Sapphire gave an approving nod as he passed me on the trail.

  “I didn't do too badly, considering it was my first battle,” I added.

  “You didn't do too badly,” he agreed mildly. “Learn and move on.”

  “Why did you not remind me about this damn stone stuck in my forehead?”

  He chuckled grimly and flashed me a glance that let me see the glint of genuine amusement in his eyes. “You learn more from mistakes you make than those you are prevented from making. Learn and move on.”

  I resolved to do just exactly that.

  #

  I started swearing softly under my breath.

  I should have guessed, of course. Ishal had a set goal, a pace to his journey. He was not randomly moving north but was following a planned path according to his own agenda. He was moving from settlement to settlement. And in these hills they were about a day's travel apart.