The captain looked at the book, at the copper wires that ran in intricate patterns on the fragile wood. “I will grant you, it could be something. But it could just as easily be nothing. When you have corroborated, or compiled more, then we—”
He stopped and looked up, tugging on the reins to stop the team, his other hand dropping to Bloodsounder’s haft. His lips were pressed tight, and the skin all over his face suddenly seemed tighter as well, as if he were suffering a strain of some kind. I didn’t hear anything, or see anything either. “Captain, is—”
“Be silent!” He ran his fingers down the chains and toward the Deserter Gods hanging at his hip.
I looked at the blackened steel flail heads, their spikes sharp and the metal dull, almost deflecting light, and wondered if Bloodsounder was truly a Sentry. Had something so horrible actually been gifted from the Deserter Gods? It didn’t seem possible. Not unless it had corrupted over time. Or the Gods themselves were malevolent. Neither prospect was very comforting.
Braylar stood up suddenly and flicked the haft up with his left hand, snatching Bloodsounder off the hook at his belt with his right, holding it out in front of him. While he didn’t twirl it overhead, he wore the same expression he had in the Green Sea, the muscles in his face rigid, eyes vacant, and I knew he was feeling something. The coming violence. Real, or a false impression, he was sensing something, but I hoped Bloodsounder was deceiving him again.
Mulldoos and Hewspear rode up on either side of the wagon, curious why we stopped. Mulldoos took one look at his captain and ran his meaty hand through his pale stubbly hair, turned, and spit angrily into the grass. “Plague me.”
Hewspear shaded his eyes and scanned the road behind. “Is it Brunesmen, Captain?”
Captain Killcoin sat down slowly and slid Bloodsounder back on his belt. “A very large host is coming, Lieutenants. And I don’t believe it is Brunesmen. Though if I am right, it will hardly matter. They are certainly no friends of ours.”
For someone who didn’t like riddles, he did favor the cryptic.
“Hornfuckers, Cap?”
“Fuckers of horn is a very good guess. Though we’ll know soon enough.” He pointed down the road. A few moments later, a single horseman appeared, riding hard, a dust plume trailing behind.
We all waited until the Syldoon reined up and saluted. Sweat was pouring down his face, and the dust that followed him stuck to it. He coughed and covered his mouth and then said, “Got a problem, captain. Big one. Fifty or sixty riders heading our way, if there’s one.”
Mulldoos whistled through his teeth. “Fuck, but you pissed those boys off something fierce.”
“How long?” Braylar asked.
The rider replied, “Few miles ahead. Got a little time. But not much. Not much at all.”
Captain Braylar turned to Hewspear. “How many fighting men do we have left?”
Mulldoos interjected, “All of us banged up, Cap. Any who ain’t ain’t here. Any who can ride can fight.”
Eyes still on Hewspear, Braylar said, through exceptionally tight lips, “How many still in the saddle, Lieutenant?”
Without calculating, Hewspear replied, “Twenty, Captain. Though Benk and Jotty are riding rear, keeping a keen eye for Brunesmen.”
Braylar shook his head and replied, “Those are not good odds,” just as Soffjian and Skeelana rode up.
“What odds are those, Bray?” No one answered right away as Soffjian looked at all of us, at the dust still settling in the ground, and then up the road. “Are we expecting company? The only time men speak of odds is gambling with coins or gambling with lives. Please tell me you are going to roll dice.”
Still no one answered, and Soffjian fixed her gaze on all of us in slow turn. Finally, Braylar said, “There is a large party of Hornmen heading our way. I suspect they do not have cards.”
Soffjian scowled as Skeelana said, “So just how bad are these odds, then?”
“Bad enough that wasting time talking about them now will get us killed.”
Mulldoos asked, “How about the quarry?”
“We are the quarry, Lieutenant.”
Mulldoos pressed on. “Passed a deserted one, several miles back. We could—”
“Even if we could make it back there in time and manage to hide ourselves, which I doubt, I’m entirely certain the Hornmen are looking for us. They would likely send men to investigate the site, and then we would be trapped and surrounded. And while we haven’t sighted them yet, the Brunesmen are behind us somewhere as well.”
Soffjian said, “I know you, brother—your notion of ‘bad odds’ is ‘certain doom’ to anyone else. If we can’t hide, we ride then. You have what you dragged us off into the wilderness for,” she jerked a thumb toward the rest of the retinue behind us. “You have your prize. Let’s run. All the way to Sunwrack if we have to.”
Braylar slapped the side of the wagon. “The priest is no encumbrance. But the wagons would slow us down. The Hornmen would overtake us, for certain.” He looked at Hewspear and Mulldoos. “Our only choice is to take them on. Rolling gear formations. Whittle them down.”
Mulldoos soured immediately, and while he was biting his tongue to avoid openly questioning his captain in front of the Memoridons, he clearly was trying to find words to disagree without being insubordinate, and it was a visible struggle.
But Soffjian saved him the trouble. “And what cargo is so precious that you’d throw all your lives away rather than leaving it for the Hornmen? I respect technique and skill more than anyone, and know all too well what your men are capable of, but even with crossbows and evasive maneuvers, you won’t be able to fight off a far superior force. Which it must be, for you to admit the lousy odds. How many men are coming? Forty?” No one replied. “Fifty?” Still no one. “Gods, more? You better have the King of Anjuria stuffed in a box back there, brother. And even then, doom is doom. So what is it? What are you carting along?”
Hewspear interjected, “Captain, none here are cowards. If you issue the order to fight, we all will, to the last if necessary. But these odds are… long indeed. Perhaps we—”
“We do not leave what we have sacrificed so much already to gain.” The captain got off the bench and jumped down to the grass and walked back to untether Scorn.
Soffjian called after him, “You’ve been a fool most of your life, brother. Rash, brazen, irreverent, and at times treating your own life with less value than a pile of shit. But not so with your men. Run. Before it’s too late. You cannot defeat fifty or sixty men. You might make their victory costly, but you cannot win. My abhorrent charge is to see you home, and I mean to do it. But I have fought for you twice against my better judgment already, and will not do so again. Run. I implore you.”
Captain Killcoin mounted his horse and rode back to the front of the wagon, one of the harnessed horses shying away from Scorn.
Mulldoos said, “Pains me something fierce to agree even halfway with a witch, Cap, but I think your sister might have the right of it. We got Henlester. The rest of it, well… the hard part was finding it all in the first place. We lose it now, ain’t near as lost as it were before. We can get it back from the Hornmen. But not if we’re all dead.”
Braylar seemed genuinely torn. While he was as hard a man as I’ve ever met, Soffjian was absolutely right on one count—he did not throw away his men’s lives willingly. But he shook his head, pulled his crossbow up and began spanning it. “The land is hilly, but not overly so. Not enough to appreciably reduce our range. The Hornmen will not be as well armored as the Brunesmen. They never are, and especially a host this size. We circle and loose and drop their numbers until the odds are not so dire.” He slid a bolt in place, devil’s claw slapped back down on the stock, looked up, and gave a feral grin. “It’s a good day for crossbows. Ready the men.”
Soffjian shook her head and started turning her horse, clearly not intending to stay, when Skeelana offered, “Perhaps a trade would be in order.”
Everyone lo
oked at her, having forgotten she was even there. She continued, “A war Memoridon could come in quite handy right about now. She could probably tip the odds considerably. Maybe even make counting heads irrelevant, assuming she could meet the foe on ground of her choosing.”
A wrinkle bridged Soffjian’s dark brows, “And why exactly would I want to do that? This fight is ridiculous. An unnecessary waste of lives.”
Skeelana said, “If the good captain here were to indulge us, reveal what the terribly secretive cargo is, perhaps a resident war Memoridon might be inclined to put aside past rancor, save the company, and help everyone get back to Sunwrack with no more lives lost. Speaking hypothetically, of course, not being a war Memoridon myself.” Her half-smile tilted this way and that. She seemed entirely too pleased with herself, given that we were minutes away from being overwhelmed by a small army and utterly destroyed.
I expected Braylar or Soffjian to immediately dismiss the idea, singly or in unison, but it hung there between them, seeming to gain strength the longer it went unchallenged.
Mulldoos said, “Hate the idea of needing help from the likes of her, Cap. But might be she could turn this one.”
“She is right here,” Soffjian said, “and given how rigidly I disagree with this engagement in the first place, my uppity comrade might have overstepped herself. I wouldn’t spill tears to leave you here to be ridden into the ground. But the Tower Commander wants you back. As does the Emperor.” She paused before adding, “Comply with Skeelana’s suggestion, and I—”
“They are scrolls,” Braylar said. Soffjian waited and then he elaborated, “Books. Stray pages. Any ancient recording I could find. Chests of them. Three years of hunting them, obtaining them.” He pointed a gloved finger at me. “To be translated in full now that we have a competent scribe.”
Soffjian looked intrigued, but not entirely convinced. “You would risk your entire company over some documents?”
“They are in Old Anjurian, some in Middle, so it is impossible to adequately gauge their value. But I hope very much to find the secret to severing the bond I have with this black thing that plagues me.” He hefted the flail heads and let them fall back to his thigh. “These records were purchased from collectors, stolen from temples, plundered from dusty crypts. You of all people should appreciate the irony of that.” The captain gave his sister a wicked grin. “Bloodsounder grieves me, wracks me, in ways I cannot possibly explain to you. So yes, I would risk almost anything to be rid of it. Or at least control it. Add ‘selfish bastard’ to the list.”
She smiled back, though no less wolfish than his own. “It is near the top already. And if I didn’t have an imperial mandate hanging over my head, and a witness,” her eyes flicked over to Skeelana long enough to register anger, “I would likely applaud your selfish death spiral. But I realize the admission must have cost you, pained you even, which brings me a little pleasure.”
Soffjian looked down the road and nodded once. “I will do what I can. I can’t promise it will be enough, and do it reluctantly, but—”
“Duly noted,” Braylar replied. “Duly.” He looked at Hewspear and Mulldoos. “Ready the men. And lay out some caltrops, will you. There are some in the other wagon.” He started to turn away and stopped himself. “Oh. And keep Henlester chained inside. We had one priest escape us already. Do not let it happen again.”
Hewspear and Mulldoos nodded and rode back to alert the men. Soffjian gave her shorter comrade a look that could have melted steel and then rode ahead to survey the road, the land, or something else. Or maybe simply to wait and prepare herself in silence.
Braylar gave Skeelana an appraising look, as if taking her in for the first time. “Well done, small adept. I do sometimes forget just how adroit you Memoridons can be.”
She gave a mock bow and replied, “Some of us don’t possess the ability to level armies at a look, my lord, but we all have our uses.”
I had a number of questions swirling, so many it was hard to fix on one. So I blurted out the first that came to mind. “What is a caltrop?”
The answer came from over my left shoulder—Vendurro rode up, holding a large sack, and slipped his hand in. “Nasty little bit of business, that.” He pulled out a sharp iron object that had been painted a dull brown and tossed it to me—it was basically four long spikes forged together. It jabbed my thumb and I nearly dropped it at least three times as he said, “No matter how it falls, one of them spikes is always pointing to the sky. Might not always cripple a horse, but enough to hurt them plenty good, throw a rider, break up a charge, slow an advance.”
I held it up and looked at it, wincing as I imagine that in a horse’s hoof. “Why brown?”
“On account of most roads and earth being brown-like. Doesn’t do much good if you can see the sun glinting off it from a hundred yards out.”
Braylar said, “Spread them out, about seventy-five yards from our position, ahead of Soffjian. I want the Hornmen to see us, see our numbers, and salivate. They are little better than a local militia—they lack discipline and I suspect when they see their huge advantage, they will come in hard. They’ll expect to flank us, so they’ll likely ride at us spread out, so make sure you get those caltrops on a lot of ground.”
Vendurro nodded and he called out to another two Syldoon bearing bags and the three of them rode ahead, passing Soffjian. Only Vendurro acknowledged her with a nod.
I asked, “What is she going to do, captain? Is she going to kill a large number, or drive them mad? Like she did in Alespell?”
Braylar grabbed his helm, overturned it on the saddle in front of him, and pulled the mail out to make room for his head. “I do not know for certain what she intends. Not all war Memoridons have the same… skills. But—and the short Memoridon can correct me if I am wrong—killing a man with memorycraft requires intense focus. It can only be done singly, and it is draining, yes?” Skeelana nodded, and Braylar said, “So I expect she has something else in mind. If you will pardon the expression. A host of fifty-five is little better than a host of fifty-eight.”
He pulled his helm on, secured it, and said, “Stay with the wagon. Keep a crossbow at the ready. But if you are forced to loose it, it probably means Soffjian failed, we failed, and we are all doomed already. If the worst happens, I’d suggest getting on a horse and running. Only you wouldn’t make it very far.” He looked at Skeelana. “And you? Do whatever it is you do when not delighting me by tweaking my sister’s nose.”
Skeelana smiled and gave another small mock bow. “Each of us our talents.”
Hewspear and Mulldoos and the remaining Syldoon rode up on either side, crossbows loaded, lamellar and helms on, sidearms at the ready. Captain Killcoin turned Scorn about to better address them. Scorn took that as a sign to piss a steamy stream into the dirt. “Our Hornmen friends have come calling. Quite a few of them, as it happens. Seems they didn’t appreciate being cut down in Alespell or losing a border tower.
“My sister is going to run interference and do what she can to slow them down. I’m assuming a fair number will still come for us, too many to close and fight hand to hand. Rolling gears, soldiers. Rolling gears. Do not engage until we have whittled them down sufficiently to turn the battle in our favor.”
There were nods as several spanned their crossbows, and Braylar continued. “Hornmen might be good at scaring travelers and collecting taxes, but they are barely better than a bandit militia. Once we tip things to our advantage, I expect them to break and flee. If they do, run them down if you can, but don’t pursue overlong. Regroup here, and we ride hard for Sunwrack. Understood?”
The Syldoon called out “aye” or saluted or both and started spreading out in a line.
I recalled our encounter with the Hornmen in the Green Sea, and thought Braylar might have been overselling things—even if young, green, with several boys in their company, they were a much larger host, and I didn’t imagine they were going to simply break to pieces against the Syldoon like a listing ship on th
e reefs, no matter what Soffjian did.
After grabbing a crossbow and quiver, I returned to my seat. Vendurro and the other two horsemen returned from spreading the caltrops in the grass and across the road and rejoined their comrades in the line ahead of our wagon, waiting. Soffjian remained on her horse on the road, fixed to the same spot she had been in, staring straight ahead.
I finished checking the small steel sight on the crossbow, careful to keep it pointed out into the fields, made sure the fur-covered flap on the quarrel case was folded back, and tried not to count the seconds until the Hornmen arrived. But I wouldn’t have counted all that high, even if I had. Unlike the Syldoon, they didn’t employ scouts, apparently safe in their numbers and the privilege of being the protectors of the road. A large number of them rode over the small hill far ahead of us, six or seven at a time. It was hard to make out details at that distance, but while they all had armor caps or helms of some kind, the sun only lit on metal armor here and there—most must have been wearing gambesons or boiled leather. There were spear points aplenty, however.
As more Hornmen appeared, the sheer number of them was enough to make me catch my breath, even if they were a mish-mash force. They might not have been an army, but near sixty men on horse, armed and angry, intent on vengeance, was still an intimidating sight. I couldn’t imagine the bravery it must take to watch a huge enemy host fill the field in anticipation of a true pitched battle. I longed to jump on a horse and ride in the opposite direction.
And yet there Soffjian stood alone, ranseur in the leather sheathe alongside the saddle, watching them slowly arrive until their leader must have called a halt to evaluate. A single woman in scale armor, holding no obvious weapon, and a small force and some wagons in the distance behind her as if to parley—not exactly the stuff to induce fear or hesitation.
I saw two or three Hornmen at the front huddling as close together as they could while still on horseback, talking animatedly. There was some pointing, some gesturing, and then, exactly as Braylar had expected, they fanned out along the top of the hill.
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