by Ty Johnston
“We go after them,” Belgad said.
“Which direction?” Karitha asked.
“Can you pinpoint where they are?” the northerner asked.
The wizard woman nodded. “We are less than two hours from them now.”
“We’ll turn east,” Belgad said, spinning his horse in the right direction and motioning for the others to follow.
As the riders fled the scene of the parlay, the demon watched their backs. Then he grinned to himself and jumped to the air, his wings spreading wide before he disappeared with another invisible explosion.
***
They rode as Belgad commanded, passing the bunch of evergreens their quarry had used earlier in the day, then turned east to the north side of a fence of loose stones. After two more hours of hard riding, Belgad pulled them to a stop near a muddy pond so Karitha could check her mirror again.
“We are very near,” the wizard said as she looked up from the mirror and spotted an abandoned, rickety farmhouse with holes in its walls. She pointed to the farmhouse on a distant hill. “They are on the other side of there.”
“You are sure?” Belgad asked, remembering the demon general’s differing opinion about the travel route of the three they followed.
Karitha looked down again and saw Kron, Adara and Randall sitting around a small fire while their horses grazed behind them with the farmhouse was to one side. “They are resting mere minutes away,” she said. “They must think they have thrown us off their trail.”
“Why wouldn’t they have raised a protection spell by now?” Fortisquo asked.
“We are about to find out,” Belgad said and pulled on his horse’s reins, driving the animal forward.
All of them spurred their horses to a full gallop, crossing an open field quickly, then flying up the hill and passing the farmhouse on their left. At the top of the hill they saw no sign of their prey, but continued down the hill in case their three enemies had taken off again.
At the bottom of the hill, at the very site Karitha had seen Adara and Kron and Randall, Belgad reined in his horse and rolled out of his saddle. He knelt and stared at the ground while the others still on their steeds formed a circle around him.
“They’ve not been here,” Belgad said, moving a small rock and dusting away dirt.
“They have to be,” Karitha said, taking her mirror out of her backpack.
The northerner stood with a sour look, staring off to the north over grassy hills.
Karitha stared into her hand mirror and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Nothing. A blank space. Not even her own reflection.
“They’ve fooled us somehow,” Belgad said, grabbing his saddle horn and pulling himself on top of his horse.
“It would take mighty magic to do this,” Karitha said.
“It had to be Markwood, unless the healer is more powerful than we expected,” Belgad said, “but no worry. We know they were heading north, likely to Kobalos. We will go that way ourselves. Sooner or later we’ll find someone who has seen them.”
Within minutes they were galloping north again, a determined face on Belgad the Liar.
Chapter Seventeen
The moon rose high before Kron allowed his companions and their horses to rest again. They had traveled as far north of Wester’s Edge as they could in a day, the mountains staying to their left. They followed a cold stream for a while, then headed slightly west nearer to the Needles. Kron steered them into a shallow valley in the foothills of the mountains before making.
Kron had wanted to put Wester’s Edge and Belgad the Liar far behind them, but he had been anxious all day. He had questions for Adara. He wanted to know what had happened to her mother and stepfather, and to her father too. The questions had been nagging him while they rode, his mind mad with anticipation of the night when they could talk. Now the night had come, and Kron was no longer so sure he wanted the answers.
The day’s events ran through Kron’s mind again while Randall saw to the horses and Adara prepared their supper of onion soup over a small fire. It occurred to Kron he would never know his true feelings for Adara, and would never have his many questions answered, if he did not talk to her.
“Adara,” he said, sitting on a tree stump near the woman.
She looked up from metal tongs she was using to hold a tin of boiling soup over their fire.
“I wanted to thank you and Randall for your help this morning,” Kron said.
Adara stared at the man quizzically. “We had no other option,” she said.
“You could have stood in line like good prisoners,” Kron said, “but you fought hard. If you two hadn’t been ready, we might be dead at the hands of the bishop or the demons.”
“We had to fight,” Adara said. “It was our only hope for survival.”
Kron nodded. “Yes, but many a warrior would have been too afraid, or too surprised, to take action,” he said. “Your actions, and that of Randall, insured our escape and our lives.”
Adara realized Kron was trying to lead the conversation elsewhere. It was not his habit to go on and on without a subject.
“My parents,” she said, turning back to preparing their meal.
“Yes,” Kron said.
“Some of it is true,” Adara said, setting aside the tin of soup and lifting another to place over the flames. “I have never talked about it.”
“What happened?” Kron asked.
Randall joined them, taking a seat on his saddle near the fire. The healer said nothing, for he too was interested in what Adara had to say.
“I loved my father more than any man I’ve known before or since his death,” the woman said. “He was my world. He taught me to know the sword, and the business of running a barony. I took up fencing in school because of him. I think he was proudest after I became my school’s champion, having won several regional and national titles.”
Randall glanced at Kron, but both men remained silent.
“He died the week before I was to graduate,” Adara continued. “I couldn’t leave or I would have forfeited my graduation documents. By the time I returned home, he was already in the ground and my mother remarried. I was furious with her at first, storming through our keep screaming and smashing pottery, but she explained to me she had to marry again or the church would have reclaimed our barony. What was worse, my mother had found a husband in my father’s brother, Merlo, a man I had always despised because of the vulgar looks he had sent my way during his visits.
“Living under the same roof as Merlo, I soon came to know just how disgusting he truly was. He would beat my mother, not often and not harshly, but harm her he did. The first time it happened, I swore to kill the man, but my mother intervened and made me promise not to harm him. To my regret, I let the matter lie.
“I had been home from school a little more than a year when my step-father came home drunk one night. He stormed into our castle and demanded gold from my mother, but she had none to give him after he had already emptied our meager treasury. Merlo did not believe her, and their argument became heated. Eventually my step-father tried to tear a necklace of gold from around my mother’s neck, but she fought back.
“Without thinking, he slapped my mother. They were at the top of a winding stone stairway and she fell, rolling down the long stairs.
“I saw all of this happen. I believe I went out of my mind at that moment, and I too acted without thinking. I raced past my uncle to my mother, screaming her name all the while, but she was unmoving and dead by the time I reached her. No breath came from between her lips.”
Adara paused to sip at a cup of soup.
Randall glanced at Kron again, but could read no emotions on that stone face.
“I grabbed my rapier, my champion rapier from school,” Adara said. “It hung on our wall near the stairway. I rammed it into his heart.”
Kron raised an eyebrow while Randall’s mouth went wide.
“After that, I fled to the West,” the woman said. “I knew the church
would never believe in my innocence, and that was proven to me this morning. To this day I do not know who is in charge of Corvus Vale, whether another baron or the church, but I would like to see home again, to see the grave site of my mother and father.”
The camp went quiet for several long minutes.
“Perhaps you will see your land some day,” Randall said.
Adara shook her head, but said nothing as she wiped away a tear.
***
Breakfast was silent with dry biscuits, most of which had to have spots of green mold picked away. Kron, Adara and Randall had not had an opportunity to resupply their provisions since leaving Hammer Home almost a week earlier.
“We need food,” Kron said as they cleaned up their camp. “I could hunt, but that would slow us down.”
Once on horseback, the three set a course slightly east of their original path but still with the Needles to their left. Kron suspected they would come across a dirt road soon and had hopes they could purchase supplies from a traveling merchant, or if worse came to worse, one of them could venture into a village.
Late in the day they came across the expected road that ran east and west. Kron dropped from his saddle to scan the ground for tracks and stood back up with an expression of surprise.
“What is it?” Adara asked.
“There was a slow wagon heading east within the last couple of hours,” Kron said, then added, “and a dozen men in leather boots trailing close behind.”
“What of it?” Adara said.
“This road goes from northern East Ursia west through the Lands and into Caballerus,” Kron said. “There’s few troops this far north and west in the East. The pope sees no use for it because of the Lands and the wardens.”
“What could the men be?” Randall asked.
“They can’t be border wardens. Too far south,” Kron said. “Most likely they’re bandits.”
“You want to go after them,” Adara said.
Kron climbed back onto his horse and turned to his companions. “If you continue riding due north, I’ll catch up with you in a day or two.”
“No,” Adara said. “We’re not splitting up, especially after what happened at Wester’s Edge.”
“Do we really need to go looking for trouble?” Randall asked. “Isn’t my father’s demons and Belgad more than enough?”
Kron turned his horse to face east, the direction the wagon and the men had traveled. “It was a lone wagon without escort. If they’re lucky, they’ll only be robbed. I can’t stand by and do nothing.”
“Always playing the hero,” Adara said.
“No, but I can’t suffer the evil men do to one another.” With that Kron spurred his horse east along the road.
Randall gave Adara a weak smile, then they followed.
***
Kron had been right. The twelve men following the wagon were bandits.
As the three on horseback topped a ridge, they spotted the single wagon connected to two raggedy mules a good distance below in a shallow valley. The man who looked to have been the wagon driver was laying unmoving upon the ground, his face in the dirt; from their distance the three could not tell if the man was alive or not, but he did not appear in good shape.
Surrounding the wagon were the twelve men Kron had expected, each a rugged thug in leathers and carrying cheap weapons. Two of them had shoddy bows, but none seemed to notice the latest arrivals. They were sloppy, not having set watchmen. Most were busy plunging their arms into burlap sacks on the back of the wagon and pulling out clothes and food and other items.
Kron slowly drew his sword from its sheath, as did Adara her rapier from its place on her hip.
“Do you think its safe to charge right into them?” Randall asked as he took out his short sword with shaking hands that showed he was not relaxed with the situation.
“If we charge, they will splinter,” Kron explained. “I could take out a couple from here with my bow, but the rest would hide behind the wagon. Then we would have to charge with them already prepared for us.”
“Good enough for you?” Adara said with a grin to the healer.
Randall could only nod with uncertain eyes.
Kron said nothing more, but kicked his horse in the side and the animal sprinted down the hill. Adara quickly followed, but Randall was slower, trailing behind.
Before Kron reached the first of the bandits, one of them spotted him and yelled out. The rest of the twelve turned to see danger flying down the hill toward them, but they were slow to act. One of the archers got off an arrow, but the dart went wide.
Kron rammed his horse into the first man, knocking him aside, then continued his charge while waving his sword from side to side, chopping through one man’s neck and slashing another across the eyes.
Then Adara hit the bandits, knocking two men to the ground with her horse while she stabbed out with her long, thin rapier. One of the men jabbed at Adara’s weapon with a short spear, but she parried the blow and continued riding.
When Randall rode into the group of men, he was so full of fear he could barely steer his animal. Still, he managed to slash out with his short blade, knocking aside one bandit’s weapon.
Two more arrows were launched at Kron’s back, but again they went wide of their target. Kron spun his horse so fast the animal was on its hind legs for a moment, then charged back at the ruffians.
This time the bandits were more prepared. The one with the spear charged at Kron, aiming for his horse, but the man in black yanked his reins in time to stall his animal from impaling itself.
Adara returned to the fight suddenly, dropping from the back of her horse and unlooping the whip at her side. Two men rushed her, but snaps of her leather weapon sent them scurrying.
Kron pulled behind the woman and slung a dagger over her head to impale the spearman’s shoulder, sending him fleeing across a field.
By that time Randall had returned, swinging his ride around the side of the wagon to catch the two archers who were preparing their bows again. Quick words of magic from the healer saved his life as two arrows shot at his chest bounced off an invisible shield in front of him.
Adara waded into the rest of the men grouped together, slashing her whip and drawing blood, her rapier flashing out and stabbing one fellow in the leg and another in the throat, dying as he fell to the ground.
The man who had been stabbed in his leg by Adara tried to limp away, but found himself facing Randall’s back. The healer was busy trying to weave his horse around the archers in hopes of driving them away and did not see the man behind him. The bandit to the healer’s back pulled a hand ax from a ring on his belt and grabbed Randall from behind. The ax drove through the air, directed toward the back of the healer’s head, but the shield spell continued to protect, blocking the blow that shook the wounded man and sent him falling to the ground. Before Randall could turn to see his latest enemy, the man pushed himself out of the dust and took off away from the scene as fast as his injured leg could carry him.
The two archers, seeing they could not injure Randall, turned their attentions to Adara, loosing two arrows at the woman. Adara had seen the attack coming, however, and dove to her left into the dust, the shafts flying useless over her head.
By now Kron had strung his bow and had an arrow to the string. From horseback he launched a missile at one of the archers, catching the man in the heart and killing him before he fell.
The other archer saw his doom approaching and yanked an arrow from the leather quiver on his back. Kron was faster, already having another lined up and aimed at the man. At the last moment the archer decided against taking another shot and jumped behind the wagon.
Kron simply shifted his position and plunked an arrow into a man approaching Adara.
The rest of the men gave up the fight and turned to flee. The archer behind the wagon was the last to run and Kron let one last arrow fly, catching the man in the back of the leg.
The three watched until the bandits were gone,
over a hill or into high grass, then cleaned their weapons and returned them to their proper places.
Randall was quick out of his saddle to inspect the wounded. The only person he found still living was the man who looked to have been driving the wagon. The bandits who lay in the road were all dead.
“What is his condition?” Kron asked from his saddle as Randall knelt over the wagon driver.
“He’s taken a bruising to the head, but it’s nothing I can’t take care of,” the healer responded.
“Nothing but simple clothes and foodstuffs,” Adara said as she glanced into the back of the wagon.
“Be careful with that man,” Kron said to Randall as he slid from his saddle. “Remember wizards are outlawed here.”
The healer didn’t need any reminding, especially after Wester’s Edge. But Randall knew what he was doing. The man on the ground could be healed easy enough, but he would be groggy when he came around; the poor fellow would have no idea magic had been performed upon him.
Minutes later the wagon driver opened his eyes to see Kron, Adara and the healer kneeling around him.
“Yes, you’re alive,” Kron said with a chuckle.
The man, who was balding and had a thick black mustache, appeared to be in his early fifties. He wore a simple yellow tunic, but that did not give a hint as to his background. He sat up and stared about himself, his eyes finally falling on the dead bandits.
“You did this?” he asked.
“We drove the rest of them away,” Adara said. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing them again.”
The man pushed himself to standing, then held out a hand to Kron. “My thanks for your service,” he said. “My name is Alfar. I am a merchant in these parts.”
Darkbow took the offered hand and shook it. Then the merchant switched to shaking Randall’s hand, then Adara’s.
“Many, many thanks,” Alfar said. “I can not tell you enough how much this has meant to me.”
“Allow us to help you with your belongings,” Kron said as he and the others began to pick up goods the bandits had tossed onto the road, “and perhaps we can provide you with some business.”