by Robert Brady
Taking Singer and Bastard by their reins, he focused his attention on that.
* * *
Vulpe had been shadowing his mother and her captors for fourteen days. These people were Bounty Hunters, trained in tracking, fighting and surveillance. He’d known of and hated Bounty Hunters his whole life, for what they’d done to his parents.
Had he trailed them, they’d had found him fast enough. That would be too easy. To east or west, he would have had better luck, but these people would have figured them out eventually. That’s just another version of the same thing.
Grelt had trained with Karel of Stone, and could shadow these people from their destination. Those who are pursued will commonly follow in the footsteps of another, recent traveler, knowing their tracks can be lost in those before them, and the other will turn out any ambushers or patrols.
So by staying far enough ahead, they tracked their prey from their destination, and adjusted their path when their quarry did. Their scout behind was just another wary soul in Eldador.
A week earlier their scout before them had come across an outrider patrol from Thera, his uncle’s men, and Vulpe had commandeered them, sending one back to report their position to his uncle the Duke.
Vulpe grinned to himself as Dunn rode beside him, twenty-seven Wolf Soldiers in their command, nineteen of them Theran Lancers.
He had done the right thing. His uncle should have been here days ago. He had to save his mother.
With 1,000 Theran Lancer’s, they’d ring this little troop so thick they’d have nowhere to run. They’d release his mother, or suffer consequences so dire they could not imagine them.
The Emperor was ruthless when it came to his family. His son would be, too, but he didn’t have the Lancers.
“Vulpe,” one of his lancers trotted in from the direction of their quarry. Vulpe recognized an Andaran—Ochustee Owastah. His name meant, “Runs Alone.”
“‘Chustee,” Vulpe nodded. He considered himself a Long Manes, so this man would be of his tribe.
“They camp,” ‘Chustee said. “They have a patrol out, almost caught us. They spent a lot of time looking at our tracks. I think they’re getting suspicious.”
“Damn it,” Vulpe swore, then looked guiltily around him. No one flickered—their commander swore if he wanted to. He suppressed a guilty grin.
“Have to get out from in front of them,” Grelt interjected. “We can go forward for the rest of the day, then turn east. We’ll let them pass, try to see where they go, pick them up again. If the Duke shows up with his Lancers, we’ll just ring them in like we planned.”
“Or lose then,” Dunn argued. “Anyone else, I’d say you’re right, but these are Bounty Hunters. If they already figured us out—”
Vulpe sighed. These adults were no different from any others. They’d argue and argue, and never come to any conclusions. His father had told him once, if you let them, your warriors would argue themselves into defeat faster than victory.
“We’ll keep going on in this direction,” he said. “When they think we’re still moving on, they’ll rest. We’ll double back and take them while they sleep—Lancers in first, then regular soldiers for clean up. We’ll need to stay away—”
“Excuse me,” they heard from before them, down the path they were following.
There he stood, larger than life, atop a giant stallion. His clothes were different, and he’d lost a lot of weight, but there was no mistaking him.
His warriors’ swords leapt from their scabbards. ‘Stupid,’ was Vulpe’s first thought. If this one could get this close to him, why not the Bounty Hunters?
Especially on Little Storm.
“I’m sorry,” grandfather said, “but that isn’t going to work.”
* * *
For anyone else, the roads west from the Salt Wood would be straight, easy and safe.
For this band of vagabonds, Karl thought to himself, it would be anything but. They’d ended up turning north, and now a city called ‘Metz’ loomed in front of them at the center of the Andurin Peninsula—a city whose Earl was a founding member of the Daff Kanaar.
Metz, a city with a compliment of never less than 5,000 Daff Kanaari warriors, would find them in their first days on their territory. Volkhydran cities maintained outrider patrols, which could be bypassed or evaded. Metz’s patrols, as any Eldadorian city, would run crossing patterns at a tangent to the city walls. You could not see a patrol for days and then see three of them. Unpredictable and efficient, the Emperor didn’t need to get you right away; he just needed to get you eventually.
Of course, for most people, that meant nothing. So what if you saw even one hundred patrols, if you weren’t doing anything illegal? They could actually be very helpful, and you knew you could sleep at night and not wake up with a knife at your throat or your horses missing.
For them, it meant they had to stay off of the main roads. Now Slurn and Jahunga’s men were fanned out before them, looking for telltale tracks of the patrols that also didn’t stick to the roads. Now his Volkhydrans fanned out behind, to cover their tracks and to protect them from any patrol that came up from behind. The rest of them clung to the center, staying small and compact, moving as fast as they dared.
“How much more of this?” Raven asked, for the third time that day.
“A lot,” he told her. “We aren’t even to the city yet. We pass north of Metz, then to Tonkin, assuming no patrols find us.”
“You mean like that one?” Zarshar growled, pointing to the horizon.
Jahunga’s men were already doubling back, and his Volkhydrans advancing. Karl saw outriders, Daff Kanaari lancers, only five of them, meaning they’d reduced the size of their patrols, or this one had seen some trouble.
Five daheer away and they were already trotting. Karl had tried to make lancers of his Volkhydrans in Teher, without success. He ripped his sword out of his sheath.
“Glynn, you women break to the north. Bring Xinto and my men with you. When Jahunga is within earshot, send him west with his men. The Daff Kanaar will follow them, if any live. Zarshar, you’re with me.”
“And you, Sirrah?” Glynn asked him. The Swamp Devil was already flexing its claws.
His eyes met hers. “No one lives forever,” he said.
“Stupid,” Raven complained. “I can already—”
“No!” Glynn, Zarshar, Xinto and Karl said, together. Xinto added, “Use your power within fifty daheeri of Metz and there’ll be a wizard trying to find out why. You want them to turn out the whole garrison?”
“I’ve been using my magic—” she began.
“Rainfall on the ocean,” Glynn informed her. “Child, you must needs follow the direction of those who make war now. Attend me, let us away.”
“But—but he’ll—”
Karl kicked his skittish mount. She leapt forward, the Swamp Devil and the dog right behind him. He didn’t need to hear a woman complain right then.
On horseback, the distance closed quickly. He’d passed the Toorians in just a few minutes, Jahunga nodding to him. The other warrior would know what this meant, what was happening. Someone had to address the patrol, to make it small enough that they could either follow, or report back to Metz, but not both. Had they attacked in force, they would have all lived, but then this patrol would have broken up and brought in reinforcements. This small a challenge, they would engage and try to take prisoners.
They broke out single file. The dog leaped ahead of them, running to the lance side, stupid animal.
“Looks like Jack is losing his pet,” Zarshar commented, watching the loping hound.
“I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing,” Karl said. He allowed himself a look over his shoulder. Jahunga had already broken west. Glynn and Xinto and his Volkhydrans were trying to keep Raven from coming after him.
He admitted to himself that he wouldn’t mind being rescued by that one.
The lancers lined up in single file. Spread out, the Eldadorians would
engage them fully exposed. One at a time, they would strike and break off, keeping the lengths of their lances between themselves and their enemies. Karl might have to sacrifice the horse’s body in order to get a single strike at the lancer and then, unhorsed, he’d be on his feet.
To his surprise, the lancers actually turned away from the dog, not that it helped. She put on a burst of speed, her tail beating the empty air. Probably thought she’d get her ears scratched, Karl thought to himself.
But that wasn’t what happened.
Picking his mount’s trot up to a gallop, Jerrod held his sword low and leaned into the saddle. Skittish as she was, the mare was happy to oblige him. The Swamp Devil sprinted to keep up the pace, his talons bared.
The Daff Kanaari lowered their lances as one. Their hooves thundered on the plain, few as they were. The sun glinted from their steel armor and lance points.
The dog now at an all-out run leapt up from the first horse’s side to knock the first of the lancers from its back, tumbling with him onto the ground. Well, that was one, Karl thought. The dog will ravage him—
But no—she disengaged and immediately leapt for the third, now from the other side. Quick as a wink, she had another lancer down, deftly avoiding his weapon as her powerful legs drove her up off the ground, crashing into the armored man’s side. They were barely twenty yards apart now, and two had fallen.
The horse from the unmounted lancer ran to the left. The one behind him split his attention between his objective and the men behind him, and that was a mistake.
Karl closed on him, the lance passing before him, and drove his sword one-handed into the man’s groin. The lancer screamed, dropping his weapon, and clutched his belly.
The dog was already chasing the fifth man, and Zarshar leapt for the fourth. The Eldadorian’s lance shattered on the Swamp Devil’s breastplate and Zarshar’s claws separated the Man’s armor.
The rider’s scream was a horrible thing as the dog claimed her third victim, knocking him to the ground, her tail beating the air so hard it seemed to move in a circle, rather than back and forth. Behind him, an armored lancer tried to roll himself over onto this knees and elbows. Karl turned his horse into a wide circle and, on his second pass, ran the man down, the mare’s hooves crushing head and arms.
Zarshar had already finished with his man and was homing in on the other fallen lancer. The dog had run from the last, whom she’d felled already, and took off after the horses. She made a wide arc away from where they ran and, much like a herd dog, she began to turn them in and collect them.
Karl trotted his mount, now much more amenable for her sudden exercise, to the last fallen man, struggling against the weight of his armor to get up off of the ground.
“I would lie still, were I you,” Karl informed him.
The man squinted into the sun. The visor on his helmet had been left down, masking his face. He pushed his weapon away.
Not a mark on him. The dog hadn’t fought; it had just knocked these men from their horses. She saw the whole thing as a trick or a game.
Karl’s mind was racing.
“Well, have done with it,” the man said. His accent was Eldadorian, but not Uman. He spoke the language of Men.
“Maybe you don’t die,” he said. Daff Kanaari weren’t Wolf Soldiers. They might be desperate men, but they lacked that maniac edge, that belief that serving Lupus made them more than mortal.
“Maybe you tell us a few things, and you live,” Karl informed him.
He could hear the Toorians running up to him from behind. The dog was growling at one of the horses that tried to shy from him. His Volkhydrans were trying to collect the nervous animals.
Having thought less than half an hour ago he’d be dead by now, Karl couldn’t help considering it had turned out to be a hell of a morning.
Chapter Six
Family Reunion
Glynn arose from her prayers to find Karl Henekhson spitting another woodland beast, Jahunga laying on his back by the fire, chewing a twig, and her naked protégé frolicking with the dog in the shallow stream along which they’d decided to camp.
Jahunga’s Toorians and Karl’s Volkhydrans split the jobs of sentry and camp maintenance and guarding their one prisoner, and yet all found reasons enough to be within eyeshot of her. Glynn watched as two Volkhydrans crashed into each other, one with a load of wood, the other with an armful of green-cut hay, neither looking where they were bound.
The two Men shared a laugh and set about retrieving their burdens. Neither paid any less attention to Raven.
Glynn shook her head and rose, brushing dirt from the front of her blue travel dress. The outfit was already showing its wear, the front and seat discolored, a small tear forming under one arm. That she should travel with but one outfit made for burden enough without having to teach casting and morals to young Raven.
“Are you sufficiently entertained, Sirrah?” she asked of Jahunga, approaching their fire.
Jahunga looked up guiltily and pulled the twig from his lips, casting it into the fire. He sighed, pushed himself up to his feet, and said, “Perhaps I should make sure the sentries are split up fairly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Karl demanded, looking up from the spit.
“Well, no one can question that my Toorians do more of the scouting,” Jahunga said.
Karl snorted. “They did more of the running yesterday.”
Jahunga straightened. “You call us cowards? You were the one who told us to run—”
“Like I had to tell them—”
“Goodsirs, please,” Vedeen intervened. She’d sat herself down by the fire, where she mended a tear in her robe. “An it were me, I would appreciate the subtle evening more and the young lady less. In fact, I myself thought to join her.”
“No, let them fight,” Zarshar said, grinning. “The victor wins the argument.”
“We won’t have either beating either, Zarshar,” Glynn insisted. The Devil sought the violence of its kind, which came as no surprise to her. In fact, the Devil probably believed what it was saying.
Xinto, whom she’d previously not noticed, reclining like a lump in a pile of Eldadorian saddles, added, “If it keeps them quiet after, then I say let them. When has it been in anyone’s best interest to keep Men from fighting?”
“Perhaps the Fovean High Council might—” Glynn began.
“Irrelevant entity,” Xinto interrupted.
“We aren’t going to fight,” Karl grumbled, and threw a bowl of water and spice herbs against the side on the spit. “Unless we decide to team up on one of you three.”
Zarshar simply stood and flexed his muscles. Glynn stepped between him and the Volkhydran, knowing what was imminent.
“I think not, Sirrah,” she said.
She knew she could count on Jahunga’s good graces, and he didn’t disappoint her. “We offer you no challenge, Zarshar,” he said. “We have an agreement, and we honor it, of course.”
Zarshar leveled his red eyes first at Jahunga, then at Karl, and then reseated himself. From the direction of the stream, the dog barked and leapt out of the water, shaking itself in a wide, wet spray. Raven, up to her hips in the stream, leaned her head back into the water to dip her long, black hair, accentuating her breasts.
“War’s beard,” one of the Volkhydrans swore. Glynn shook her head.
“I’ll take care of it,” Karl said. He turned to Jahunga. “Can you watch this?”
“I think it better, Sirrah—” Glynn began. The last thing the girl needed was another male, ogling her.
“I bet you do,” Karl said, and turned his back on her, grabbing a towel from the saddle pile. Jahunga stood and took hold of the handle on the spit, turning the side. Fat had already begun to bubble and pop on it.
Vedeen looked down into her robe and smiled, saying nothing.
“Better to leave this within the people,” Xinto noted, leaning back into the pile of saddles.
“But, Sirrah,” Glynn said.
“They aren’t of the same people.”
* * *
Raven ran her fingers through her thick, wet hair, watching the dog run back and forth along the bank of the stream. The water was freezing, but it made her skin feel alive. Getting a pound of trail dust out of her hair didn’t make her feel any worse, either.
The dog turned to see Karl approaching them and barked at him, its tail beating the air. She ran toward the Volkhydran, went down in a crouch, barked again and, its tail not missing a beat, charged back toward Raven.
She had to laugh.
“So,” Karl said, as soon as he was sure he had her attention. “Are you trying to start a brawl, or is there a brothel you want into?”
She knelt down into the water until it covered her up to the shoulders. “None of them ever seen a woman before?” she asked.
“You want to wave it under their noses, go ahead,” Karl informed her, holding up the towel. “They rape you in the night, don’t scream for me.”
She made a disgusted face and stood, exposing all of her, stepping out of the water. She knew she could dry herself in a second with her magic, but she’d been warned she’d draw the city’s attention. They could see Metz’ walls on the horizon now—there was no point in alerting them.
“I didn’t know that was how your men behaved,” she said, taking the towel and wrapping it around her. She felt Karl’s fingertips brush her shoulders and suppressed a little thrill at their roughness.
He was gorgeous, but he still wasn’t Bill. No one was Bill.
But Bill wasn’t here, either. Bill had taken off on her. Bill was ‘Jack,’ and Jack had things to do.
So, yeah, she’d gone skinny dipping for some attention. It wasn’t like they hadn’t all seen her naked at some point, either getting into her bedroll, relieving herself, or what-have-you. She’d seen each of them, as well. She’d half-hoped that some of them would join her.
Maybe Glynn could have taken the opportunity to get the stick out of her ass.
“You can only push a man so far,” Karl said. The dog ran up to him and nosed his hand. He ruffled her wet ears, then pushed her away. Reaching behind him, he pulled a dirk from his belt.