Elizabeth of Starland (The Colplatschki Chronicles Book 1)

by Alma Boykin

  “You sense it too, my lady,” Lazlo observed, coming up beside her for a moment.

  “Yes. Are the Turkowi this overconfident, or are we riding into a trap?” Or was it both?

  “Or are they trying to wear us down and hit us later, once we start ignoring the little signs and hints?” Lazlo continued scanning the old fields and collapsed houses.

  They followed the Turkowi’s route well into the foothills. Finally Elizabeth called a halt. “We’re not going to find anything in the dark. Let’s,” and she caught herself. “We are returning to the flat area two kilometers back and making camp there.” Lazlo and several of the men gave her strange looks, then started moving in order to resume their march positions. “No,” she stopped them. “Simple reversal as we are.”

  That saved her. No sooner had the lead rider begun moving when a net dropped. The heavy cording fell onto his horse’s rump and the beast spooked, lurching forward. Elizabeth kneed Malcom to the side of the trail and drew her saber before urging him forward as three Turkowi sprang out of hiding and a horse screamed. One of the attackers grabbed Malcom’s bridle. Elizabeth smashed his arm with her saber, forcing him to let go. As he did, the gelding kicked out behind him. She heard a grunt of pain and swung down at the man beside her, inflicting a deep slash to his face. He backed away and she forced Malcom to pivot so she could finish off the attacker. As she did, a flash of fire appeared and the gelding screamed, staggering as a musket ball hit him. “Lateral advance,” Elizabeth called, turning the injured horse across the road and riding into the woods. As soon as they got off the trail, the underbrush and trees opened up, giving the Imperials room to maneuver and eliminating half of their attackers, at least for the moment.

  Two Turkowi horsemen followed Elizabeth and she turned to face them, dropping the reins before firing her pistol at one as he came into range. St. Gerald was with her, because the ball hit his face and he dropped his sword to clutch his head. The other rider screamed a challenge and rode straight into Malcom as Elizabeth slid the pistol into its holster. The gelding staggered at the impact and Elizabeth almost lost her sword. Something skidded off her chest armor and she stabbed, aiming at gap under the man’s arm. She missed and he grabbed her, intending to pull her out of the saddle, but the leaping horn held her in place. She drew her saddle knife, jamming it into his groin and sawing away at him. He screamed and relaxed his grip enough for her to break her sword-arm loose. Malcom shifted sideways, giving her space to swing at the man’s arm again. This time she got a hit; severing muscle and making him drop his sword. He tried to keep fighting even as he swayed in the saddle but Malcom moved again and the Turkowi’s horse, ignoring his rider’s commands, disengaged from the injured gelding.

  Someone pounded up and she wrenched Malcom around, ready to fight both foes or flee. It was Gary, one of her men, and she relaxed a fraction. The Turkowi leaned to the side, sagging onto his horse’s neck and dropping his weapons. Gary sliced the man’s throat open to ensure that he’d remain harmless. She nodded grimly. Only a dismembered Turkowi was truly dead, she’d learned this bitter month. She pulled a whistle from her collar and blew a trilling call. “Bring the horse if you can. I think I’m going to need it.”

  “If not you, someone else.” Gary panted, catching the smaller horse’s reins and leading it beside his fighting mare.

  Malcom’s limp grew worse, forcing Elizabeth to walk the last kilometer as the Imperials regrouped at the flat spot. A few minutes later the last stray walked in, leading the pack mule, as Gary got a small, shielded fire started. “Who’s missing?” Elizabeth growled, throat parched, her guts and back aching.

  “Lew’s dead, Lazlo’s got a dislocated shoulder, everyone’s got scratches, but all are accounted for,” Pedro told her. “One Turkowi may have escaped, the one that got Lew. Hit him and then fled into the woods.”

  Ah, damn. That meant he was probably reporting to someone. “Right. We rest for two hours, then we’re moving off the trail.” Several of the men glared at her but no one argued. They would later, she knew, but right now survival trumped bad leadership. “How many horses have we got?”

  Lazlo’s beast had died by crossbow, Malcom had a nasty but shallow gash in his right hock thanks to the musket ball, and two others had been wounded to the point of lameness. The pack mule remained uninjured and seemed to regard the adventure as nothing more than one final imposition on his already bad day. Godown bless mules, Elizabeth giggled to herself. They’d captured four Turkowi horses. Elizabeth claimed the one her attacker had been riding, assigned a second to Lazlo, and let the men with lamed beasts take the others.

  Two hours later they picked their way through the dark woods. Through the grace of Godown, a forest fire the previous summer had cleared out the underbrush. Elizabeth’s new mount seemed to be a good night horse, calm and steady despite the darkness. Or was it hearing something familiar? A horrible thought crossed Elizabeth’s mind and she slowed the stud, then stopped. The men also stopped and she listened as hard as she could, trying to identify any out-of-place noises.

  She heard nothing and neither did any of the men, so they resumed their downhill trek. Just before they reached the plain, as the woods thinned out into brush, a dull “crack” followed by a low, rumbling boom shook the air and the very ground seemed to tremble. The horses reared, panic-stricken, and the mule tried to bolt. Elizabeth sat hard in the unfamiliar saddle, holding her beast’s head down to keep him from rearing again. Several minutes passed before everyone settled down, and as soon as they found a decent camping area, Elizabeth called a halt. She made certain that everyone was OK, got Lazlo settled, saw to Malcom and the other horse, and then, at long last, slipped away behind a tree to empty her bladder and change her padding and band.

  As she rinsed the old band and padding, well downstream of where her troopers gathered water and watered their beasts, she found herself swallowing hysterical laughter. She’d been using scraps and strips of cloth cut from the clothes of dead Turkowi to hold the lint and other material. Godown have mercy, this must be the ultimate insult to a follower of Selkow, she giggled. And we’re alive and they’re not. The giggles threatened to escape and she clamped a hand over her mouth, forcing herself to stay silent. But that may change at any time. Cold reality and a mouthful of the frigid water from the stream sobered her. Lew is not alive.

  Elizabeth returned to camp and accepted a mug of hot tea. “Any idea what that boom was, my lady?” Gary asked.

  “Not thunder, and probably not the opening of the Final Days.” She drank more tea. “There are Lander sites in the Dividing Range, and some old mines. I’ve heard about people accidentally setting off Lander devices that blew up, killing them.”

  The tracker, Chan Michael, shook his head. “Don’t think it was that, my lady. Turkowi like Lander things even less than St. Mou’s followers do. Wonder if they had a trap at the head of the trail and something tripped it.”

  “Head of the trail, or that nice flat camping area?” Lazlo added from where he reclined against his saddle.

  “Well, we’re not going to go find out until well after sunrise,” she stated. “I’ll take first watch. Chan, as soon as there’s enough light, release a bird so his Grace knows what we’ve found.” Her cramps would make sleep impossible anyway, at least for the moment. She dug her short string of prayer beads out of Malcom’s saddlebag and recited the office for the dead for Lew and for the dead Turkowi as she stood her watch. It might not help Selkow’s followers, but it gave her a little peace of mind.

  She managed to sleep for an hour or so during the second watch. It helped. The cramps stopping helped even more. After she emptied her bladder again, she gnawed more trail bread. The hard, twice-baked meat and bread plank absorbed every drop of tea that she tried to soften it with. “You’d think, as much rain as we’ve been enjoying, these would be at least a little bit easier to chew,” she told the air.

  “Nah, my lady, I’ve seen ‘em moldy from the wet but still hard un
der the fur,” Chan Michael laughed. The other troopers snorted and nodded their agreement. “Do the Frankonians have anything like it?”

  She tried to recall. “Yes, but they add maize grindings to the flour instead of meat, so it is just as hard and twice as scratchy and gritty.” She blinked, staring at the ration in her hand. I just called Frankonia ‘they’. Interesting.

  Even more interesting was what they found at the campsite up the trail, past where they’d ben surprised. “For someone who does not like Lander technology, the Turkowi certainly tried to use a lot of it,” Lazlo noted. Two mugs of salibark tea had dulled the pain of his shoulder enough for him to ride.

  “It is a hell of a hole,” Chan Michael observed, brushing coarse, straight black hair out of his eyes.

  “Indeed.” Elizabeth paced around the crater. In a way, it made no sense. Why go to such an effort to kill a small patrol?

  Gary burst out laughing. “Well I’ll be shot for a pseudo-deer! Selkow’s acolytes can fly!” She turned, saw Gary pointing up, and peered into the top of a broken tree. As used to dead bodies as she was becoming, the sight still turned her stomach. Another voice laughed, “Fly, yes, but he sure as hell couldn’t land.”

  Pedro and Lazlo both frowned. “My lady, for something to go up like that, the explosion had to be beneath it,” Pedro explained, lowering his voice. “Why was he standing on the explosives when they triggered?”

  “And why the explosives at all?” Lazlo, also very quiet, continued the thought as he looked around the clearing.

  Elizabeth risked taking off her helmet and scratching her head. She beckoned the men to come closer so they could hear her. “One, they had them cached here and an accident happened.” The men gave her skeptical looks. “Two, this was a trap for us, if we did not ride into the ambush, or if we fled here after the ambush.” Several of the troopers nodded their agreement, but she continued, “or it was not for us at all. It is part of something larger, meant to trap a bigger force. Remember, there was a loud boom after the crack last night.” The itchy feeling between her shoulder blades made her increasingly nervous, and she walked over to a large rock, putting her back to it. “How far would his grace’s forces have gotten on this trail, assuming they made the same time we did, but did not run into the ambush?” Grim looks answered her question.

  She and Lazlo exchanged frowns. “I don’t like it, my lady,” he admitted.

  “Me either, my lady,” Chan Michael agreed.

  And what if it were not for Aquila at all, but for an even larger force, one notled by a suspicious stranger and a local scout? Which means… she did not want to think about what that meant, if it were true. “Mount up,” she hissed. She grabbed Chan Michael’s arm as he turned to go. “Is there a different trail?” Elizabeth pointed upslope.

  He nodded. She raised her eyebrows in a question and he pointed north and east. She nodded. He tapped his forehead in salute before turning to get his horse. As they set out, she could tell that the troopers were wondering what the hell the crazy foreign woman wanted. She wanted information and confirmation, one way or another, of her fears.

  The trail paralleled the one the Turkowi had followed. She could see why they preferred the other. Only the mule acted comfortable with the rocky, washed-out goat path. Actually, she decided after ducking another branch, anything as smart as goats would shun the area too, so this must be a sheep or shahma trail. The trees began thinning out and Chan stopped so quickly that she almost collided with him. “Ah,” he breathed.

  “Indeed,” she hissed, eyes bulging. “A quick look around, but no lingering or collecting,” she ordered the others. “Unless you can collect an uninjured horse or mule that seems tractable. Otherwise kill the beast.”

  “Don’t touch any metal or Lander gear,” Pedro murmured. No one else spoke as they studied the remains of what had been a large camp or depot. What happened? Nothing explodes on its own, does it? She saw a convenient rock and slid out of the Turkowi horse’s saddle, handed the reins to Gary to hold, and went around the back of the reddish-black boulder to take care of her needs.

  “Oh, oh St. Sabrina,” she gagged, backing up at the double. “Oh holy Godown,” and she burst into tears.

  Chan Michael took one look at what she’d found and turned as white as she was. “My lady, go over there, please.” She found Malcom and leaned against the horse’s shoulder, sobbing as quietly as she could. Once she got herself under control, she wrote a coded message to Aquila and launched a dove.

  Fury replaced shock and she stalked back to the grisly remains. “If she was not alone, I wager we won’t find the other women.”

  Lazlo started to challenge her, then caught himself as he realized her meaning. The others looked from the remains to the wreckage behind them. “She’s not Starland, my lady,” Lazlo told her. “Her clothing looks more northern, Windthorst colors and weight.”

  Elizabeth wanted to ride straight back to Aquila and warn him. But the men would refuse to go without burying the remains of the eastern woman, whoever she had been, and Elizabeth wasn’t in a position to force the matter. “Gary, find a soft spot where we can dig. Ted, Aaron, collect rocks.” She gave her orders and took her turn digging the shallow grave. They’d cover it with rocks to discourage scavengers. As the men dug and explored, Elizabeth cut the embroidered strip of cloth from the dead woman’s skirt, what was left of it, to use to identify her or her family.

  Once they finished with the brief internment service, the patrol did not linger in the foothills. They reached the plains at sunset, located an abandoned house and made camp there. Elizabeth tried to decide what was worse: finding the town that had been raided, or seeing what became of women captured by Selkow’s followers. She prayed that the girl had died quickly, as unlikely as that was. Then she shook herself and began writing a full report for Aquila. She left a great deal out, including her suppositions about how a woman who seemed to be from Windthorst ended up on the far edge of Starland’s holdings. Well, not holdings, not at the moment, but much closer to Starland than to Windthorst. She did not recall reading or hearing anything about a raid that far into Imperial territory, and if anyone had grounds for knowing, it was Aquila von Starland and his officers.

  The next day, a dry day, they rejoined the main body of Aquila’s troops. “That saddle needs some soap,” one of the camp guards sneered at her.

  “Killing’s a messy business,” she snapped. “Especially when it’s a Turkowi.” Once inside the perimeter, she led her men to their usual section of the camp. After they got settled, she took the looted horse and Malcom over to the picket line and without thinking about it, tied them there, loosened their girths a little, and turned to see to her men. Matthew Starland caught her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To take care of my troopers, my lord.”

  He smiled a little. “No need. Strip your beasts, then report to his grace.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She did as ordered, rubbing more liniment on Malcom’s healing bullet wound. “You are almost fit for duty again,” she warned him. He dropped a load of horse apples and swished his tail at her. “Snowy is a bad example, I can tell.”

  One of the wranglers came up as she heaved the heavy Turkowi saddle off the other horse. “Who’s this, my lady?”

  She stared at him blankly. “He doesn’t have a name.” She turned back to the stallion. He was a very dark gray, with paler grey mane and tail and one white sock on the left rear. “Call him Grau. He’s loot, for his grace to apportion.”

  “Grau. Very good, my lady.” He waited until she finished removing the last of the tack before watering and feeding the two horses. Elizabeth found a place to wash off the worst of the visible dirt, shook her hands dry, and went to find Duke Aquila.

  “His grace is meeting with a guest,” the guard at the tent warned her. “You’ll need to wait.”

  “Very well.” She stepped out of the way and began pacing, walking back and forth, trying to get the blood flow
ing again. The warm spring sun made her sleepy and she fought off a yawn. Another thing that’s not in the tales of glorious warfare: bone-deep exhaustion, sore feet, blisters, and itchy hair. At least she’d managed to avoid lice and fleas, so far. Another yawn threatened to split her head in two.

  At last Aquila appeared, looking around for her. “Here, your grace,” and she bowed.

  “Good. Come in. I need you to show me exactly what you found, and where.” He stopped and sniffed as she passed him. A broad grin appeared on his face. “Lady Sarmas, do you ever wear any perfume other than horse?”

  “Not when I’m traveling, your grace.” It had become a joke between them. As her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, she noticed a pale man standing beside the all-purpose table in Aquila’s tent. She bowed a little, acknowledging his presence. He nodded back, then returned to studying the maps spread out on the table. “Your pardon, your grace, but do you have any drinking water?”

  His aid poured her a large leather tankard of diluted wine and juice. “Thank you.” She downed half of it in one long chug. When she finished, Aquila pointed to the maps.

  “We followed the tracks to here,” she began. It felt as if she’d stepped back a year, to her first encounter with Aquila Starland, recounting her escape from Frankonia. The men listened without interrupting until she reached the part about her squad’s discovery on the bald. “Your grace, to be honest, I have not the faintest idea what happened, other than either Godown’s hand reached down and smote the heathen, or someone carried fire into a gunpowder storage building.” In truth, she highly suspected the latter.

  “Building?” Aquila frowned at the map.

  “Yes, your grace. We found splinters,” and she made a ball with her hands, then pulled them apart, “scattered out from the middle of what might have been the camp or outpost. Along with at least two dozen Turkowi bodies, and,” she stopped, forcing herself to swallow the gorge rising in her throat. She clenched her fists so tightly that her nails cut into her palms. The pain helped her stay in control of her voice as she continued, “An altar. And the remains of at least one woman from the Empire; possibly two more, but one I can swear to.”