by Court Ellyn
Laral slugged him in the other shoulder. “We’ll be lucky if ogres didn’t hear you clear to Ulmarr. Eyes open, mouth shut. Ride point. Twenty yards ahead. Not one peep. Go.”
Drys grit his teeth in Laral’s face, then rode off at a trot.
Whispers came from the rear. Whispers carrying the sour note of apology. “Kalla, you too,” Laral snapped. “Stop mothering that boy. The three of us have been friends since we were kids. Don’t make him a wedge.”
She gasped and puffed, trying to gather her wits. “Tarsyn wouldn’t be a wedge if you two weren’t assholes.”
“Can we stop bickering, please?” Tarsyn’s eyes darted between the two of them. “What about Ulmarr, m’ lord? Will we go through town or around?”
The young man’s composure was a chastisement that shamed Laral to his bones. The tension wasn’t Tarsyn’s fault. The stress of the search weighed heavily on them all. They couldn’t afford to crack, not this early. Laral reined in to ride abreast with the two of them, primarily because he didn’t like the idea of them glaring daggers into his back. “Best to go around. If we swing to the south, we’ll be able to examine the road to Karnedyr. The ogres could’ve taken the prisoners south before heading into the mountains.”
Near dawn, they arrived within sight of Ulmarr. The village spread out like pitch spilled on the benighted hills. It hugged the feet of the rocky hill where the castle hunched like a sleeping beast. Lamplight shone through a couple of arrow loops, hinting that someone occupied the towers. Preferring to avoid scouts and picket lines, Drys led his companions off the highway long before he detected any shimmers. They used tree-lines and the hollows between hills for cover. The horses seemed to delight in having soft ground beneath their hooves, but the moons were dim so the going was slow. Forath’s red dome slipped out of sight in the west. It was as if the warrior moon pouted, refusing to share the sky with his mate, even for an instant. Thyrra rose grandly from the jagged horizon, a coy silver smile. Only the tips of the Drakhan Mountains were visible, and the moon’s light turned them as white as teeth. She wasn’t long in the sky before dawn began to brighten the east.
Throughout the morning, a narrow lane carried the companions past farmhouses with boarded windows and barricaded doors. Near noon, they topped a hill and saw the highway stretching across a green valley. At Ulmarr, the road split northeast for Nathrachan and southeast for Karnedyr. A hamlet of five houses and a mill sprawled around the juncture where the lane met the Karnedyr road. The fins of the mill turned slowly in a warm wind. A wheat field edged toward gold. At a well, a woman wrung out laundry. A welcome sight. It would lift Laral’s heart to talk to someone who had managed to escape this horror.
They started down the hill, Drys in the lead. As Laral was dreaming of bread warm from the oven and freshly churned butter, Drys reined in sharply. “Back, back, back!” he whisper-shouted.
The woman at the well dropped her laundry and stood motionless, as if listening. Then she ran for one of the houses. By the time Laral turned his mount, Kalla and Tarsyn were cantering back the way they’d come. Once they were hidden at the bottom of the hill, Drys reported, “Looked like foragers. Two of ‘em were pulling a cart. I hate it when they do that. Bastards are big as oxen, and I remember how puny I am.”
“No one would call you puny,” Kalla said dryly.
“Because I’d break their teeth.”
“What should we do?” asked Tarsyn.
“Take to a field, jump a hedgerow?” Kalla suggested.
“We take cover while the ogres are this close,” said Laral. “They may be only foragers, or they might belong to a war band who’s lurking around.”
No one argued. The excuse to rest was too welcome. A stand of birch trees growing alongside a hedgerow provided fair cover. Laral tethered his horse and whispered soothing words, even though it wasn’t the horse who needed them. He laid his forehead against the animal’s sweaty neck and said, “My family didn’t come this way.”
“How can you be sure?” Drys asked. “We haven’t scouted the highway yet.”
“Those people. The ogres who took Wren would’ve slain them or taken them prisoner, too, like they did at the Crossroads.”
Kalla was kind to debate the point. “They could be squatters, refugees who settled in after the ogres marched through.”
Laral nodded and forced an appreciative smile.
Drys headed back up the hill to keep watch on the raiders. Laral decided to accompany him. “Stay here,” he told the others. “Keep an eye open. You’ll see us running if we need to flee.”
He was halfway up the hill when he heard the screams. Ahead, Drys dropped to his belly and crawled on his elbows to the lip of the hill. Laral lowered himself into the grass and joined him. Half a dozen people were lining up and descending to their knees amid the lane. An ogre loomed over them, pointing and bellowing orders that Laral couldn’t make out. Others tossed bags of flour from the mill. One loaded the bags into the cart. A body was sprawled near one of the houses.
A man on his knees spread his hands in a pleading gesture, but his words were too soft. Whatever he’d said, the ogre didn’t like it. He swept a child from the line. A woman screamed and scrambled after him, but one swift backhand from the ogre sent her reeling.
Laral’s attention clung to the boy. He was small, dark-haired, and feisty; he kicked and squirmed as the ogre held him off the ground under one arm. Laral knew it wasn’t Andy, but his heart jumped in an agonizing flip-flop anyway.
The ogre bellowed his orders. “…all food…,” Laral heard. The man who pleaded on the villagers’ behalf rose to his feet, reached for the boy.
“No, stay down,” Laral whispered. If only the man could hear him…
The ogre wrapped a hand around the boy’s head and gave a sharp tug. The boy’s legs went limp. So quick, so indifferent, as if the boy were a chicken bound for the pot. The man sank to his hands and knees; his wail careened up the hill.
Laral had to bite the back of his hand to stop himself from crying out. Andy, Goddess, Mother-Father, protect my boy…
He felt Drys’s hand on his back. Blunt, hard fingers curled into a furious knot around Laral’s surcoat. “There’s only three of ‘em. No, four. Still, I can take that many.”
Laral shook his head.
“I can!”
“I don’t care if you can or not. We can’t risk losing you.”
Drys persisted. “If I take a couple by surprise—”
Laral seized his collar. “My kids, Drys! My Wren! Without your eyes I’ll get myself killed before I can find them. We stick to the plan and wait here until they’ve gone.”
Drys lurched free of Laral’s grasp, and for an instant Laral feared he meant to charge down the hill anyway, but the vengeance leaked out of him and he laid his forehead on his arm.
The ogre who gave the orders tossed the boy’s body into the cart, like another sack of flour, then he fetched the corpse sprawled beside the house. The villagers huddled together, keening, as the cart carried the bodies of their loved ones away.
The boy’s mother staggered after the cart, then broke into a run, screaming a name. An ogre turned. The scream stopped abruptly, and the woman crumpled in a heap. Had he struck her? Stabbed her? She was too far away to tell. It was nothing for the ogre to lift the woman and heave her into the cart alongside the body of her son.
Laral didn’t know what happened after that. All he saw was Wren running after Andy. No, it was Lesha. His beautiful girl lying in the back of a cart. Moments passed before he realized Drys was shaking his shoulder. He tried to climb to his feet, but his body wouldn’t move. A door shut. The villagers had fled into one of the houses, but Laral hadn’t seen them go. Drys dragged him up by his arm. He trembled so hard that his legs felt brittle. His jaw ached and he realized he was clenching his teeth.
When they returned to the stand of birch trees, Kalla and Tarsyn bombarded them with questions. Laral didn’t have the heart to answer. He mounted
up and started for the highway, leaving Drys to paint the picture.
They searched several miles of the Karnedyr road. Heat rose off the white gravel in shiny ripples. Sweat trickled between Laral’s shoulder blades; the sleeves of his mail hauberk were exposed to the sun, and the weight of the armor made his shoulders ache, but he didn’t dare remove it. The back of Drys’s neck turned the color of a ripe apple’s skin. Tarsyn let Kalla borrow his gaudy wide-brimmed hat, boasting that he didn’t burn in the sun. Discomforts didn’t matter to Laral. He busied himself with calculations. If the ogres had camped at the Crossroads, Ulmarr was about as far as a person could walk in a day, if they pushed themselves, a difficult feat for several hundred prisoners. And after Ulmarr? Another fifteen mile walk would bring the train this far. Though they found wagon ruts and ogre tracks, they saw no sign that a large number of humans had passed. Only one firepit. No piles of bones or discarded clothes.
In mid-afternoon, Laral insisted they head north for the road to Nathrachan. If they hurried, they might have enough daylight to search it as well.
The sun was slipping low when they crossed a hayfield and emerged onto the highway. They searched until dusk. By then their bodies ached, their bellies complained, and tempers grew short. “We’re wasting our time,” Drys said, rubbing eyes tired of examining the ground. “They probably camped in Ulmarr’s shadow, and we’d be stupid to creep in that close for a peek. We should capture one of those bone-sucking bastards and poke him with a hot stick until he tells where the prisoners are.”
“I should like to see you try to capture an ogre,” Tarsyn said. “Yes, indeed, I would.”
“You calling me short, you little by-blow?”
“If that’s the only insult you heard, you’re short on imagination as well.”
A vein bulged in Drys’s forehead. He ground his teeth and raised his fist; if his horse hadn’t detected the tension and side-stepped, he might’ve taken a swing at the kid.
“Drys,” Laral barked, “lead us to a safe campsite. Tarsyn, you’re rear guard, and keep your mouth shut. Kalla, with me.” She was the only one with sense and the only company he had patience for, but she was too tired to offer advice or encouragement. Out of habit, she kept her eyes on the road, looking for the smallest trace of human presence despite the failing light.
Tarsyn brought up the rear as ordered, humming of all things. Didn’t anything dampen his spirits? His song slowed and absently evolved into the tune of Alovi’s Ballad. I shall find thee, love, near or far, though I search beyond sun and star. Lesha’s favorite.
Drys turned in the saddle and called back, “Something up ahead.”
A large wain emerged from the twilight. It had been pushed into the ditch on a broken axle. A closer look revealed blood stains dried deep into the wood of the bed. “One of their meat wagons?” Drys asked.
“Do you have to call it that?” Kalla snapped. Whatever they called it, the wagon suggested they were on the right track.
Pushing on well past dark, they arrived at a stand of old, ragged cottonwood trees. A space of flat ground marked where other travelers often stopped to camp. “This place reminds me of Thorn,” Laral said, dismounting.
“Why is that?” asked Tarsyn. Seemed he was ready to jump at any chance for friendly conversation with Lesha’s father.
Laral tethered his horse to a fallen tree and began loosening the saddle and packs. “It’s where he showed up again. No one had heard a word from him in years. Many of us thought he was dead. Then there he was, waiting for us to come to him. Never will I forget the sight of him. He looked more Elaran than human.”
“Elaran?”
Laral let out a dry chuckle and lowered his saddle to a space of ground smooth enough for sleeping. He kicked at a few twigs, then flung out his blanket.
“Will you tell me of the war?” Tarsyn knelt and with a single push unfurled his bedroll. The hard sausage and a bottle of wine were tucked inside.
“No. I was just a squire anyway.” Laral felt for the dagger that he’d used to defend Lady Rhyverdane, then remembered he’d given it to Andy.
“But you must’ve seen—”
“No. Ask Drys if you want stories.”
Drys snorted. “Go earn your own war stories, boy.”
They wolfed down stiff bread and dried apples, and even shared the bottle of wine. Laral hated to admit it, but as his bruises eased and his muscles relaxed, he was grateful Tarsyn had filched it.
By the time they were ready to bed down, Forath hung directly overhead, heavy and sullen. The red glow lit a path for Laral as he ventured into the trees to relieve himself, and when he returned to camp, he found Drys stooping over Tarsyn’s bedroll. Tarsyn was nowhere in evidence. “What are you doing?”
Drys stood in a hurry. “Nothing!” He chuckled. “Just seeing if it’s made of silk.”
“Leave the kid alone, will you?”
Drys shrugged and sauntered off into the trees.
Laral settled himself atop his blanket, trying to make himself comfortable despite the bruises his chainmail had dealt him during the last several nights. Imagining the discomforts Wren might be suffering made his own aches fade. He stared up through the fluttering cottonwood leaves at the stars and wondered how much farther he’d have to ride before he caught up to his family. He would travel to the eastern shore if he had to, but part of him felt they might be over the next hill. The next, the next, and the road stretched on, empty and selfish with its secrets.
The others trickled back to camp. Drys trudged about in a weary watch, and Laral was drifting on the sweet side of sleep when an outcry startled him. He sprang up reaching for his sword.
Tarsyn scrambled free of his bedroll, dancing and slapping himself as if he were on fire. Even in the shadow-dappled dark, the spider was big enough to see. It skittered down Tarsyn’s chest, black, furry, and scared to death. He flung it to the ground and smashed it under his heel, once, twice, five times. In the stillness that followed, he stood over it panting and shuddering and wiping at his face with his hands.
Laughter erupted from Drys. “I hoped for a reaction, but good Goddess, boy! That was spectacular!”
There was nothing cool in the rage Tarsyn aimed at Drys. Laral suspected that if there had been a campfire, the boy would have picked up embers with his bare hand and shoved them down Drys’s throat. Instead he kicked sand at him and bellowed, “Childish fucking dwarf!”
Drys’s laughter stopped on a startled note. “Mind your mouth, boy!”
“As skillfully as you do? Done!” In a mock sing-song he added, “There once was a dwarf with no sense at all. He bullied young boys and thought himself tall.”
Crouching on her blanket, Kalla drooped a bit and muttered, “Oh, shit. Laral—”
He didn’t have time to intervene. Drys let out a wild roar and charged, head ducked, arms open. Tarsyn braced himself. He met the attack with an embrace and let Drys carry him back, back, until they slammed into the trunk of a cottonwood tree. His hands knotted together in one large mallet and hammered Drys in the kidneys, while his knees went to work on Drys’s gut.
“Laral, stop them!” Kalla cried.
But Laral crossed his arms and watched from a cool distance.
“Drys will kill him!”
Something about Tarsyn’s blows and reflexes said otherwise. Would this young man who prided himself on his character fight with honor?
When Laral did nothing, Kalla huffed and started forward to break them up, but Laral grabbed her arm and hauled her back. She cursed him, but then noted his intent on his face and started pacing nervously instead.
Drys backed away from the barrage to his ribs, seized the front of Tarsyn’s jerkin and flung him to the ground. The boy rolled to his feet, but Drys’s fist caught him under the eye, knocking him flat. Tarsyn lay on his back, caught his breath, and swung a foot into Drys’s knee. When he toppled, Tarsyn pounced him with both fists swinging. It was rare that anyone got the advantage over Drys the Ea
sily Offended.
In truth, Laral had expected him to give up after the first blow and go whine in a corner. Maybe he really had been a sailor. “Dockside brawls, you think?”
Kalla’s pacing paused. “What?” After a moment’s reflection she caught his meaning. “And bullies like Drys. The world has no shortage of bullies like Drys. I hope Tarsyn breaks his jaw. Maybe that’ll keep him quiet.”
Laral laughed. “I doubt it.”
A meaty smack dropped Tarsyn hard. Drys huffed, kicked sand at him, and started to walk away. The boy heaved himself off the ground, took a second to steady himself, then in two steps had Drys in a headlock. His free hand pummeled the side of the older man’s face. Drys threw his head back, hammering Tarsyn in the chin while his elbow struck the air from his lungs. A swift bear-like swipe, and Drys tossed him onto the ground again. “Stay down, boy!”
“Screw your dwarf of a mother!”
Drys reared back a foot, but Tarsyn rolled into Drys’s grounded leg, toppling him in a heap. Limbs scrambled, sand clouded rusty in the red moonlight, and in a heartbeat Drys straddled the boy with both hands gripping his hair. Before he could slam his foolish young head into the ground, Laral grabbed Drys by the scruff and dragged him away. He cursed and flailed and slowly came to his senses. Blinking up at Laral through a bloodied eye that would surely swell shut, he muttered, “Oh. Laral. Don’t worry. We’ll see eye to eye in no time.”
“Cut him down to size, will you?”
“Damn it, not you too.” Drys spat blood, worked his jaw.
“Speaking of eyes, we need yours. Else I’d have let him kill you.”
Drys climbed stiffly to his feet. “Ha! That little shit, kill me?”
Laral nodded. “You were ready to quit. I don’t think he’d ever stop.” Tarsyn had managed to find his feet as well; he braced his hands on his knees and waved Kalla away. “Matter of fact,” Laral added, “I think he’s a good one to have on your side.” He left his old friend to think it over and approached the lad. Instinctively, Tarsyn raised his fists, then saw Laral coming and lowered them.