Wardtown (Teer & Kard Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  The guide was already on the ground, leading Grump into the trees as she drew her bow from its case again.

  “Doka leaves them unless attacked?”

  “Exactly,” Kard said. “Be careful.”

  “Doka always careful,” she replied. “Ask Teer.”

  Teer’s ears were burning again. Thankfully, his coloring didn’t show blushing much, at least.

  “I know,” the bounty hunter agreed. “But Boulder didn’t live the way he does this long by letting people sneak up on him.”

  Doka winked and disappeared into the trees with unexpected speed.

  “She’s a strange one,” Teer murmured. “I don’t know what to make of her.”

  “That she’s a strange one,” Kard suggested. “She’s Kotan, but even among Kotan she’s strange. Like you or I, she has magic of her own. Like me, she hides it.”

  The El-Spehari sighed.

  “She’ll be safe enough, I hope. We’ve worked together enough I’d rather not lose her.”

  Teer nodded, reaching down to loosen his hunter in its scabbard. He couldn’t hear any sign of Doka, but he figured he’d hear a change in the voices if they spotted her.

  “Voices are moving,” he warned Kard. “Heading father away. North, I think?”

  “You realize that’s not normal, right?” the bounty hunter asked with a chuckle. “I can’t hear them, and I hear better than any Merik should. Doka hears as well as I do…and you heard them before either of us.”

  “Oh.” Teer chewed on that. “Not just sight, I guess.”

  “No,” Kard agreed. “I need to find some books. Odar won’t have them. Carlon might.”

  “Books, sir?” Teer asked.

  “I’m not exactly going to write some old Spehari and ask him what magic the Merik had when his people arrived,” Kard said drily. “You’re gifted, Teer, and the more I know about your gift, the better off we both are.”

  “Wait.” Teer held up a hand to quiet his boss. “Doka’s coming back.”

  Now that he wasn’t walking behind her, he could pick out the soft sound of Doka’s footsteps. She was amazingly quiet, but she wasn’t silent.

  A minute or so later, she emerged from the bushes and grinned up at the two men.

  “Four men, watering horses,” she told them. “Got faces of followers?”

  “Not all,” Kard noted. “But three were known when I got the writ.”

  He pulled the papers out and handed them to Doka. She took them carefully, clearly aware that Kard might not get paid without the proper writ, and studied the pictures printed on the second sheet.

  “This one.” Her finger stabbed one of the three smaller pictures on the sheet. “Dosav?”

  “Dosav,” Kard confirmed, taking the sheet back. “The other two?”

  “Not on your paper,” Doka told him. “But was Dosav.”

  “Then we’re in the right place.”

  “Not as hoped,” the guide said. “They go wrong direction for campsite.”

  Teer glanced up the hill toward where he’d last heard the voices.

  “Four horses, four men,” Kard said calmly. “Were they just watering horses, or did they fill containers, too?”

  “Just canteens.”

  “Detached group, trying to catch up,” the bounty hunter guessed. “They’re not moving against Odar yet; Boulder wouldn’t leave four men behind for that. He would leave four men behind to clean the campsite and eliminate anyone who catches up.”

  “So, we follow the riders?” Teer asked.

  “They careful. Ride in water,” Doka warned. “They good.”

  “Good enough to get away from you?” Kard asked.

  Doka bared her teeth in a disturbing grin.

  “No. Doka can track.”

  “Then let’s follow these people back to their boss and see what we find,” the El-Spehari bounty hunter concluded. “I’m figuring he’s moved closer to town, but we’ll find out.”

  Doka led the way back to the stream, Grump trailing behind her like a well-trained puppy. Even Teer couldn’t hear their quarry anymore, but she glanced up the stream to make sure she couldn’t see anything before kneeling in the soil.

  “Here and here,” she noted, pointing at marks in the soil. “You see?”

  Teer dismounted from Star, holding her reins to lead the mare as he crossed to stand behind Doka. The bank of the stream had a lot of footprints and hoofprints, but he picked out the ones the guide was pointing to quickly enough—they were the ones heading directly into the water.

  “Stream not wide enough for four,” Doka said. “Rode single file; might slip onto banks, still. Need find those. Know they went north, that hard part.”

  Kard finally dismounted to join the other two, looking down at the tracks.

  “We’ll have to hope they’re heading to the camp and will stop,” he told them. “Even Doka can’t track from horseback.”

  “Sadly not,” Doka confirmed. “But if we walk horses, can outlast them.”

  Teer saw Kard grimace, but his master’s expression suggested he’d been thinking the same thing. The hunter glanced back at Teer.

  “Think you can handle that, Teer?” Kard asked. “I’m not figuring ranching to involve a lot of walking.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Teer said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Then let’s move,” Kard ordered. “Time is wasting and they’re getting farther away.”

  Doka didn’t even respond before taking off along the side of the river at a ground-eating trot. Teer shared a nod with Kard and made sure to extend Star’s reins into a lead before following.

  Star was well trained, but her training was quite different than Grump’s. If Teer dropped her reins to the ground, she’d stay right where she was. She hadn’t been taught a command to follow, though she was probably bright enough to work it out as Clack and Grump headed after their riders.

  It was better to lead her while he walked after Doka, watching as the guide studied the banks of the little stream. The last thing Teer could afford at this point was to lose his mare!

  “One of them slip here,” Doka said, pointing at the bank. “Horse stumbled or something. Six paces on bank, then back in water.”

  Teer studied the hoofprints she’d seen. He was paying attention to everything the guide said, trying to pick up as much as he could from the unexpected opportunity.

  He figured Doka had realized that, too. She was explaining what she was seeing as they went. Either she was doing that to help him try and follow along, or she always talked like that. Given his experience with Doka to date, he wasn’t betting on either option.

  “We’re easily a candlemark behind them now,” Kard said grimly. “We’re losing ground.”

  “They camp at nightfall latest,” Doka told him. “No one ride horse in water in dark.”

  “Unless they’re close to their destination,” the hunter replied. “Let’s keep moving. We can’t track them in the dark.”

  “You couldn’t,” the guide said with a chuckle. “Doka could.”

  “Quiet,” Teer told them both as he heard something. “Listen.”

  Something was moving in the bushes uphill from them. He unslung the hunter from his shoulder and stepped closer, studying the dense greenery twenty yards away. Whatever it was had frozen now, and he slowly shook his head as he studied the bushes.

  “Beast, I guess,” he told them. “Getting twitchy.”

  “Dangerous beasts in these hills,” Doka said. “Better twitchy.”

  She had her thunderbuss in her hands, studying the bushes intently as she gestured for Teer to fall back toward her.

  “Even things that fit in bush kill,” she continued.

  As Teer fell in beside the guide, he saw a sparkle of purple light flash past him. He barely managed not to look behind him at Kard as the El-Spehari’s magic flickered into the bush.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then Kard’s spell took hold of the creature and the movement returned
as the beast fled. A dark gray streak flashed out of the bushes in the opposite direction from them, legs pumping as magical fear drove it.

  Doka was raising her gun as the beast fled, but Kard laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Let it go, Doka,” he told her. “It’s no threat to us.”

  “Wolfen threat to everyone,” she said grimly.

  “This one was looking for fish and we were in its way,” the El-Spehari said. “No need to kill a beast that didn’t harm us, is there?”

  The wolfen—a nastier form of wolf with venomous teeth and claws, Teer understood—was out of reach of the thunderbuss now, anyway. Teer was sure he could hit the creature, but he followed Kard’s orders.

  He hadn’t tested whether their bond would let him disobey the other man yet. He’d sworn loyalty, after all, and he had every intention of honoring that oath.

  “You strange man, Kard,” Doka said, but she returned the thunderbuss to its place on her shoulder. “Not bad. Just strange.”

  “Do what needs, no more,” Kard said, like he was reminding her of something. “Let’s not kill anything or anyone we don’t have to. Plus, well, that thunderbuss makes a lot of noise, and I don’t think we’re that far behind our quarry!”

  14

  It was around a candlemark later when Teer spotted the hoofprints leaving the water. Having ridden in the stream for over a candlemark themselves, their quarry clearly felt that was more than enough. They’d turned and left the water as a body, the four of them riding abreast as they headed into a sparsely wooded section of the hills.

  “Not clever,” Doka said a moment later as she spotted the track. “You not need Doka to follow idiots.”

  “I’m glad to have you anyway,” Kard replied, studying the trail. “What’s around here that they might be heading to?”

  “No campsites Doka’d use if hiding,” she said slowly. “Couple places used by travelers. Path head toward one.”

  “Well, we follow and see where they went,” Kard said. “Shouldn’t take much luck now to track them to Boulder.”

  The three of them turned into the tracks, walking around the hoofprints in the mud and the loam. The vague path their quarry had followed was through scattered trees and between several of the hills.

  The entire area was very different from what Teer was used to. The hills themselves were sharper and taller than the occasional bump that marked the plains he’d handled cattle on. This patch of less-dense forest was about as heavy as the trees ever got around Hardin’s Ranch.

  He liked the shade and the greenery. The smell was surprisingly pleasant as well, though part of him missed the smell of grass and scrub in the sunlight. Not the smell of cows, though. He wasn’t sure he’d ever miss the smell of cows.

  “We’re still losing ground,” Kard murmured to Teer. “I expected as much, but it’s starting to get close enough to dark that we may want to stop.”

  “Think they rode until dark?” the younger man asked.

  “I suspect they reached their camp by dark,” the bounty hunter admitted. “But I don’t want to stumble on Boulder and his men in the night. The numbers aren’t in our favor; we need advantages.”

  “You thought you could take them on your own,” Teer pointed out.

  He felt Kard’s amusement through their link.

  “I did and I do,” he agreed. “Fear can get you a lot in this business, Teer. Working with Doka costs me options I might otherwise have. Normally, killing them all is an option.”

  Teer shivered as Kard’s matter-of-fact admission that he’d kill the entire group of their quarry if he thought he needed to. Probably with magic. Teer hadn’t seen the El-Spehari let loose with anything resembling offensive magic yet—but he could see the problem, if Kard was keeping his true nature hidden from Doka.

  “You have a plan?” he finally asked, eyeing the guide ahead of them and keeping his voice very quiet. From what Kard had said, Doka didn’t hear as well as Teer did, but she still heard better than most others.

  Of course, Teer was only just now beginning to realize that not everyone heard as well as he did. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. The world didn’t quite add up to him at that moment. He figured he was rolling with the changes well enough, but he was well aware he was unsure of everything.

  “Basics of one, yeah,” Kard answered his question. “Depends on the ground. You and Doka add options I wouldn’t have on my own, too.”

  “Catch up,” Doka said loudly. “You need see this.”

  The two men shared a glance and obeyed, breaking into a jog. Teer realized he’d lost sight of Doka, the woman having gone over the edge of a rise and disappeared from view. Knowing the direction she’d been going and following the tracks led them right to her.

  And to what she’d found. The rise concealed a roughly cleared path marked by wagon ruts. It was probably on the maps that Teer had been shown, but he knew he wasn’t good enough to follow their location as they went. He was trusting Doka and Kard for that—if nothing else, they were the ones who had the maps.

  Doka was standing next to a burnt-out wagon, carefully poking at the wreckage with a stick she’d acquired from somewhere. They’d been upwind of the site, but the smell hit Teer as he came down the hill onto the road: rotting meat and roast pork.

  The wagon was built for two horses. One had been cut free; the other was dead in the harness.

  “Eight bodies in the wagon,” Doka told them as they approached. “Fire was already burning when they were tossed in.”

  Kard looked around the road.

  “How long ago?” he demanded. “This wasn’t the four we’re chasing, was it?”

  “Three, four days,” Doka told him. “This where they headed. They stop here, checking for signs.”

  “So, Boulder sent men back to clean up the camp and left signs…to follow another wagon of loot, at a guess?” Kard asked.

  “Doka guess that too.” She stepped away from the impromptu pyre and tossed the stick back into the woods. “Grabbed what could from wagon, tossed dead on to burn. Everything in another wagon.”

  “Survivors?” Kard said grimly.

  “Not sure.”

  Despite his best efforts, the smell got to Teer. He missed the rest of the exchange as he ran to the side of the road and threw up. Repeatedly. He emptied his stomach and kept vomiting.

  Eventually, Doka was there, pressing a canteen of water into his hand.

  “Ugly days,” she murmured. “This why Kard hunts. This why Doka help. Teer grasp?”

  “I get it,” he agreed, washing his mouth out with a first gulp of water before taking a long drink. “What…how…how does someone do this?”

  “You either convince yourself they don’t matter, you convince yourself they deserve it, or you convince yourself your cause is just enough to require it,” Kard said behind him. “Boulder is one of the first. I’ve seen men do worse for a cause, but Boulder is bad enough.

  “That’s why we’re here, Teer. These people are the last poor bastards that man is going to kill. Whatever it takes from us. You follow me?”

  “I’m with you,” Teer agreed, straightening and passing the canteen back to Doka with a nod of thanks. “What do we do?”

  “We still have some light and I don’t think that Boulder will have hauled his loot far,” Kard said. “This was a homesteading party. Boulder won’t have cared about the tools, but he’ll have taken the food and the alcohol. They’ll party for a few days until the booze is gone, and then they’ll move on the town.

  “We find their campsite and we finish this.”

  “All try to hide trails,” Doka warned. “Better than Doka expected. But Doka know these hills.”

  “And?” Kard asked.

  “No good site here. Couple decent sites. Can go far enough to know which way they went easy.”

  “Then let’s hunt,” Kard ordered grimly. “No more innocents die. This ends now.”

  15

  Doka wasn’t exaggera
ting when she said she knew the hills. They’d followed the path she’d chosen for about a quarter-candlemark before they found the first signs that someone had come there before them.

  “How did they manage to hide the wagon?” Teer asked as the vehicle’s tracks appeared from nowhere.

  “Boards,” Doka said. “Lay down, run wagon along. Need at least six, takes time, need hard soil.”

  “A lot of time,” Kard agreed. “But it helps hide the tracks. Have a couple of hands at the tail using brooms or something to mix up debris, you can make it almost impossible to track even a mid-sized group with a wagon. But they ran out of patience.”

  Teer looked at the tracks and considered the process that Doka and Kard were suggesting. He was surprised the brigands had even managed to keep it up for an entire mile before they’d called it good enough.

  “Doka know campsite they want,” she said. “Little hollow. Has spring, three sides shelter. All hills rideable, easy ways out.”

  “Good spots for watches, I suppose?” Kard asked.

  “Several,” she confirmed.

  “Let’s get closer, but I’m thinking we’ll need that rope of yours,” the bounty hunter said. “I want them alive, but we need to take them out quietly.”

  “Doka can.”

  “All right. If we know where we’re going, let’s mount up,” Kard instructed. “I want to get a look at the place before nightfall and hit them at dawn.”

  Teer nodded and leaned down to massage his shins.

  “I am not going to complain about getting back on Star,” he admitted. “Long day.”

  “Figured,” Kard said with a grin.

  The three rode along the trail, their quarry’s tracks becoming clearer and clearer as they traveled farther from the road. They’d still been sweeping behind themselves for a while after they stopped planking the wagon tracks.

  Doka eventually threw up a hand to stop them.

  “Getting close,” she told them. “Path lead on for quarter-mile, swing around hill to come in from north. We can go over south hill. Highest point, will have watch.”