Get Her Back (Demontech)

by David Sherman

  “Aye aye, Sir Haft!” Kaplar said. The Bloody Axes were from a landlocked nation, so they didn’t have a nautical tradition. Still, Kaplar had adopted some of the terms used by Haft. Kaplar thrust an arm in the direction of the tracks and said to his men, “Let’s see how long it takes us to catch up with them.”

  “HOLD!” Lieutenant Guma had shouted the instant he saw the nomad chief gesture. “Do not fight, do not resist!” With the same peripheral vision that had allowed him to see the nomads getting close to his men, he had seen that they reached for the weapons of the Royal Lancers, not for their own.

  The nomad chief leaned forward in his saddle and grinned at Guma. “You are quick,” he said through his interpreter. “Few men would notice that you weren’t being attacked, and would have resisted.” His grin widened as he turned his gaze toward the Golden Girl, exposing snaggleteeth. “Your woman wants to go to our camp. So we shall take you there. But,” he looked back at Guma, his smile gone, “your weapons will be peace-bound.”

  Guma gave a surprised blink. “Why peace-bind our weapons instead of disarming us?” he blurted.

  The nomad chief threw his head back and roared out in laughter.

  The interpreter explained, “If we disarm you, then we have to carry your weapons. It’s easier on us if you carry them.”

  Guma shrugged. He thought there was a flaw in the nomad chief’s logic, but he wasn’t going to pursue it. Not if leaving it alone meant that he and his men were allowed to keep their weapons, even if peace-bound.

  It was a matter of mere moments for the nomads to use leather cords to bind knives to scabbards and lances to their carrying loops.

  Obviously, Guma thought, they’ve done this before. That was another thought he didn’t want to pursue with the nomad chief. But it gave him hope that his men and the Golden Girl would come through this meeting alive, and be allowed to return to the refugee train unharmed.

  It took Haft and the Bloody Axes three days to reach the nomad camp; he estimated that if they hadn’t had to go slowly because of Balta’s injuries, it would have taken only two days. And he thought two days might be too long, given the reputation of the High Desert Nomads.

  But given that reputation, two days or three likely didn’t matter.

  They heard the camp before they saw it. Corporal Kaplar, still leading the point team, signaled a halt and dismounted when he heard the lowing and honking of comitelots on the wind.

  Haft turned his head and called back, “I want Jurniaks!” He heeled his mare’s flanks and she reluctantly shifted her gait to a canter. Balta also urged his mount into a canter; he’d healed a great deal during the three days since they found where the desert men had surrounded Alyline and her Royal Lancers.

  “Sir Haft,” the refugee sailor said when he reached the point element.

  “Do you hear the animals?” Haft asked.

  “Yes, Lord, Sir Haft.” Jurniaks still didn’t know which way he should address Haft, so he decided to use both titles.

  “Do they sound like camp animals?”

  Jurniaks made a show of listening, then nodded. “Yes, Lord, they sound like the animals in the camp sounded when I was held captive.”

  He looked all around. “I don’t see any outposts, no sentries. Why do you think that is?”

  Jurniaks swallowed to wet his suddenly dry throat before saying, “Because they are too well hidden for you to see them? Or maybe,” he went on hastily, “it’s because they feel so secure on their wasteland that they don’t need lookouts.”

  “That makes sense,” Balta said. “There weren’t any sentries around their camp when you escaped, were there?”

  “No, Sir. None that I saw.” Here, Jurniaks was on firmer ground as to how to address these people. He knew that Balta was an officer, and officers are addressed as “Sir.”

  Balta nodded at Jurniaks’ confirmation of what he thought, then shook his head at the carelessness of a warrior people who didn’t bother with sentries around their camps.

  “That means we can just ride right in?” Haft asked rhetorically.

  “In theory,” Balta said. But he sounded like he didn’t think the theory was very sound.

  Haft twisted around to look at the column strung out to his rear.

  “Bring in the flankers, and tighten the column,” he ordered. “If we get a hard reception when we enter the camp, I want enough axes up close to make a real difference when we fight.”

  They went forward another fifty yards and the camp spread out before them in a shallow hollow that hadn’t been hinted at in the uniformly dull landscape. Haft estimated the camp to be one mile in circumference. They saw thin tendrils of smoke rising from fires.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  They rode tall and proud into the camp of the High Desert Nomads. Even Haft, who would have preferred to be walking, and Jurniaks, who wished with all his heart that he was somewhere else, rode tall and proud. Despite the sights that met their eyes.

  The camp was circular, with three rings of woven-grass huts around a central clearing. The huts were dome-shaped, and decorated with crude pictures of people and animals drawn or painted on skins laid over the thatch. The tendrils of smoke Haft had seen before the camp came into view vented from holes in the centers of the huts’ domes. Their entrances were on the inner sides of their circles, and two narrow windows that looked suspiciously like archer’s loopholes on a castle wall faced outward. The huts in the outermost ring were spaced so close together that a man on foot could barely squeeze between them, much less a mounted man. There was a wider spacing after twenty close huts; wide enough to allow egress to two mounted men side by side. Spacing was the same on the middle and inner circles, with the wider spaces offset, so that there was nowhere a straight path from outside of the camp to its center. One hut, larger and more elaborately decorated than the others, was on the inner ring.

  Haft thought the camp was laid out for defense, and suspected that the thatch of the huts was stronger than any grass thatch he had seen elsewhere in his travels as a Frangerian Marine.

  But the shocking thing was at each of the wide spots between outer ring huts: Cages made of ropes and cords woven from the tough grass that dotted the desert, the same grass that made up the thatch of the huts, hung from wooden frameworks on each side of the entry space. Haft estimated that there were more than four score of the cages around the camp. The cages were just the size to hold a man. Each held a body; some were rotted down to skeletons, a few were still very much alive. Most of them wore remnants of the furs and skins of the High Desert Nomads; some wore the clothing of men from other countries, adventurers or explorers. The live ones wore the pale blue tabards of the Zobran Royal Lancers. A couple of the lancers were conscious and looked at the Bloody Axes with haunted eyes.

  “Steady, lads,” Lieutenant Balta said soto voce, but loudly enough for everyone in the platoon to hear.

  Soft grumbles came from within the platoon’s ranks, but the Bloody Axes held steady. They kept their weapons ready, but made no threatening motions with them.

  “See that?” Haft asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  “The archers?” Balta replied.

  Haft nodded; inside the huts, barely visible through the narrow rear windows, he’d seen archers standing with strung bows ready to loose arrows. When they reached the passage between the outer and middle hut-circles, he saw that the inner sides also had narrow archer windows—and they were manned as well. More of the nomads stood about in random singles or groups in the central clearing. They were all armed, though none held their weapons at the ready. No women or children were in sight. Neither were the Royal Lancers except for the few who were hanging in the cages.

  No shafts took flight as the small band made its way to the inner clearing. Haft reined up in front of the larger, more elaborate hut, and the Bloody Axes arrayed themselves in an arc behind him, some facing outward, others in.

  Haft stood up in his stirrups and bellowed in Frangerian, “Who�
��s in charge of this circle jerk?”

  The door flap of the main hut was flung open, and a huge man strutted out. He planted himself directly in front of Haft’s mare, and stood with richly muscular arms folded over a massive chest. He was tall enough that, even standing only a foot in front of the mare’s head, he was easily able to look over it into Haft’s eyes. The other nomads Haft could see were dressed in furs and boiled leather armor, but this warrior had metal armor, covered by a purple tabard with an ensign that Haft didn’t recognize. When the nomad chief spoke it was in a roar that made Haft’s bellow sound like he had spoken at a polite conversational level. His words were barks and growls that sounded to Haft like nothing so much as the speech of the Jokapcul whom he and Spinner and everyone with them had been striving to keep ahead of.

  “So you’re the big guy here, huh?” Haft leaned to the side so he could see past his mare’s head to look up and down the obvious chief. “Yeah, you’re big, all right.” Big and scary, but Haft wasn’t about to show the slightest bit of intimidation. If he did, it could mean he and the Bloody Axes would suddenly find themselves fighting this entire nomad band—and likely all of them would die. Instead of giving in to the watery feeling in his guts, he’d present himself as just as arrogant and confident as the nomad chief.

  “A couple of days back,” Haft said when the chief didn’t say anything more, “we saw where some friends of ours met up with some other people. We followed their trail, and—guess what?—the trail led right here. We’re here to take our friends home. Where are they?”

  The chief rumbled at length, longer than Haft’s short speech. His words were incomprehensible to Haft or any of the Zobrans. As it was to Tabib.

  When the chief stopped, Haft looked around past his Bloody Axes at the nomads milling about and, he couldn’t help but notice, getting closer to his men.

  “Does anybody here speak a civilized tongue?” he shouted in Frangerian, and followed up with the same question in several more languages. But before he could run through all the languages he had some knowledge of, a single, sharp bark from the chief brought him back around.

  The chief was staring wide-eyed at Haft’s axe. He jabbered something at a much less threatening volume than that which he’d used before and looked through the people, Bloody Axes and nomads alike, in the clearing. Haft turned his head to look the same way. The nomad warriors were edging away from the Skraglanders, and shifting their weapons to less-ready positions. They were clearing a path for an ancient man, leaning on a walking staff, who hobbled his way out of an undecorated hut on the opposite side of the inner circle and slowly made his way toward them.

  “Let him through,” Haft ordered when the ancient reached the Skraglanders.

  The ancient man, dressed in furs but without any kind of armor, slowly approached Haft’s axe side. Leaning close, he peered with rheumy eyes at the halfmoon blade of the axe. He slowly raised his right hand and gently traced the rampant eagle engraved on the blade. After a moment he lowered his hand and shuffled around to face the chief. His voice, when he spoke, was not as reedy as Haft had expected it to be.

  The chief said something. Haft thought he was questioning the ancient. Satisfied with the answers, he nodded, then shouted to his warriors and waved an arm in a circular pattern. He faced Haft and spoke politely, even if in barks and growls.

  A younger man, unarmed or armored, came through the semi-circle of Bloody Axes to stand by the chief’s side.

  “Sir,” he said in Frangerian that was accented, but without enough bark and growl sounds to be difficult to understand, “my name is Itzuli. The Great Chief Nagusi of the Deitua Clan welcomes you to his encampment. I will have the honor of translating for you.”

  It took an effort of will for Haft to not breathe a deep sigh of relief. He said, “Tell your Great Chief that I, Sir Haft of the Frangerian Marines, happily accept his hospitality.”

  Itzuli translated Haft’s words, and Chief Nagusi grinned widely, stretching out a hand for Haft to grasp in friendship. His grip was tight, but not crushingly so.

  There was a flurry of activity after Haft and Nagusi grasped hands; preparations for a feast for the nomads’ guests. Haft and Balta took advantage of those few minutes to figure out just what was happening, and what their next steps would be. The mage Tabib and Sergeant Korona joined them, as did Jurniaks. They still didn’t know where Alyline and the Royal Lancers were—other than the imprisoned held in the wicker cages. They sat in a tight, in-facing circle out of the way of the activity around them.

  “I want to know what happened,” Haft said. “One minute it looked like the nomads were about to attack, and the next that old man said something and all of a sudden I’m the chief’s long lost brother, or whatever.”

  Tabib made a moment’s show of hiding a grin and laugh behind a hand. “You don’t know, is that for truth?” he asked through a broad grin that showed what looked like more teeth than a human mouth should hold.

  Haft glared at him. “If I knew, do you really think I’d ask?”

  Tabib shook his head in disbelief and looked at the two Skra glanders. Balta merely shrugged; Korona looked off to the side as though he hadn’t heard the question. Jurniaks, as he had ever since they’d come in sight of the camp, did his best to look invisible. Failing invisibility, he went for trying to appear entirely too inconsequential for anyone to look at.

  “It seems to me,” Tabib said, with his grin toned down somewhat, “that Nagusi thinks you are someone you most assuredly are not.”

  Haft put his hand on the blade of his axe. “It has to do with this, doesn’t it? The eagle on my blade.”

  Balta joined Korona in finding something interesting to look at off to the side. Tabib smiled gently and spread his hands to his sides.

  Haft pulled his axe from its lashings and held it across his crossed legs. He rubbed a hand over the eagle and muttered, “How come everybody but me knows what this means?”

  “What’s more important right now,” Balta said before Haft could demand an answer, “is where are the Golden Girl and the rest of the Royal Lancers.”

  Haft grunted and looked toward where he’d seen a few lancers hanging in cages; not that he could see them from within the central clearing, the inner ring of huts blocked his view.

  “I think the first thing we have to do is get them freed.”

  “I agree,” Korona growled. His hands flexed as though he held his axe and was about to use it on a nomad warrior.

  “Nagusi seems to hold you in high esteem,” said Tabib. “Maybe perhaps you should simply demand their release to freedom.”

  “I agree with the mage,” Balta said, nodding to Tabib. “Can you,” he addressed the mage directly, “take care of their injuries when we get them out?”

  Tabib held his head up, with an expression of offended pride on his face. “I can cure any of their physical ills!” he exclaimed. Then he gave his head a sharp shake. “It is what the nomads did or might have done to their minds that I might possibly have difficulty healing.

  Haft gave a casual shrug. “And, while I’m at it, I may as well ask where the rest of our people are.” He looked at Jurniaks. “You’ve been a prisoner here. Where are Alyline and the Royal Lancers being held?”

  Jurniaks grimaced and shook his head. “Lord Haft, I have no idea. When I was held, there was a pen in the middle of the clearing. That’s where we were held when we weren’t working.”

  Haft looked around. “I haven’t seen any sign of a pen. Has anybody else?”

  “No, Sir Haft,” Balta said. Korona and Tabib echoed him.

  “Where else did they keep prisoners?” Haft asked Jurniaks.

  “I don’t know,” Jurniaks whined. “I only saw the pen.”

  Just then, Itzuli came to them.

  “The Great Chief will be honored by your attendance at this time,” he said formally.

  “We look forward to it,” Haft said, rising to his feet and slipping his axe back into the lashings that s
erved as its holster. Balta and Korona made sure their axes were loose in their lashings when they stood to follow. Tabib put his hands in the folds of his sarong.

  “Corporal Kaplar,” Balta called before he stepped off, “You’re in charge until we return. Keep the men together.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Kaplar snapped to attention and popped a salute.

  Jurniaks tried to slip away, but Sergeant Korona grabbed him by the arm and dragged him along.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Itzuli led them to the large, elaborate hut—the Great Chief’s hut. The door flap was open, and the entryway was high enough that none of them had to duck to pass through. Four arrow slit windows and the smoke hole at the top of the dome along with the opened entry gave enough light to see fairly clearly. All but the center of the ground inside the hut was covered with rugs of cured hide; a small fire of comitelot dung smoldered in that uncovered center. Several chests, none of greater length than a man’s forearm, were lined up against the walls. Stacks of furs were spaced about the hut’s single room. Animal skulls and horns hung from the wooden posts that supported the thatching of the walls.

  Not only animal skulls, Haft suddenly realized—there were at least three human skulls hanging among those with horns and antlers.

  Chief Nagusi sat facing the entryway. His stool appeared to be a high cantled saddle set sideways so the front and back served as armrests. He wasn’t wearing armor, but a sword leaned against the right side of his stool, canted so that its hilt was in easy reach. Also within reach were a spear, a recurved bow already strung, a long knife, and what looked like a lance that belonged to one of the Royal Lancers. Half a dozen nomad warriors flanked him, and every one of them looked anxious to use the short swords he held in his hands.

  Nagusi grunted something and made a sweeping gesture.

  “The High Chief bids you sit,” Itzuli said. He indicated the stacks of furs.

  They sat; Lieutenant Balta and Tabib the mage to one side of Haft, Sergeant Korona and Jurniaks to the other—Korona had to physically seat Jurniaks facing Nagusi. It took a moment for them to settle into position as the stacked furs were laid over low benches that weren’t immediately visible under the furs. When they stopped shifting about, Nagusi began talking and gesturing.