She looked at Rovos. There was pain, longing, and fear in her gaze. He nodded, and she turned on her heel and left the tent.
The leader of the Deep Shields wiped blood from his armor with a rag and glared at Telros. “So is the pay forthcoming, Lord, or do we have a breach of contract? My men will not respond well to treachery.”
“Treachery? You are the ones who betray me! I hired you to fight a battle. Instead, you let blind animals do it for you, and now you want to take pay and leave? Now we see the downside of mercenaries. I swear by all the gods, if you give me trouble I’ll see you all put in chains. Don’t forget that you are guests here, with no friends or allies in the north coast region.”
Damicos and the Deep Shield commander stared Telros down. Lorcos Longhand was scowling bitterly, but stood behind his lord with hand on sword pommel.
Telros’ refusal to pay rankled deeply, but the situation was exactly as threatened—the mercenaries had no friends in the area, no base like Telros did. A lone free company at odds with the local nobility would be at a deadly disadvantage, especially if other barons heard that they had turned on the nobility and came to their cousin’s aid. Damicos and his fellow captains could grumble, but it was another thing entirely to speak of murdering their employer and looting his treasury by force.
Lorcos spoke up tentatively. “Stay and quiet yourselves, all. Let us wait and see what comes in the morning. It may be that this will resolve itself. We need not argue to the point of fighting if we are declared the victors by default.”
Telros said nothing, standing in sullen and defiant silence.
“You mean if Vocke and his people don’t make it away from that slaughterhouse,” Captain Rovos replied, “then you’ll pay us?”
Telros shrugged.
“Wait and see,” Lorcos encouraged. “Let the passions of this awful day cool, and let your men rest. Then we will see what must be done in the morning. It’s not as if any of us are ready to march away at once, not after a battle like that.”
Damicos nodded. “We have many wounds to tend to. But think carefully of your position, Baron. We will speak in the morning.”
Captain Rovos backed away to the tent opening, and Damicos followed. The captain of the Deep Shields was the last to leave, grumbling under his breath the profane names of gods Damicos had never even heard of.
Damicos wasn’t any happier about the way things had worked out. It was going to be very difficult to explain to his men that they were on the verge of leaving the north coast without a penny more than they’d come with.
And it would be even harder to march back to Dura to admit to Pelekarr and the horsemen that he’d been cheated out of everything the young company so sorely needed, and hadn’t even faced down the old general’s assassin, Chiss Felca.
Pelekarr would be disappointed, the men would be despondent. Unless the horsemen were faring significantly better in their campaign, the whole company might soon fall apart at the seams.
CHAPTER 26: RETREAT THROUGH THE WOODS
Sergeant Deltan cantered into the trees on a blood-spattered horse that wasn’t his own. He reined in savagely and hailed the two other sergeants, Keresh and Bivar.
“Where is the captain?”
“Telion only knows,” growled Sergeant Keresh. “He bid us form up here in the trees and see to the wounded. Then he rode back out there. What’s happening? Do the beasts return?”
Deltan was incredulous, ignoring the question. “You let the captain go back?”
“He didn’t ask our leave,” Bivar snarled. “Get off your horse and help your wounded into the center, Deltan.”
Deltan turned with an impatient snort. He pointed at Keltos and another man behind him. “You two, with me. The rest of you, join the formation around those trees!”
Ignoring Bivar’s angry shout, Deltan rode back toward the meadow, clearly expecting Keltos and the other chosen trooper to follow. Keltos hesitated, unsure of whether to obey or remain with his actual sergeant; he looked Bivar’s way, hoping for clarification. But Bivar hadn’t noticed him and was busy organizing the newly arrived wounded. Keltos eyed his fellow, who shrugged. Orders.
They both mounted stray horses, restive at the rank scent pervading the air, and spurred after Sergeant Deltan, catching up to him well before he exited the trees. All three men were lance-less but held bronze sabers ready—useless against the giants, but better than nothing. They kept their horses to a walk now, eyes straining to see any sign of danger. The trampled meadow could be seen here and there through gaps in the branches as they approached.
Deltan held up a hand. “Something comes!”
Keltos crouched low on the saddle, steeling himself. The three men peered through the green gloom, gripping their weapons until knuckles whitened, hearts beating a quick tattoo.
Shapes, moving slowly, were approaching, leaving the sunlight and entering the tree line.
Keltos waited, hoping the approaching figures were apes so that he could avenge Hetta’s death in their hot gore. The grief and shock had burned themselves out, leaving a cold hunger in his guts. He wanted to kill until his saber broke.
Deltan suddenly sighed in relief. “Ours, thank the gods.”
Through the trees came Captain Pelekarr, with a few wounded but still mounted troopers. Several more limped along after, some supporting others between them. Dom and Arco were there; Velzar was not.
Keltos nearly shouted when he saw Makos bringing up the rear. His friend was afoot, leading Brel with an injured Wikios draped over the saddle.
The reunion was quiet. No one dared draw the monsters’ attention, but it was no less joyous for all that. Keltos embraced his friend, after which Makos sank to the ground, exhausted. He watched as Keltos wiped blood from Brel’s flank, checking the horse’s wounds.
“The monster clipped us on the follow-through,” Makos explained. “But we came away in the end. She was magnificent, Kel. She…” He stared at his friend. “I saw Hetta’s end. I’m sorry.”
Keltos nodded. There was nothing to say. To a cavalryman, a mount was like his own flesh and blood.
“Up, lads. Back to the others. It’s not safe here,” Captain Pelekarr directed.
The ragged column staggered and limped back into the forest until they joined the larger group. The relief of friends reuniting was drowned by the shock of seeing so many missing. Captain Pelekarr gathered the surviving sergeants around him. His face was haggard but his voice was crisp and confident.
“We have to keep moving. The monsters could give chase at any time. We head east until we reach the pond; we’ll rest there. I want flankers out on both sides. I myself will bring up the rear. Where’s the guide?”
“No one’s seen him, captain. Bolted for home, probably.”
“No matter. Our trail in will be easy to follow out. We move as fast as we can. Wounded on the horses. Once at the pond, we regroup. I’ll have a better idea where we stand by then.”
The men didn’t like walking away from the fight and admitting defeat, but neither did any volunteer to rush back out into the clearing. Afraid that the groans of the wounded were loud enough to draw the beasts after them, the men moved out as fast as they were able, eastward, though not along the same trail they’d followed in. That way skirted too closely the part of the clearing where the monsters had last been seen. Pelekarr led them northeast through less tangled trees where they could make better time.
The troopers trotted on the double, many on foot with chests heaving and sweat dripping down their faces. The rear guard looked over their shoulders nervously every few minutes, waiting for a huge horned snout to push snuffling through the leaves.
Again they crossed small streams, wound their way around outcrops of mossy gray stone, pushed through brambles and thickets. Finally, when even the horses began to stagger, the captain called a halt.
“Rest here,” Pelekarr ordered. “Tend to the wounded. Sergeants to me.”
They formed a rough square and haste
ned to get the wounded off the horses and attend to them as best they could. The company had no official healers, but the most experienced men carried bandages in their packs and these were used until they ran out. The stifled moans of the wounded were pitiful to hear. Waterskins were soon emptied.
Makos was wiping blood from his face, a shallow scrape inflicted when he tumbled from his mount, and Keltos was cleaning his blade when the captain approached them. Both troopers scrambled to their feet and saluted.
“You two look hale enough,” Pelekarr said. “We need water. Take all the skins you can carry and find me some. I heard a brook through the trees, that way.” He pointed. “Watch for apes!”
“Captain.” Keltos and Makos saluted and hurried off, gathering water skins as they went.
Keltos passed a mare tied to a tree. It had the same coloring as Hetta and he felt a sharp pang when it whickered as they went by. “Rukhal rot the apes!” he said. “And the giants too!”
Makos cast him a look of deep sympathy. “I’m sorry, Kel. She was a great one.”
“Yes, she was. I’ll never find her like again.”
It took them several minutes, but at last they heard the trickling gurgle of water over stone. Past a small rise they found what they were looking for. A spring bubbled up into a clear basin lined with mossy stones before running off into the green gloom and disappearing. The water was unbelievably cold and pure, and they took turns drinking long from its limpid surface before filling the water-skins.
Keltos filled while Makos kept vigil, drawn saber in his hand. The skins were sloshing-heavy once filled and they headed back, dripping and refreshed.
“What possessed you to charge that monster, Mak?” Keltos asked. “It was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. And you’ve done some very stupid things. I should know.”
“Stupidest?” Makos laughed. “You forgot bravest.”
“It was that, too,” Keltos had to admit.
“It was pure rage, Kel,” Makos confessed. “I was boiling inside. I kept saying to myself, ‘It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair.’ There we were, fighting for our lives against the apes, and we’d finally won the day! Who knew they’d fight like that? They’re far more than simple animals. But we had them, finally, and then those two impossible things appeared.”
He moodily kicked a stone aside as they trudged through the trees.
“They weren’t even there to fight, they were just hungry! We train our entire lives for battle and then a couple of Ostoran beasts turn our hour of glory into a frenzied feed, oblivious of our aims, our strength, our lives. That’s all we were to them, just food. It made me so angry.”
“Ah. And here I thought that you were a paragon of selfless valor and sacrifice, thinking only of saving your fellow soldiers.”
“There was that, too, perhaps,” said Makos, and both men laughed. But the laughter died after a moment and they finished the trek in silence. Hetta was gone, and half of the company with her.
Keltos and Makos were hailed gladly when they returned, and after hearing their report Pelekarr ordered the company north, closer to the spring.
The horses were watered and stripped of saddles and gear, then picketed carefully until a makeshift corral could be constructed of cut poles lashed to tree trunks. It was late in the day now, and despite the danger, the captain deemed it safer to camp the night where they were. Attempting to move east through the forest at night was madness. The guide was still nowhere to be found; he had not been encountered in the forest nor caught up with the march.
Pelekarr authorized a few small fires, and in the last evening light the men gathered as much wood as they could, moving in heavily armed groups. They had their supper from dried saddlebag food, and the wounded were made as comfortable as possible near the fires. Guards were posted, and then the exhausted men curled into the leaf mold and slept.
Some stayed awake, thinking. Captain Pelekarr stared at the flames long into the night, and only the gods knew whether he suffered more from guilt or helpless frustration.
A hundred men mounted on fine warhorses had entered the forest that morning. Less than seventy had straggled back, and many of those were wounded. Ten were too close to death to last the night, and others would be crippled for life, bringing the total combat-capable muster to around fifty men.
Almost as bad was the loss of horses. Over half the mounts had been lost—highly trained, valuable animals that could not be easily replaced.
Company morale was, of course, as low as it could get. So many troopers lost to the pale apes, and—Mishtan above!—the giant monsters. Who knew such creatures existed? Shapes of nightmare made flesh to trouble the world.
The entire company was in dire jeopardy, Pelekarr knew. Damicos had already lost many men in their first campaign, against the outlaws. Such a crushing defeat here, with nothing to show for it, was a death knell. Even if Damicos was successful in the battle between the barons, and the captain prayed his friend and fellow captain would be, the loss of so many personnel from a single scuffle in the woods would draw scorn instead of admiration and renown.
They were looking at the sudden and sorry end of the enterprise they’d thought so promising a few days earlier.
Huddled around their own fire, Keltos and his surviving squad-mates found sleep equally elusive. No one wanted to be the first to speak, the first to acknowledge the two empty places at the little fire. No one except Somber Dom.
“Aslom gone,” he said. “And Velzar. A bad day’s work. Perhaps we offended the gods.”
Aslom had been dragged from the meadow but died at the tree line, eviscerated by ape fangs. He had taken three of the blonde creatures with him, fighting alone over his dying horse with crimsoned saber before finally falling and crying for aid.
Velzar’s neck and back had been broken when he’d been thrown violently against a tree trunk by the behemoths’ first charge, dead before he hit the ground.
Thus, only four of the original six tent-mates were gathered around the fire that night. Arco and Somber Dom had each slain some apes and kept their mounts, but were driven into the trees by the giant creatures and barely escaped.
In the shadows beyond the firelight, Sergeant Bivar moved among the wounded as calmly as ever despite an arm that dangled loosely in a crude sling of leather straps. He’d lost men that day, and there was no remedy or miracle cure for what he was feeling.
Keltos’ body ached, his throat was raw, and he felt utterly spent. Yet he had little desire for sleep—the dreams that came after a day like this one would not rejuvenate.
Ostora has a dark soul, he mused. A heart dark, inscrutable, and bitter.
No doubt the villagers would be grateful for the soldiers’ sacrifice. The damage done to the apes would benefit them, even if it was far from a victory for the soldiers. But how much of the story the Baroness Craya would accept was anyone’s best guess—or how much she would pay.
“We inflicted casualties,” Keltos muttered at last. “Many casualties. And the monsters killed yet more, so technically our mission is complete. The apes are all dead or scattered.”
“That’s nearly certain,” Arco replied, grunting as he leaned over to put weight against his saber blade. It had taken a severe bend near the tip from the thick spine of an ape he’d killed, and he was straightening it out against his thigh. One of the benefits of bronze weaponry. “Our charge swept the field, delayed and slow as it was! Until the creatures appeared, and it all became for naught.”
“But the apes inflicted disproportionate casualties on us,” Makos said. “For all our caution, we rode right into their ambush. The apes killed or wounded too many of us despite all our advantages. Had we blundered into twice as many of them…” He trailed off, unwilling to pursue that line of thought aloud.
“You know what we need?” said Keltos, staring into the fire. “We need a tracker. We need the best tracker we can find. A hunter, maybe, someone who knows this place, knows the forest. That damned woodcutter ran
us straight into an ambush. Worse than useless. We ought to get somebody that knows what he’s doing and offer him a place with us. And if he doesn’t want it, then we learn everything we can from him so this can never happen again.”
The others gazed back at him over the flames.
“That’s the best idea I’ve ever heard,” Makos told him.
Arco tossed a leaf into the fire and watched it burn. “No, second best. The best idea is that we march to the coast and take the first ship home.”
“No ships left,” murmured Somber Dom. “Just an empty, bloodstained beach.”
“Then I’ll find a fisherman and pay him to sail me home.”
Somber shook his head. “You’ve got no pay, so here we stay. No boats for us until the job’s done and the baroness shells out.”
Arco leaned back, scowling. “I’ll find a fisherman on the coast and get him to teach me how to make my own boat. Then I’ll sail across the sea and kiss the ground back home and never leave again. What do you say to that, Somber?”
There was a silence, broken only by the crack of the fire. Then Somber heaved a sigh and muttered something inaudible.
“What’s that? What’d he say?” Arco growled. “He’s got an answer, doesn’t he? He’s always got a stupid answer, never lets it go. And it never even makes sense.”
“It does,” Somber muttered.
“Never does. Don’t want to hear it.”
“Your plan won’t work,” Somber intoned.
“Rukhal’s beard! Why not?”
“You’d never sail away,” Somber patiently explained while Makos put out a hand to steady the impetuous Arco. “While learning to make your boat, you’d fall in love with the fisherman’s daughter and marry her. Then you’d have to stay in Ostora forever. Certain sure.”
Arco looked across the fire at Somber, speechless. Makos bit his lip to keep a smile off his face, and failed. “He’s got you there, Arc. Tread careful around those fisherman’s daughters. They’re a risk. Certain sure.”
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