by David Welch
He arced gradually until he was only a mile or two from the sea and then began heading north again, towards Kamith, trailing his pursuers. At full gallop, he blazed past the edge of the clearing where this had all started, then he changed direction again, following the edge of the clearing until he had reached the top of the rise. His enemies predicted the move and sought to cut off his arc by riding through the open meadow…
Leaving him with a clear shot. He readied an arrow, drew, and fired from the edge of the meadow. Before he could see where the arrow went, he was off again, retreating back into the forest. The shot struck the shoulder of one of the riders, managing to cut through thick layers of leather and into the muscle of his arm, but it was a flesh wound, and the man kept riding.
Thief took precious seconds to get back to full speed, allowing his pursuers to close a few yards. Gunnar was uncertain how much longer the horse could keep it up, but he also knew their horses would be in the same situation.
He was now riding south again, looking for some sort of cover; some place where he could fight on foot and neutralize the odds. A minute of frantic riding later, he found it. A slight slope had caused a gap in the canopy, and a dense thicket of cedars had grown up, a pocket of brush in the understory of the ancient forest. Ignoring his horse’s reluctance, he plunged in, riding to the dead center of the copse.
Gunnar leapt from his horse and dug out his longbow. Crouching low, he froze in place, his silhouette obscured by the overlapping branches of the cedars. His vision was obstructed, but he could see through the brush well enough to spot his enemies’ approach. They shouted to each other in their own language, pointing at the thicket.
He nocked a large arrow and took a grip on the string. The four pursuers circled around the thicket, looking. They could probably make out the outline of Thief, who shuffled nervously in place.
“Come out, southlander!” one shouted in Trade Tongue.
He said nothing, making no sound. The speaker leapt from his horse, moving to pull his sword. Gunnar drew back the greatbow and fired. The light branches of the cedar did little to impede the heavy arrow. In a blur of speed, it streaked from the thicket and into the man’s chest, punching through steel and rib to transfix his insides. The man jolted back from the impact, crumbling to the ground.
Gunnar shifted, scanning for the three remaining attackers. He found them. They shouted at each other, then one pulled a long object from a saddle pack. Seconds later, an orange glow rose from it.
Torch!
The rider threw it into the thicket. Gunnar shifted and fired on the move. His arrow struck low, missing the man who’d thrown the torch and striking his horse. The animal bucked and threw its rider, blood foaming at its mouth from torn lungs. Gunnar darted to Thief, now spooked by the fire. He slid his longbow back into its slot and leapt on the horse’s back. The animal shot out of the thicket, driven more by fear than by Gunnar, who struggled to get his feet into the stirrups.
The raiders moved to catch him, but he was out before they could block him. Expecting him to make a break for it, they were caught momentarily unaware when Gunnar yanked the reins hard to the right. Thief sprinted along the edge of the thicket, right at the dismounted third man.
Gunnar whipped his sword from its scabbard and hacked down at the man’s head. The man tried to raise his shield, but he was too slow. The blow slammed hard into his helmet, smashing a huge dent into it. The metal didn’t break, but the sheer force of the blow knocked the man out cold. He fell back and hit the dirt with a hard thud.
Gunnar pushed on, now down to a pair of pursuers. In the back of his mind, he realized he could, if he had to, take both with his sword. But he had a better idea. A hundred yards off, he could see a blur of motion, streaking across the understory of the great forest. Another blur followed it. It was Kamith and her pursuers, and they were arcing towards him. Pulling his horsebow once again, he readied an arrow, never slowing as he did. He pushed Thief towards Kamith, who quickly approached.
“Pick off one of mine, I’ll get yours!” he shouted in Langal.
She made no sound to indicate she’d heard; she just drew her bow. They rode past each other, each aiming at the other’s pursuers. The men following Kamith, now down to three, didn’t realize what was happening until the last moment. Their eyes widened as Gunnar, riding at them at full gallop, loosed as arrow. At fifteen yards distance, the shot leapt forwards, catching one man in the neck. It ripped right through and lodged in his spine, paralyzing him in his final moments. Like a stone, the man fell to the ground, his helpless body smashing into the massive trunk of a towering hemlock. A scream behind Gunnar told him that Kamith’s shot had also hit. He glanced over his shoulder, seeing only one man behind him. The rider trailed off, joining the two surviving men who had followed Kamith. They broke their pursuit, moving behind a cluster of white pine trunks to gain cover.
Kamith circled and rode to his side, both her and her horse breathing heavily. Sweat glistened on her forehead and face.
“Think we can take ’em down without using a sword?” Gunnar asked, allowing a small grin to come to his face.
“Damn right we—” Kamith began.
But a loud horn interrupted her. Two more blasts came in quick succession. One of the three remaining raiders – the leader, from the look of him – quickly rode away at top speed. Gunnar followed him with his eyes, seeing a dozen new figures emerging from the wood.
“Gods damn them,” Gunnar grumbled.
“Seems they weren’t the only ones out to get us,” Kamith swore.
Gunnar hesitated for a moment, thinking.
“Think Turee and Suhngiu got out?” Gunnar wondered.
“We got her a half-hour at least,” said Kamith. “Think that’s enough?”
“It’ll have to be,” Gunnar said. “Because we’re getting out of here.”
And so they rode. Thief and Dash churned through the understory, jail-bars of light from the canopy above flashing across them as they went. The pounding of hooves behind them signaled the pursuit had begun again. Gunnar didn’t need to look back to confirm it.
His mind raced, trying to find a way out of this. Their horses had been running hard for some time, and he had no way of knowing how fresh the mounts of the newcomers were. They could have been riding hard all day following their trail, or they could have stumbled upon it by accident and be ready to go. If that was the case, their lives could now be measured in hours. Thief and Dash would slowly begin to tire, and their pursuers would begin to close.
He couldn’t pull the same trick again, dividing up and picking off the smaller groups as they followed. The three survivors of the first party had no doubt told the newcomers what had happened. They could circle and pelt away with arrows, but from any safe distance, the horsebows would wound, not kill, and every second they spent firing was a second their enemies closed the gap. If he stopped and got on his feet to use the longbow, he might kill two or three before they reached him, but not fifteen. Even if he pulled his sword and charged, he probably couldn’t kill that many.
So far, the only thing he could think of was to run. Branches and tree trunks flashed by. The chase had slowed from a sprint to a fast canter, with the edge going to his pursuers. Fleeting glances backwards showed them whittling away the yards.
The forest dropped away, opening to a large meadow, a small stream running through its center. Gunnar and Kamith rode through the stream with a splash. A small knoll awaited them. Gasping for breath, their horses charged up the small slope.
Then Gunnar’s heart fell. Waiting on the rear slope of the knoll, not a hundred yards away, were forty mounted warriors. With a shout, they charged.
***
Eynfles, an arrow still sticking out from his shoulder, pushed on into the meadow. His horse’s breath came in hard rasps, but the beast pressed on. He could barely see the southlanders, the heretics who had defied the Gethori so blatantly. He could make out the outlines of their backs ahead of him,
atop a small knoll just past a meandering stream. They were slowing, stopping.
Part of him considered it a godsend. The chase was over, and they would soon be dead. A more rational part sent up alarms. Why had they stopped? People didn’t stop when being chased. Turning and fighting was unthinkable; the odds were too great for even the greatest warrior, even one with an arrow-slinging whore riding beside him. Yet Eynfles’s party didn’t slow. They reached the stream and started up the knoll.
A roar went up, and a charge of lancers broke over the knoll at a gallop. Eynfles barely had time to recognize the banner of the raven before he was skewered. He fell from his horse, his killer riding on, dropping the lance to pull a mace and join the melee.
***
Gunnar’s shock prevented him from moving. The horsemen had galloped forward, lances in hand. He had been expecting death, but they had swept around him, charging down the knoll and into the Gethori. The wall of lancers crashed into the loose pack of raiders, the cracking of bone audible as both horse and human collided. Long lances pierced mail effortlessly, knocking most of the raiders to the ground in the first charge. Maybe a half-dozen survived, only to find themselves packed close, surrounded on all sides by warriors. Swords and maces clashed for a few frantic seconds then stopped suddenly.
Gunnar turned Thief around and looked on. Not a single Gethori remained alive. The lancers milled about their fallen foes, shouting triumphantly in their own language. Gunnar noticed one holding a blue banner with a raven on it and remembered that the Gethori’s symbol was a bear. These people were new.
One of them, apparently the leader, broke from the group and rode up the knoll. He wore leather over chain-mail and carried a straight sword.
“Gunnar of the Langal?” he asked in heavily accented Trade Tongue. Gunnar nodded. “I am Ailwur, Lance Commander of Count Thelwul’s cavalry.”
Gunnar stared for a long moment, more out of disbelief than anything else.
“A very insistent young woman told us we had to rescue you,” Ailwur continued. “She rode into our fort on the frontier. Normally, we would not have given much heed to foreign pleadings, but she happened to have the count’s daughter on her horse.”
“Suhngiu,” Kamith realized aloud. “You’re of Three Waters?”
“Yes, madam,” Ailwur said, smiling confidently. “And while my count does not appreciate his men riding blindly into the wilderness of the savages, I felt that saving his daughter’s rescuer warranted an exception.”
“Thank you for that,” Gunnar proclaimed.
“Word came of raiding on the Sea of Kings. Whispers of Lord Eitell’s wife in the hands of the animals that infest our western border,” Ailwur said. “I nearly fainted when she rode in.”
“Eitell died rescuing her,” Gunnar informed him. “He deserves as much credit as we do.”
Ailwur’s smile became bittersweet.
“There will be time for honors and remembrances,” he said, “but, for now, let’s get back to the fort. Word has most likely reached Count Thelwul by now. He will be anxious to hold his daughter again and meet her saviors. He is not the kind to let such bravery go unrewarded.”
“Great,” Gunnar muttered, noticing for the first time how raw his throat felt. “Right now, I just want to sleep someplace with a fire and eat something cooked.”
“That does sound nice,” Kamith agreed.
“I think even our little fort can handle that,” Ailwur laughed. “Come, it’s not far.”
The lancers fell in, Gunnar and Kamith amongst them. At a much more relaxed pace, they crossed the meadow and headed east, the sun high behind them.
Tales of a Northern Shore
The wooden sword came at him, slashing towards his head. Gunnar stepped aside a heartbeat too late, and the edge of Kamith’s practice sword grazed his helmet. He brought his shield inside her left arm as the sword flew past, immobilizing it. Her right arm shot up, the small buckler shield clashing against his chest as he shoved forwards. She stumbled back a few feet, regaining her balance.
“You’re off,” she said. “I haven’t hit your head in weeks.”
“Just restless, I guess,” he said.
“We’ve only been here a week,” Kamith replied.
He nodded absently. Since rescuing Suhngiu from Gethori slavers, they had been staying in the frontier fortress of Lord Thelwul, of the Kingdom of the Three Waters. Three Waters was not among the richer of the kingdoms on the inland seas, so only the central keep was built of stone. It rose behind them, a hundred feet into the air. Surrounding it were wooden structures, a manor home, a blacksmith, a lumber yard, stables, barracks; all the things a lord needed to keep his men armed and equipped. A wooden stockade surrounded them, and, surrounding that, a village had grown up around the fortress. No wall protected it, but he supposed it would be easy enough for the inhabitants to scurry into the fortress.
Gunnar and Kamith stood just beyond the village, in a patch of open field that the lord’s lancers used for practice. Radiating outward from the fortress was a spattering of farms, each claiming a few acres of open space from the thick woods. Still, the majority of the Kingdom of the Three Waters’ western frontier was a seemingly endless, mostly evergreen forest.
“So, I guess we’re done for today?” Kamith asked.
He shook off his reverie, focusing on his wife.
“I guess,” he conceded. “I feel the need to move. I think I’m going to walk for a bit, see if there’s anything in this town I haven’t seen yet.”
“Is this strictly a brooding, solitary walk?” she asked.
“Of course not,” he replied, a smile cutting through his mood. “Where could I go that wouldn’t be better with you there?”
Kamith beamed and planted a quick kiss on his lips. They headed back to their cottage, just inside the palisade. It was one normally reserved for the commanders of the garrison, but Thelwul was short-handed at the moment, so that was where he’d put them up. They dropped the staves and the armor, getting into more casual clothes. They even left their weapons, the serious ones at least. Both kept long knives at their hips.
They emerged and strolled out of town, the fortress disappearing behind them. They’d not gone twenty yards down the road when they passed their first farm. It wasn’t much to look at, just a log cabin with a barn and a field enclosed by split-rail fences to keep the dairy cows in. They passed several other such spreads as they continued on. The road curved sharply above a small knoll, giving Gunnar an excuse to pause.
They stood atop the knoll. Below, another farm lay, so the view was open for a good half-mile. Mostly, they could see trees. Occasionally, these nudged skywards just a bit, no doubt sitting atop small hills or shallow ridges, but most of the land here was flat. He hadn’t seen a single hill that would take him more than a minute or two to climb, even with thick forest covering their slopes. It reminded him of the Great Grasslands, where the terrain rolled ever so slightly for miles on end, so gradually that even when you were gaining elevation, it still looked flat. The only real differences were that this stretch of the world was more densely wooded and far less populated.
“Weather coming in,” Kamith said, pointing.
Sure enough, a bulk of dark cloud hung on the horizon. It hadn’t been there a second ago, but, since coming here, Gunnar had learned quickly how suddenly the weather changed. This part of Three Waters was on the eastern end of a long peninsula, known only as the Land Between the Waters. To the north was the Sea of Winds, reputed by locals to be a temperamental ocean that spun off storms on a moment’s notice. To the south was the Sea of Kings, which he’d been told was nearly as large and more than capable of ruining a sunny day. He’d also been told that the Sea of Travels lay to the east. This was the third sea from which the Kingdom of the Three Waters got its name. He’d never seen it, but he knew it was as large and temperamental as the other two.
All of this meant that he was probably going to be rained on in the next few minutes.
“I do have lousy timing,” he grumbled. “Guess we should start back.”
“We didn’t even get that far,” Kamith said with a frown.
They turned and started pacing back quickly. Within a minute, the first drops had started staining the dirt ruts of the road. Gunnar frowned at the sight. As seconds passed, it went from sprinkles to a downpour with the impossible speed that only misfortune seemed to unlock in the world.
They broke into a run. Gunnar pointed at one of the small farms. Two buildings rose from the field, a dark-looking house with no windows, and a tall, two-story barn. One of the doors on the barn had been left open, so they dashed for it, their feet splashing through the fast-forming mud. The downpour grew heavier, the rain pounding hard against the wood shingles of the roof.
Gunnar took a breath, looking around him. The barn was dim and mostly empty. At the far end, he could see a horse standing in its stall, lazily chewing on some hay. At first, that was the only sign of life, until a slight movement caught his eye.
His head perked up, turning towards the motion. A pile of straw shifted, revealing a pale foot sticking out from one of the stalls. It moved rhythmically, but whatever sound the person was making was drowned out by the rain hammering on the roof.
“Hello?” he shouted in Trade Tongue.
The foot withdrew rapidly into the stall, and, over the drone of the rain, he could hear hushed voices and clothes flying about.
“Looks like we caught somebody at a bad time—” Kamith began.
She stopped because a familiar young woman appeared from behind the stall, pressing a dress to the front of her body to cover herself.
“Turee?” shrieked Kamith.
“By the gods,” Turee groaned. “How did you find me?”
“We didn’t,” Gunnar said. “We took shelter in the first building we came across.”