Death Flag

  He sent Warren off to set up a scouting route so that they could make sure no one else tried to approach during the night. He had no way of knowing whether or not someone had approached the camp during the deluge during the day, but it seemed unlikely. The series of switchbacks he had to travel up to make the ascent were rather narrow on their own, and making the climb would be somewhat dangerous under any type of conditions that weren’t perfect. Attempting to make it in the dark and in pouring rain would be almost suicidal unless you knew exactly where you were going and what to expect along the way. It wasn’t like there was a guardrail or anything to stop a person from going over the edge, so a single false move, loose stone, or a misplaced step could spell disaster.

  “Any change?” Madison asked in a low tone as he approached Shayna. She blended in almost perfectly with the dark of night, and he probably never would have spotted her if she hadn’t let him know that she was there.

  “You were right,” she answered in a voice that was barely above a whisper. The guard changed just a few minutes ago. But don’t you think this is a little risky? Going in with a fresh set of eyes? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until he fell asleep or grew lax later on? I don’t want to wait any longer, but . . .”

  “No,” Madison answered, leaning down so that his mouth was close to her ear and just inside her cowl. He didn’t mind explaining himself, but standing out in the open and making noise was a horrible idea, and he wanted to make sure that he took every precaution to stop the sound from traveling up and reaching unwanted ears. “If we go now, when he’s alert, he’s more likely to believe I am who I say I am. If he wakes up from a torpor, he will be on high alert for anything even remotely suspicious or out of the ordinary. If I go now, he’ll see me and have time to watch me as I approach, giving him a bit longer to make a decision about whether or not he should trust me before I reach him. The first rule of convincing someone that you belong is to just act like you’re supposed to be there. Didn’t they teach you that back at K’yer Utane?”

  Shayna watched him out of the corner of her eye the entire time and only turned to look at him once he had finished talking. Their faces were so close together that he could feel her breath. He watched her eyes flicker across his face several times, and then she nodded slightly. “Be careful,” she said. “You still owe me for saving your life! And you aren’t allowed to die until you repay me!”

  Madison just laughed to himself as he turned and made his way out of the tree line and toward the narrow trail leading up. He had always seen people using goat paths to scale mountains in the movies, but he had never really believed that they actually existed until now. The pathway he had to follow was fairly wide at the bottom, probably wide enough to drive a cart up if you were careful, but after the first few turns, the path narrowed down until it was slightly nerve-wracking to even walk up the path without turning sideways. No matter how much he wanted to take it slowly, however, he forced himself to maintain a steady trudge at all times. He didn’t bother taking any precaution to hide, and he sincerely hoped that the scout watching from above would assume that he was one of the bandits who had gone missing or someone else come to report. He still had no idea what this group was doing up here unless they were waiting for orders, and he sincerely hoped that there was some legitimate reason for a messenger to approach after dark. Otherwise, he was going to end up shot before he ever even made it halfway.

  Switchbacks ran almost straight up on the right side of the cliff and took up about a third of the entire wall. The other two-thirds, the part that worried him the most, was nothing but open and barren rock. About three-quarters of the way to the top, there was a rough outcrop of rock that extended out from the switchbacks into the otherwise-empty section of the wall. It was just large enough to shelter a few boulders and various misshapen shrubs that had somehow survived the harsh winds, but that was about it. It was also the ideal place to station a lookout. He’d have a complete and unobstructed view of the trail leading up as well as the surrounding forest. As long as he was even halfway alert, he’d be certain to know of anyone or anything approaching from anywhere but behind—which presumably wouldn’t be the direction any enemy ever came from.

  Madison made it a point of stopping just as he reached the large outcropping. He was in luck. His climb up hadn’t been slow, but it hadn’t been rushed either. He was playing the part of a messenger in his mind, and he could only hope that whatever news he was carrying with him wasn’t supposed to be delivered urgently. As soon as he came to a halt, he heard the shuffling footsteps of a man walking forward across the rough rock. He couldn’t see very far ahead in the dark of night, but he didn’t need to. He knew that he was being scrutinized.

  “Well?” a man’s voice asked impatiently.

  Madison held his hands out to his side, though it really wouldn’t do him any good if the other man couldn’t see him either. “Well, what?” he asked back, also impatiently. “Are you going to let me pass or not?”

  “What? Who are you?” the voice asked gruffly. “What are you doing up here?”

  “Name’s Barnes,” Madison answered, starting out slowly and spinning his lie. He knew that saying too much was a risk since he was likely to give himself away with something that wasn’t right, but he had to sell the part as well. “I was part of a group that was on our way up here yesterday. We ran into some trouble along the way, and . . . Well, I think I’m the only one who made it out. I got knocked out early on in the fight and only just woke up in the middle of that damned downpour. Hunkered down and waited for it to pass and then made my way here. Anyone else make it? I . . . I saw quite a few bodies, but . . . those monsters . . . They mutilated them! By the goddess! I couldn’t even recognize my own brothers . . .” Madison trailed off then and shook his head, acting like he was really shaken up by what he had seen.

  There was a long pause as the lookout weighed the information he had been given. Madison had completely forged the name, but everything else was basically the truth. Finally, the man said slowly, “I guess that sounds right. One of yours turned up early this morning and told us basically the same thing. That man walked into camp like he owned the place and almost got stuck like a pig because of it. We might be working together for now, but you all need to remember that this alliance is only temporary! Someone’s going to get hurt if you don’t learn to show us some respect.”

  Madison sighed loudly, grumbling to himself before grunting an acknowledgment. “It is as the goddess wills,” he growled as if he were dissatisfied with what he had heard, mimicking the speech patterns from the bandit earlier. “I’m free to pass then? Don’t want no more trouble. Just a hot meal and some sleep.”

  “You’ll have to wait here until the watch changes,” the man answered. “Not gonna let someone wander into the camp after dark unannounced and unexpected.”

  “Oh, come on!” Madison protested. “I just watched all my friends get killed, and you can’t even let a fellow dry off from the rain!”

  “Can it!” the man barked back a little too loudly. “Just grab some wall and wait. You should have shown up before dark if you didn’t want to wait!” He turned his back and started moving back to the rock he was positioned on, and Madison figured this was about the best chance he was going to get to make his move. The guard was walking closer to the edge than Madison felt comfortable with, but this might be the only opportunity to catch him off-guard, so he had to take.

  He hustled forward as quickly on the balls of his feet as he could without making a bunch of noise. He came up right behind the guard and simultaneously wrapped his arm around the man’s throat and jammed his knee in the back of the guard’s knee. The guard’s balance gave way as Madison took his support out from under him, and Madison twisted his entire body to the side and pulled back. The man was thrown to ground with a loud grunt, and Madison was on top of him a moment later. Madison had thrown the man away from the ledge out of necessity, but that didn’t leave a lot of space to wrestle aroun
d with. He was all too aware of that fact as he dropped down on top of the guard. If he lost his balance, or if the guard managed to buck him off, Madison was likely to go flying over the side of the cliff.

  The guard had landed face down, and Madison landed on his back, wrapping his legs around the man’s waist. He leaned over and started to wrap his hands back around the man’s throat, but the guard wasn’t going to go easily. He pushed off from the rock, and it looked like he was trying to do a sit-up with Madison sitting on his back. He actually managed to get his upper half off the ground, but he wasn’t nearly strong enough to shake Madison loose that way.

  Madison leaned forward and slammed his fist into the back of the man’s skull as hard as he could. The guy’s head snapped forward, and his body slammed back down to the ground. Madison leaned forward, once again hoping to wrap him up, but the scout chose that moment to change tactics and try to twist to the side. The man’s elbow came flying around as he rotated his torso, trying to roll over off his stomach. His elbow caught Madison right in the corner of his eye, and Madison jerked back upright as a sharp pain shot through the side of his head. He saw stars sparkle against the pitch-black night for a moment, and then he lashed out with a second punch out of spite. He hit the guy in almost the exact same spot as before, driving his head down into the rock this time, forehead-first.

  The guard automatically wrapped his arms around his head, covering it as protectively as possible, but he didn’t stop squirming around. He bucked his hips up and down and thrashed his body from side to side as he attempted to get Madison off of him. Finally, realizing that he was wasting his time, Madison reached back to jerk his boot knife free. It was the only thing he had kept with him from his own set of armor, figuring that it would go unnoticed, and he was thankful for it now. Just as his weight tipped backward and his hand wrapped around the knife’s handle, the guard twisted to the side and bucked his hips at the same time. Madison’s survival instinct kicked it, and he automatically rolled away from the ledge and off the guard, landing on the flat of his back.

  Instantly realizing his mistake, Madison lashed out with his foot. Since the guard’s arms were pulled up above his head, there was no way for the man to defend his body. Madison’s foot slammed into the side of the guard’s abdomen, squarely planting a solid kick into his ribs. He rolled onto his side and away from Madison, dropping his arms and curling into a ball, and then his eyes went wide with horror as he realized what was about to happen.

  Madison instantly rolled over onto his stomach and scrambled toward the guard, but there was little he could do. The scout teetered back and forth for a moment and then he panicked, swinging his arms about wildly as he tried to clamber back to safety. His desperate, uncontrolled movements rocked him backward, and he slipped over the edge. It was like watching someone fall off the edge of a bed, except it was a hundred feet straight down, not just two. One minute he was there, and the next he was gone. Madison’s fears finally came to fruition. The guard screamed out as he fell over the edge, and he didn’t stop until he hit bottom.

  Madison lay prone where he was and waited for his heart rate to calm down. He didn’t deal well with heights, and watching someone fall to his death was like sending a guy who was scared of clowns to the circus. It wasn’t just that he was trying to calm himself down—in truth, he would have been fine if he had to continue fighting—but that he was also listening for any sound coming from above that might indicate that someone had heard the man’s cries as he tumbled off. He shuffled back to the edge of the cliff and positioned himself behind the rock in the same place that the guard had formerly occupied and waited. If nothing else, he hoped that anyone looking down from above would see him and find a lookout exactly where he was supposed to be and doing what he was supposed to do and not see the need to investigate further. The shouts had died out rather quickly, and given the hour and poor weather, it wasn’t likely that anyone had taken notice of it—but that didn’t mean he wanted to go rushing headlong into the waiting arms of an angry camp.

  After waiting for about half an hour without hearing so much as a peep from above, he figured he would be safe to continue on. He knew that someone was going to show up for the watch change eventually, but he had no idea when that was supposed to be. He felt like he could handle one lone man wandering across him while half-asleep in the middle of the night, but he would rather avoid it if he could. Deciding it was better to go on than stay and wait, he stood up and continue his walk in the same unhurried fashion he had before.

  He made his way around the final turn and casually strolled onto the high ride a short time later. There was something resembling a small forest here, comprised of the same stubby green shrubs and stunted trees that he had seen down below, and they somehow seemed to be thriving despite the pounding that they received on a regular basis from storms moving through the region. It wasn’t nearly as lush as even the woodland on the tier below, but it was more than enough to provide a small measure of cover from the rough winds and heavy rain that had just passed through, and that gave Madison some small bit of confidence. If the party hadn’t been completely exposed to the elements, it was likely that they were still tucked away in tents for the night.

  If he remembered correctly, they had made camp in a small clearing just on the inside of the small grove. It was far enough away from the edge that they could safely burn a fire without anyone below noticing, and it was likely that Madison never would have known that they were there at all if he hadn’t been on the back of a dragon looking down. He glanced back and forth, making sure that there wasn’t another scout positioned somewhere close by, and then casually made his way into the tree line as if he knew exactly where he was going.

  Once he was under the cover of the trees, he switched his gait and took things a little more slowly. He didn’t want to look like he was creeping around, but in truth, that was exactly what his plan entailed from here on out. He needed to get as much information about the camp as he could before making a decision. Just as he had told Shayna, if he thought that he could rescue Erin without their help, he would do it. If he decided that he needed to wait, he would do that too. But before he could make any decision at all, he had to have more information than he did at the moment. He was playing with people’s lives, and he couldn’t risk making a mistake.

  He was thirty paces into the woods when he caught sight of a bright blaze somewhere just ahead of him. Cautiously, he crept forward until he was able to peer out from around a tree and get a good look at the encampment at last. Several small tents had been pitched to the left of two large campfires that looked like they had recently been fed a good amount of wood, and two larger tents had been erected to the right that were practically indistinguishable from one another. The flames licked up high into the air, casting the entire scene in a warm red glow and giving him a clear view of everything that was going on.

  There were around twenty men gathered around the fires, and a few looked as if they had just finished eating a meal—likely the reason the fires had been fed so much. The woods surrounding the small clearing which they made camp in were thick enough to hide the light of the fires, and Madison felt a small pang of jealousy. He had been living off of dried jerky and oats and stale waffles for days now, and the thought of a good, hot meal how it must taste sent hunger pangs through his stomach. Aside from that, there really wasn’t anything noteworthy. It looked like a dozen or so men had lain out bedrolls around the fires with the intention of sleeping there, and he silently cursed his luck for that. He never would have expected men to sleep on the wet ground after a hard rain, but it was likely that there wasn’t enough room in any of the tents to accommodate them.

  Sleeping in the open allowed the men to be prepared much more quickly in the case of an attack, as they wouldn’t have to waste time stepping out of a tent or risk having someone walk right up to the outside of their shelter without them being aware of it. If a man could get his wits about him fast enough, he could effecti
vely stand up, grab a weapon, and be ready to fight. It also meant that the group didn’t have to haul around the extra baggage that tents would entail—a minor thing to consider logistically, but if you were trying to make it across rough terrain or cover a great distance as quickly as possible and without being detected, it was a rather important thing to consider. The only major downsides were that it left them open to the elements and the possibility of being attacked in their sleep. He also knew from experience that most men would rather choose a wet bed than one that was far too cramped with a bunch of foul-smelling, unbathed men.

  Most of the men looked like they were of the same strangely-dressed, goddess-worshiping bandits that he had encountered before, but there were a few others mixed in along with them whom he didn’t recognize. They were sitting together in a group separate from the rest near one of the large tents, and they all had their backs so he wasn’t able to see their faces.

  The only other two things of importance that he had to note was that there was no sign of Erin anywhere to be seen and that there was a single man standing as a sentry just on the inside of the clearing. He was a little to Madison’s left and about twenty feet back from the trees, and he looked like he was already bored out of his mind, likely seeing no need to stand guard when there was already someone down below guarding the only way in or out. Assuming that he had just started his watch at the same time as the other man down below, that was a good sign. He’d likely become restless and stop paying attention altogether before too long, and Madison knew that he could take advantage of that with a little patience.