by John Dalmas
Even his own staff, who were quite willing to plunder flatland farmers, saw the logic of it.
They'd been ready to do it cold. In fact, their concept of planning in general troubled Macurdy. Their attitude was no problem. We'll just go do it. Then he'd point out problems, and they'd say oh yes, and listen while he asked questions, paid attention to their answers, and came up with handlings, or what he hoped were handlings.
He had no doubt his Kullvordi were resourceful. The unforeseeable things that would inevitably come up, they'd probably handle better than most would. That was pretty much the way the hillsmen lived life. But the more things you foresaw and prepared for in advance, it seemed to him, the easier it would be to handle the rest of it.
Anyway they'd listened; even been impressed and enthused. Partly because he was going to let them fight at last, but even more because they had confidence in him, in his leadership. More confidence than he did. Not that he denigrated what he'd accomplished, from that decisive morning at the House of Heroes, to the confrontations with Slaney and Orthal. And in building and training his company since then. But to him, the challenges ahead seemed much greater. While to his rebels-he'd performed what they considered miracles, and they assumed he'd continue to.
He looked around at the platoon riding quietly through the night. Only occasionally had he heard a murmured exchange or comment. Beyond that was only the soft plod of hooves on dirt and the squeak of leather; they were doing a good job of keeping route security. He could sense no extreme tension, and he'd come to appreciate how sensitive he'd grown to other people's unexpressed emotions, since Varia and Arbel had worked with him. These guys are a lot more interested in fighting than Slaney's men were at the fallen timber, he told himself. Even with the cover of forest hours behind us, and a fight ahead that not all of us may live through.
Two well-hated bailiffs had been targeted, whose plundering and humiliation would please the flatlander peasants-bailiffs whose strongholds could be reached in something under a night's ride from forest, on trails and roads where their travel would raise no alarm. One was well west, a long ride through wild and forested hills. The reeve in that shire was why Three Forks had been fertile recruiting ground, a reeve who'd selected bailiffs as harsh and arrogant as himself. Macurdy had assigned Jeremid to lead that raid; as a third-year Hero, Jeremid was by far his most competent officer. The other bailiwick chosen was a lot nearer, but the ride through open lowlands was longer and seemed more dangerous. That was the one he was riding to now.
In his mind, Macurdy began to review again what he knew about the bailiff's stronghold. For whatever royal reason, bailiffs weren't allowed a stockade. What they generally had, or so he'd been assured, was a fence not much taller than he was-a miniature palisade of stout locust stakes set in the ground, with stout oak posts every six feet or so-presumably white oak so they wouldn't rot. The whole thing was tied together with a growth of thorny rose vines so no one could climb it. There'd be a padlocked wagon gate in front. He hadn't seen padlocks in this world, but he imagined them as large and heavy. Next to it would be an access gate just wide enough to lead a horse through, barred on the inside, and guarded. Inside were large fierce dogs. This bothered Macurdy more than guards, though his men didn't seem concerned.
For the life of him, he couldn't think of anything he hadn't considered, but he kept reviewing doggedly. The biggest unknown at the village, it seemed to him, was how many men the bailiff would have on hand. Bailiffs were allowed eight armsmen on their permanent payroll, but in tax time they hired as many as thirty toughs from other bailiwicks to help collect the taxes. Would they be hanging around guarding the loot? His people seemed semiconfident they wouldn't, but the possibility troubled Macurdy.
Still, it seemed to him likely that he'd get the loot and out of the village without serious losses. Then, instead of backtracking, they'd turn east. There was supposed to be an east-west road just north of the village, that would get them to the North Fork Road before midmorning. By that time the reeve would have been notified, and have his company on its way from his castle on the river west of Gormin Town. They'd be twice his number, better trained, better armed, and on fresher horses. Of course, by the time they caught him, their horses wouldn't be so fresh, but his own men would have been in the saddle, or working or fighting, since dusk the evening before, and their horses wouldn't have much run left in them.
The North Fork Road roughly paralleled the North Fork of the Calder River, with its stringer of woods. About an hour before you reached extensive forest, the East Fork flowed out of the hills to join the North. There, Wollerda was to be waiting with two hundred men, to jump the reeve's company from behind when it had passed. Then Macurdy's platoon was to turn and hit it from the front. Between his force and Wollerda's, they'd outnumber the reeve's more than two to one.
Macurdy couldn't afford much delay at the village. If the reeve caught them before they'd passed the junction with the East Fork, they were in serious trouble. They'd have to abandon the loot, try to reach the forest and scatter. His people said not to worry, it wouldn't happen that way, and he'd nodded as if he accepted their assurance, but…
And finally, how well would his men perform? Would they hold ranks? Fight well? Would he make good decisions?
On top of it all, his mouth hurt where new teeth were pushing through. Now he knew why teething babies fussed. New teeth! Weird, at his age. Apparently it was a side effect of Varia's magic to keep him young.
Macurdy could hear the village dogs almost as soon as he saw the village, their distant barking less insistent than that of the farm dogs they'd passed. Bark bark, pause. Bark bark bark, longer pause. Like Morse code, he thought. Houses hunkered darkly in the moonlight, with here and there something taller-barns and stables he supposed. Somewhere in there was the bailiff's stronghold.
His lips stretched tight over his grin. He felt better now, as if the immediacy of action was clearing away his nervousness. Quickening his horse, he caught up with Tarlok. "Keep it to a walk," he said, loudly enough for the men to hear. "They won't react so quickly."
At four hundred yards the village dogs became aware of them, and the barking spread quickly, gaining energy. Another wagon road crossed the one they were on; they'd take it eastward when they left. Meanwhile their present road took them into and almost through the village before they came to the stronghold, its fence looking solid and formidable in the darkness. The barking from inside was deep and raging, a sort of staccato roar that made him twitch.
His men knew their assignments and needed no orders. One group turned off on the near side, another rode past and turned off at the farther corner, each group with a packhorse carrying a ladder for laying against the fence, a ladder broad and strong enough for three men to cross abreast. Macurdy and the rest stopped in front of the gate and waited. If there'd been an outside guard, he'd disappeared. Meanwhile what were the inside guards doing? Their dogs were just inside the gate, barking like something out of hell. The whole village had to be awake by now, he thought, and for the first time wondered what would happen if the villagers sided with the bailiff. Traditionally, flatlanders and hillsmen had been hostile to each other, feelings dating from ancient wrongs occasionally renewed. The bailiff, on the other hand, was a present and continuing evil. But…
Then someone inside whistled shrilly, a signal to those outside, and the dogs raced away from the gates, still raging. There were shouts from several points, and very close by, a man screamed. The barking thinned as dogs were killed. The access gate opened, and one of Macurdy's men looked out.
Macurdy trotted in with another group, and stumbled over a body; a gate guard, he supposed. He wondered if his people had taken any prisoners, as he'd instructed, or if they'd simply killed everyone they didn't know. There seemed not to have been any serious resistance. His attention went first to the wagon gate-a double gate, its two halves meeting in the center. They were barred-that was no surprise-but they were also fastened inside
by a heavy, padlocked chain through two large eyebolts. And they needed them open, to get the packhorses back out when they'd been loaded.
"Slide the bar out!" he shouted. "Use it as a battering ram!" One of his men tugged on Macurdy's arm. "Captain! They had a bunch of tax girls shut up in a shed. What do you want done with them?"
He followed the man. The girls, four of them, had been brought outside. Macurdy judged their ages as being from twelve to perhaps seventeen. Even by moonlight they looked terrified. Two, seemingly the younger, were crying, their voices keening. He spoke to the one he judged oldest: "Tell them no one's going to hurt them. Tell them I'm going to send you all home."
Someone else came to him, to announce that the bailiff was dead. "And Captain, we found a little casket in the house, full of coins-silver and gold!"
"Good. Tie it shut and load it on a packhorse."
Someone came to tell him that the battering ram wasn't doing the job. They'd also tried using the ironwood pry poles Macurdy had had them bring along, to pry the gates up off the hinge pins, but the pin ends had been hammered, and the hinges wouldn't come off. Macurdy raised his head. "Someone bring an ax to the gate!" he bellowed, "and a torch. Right away!", and jogged to where the men had laid down their ram.
A sizeable crowd was gathering outside. Tarlok was talking to them. Damn! Macurdy thought. If we don't get this gate open right now, we're going to look like a bunch of clowns to these people.
"Captain! There's a guy here's got something he says is important."
"Have him wait! Where the hell is that ax?" As he asked it, a man ran up with one and handed it to him. Macurdy stepped up to the wagon gate, eyed the U-shaped padlock bolt, wound up and hit it as hard as he could. The body of the lock fell to the ground. He grabbed the chain, hanging loose now, and pulled it out of the eyebolts, then four of his men shoved the gate open.
The person with the important information was a boy of about fifteen years. He'd seen someone come out of his father's horse shed, leading his father's best horse, a man wearing the helmet of a bailiff's armsman. He'd mounted and ridden quietly south, headed out of town.
The outside guard, Macurdy suspected, on his way to notify the reeve.
The next man who wanted to talk to him was the village spokesman, the man voted by the villagers to represent them with the bailiff. He was agonizing over the tax girls. When Macurdy said he was sending them home, the spokesman blinked with surprise, then shook his head. "The reeve has already been sent an inventory. He will come here and take them back; hunt them down if he must." The man looked worriedly into Macurdy's face. "It's best if you can take them to a safe place."
For just a moment the two men traded gazes. Shit! Macurdy thought, things must be bad here, if he's putting his trust in us. "All right," he said, "but two of them are children. Bring me a woman of the village, a strong one who can ride well, to look after them. And tell your people why we took them."
He turned away from the spokesman and went to check on the loading of the packhorses, to make sure they weren't overburdened. They'd have to keep up with the saddle mounts. But the spokesman, he became aware, was following him anxiously. "Excuse me, Captain," he said. "Did you know the reeve has stationed his company at a farm on the Great Road? They are more centrally located there, and also much nearer to us. If they arrive before you leave…"
"Tarlok!" Macurdy bellowed, and the man came running. Briefly they talked, and given this new information, Macurdy decided they had little or no chance of making it via the North Fork Road. They'd have to go back the way they'd come, and as quickly as they could. He sent one of his best riders, a youth who might have weighed 120 pounds, on the bailiff's best horse, to find Wollerda and let him know the trap was aborted.
Hurriedly they then finished loading the pack horses with two bags each of wheat. The tax girls and the woman who'd tend them were helped onto five of the bailiff's horses. Another townsman had told him there were tax cattle in a paddock just outside town, and Macurdy sent men to get them. The guards there had fled too, it turned out.
When they rode north out of the village, they had not only the pack string, but the tax girls, and three village youths who insisted they wanted to join the rebel band. And eight of the tax cattle. The rest had scattered, and there was no time to round them up.
When he rode away from town at the head of his column, Macurdy already could see faint dawnlight along the eastern horizon. Before long he could see a mile or more. No one seemed sleepy, and from time to time they trotted their horses. The sun rose, and began its daily trip. They passed farmers on the road or at chores, or in the fields-men and women who stared worriedly at them, and kept out of their way. Meadow larks challenged each other in liquid notes, while marsh hawks soared over the hay fields, watching for rodents. Gradually the morning warmed, but remained less than hot; the humidity was low and the breeze pleasant. It would be easy, Macurdy told himself, to think the danger was over, if there'd been any in the first place. And maybe it was over, but that seemed unlikely.
After a bit, Blue Wing found him. "Macurdy! Macurdy!" he cawed, and Macurdy, pulling off the rutted, hoof-packed road, waited while the column passed. Waited for what he was sure was bad news. A rail fence bordered the road there, and with uplifted wings, the great raven braked to land on it. Carrying on a conversation in flight was difficult.
"You are not where you told me you'd be!" he said accusingly.
"I found out things I hadn't known. The North Fork Road's too dangerous. We'd have been caught."
"They're coming! Many more of them than you! And they're riding faster! You'd better hurry!"
"Thanks. We'll go as fast as we dare, but we don't dare wear the horses out." And the pack string may start to gallop, and the cattle. That'll use them up fast.
The cattle, Macurdy decided, were the most dispensable, but he'd keep them as long as he could. "How close have they gotten? Have they forded the creek with the brushy banks?"
Blue Wing looked at him exasperated. "Most of the creeks around here have brushy banks."
"The creek with brush that comes up to the road. The next to last creek we crossed between here and the village."
"I'll see." The bird flexed its legs, and launched itself with a whoosh! whoosh! of powerful wing strokes. Then Macurdy urged his big gelding into a canter, to catch the head of the column again.
The great raven was back before many minutes, and Macurdy and Tarlok pulled off the road while the column passed. Their pursuers had crossed the creek, Blue Wing said, were well past it. Tarlok shook his head. "We won't reach the forest before they catch us. Not unless we leave the pack string behind, and the cattle. And if we do that, they'll say they beat us-that we quit. That we're scared of them. And the story will spread."
"Right." And it'll kill the optimism people have been feeling. Especially these guys. He turned to Blue Wing again. "There are two places ahead where we rode through woods last night, after we left the forest, but I couldn't see well enough to know what it's like there. Go take a look for me."
Again the great raven left, then returned. Blue Wing always described things differently than a human would, but it seemed to Macurdy there were opportunities in those woods.
He chose one squad and told them what he had in mind for them. The country here was higher, sloping generally southward, and where the woods farther south were mostly in scattered small blocks, here they were irregular, oriented on irregularities in the terrain. It was midmorning when Macurdy came to a broad shallow draw, with a creek running through it flanked by woods. By that time Blue Wing had swooped low a couple of times to urge speed; their pursuit was getting close. Looking back, Macurdy could see a dust cloud: the reeve's men. No doubt they were trotting their horses by intervals.
He and Tarlok kicked their own animals to a brief downhill canter, leading the column into the draw. When they were well into the trees, Macurdy and the squad he'd chosen drew up. Tarlok pulled off too, and called for the others to halt
.
"Captain," he said quietly, "do you figure on staying here with them?"
"Yep."
"Best you leave me with them. Lose you, and the whole company will melt away like maple sugar in the rain. But lose me and folks will hardly notice."
"I'd notice."
Tarlok ignored the reply. "By now, everyone knows what you've done. You get yourself killed, and people from Gormin Town to Three Forks to the Saw Pit Valley will lose heart. While most of them never heard of me." Tarlok turned to the others and called out. "Men! Anyone here think the captain lacks guts?"
The chorus of noes was emphatic; there was even laughter, as if the thought was ridiculous. Tarlok nodded, satisfied. "Captain," he said, still loudly, "you don't need to stay here because it's more dangerous. What you need to do is ride on with the column, for the same damn reason."
The man sat easy in the saddle, eyeing his commander. Macurdy nodded, and without answering verbally, nudged his horse with his heels, passing the halted rebels to the head of the column. There he paused just long enough to call out, "All but Rensey's squad-move out!"
They rode. At the break of the draw, Macurdy paused. The road had shrunk to little more than a broad, well-beaten trail, though there still were cart ruts. Looking back toward the head of the dust train, he could see the leaders of the pursuit column. After the last of his drovers had passed, urging the cattle with voices and staffs, he turned his back on Tarlok and the chosen squad. For the first time really aware of how these men looked at him.
It was a burden he hadn't recognized before. It seemed to him now that he owed them at least as much as he owed Varia and himself.
When Blue Wing came back, Macurdy rested the column briefly while he took the bird's report. The reeve's company was on its way again, continuing the pursuit. Yes, some of the ambush squad had gotten out alive, riding upstream; four of them, he thought. (He could handle the smaller numbers well enough.) Some others had probably sneaked away on foot. The reeve's company had lost more. Blue Wing concentrated, then guessed that "ten or more" horses or men had fallen.