That night Vera dreamed of Hassell Point. She was back at the Boggy Peat, the tavern for locals where she had worked out of a room in the back. She offered her customers comfort and companionship, Lorik being chief among them. She dreamed she was serving Lorik drinks when a stranger arrived in town. He had blood dripping from his knuckles when he came in. He drank the strong rice liquor they called saka in the marshlands. And he beat down two outlaws who tried to bully him, in a way that seemed almost effortless.
Then the dream changed, and he was sitting in her room in the Boggy Peat, his eyes like liquid pools of kindness and affection. In her mind she knew he was a dangerous man, but he wasn’t an outlaw or a brute. She heard herself laughing with him and mentally dueling with him. It was a battle of wits and she was falling in love. It was happening so fast. After knowing so many men intimately, after refusing offers of marriage from good prospects in the Marshlands year after year, she was falling hard and fast for this dangerous stranger. The giddiness was more intoxicating than any drink.
Then the dream changed again. The dream was suddenly dark. She could see Liam, the love of her life, her dangerous stranger, covered in blood, lying dead and forgotten. His eyes were open and his skin, where it wasn’t stained red with blood, was so pale and cold it made her shiver. She stared into his eyes and the giddiness was replaced with grief. He was gone, the spark snuffed out much too soon. It was her biggest fear come true. Her parents had died when she was young. Lorik’s parents, too, when she was barely old enough to be on her own. Everyone she cared for had left her. Tears, hot and salty, streamed from her eyes and dripped down onto Liam’s face. He was as cold as his common name, his flesh as hard. He was Stone now and forevermore.
***
Stone had come to his senses in the hours just before dawn. At first he hadn’t remembered what had happened, but then it all came back in a rush. He stayed perfectly still even though his body was stiff and aching. His knee hurt more than anything, but his head ached so much he was afraid he would throw up, and the blood all over his body was drying and itching. He was cold, too, but luckily he wasn’t shivering.
He felt the sun come up, felt the light penetrating his eyelids. Still he didn’t move. He breathed as softly as possible, especially when he heard people moving around him. He was afraid he would be discovered when the Norsik raiders came to see to the bodies of the three men he had killed in his last fight, but they were ignored. He heard the cries of the women and children and he wondered desperately if Vera was among them, but he couldn’t risk finding out. He knew his knee was in bad shape. There was no way he could escape the raiders if he was discovered, and he doubted that he could rescue her even if he hadn’t been. He was one man and the raiders numbered more than a hundred.
The hours crawled by at an agonizingly slow pace. He heard the wagon moving, heard the supplies being loaded, heard half the raiding party marching one way and the slave masters carrying the captives away in a different direction. He waited even when he saw the shadows of the carrion birds flashing over him through his eyelids. He waited until the birds’ jubilant cries were the only sounds he could hear. He guessed it was midday when the first bird landed on him, its talons digging into his flesh. He swatted at the bird and it squawked so loudly that Stone was afraid the raiders would come dashing back to finish him off. But there was no other sound.
He opened his eyes and slowly rolled to his side. Waves of nausea rolled up from his stomach, but eventually the sickness passed. He propped himself up and checked the wound on his head. It was sore, but he decided it was not worth being concerned about. He would need to wash the blood away, but for now the wound had clotted and wouldn’t trouble him with more than a headache.
His knee was another story. It was swollen and stiff, tender to the touch and completely unable to bear his weight. He dragged himself to a litter of supplies that had been completely torn apart. The supplies had been transported in a pack that had thin wooden rods to give it structure. He tore the wood free of the canvas and ripped the canvas into strips. Then he placed the rods on either side of his knee. The rods were light and flexible by themselves, but two of them together made them much more stiff. He used the canvas strips to tie the rods to his leg. The added support eased the pain a little and made moving around easier, although he still couldn’t put weight on the leg.
He knew he needed a crutch but he had no idea where he might find one. Trees were rare on the plains and he was miles from the closest settlement. He made a mental list of what he needed to survive. Water, food, a good cloak, and some way to move around. He began to explore around him. Most of the refugees had brought their own food rations, and although most of it had been taken by the raiders, they hadn’t been careful: there was a little food lying on the ground in places. He found a small tow sack and filled it with the remnants of food he found.
There was a stream near the camp, and he went there next. He washed the blood from his head and threw away his ruined shirt; then he scrubbed his body clean. He felt better almost immediately. He drank his fill of the cold water and felt hunger stirring in his stomach. He nibbled some stale bread as he hobbled and hopped back to the ruins of the camp.
There were bodies lying everywhere, many of them covered by carrion birds. He could see the carcasses of several horses and went to inspect them first, checking each body he passed along the way. The bodies were mostly elderly people, both men and women. Stone wondered briefly about the woman who had saved his life. He wondered if she had been taken or slain. He hoped that she had somehow escaped with her life, but he knew that hope was foolish.
He passed by two dead draft horses that he recognized as the animals that had been pulling the wagon. The Norsik weren’t fond of horses, and because he didn’t see the wagons he guessed that either the slaves or the raiders themselves were pulling the wagon. The body of the third horse brought tears to his eyes. It was his mount. He saw that one of the horse’s forelegs was broken, and he knew that Vera had not escaped the raiders. His only hope now was that she was alive, even if she was being held captive. He needed to confirm that she wasn’t one of the bodies lying dead on the field, but at least then he knew what he had to do. He would travel north, following the raiders, through the Wilderlands, through Norsik, even into the Borian Tribelands if he had to. He wouldn’t stop and would never give up until he found her.
Unfortunately his good leg was already aching from bearing all his weight. He needed a horse, but the chances of finding one was were nearly impossible. He had no money and very little supplies. Yet somehow he knew he would find a way to get to Vera.
He spent the rest of the day searching the ruined the camp. The desire to start out north ate at him like an insatiable hunger, but he knew he had to check every body. There were very few Norsik among the dead. He recovered his good knife, the one he had thrown at the raider the night before. He found an old shirt that was wearable, patched and threadbare though it was. He also found a cloak, and just as the sun was setting he found a broken staff that some elderly man had used as a walking stick and perhaps as a weapon. He had tried using one of the curved short swords like a cane, but the blade was too short to be useful. The walking stick, however, was broken at just the right length. It wasn’t as useful as a crutch, but Stone was able to move around much more quickly with it.
When night fell he was exhausted and cold. He knew he needed to rest, and although he knew it was foolish, he built a small fire. Two hours later, he heard horses and a wagon approaching. He got to his feet and moved away from the fire. Then he heard a familiar voice.
“Is it possible that someone survived?” said a man.
“Anything is possible,” said a woman.
Tears filled Stone’s eyes. He hobbled forward and called out.
“Hello,” he said. “It’s me, Stone.”
“What?” said the man. He came walking forward into the firelight. “I can’t believe it. Look here, Mother, it’s our friend Stone.”
<
br /> It was the farmer and his family, and they came gathering around Stone and his little fire. Stone felt a huge sense of relief wash over him. He had determined to face any obstacle to find Vera, but he had felt so alone near the bodies of so many innocent people.
“You’re hurt,” the farmer’s wife said.
“We were attacked last night,” Stone said. “I have to go after the raiders.”
“How can we help?” the farmer asked.
“I could use a crutch,” Stone said. “And better yet, a horse.”
“We can make you a crutch and you can have our spare horse,” the farmer’s wife said. “It’s the least we can do. We owe you our lives.”
“Do you need help fighting?” the farmer asked, unable to hide the fear in his voice.
“No,” Stone said. “It’s better if I go alone. But your help now means the world to me.”
“We’ll do whatever we can,” the farmer’s wife said.
Her young children and daughters were still in the wagon, but the older sons were leading their horses. They quickly pulled a long plank from the sideboard of the wagon and began fashioning a crutch. They were skilled at making things they needed from whatever was at hand, and in less than half an hour they had fashioned Stone a simple crutch.
Stone and the farmer pulled his saddle off the carcass of his fallen horse. The farmer explained that they had had been moving at night and resting during the day. They’d had better luck keeping watch that way and figured they would have better luck avoiding being seen as well.
“It’s a miracle that you came along when you did,” Stone told them as they gave him more food and supplies. “I’m not sure how far I would have gotten without you.”
“We would have passed right by you if it hadn’t been for the fire,” the farmer said.
“Fate is smiling on us,” Stone said.
“You can say that again.”
“You’d better move on. I’m going to ride for a while myself.”
“You be careful getting on and off that horse,” the farmer’s wife said.
“You sure you don’t need help?” the farmer’s oldest son said.
“I’m sure,” Stone said. “It’s better if you stay with your family. They’ll need you if they run into trouble, and it could be difficult finding each other again once you’re separated.”
“You stay safe,” the farmer said as he climbed back up into the wagon with his wife.
“And you as well, my friends.”
“Come and find us when this is all over and things settle down. You’ll always be welcome in our home.”
“Thank you,” Stone said. “I won’t forget.”
He watched as they rode away into the darkness. He felt a surge of hope as he pulled himself up into the saddle. He looked around for a moment and then he rode north, confident he would find Vera—and a way to save her.
Chapter 32
Lorik and his men returned to Fort Utlig in a cloud of despair. Every settlement and every farm they saw was destroyed. Lorik knew his people were being killed and he felt helpless to do anything about it. Along the route back to the fort they saw more and more groups of Norsik raiders hiding in the Wilderlands. The raiders had no desire to come out and fight, and at first Lorik wanted to ride into the giant forest and kill all the Norsik they saw, but after riding into the Wilderlands several times, he quickly realized that the Norsik were simply slipping deeper in the woods and hiding. There was no good way to use the speed and advantage of their horses among the giant redwoods. Any number of Norsik raiders could be hiding behind the massive trees, waiting to leap out and ambush his men.
So Lorik returned to to the fort. He rested his men and horses, while he watched the border from the high watchtower. It was there that he saw the group of captives being herded like cattle up from the south. At first Lorik thought the massive group was a returning tribe of raiders, but as the group moved closer he could see that the slaves were being dragged along behind their task masters.
“To your horses!” Lorik bellowed.
He raced down the stone steps of the massive tower, not sure what he was going to do but determined to do something.
“What is it?” one of his men yelled.
“Captives,” Lorik answered, lifting his saddle and placing it on the back of his horse.
His hand was much improved. The swelling had subsided and the pain only flared up when he tightened his grip. Looking at the back of his hand he could see a small bone sticking out at an odd angle, but there was no way to repair the damage. He flexed the hand, knowing he would need to use it in the fight ahead. It was weak and still painful at times, but his adrenaline was overcoming any pain or fatigue he felt.
The men with Lorik quickly saddled their horses and led them to the gate.
“I’m not opening the gate,” Yorn called down from the wall. “The Norsik are too close.”
“They have captives, Yorn,” Lorik bellowed. “We can’t let them take captives into the Wilderlands.”
“There is nothing I can do,” the frightened constable shouted back. “And neither can you. You’ll all be killed.”
“At least we’ll die for something,” Lorik said. “Now open the gate!”
“It’s your funeral, but I’m warning you. You ride out now, that gate won’t open again, not while there are Norsik in the area.”
“Fine, we are warned. Open the gate!”
Yorn waved at the two men by the gate. They lifted the heavy crossbeams and swung open the large wooden gate. Lorik and his men mounted their horses and rode out of the fort. The group of Norsik raiders and their captives were less than three hundred yards away. When the captives saw Lorik and his volunteers they shouted for help.
“Hit them hard and stay between that group and the Wilderlands!” Lorik shouted to his men.
Lorik’s injuries were forgotten. His battle axe was slung next to his saddle, and he carried a spear. He led the charge toward the group, which was now moving as quickly as possible across the open ground. The captives were struggling and resisting their captors, but there were forty raiders with the group, half of which left the captives and ran toward the charging horsemen.
“Hit and run!” Lorik shouted. “Don’t let them slow you down.”
The horses thundered across the open plain. Lorik and his men prepared to hurl their spears and veer away from the raiders when suddenly the Norsik raised horns and blew them. The sound was loud and jarring. It startled the horses, causing several to skid to a halt and even start bucking. Four of Lorik’s men were tossed from their saddles. The Norsik warriors dropped their horns and rushed in for the kill.
Lorik glanced up and saw that if he stayed with his men, he wouldn’t be able to stop the other group of raiders from reaching the Wilderlands. It was as if someone were ripping his heart from his chest, but he turned his horse and rode between his fallen men and the raiders. The savage Norsik warriors streamed past him. Lorik struck out with his spear, wounding one raider in the shoulder and then another in the neck. Then Lorik was forced to turn his horse.
His fallen riders were on their feet, but their horses had fled and they had only their spears to fight with.
“Retreat!” he shouted at them. “Fall back.”
Then he was among the raiders again, his hand searing with pain as he thrust out his spear. It stabbed another raider in the chest, but this time the spear was pulled from his weakened grasp as the wounded man fell. Lorik’s horse kicked out, knocking another raider senseless as Lorik pulled out his battle axe.
His face twisted in pain as the weight of the heavy weapon forced him to tighten his grip. He swung the axe, and the raiders around him fell back to avoid the weapon. The other two volunteers who were still on their horses dove into the fray, slaying two more raiders as they passed through the group.
The Norsik were adapting to the fighting tactics of Lorik and his men. They spread out, continuing the pursuit of the fallen men. One of the volunteers wh
o had been bucked off his horse had hurt his leg and was unable to run. Two others limped, but the first volunteer was hopping on his good leg and using his spear to help him balance.
The first raider caught up to the volunteer and ducked under the man’s swipe with the spear. The raider gutted the injured man with a savage thrust of his sword that stabbed into the volunteer’s groin and sawed up to his ribcage. The volunteer bellowed a horrible death cry, then fell dead at the raider’s feet.
Lorik spun his horse around and tried to maneuver to intercept the raiders chasing his men across the plain, but three raiders jumped out in front of Lorik’s horse. The first one screamed and waved his arms, but the horse smashed into him kept moving forward. The second raised his sword just as Lorik swung his axe down. The heavy axe batted the sword away easily and severed the raider’s arm above the elbow, but the vibration from the blow hurt Lorik’s hand so much he almost dropped the axe.
The third raider crossed in front of the horse and attacked from Lorik’s weak side. With his hand hurting so much, Lorik was unable to bring his axe to bear and the raider slashed his sword across the horse’s thick hind leg.
The horse bellowed in pain, its gait immediately slowing and becoming irregular. Then the horse toppled backward. Lorik fell out of the saddle but managed to roll clear of the horse’s writhing. Almost before Lorik was back on his feet the raider attacked with an overhand chop from his short curved sword. Lorik raised the shaft of his axe and caught the blade before stepping into a kick that caught the raider between the legs and lifted him off his feet.
Lorik didn’t wait to see the result of his blow. He turned to see another of his volunteers caught from behind and dragged down. He ran to help, but he was too far away to keep the raiders from hacking the young volunteer to death. Nearly half of the attacking raiders had now turned back and were running to join the group that was leading the captives toward the Wilderlands.
“Stop them!” Lorik shouted to the two men still on horseback and pointing toward the group of retreating raiders.
Lorik The Protector (Lorik Trilogy) Page 28