Blackbird (The Colplatschki Chronicles Book 7)

by Alma Boykin

  Capt. Ricks frowned a little, then relaxed. “Your Grace, if some of the troops assigned to Greysville go out inspecting our caches and looking for Turkowi sign, that should keep them out of more mischief than usual. And they’ll get a better feel for the area, if anyone’s seen sign or heard anything of interest.”

  “Is there any reason not to shift more supplies, armament, and travel rations especially, to Greysville?” Matthew couldn’t think of one, but he’d been known to overlook important details more than once.

  Ricks shook his head. “None that I know of, Your Grace.”

  Nagy scratched away on his wax board with a stylus. “Not really, Your Grace, although it will cost a little, since there’s not many carters going that way yet.”

  “I don’t …” Kazmer rubbed the side of his forehead, then ran his hand down his sharp-edged face. “Bagh. Your Grace, something’s nagging me, but I can’t recall what it might be.”

  “You’ll remember when you get up at midnight to use the nightsoil box,” Nagy suggested. The others chuckled and Kazmer nodded, smiling a little ruefully.

  The men finished drawing up their plans. “I hope this will prove to have been a waste of time,” Lt. Bustos sighed after another hour.

  “From your lips to Godown,” two others chorused, drawing a smile from Matthew. He’d rather spend the summer reading, looking at his paintings, watching Kiara and Barbara, and teaching his sons how to fight. Forgive me, Godown, but please may the Turkowi pester someone else this summer.

  “Get on, you bastard sons of good-for-nothing gallows-bird bait!” The driver’s whip cracked in the air above the oxen’s heads, and the four beasts strained against their yokes, but the wagon refused to budge, trapped in the red, sticky mud at the head of the ford.

  “Enough,” the caravan-master barked, riding back to take control of the mess. Four wagons had already gotten through the Redwater Ford, and twenty waited behind the immobilized vehicle. “I said enough,” he growled when the teamster tried to force the animals again. “You know this is a fast ford, especially after a rain. Now stop trying to kill your beasts and start unloading your wagon.”

  The teamster grumbled but tied the reins to their peg, pulled off his boots and socks, and climbed down into the knee-deep water to start trying to lighten the load. Matthew guided his horse away and rode quickly across the wide, shallow, fast-flowing stream. Brownie seemed to founder a little just before reaching the last sandbar, and Matthew hoped the men behind him had taken note. The gelding surged up the bank, scrambling out of the water and onto good, solid ground.

  Four more days, Matthew grumbled inside his mind. Four more days and I’ll be shed of these idiots. Well, only three of the teamsters deserved his ire, but the others didn’t seem to be bothered by the fools, which fed Matthew’s anger. If they’d work together better and police each other, we’d be on the coast by now instead of waiting in the woods for anyone to come down on us. At least they’d started laagering up when there was a long stop, like this one appeared to be.

  He rode ahead, then dismounted and took care of his needs. The woods sounded normal and a red bird darted across the road. The route followed a Lander road, and Matthew had noticed bits of the ancient paving here and there along the way. He wondered if anyone else noticed it. The stuff looked like black rock, but wasn’t. It also felt different underfoot from the Lander paved roads in and out of Vindobona.

  He heard rapid hoof-beats and turned from checking Brownie’s girth to see one of the troopers riding up. The man saluted. “Sir, one of the outriders ahead sent these back.” He held out two all-too-familiar stakes and a piece of faded yellow cloth.

  Matthew mounted and rode up to the soldiers waiting with the four wagons that had already crossed the ford. “Stay here and be ready for trouble.” He tapped Brownie with a spurred heel, stirring the warhorse into his choppy trot, and Matthew wondered once again how a beast with such nice conformation could move so badly. He and the messenger caught the outriders a kilometer up the road, where the woods thinned into open pasture and a field. “Any other sign?”

  “No, sir,” Sgt. Gerry Andreti assured him. “We fanned out into the woods a little, but didn’t see any fresh sign or more claim stakes. I think the stakes and flag are a few weeks old, maybe from just before midsummer, sir.”

  Matthew pulled the cloth and wood out of his saddlebag for a second look, this time in bright sunlight. Indeed, the stakes showed weathering, and the bottom of one felt a little soft, as if it had started to rot. The cloth’s dye had faded to a paler yellow than usual, and the edges seemed more frayed than the strips Matthew recalled from the past. “I hope you’re right, Sarge.”

  “Me too, sir.”

  Matthew studied the land beside the road, trying to see through the edge of the bottomland woods. I’ll be glad to get away from trees. The shade’s nice, but there are too many places for an ambush. He grimaced, already feeling the sun’s weight on his black leather jerkin and black twill breeches. He wore a hat instead of his helmet, which hung from a strap on the cantle of his road saddle. Should I armor up? No. Mail’s enough and we’ll be in the open soon.

  The rest of the caravan didn’t cross until just before dark. The wagons took the ford at a trot, something that had amazed Matthew the first time he’d seen it, years ago. He still had trouble believing that oxen could move that fast, but they managed it, charging down the slope, through the stream, and up the opposite slope at a near-run, splashing everything between the Donau Novi and the sea with red water and muddy sand, or so it seemed. The two mule-drawn wagons carrying the soldiers’ supplies and additional weapons made less mess, for once. Matthew pushed the caravan ahead, to camp in a freshly-mown hay meadow another kilometer past the edge of the woods. The teamsters bitched and moaned, but he didn’t care.

  “Yer Grace, there’s no need to push after dark,” one of them protested.

  “There’s Turkowi sign in the woods and the sun’s not down, not yet,” he pointed to the last of the shimmering gold dot, hovering just above the top of the low coastal hills to the west.

  “Turkowi sign? How’d they get here?” He sounded suspicious.

  The lead teamster walked up and clouted his fellow on the shoulder. “The same way all Godown’s creatures do, Obee. They walked or rode. Like woods ticks. Now do you want to draw your place for tomorrow, or can I just assign you one?”

  “I’ll draw, I’ll draw.” The grumbler hurried off to join the others for the nightly lottery. Matthew fumed at the accusation in the man’s tone, but couldn’t respond without sounding weak or letting his temper get out of hand. Instead he stalked around the civilians to his campsite and the remuda.

  The eight wagon mules clustered together, regarding the horses with suspicion, as usual, while the horses grazed, dozed, and rolled. Mules and cats, Godown must have used the same material for them. He’d never quite sorted out how to get a mule to do what he wanted without getting frustrated (him, not the mule). The muleteers swore their beasts behaved just as well as horses and were as easy to get along with, in their own way. Matthew had his doubts—after all, he’d never met a mule man he considered completely sane. Matthew checked on Brownie and Socks III, his riding horse, before going to the main military camp.

  Like the caravan wagons, the tents formed a protective square, with the supply wagons in the center. The men on camp duty had already gotten the dung-hole dug and water brought in, and Matthew smelled something meaty and spicy cooking. Probably another variation of jerky stew, plus any small game the men had caught. Matthew turned a blind eye to hunting for the pot, so long as the men checked in and out with their sergeant. The first breach of that discipline had been the last.

  “The teamsters do not care for us,” Matthew informed Lt. Bustos.

  “Indeed, sir?” The officer twisted left and right, loosening up his back. “Are we drinking too much wine or slowing them down?”

  “I am pushing them too hard, despite the long break this aft
ernoon, and shouldn’t make them move after sunset.” Bustos glanced west, where a spike of sunlight still reached from the hills to the heavens, and gave Matthew a doubting look. “Yes,” he confirmed.

  “And here I thought that Sgt. Andreti, ahem, expressed excessive care for the condition of his mount, sir.”

  The scout in question walked up as Bustos finished speaking. “You mean I’m lazy? No sir, I just believe in conserving resources.”

  Matthew hid a smile behind his hand. “On a more serious note, any more signs of interlopers?”

  Two head shakes provided the answer.

  Let’s hope it stays that way, please, Godown.

  Ten days after they left the caravan in Valdoro-Matmouth, Duke Matthew felt the skin between his shoulder blades crawling. He’d suffered the sensation for the past five kilometers, and wanted to yell “Just attack, damn it!” Instead he watched the brush and waited.

  They’d turned east from Matmouth, cutting through the coastal hills and into the farmland beyond, until they picked up the Bitter River. A dozen militia infantry from one of the strong points joined Matthew’s score or so of mounted troops, traveling with them to the next small fort. Thus far he’d liked what he’d seen of the outpost and the militia. They didn’t have the polish of full-time soldiers, but they drilled together well enough, and stayed disciplined. It helped that several of the men had fought off Turkowi raids in the past, and explained in graphic detail and with great gusto why the youngsters did not want to be stupid.

  Lt. Bustos rode up and nodded a salute before wiping the heavy sweat off his face. “I don’t like it, sir,” he admitted, voice low, eyes flicking back and forth from Matthew to the road ahead of them.

  “Me either. Anything from the scouts?”

  Bustos shook his head. “It feels like a storm coming—heavy air, quiet, sky not as bright as it should be, but nothing definite.”

  “Agreed.”

  The afternoon and that night passed quietly. They reached the small fort just before midday by sun the next day, and Matthew barely managed to stifle his sigh of relief as they rode in through the open gate. Blackcross marked the point where the Bitter River Road met one of the main routes north to Greyville, and had been one of the first fortresses Matthew ordered built after taking over Morloke and Scheel’s defense.

  It boasted two ditches and two walls. The outer ditch was almost eight meters deep and five meters wide, with steep sides that led to the outer wall of horizontal logs. Some of the ditch dirt had been used to plaster the wall, and more filled the gap between the logs and the back of the wall, forming a thick, fire-resistant barrier. A second ditch, three meters deep and accompanied by a still taller wall, stood within the ring of the first wall, this one topped with a small roof and guard-walk. Every few meters a reinforced platform sported a mount for a match-lock mini-cannon. Also double-built and filled with dirt, this inner wall contained wooden sections inside the base for storage of some weapons and to provide shelter in case someone attacked with artillery. Matthew wished he’d been able to build in stone, but Godown had not provided much of that, so only the powder house and chapel inside the walls boasted stone walls and (in the case of the powder house) a stone roof topped with a lightning diverter. Fifty men currently manned the fort, using it as a secure base to patrol out.

  “Well met, Your Grace,” Lt. Pietro Johns said, saluting while bowing a little as Matthew dismounted.

  “Greetings. Anything interesting going on?”

  The brown man took a deep breath and exhaled. “Yes and no, Your Grace. That is,” he continued before Matthew could ask, “we’ve found some sign, and crossed paths with a pair of Turkowi, but that was ten or eleven days ago. The Turkowi got away, assuming that’s who they were. Matt Norman saw a man in yellow crossing the road three kilometers or so east of here, and tried to get closer, but the man and another in brown got into the woods and kept moving. Matt was by himself at the time, and didn’t want to go too far into what might have been a trap. I sent a small group back with him, but they didn’t find anything, Your Grace. Not even claim stakes or prayer rags.”

  That’s a very vague description. “Mr. Norman is sure he saw someone in yellow?”

  Johns wagged one hand back and forth. “He was pretty certain, Your Grace. No one would be wearing white or cream, and there’s nothing else that bright and easy to spot.”

  Damndamndamn. Now I know we’ve been watched. What to do about it? Matthew pondered his options as he inspected the fort and the men based there. Mr. Norman swore he’d seen yellow. The others had found some prayer rags and other things, and the remains of campfires in the wrong places. Lt. Johns had taken the precaution of cutting back as much of the underbrush from along the road as possible, and cutting down a few trees that might offer an archer a good platform, as well as bringing more water and fuel into the fort proper. Matthew approved of the precautions.

  That night he walked the walls and made his decision. I don’t have enough men with me. His gut agreed with the thought. They’d go to Greyville, call out the rest of the levy, plus the soldiers there, and extra weapons, then return and sweep the border as far as where Cold Springs used to be. He’d also pull ten more infantry from the fort. They had room in the wagons for the men to ride, and the foot soldiers could rotate walking and riding, so they wouldn’t be as tired and the troop could move a little faster. Godown, but I don’t like what I’m feeling.

  Two days later they’d gotten half way to Greyville. The air felt more oppressive than it had at dawn and smelled musty. The forest had been shifting, and now blackwood and dropneedle dominated the lowland woods. The open areas sported taller grasses and a few clumps of water-willow. Everything looked dry: the men at Blackcross had complained about the lack of rain, and the woods showed it. Matthew waved away a dance of gnats and finally remembered what he’d forgotten. The Greyville road bent sharply east, then north, and finally back west, because of a kilometers’ wide swamp. As the blackbird flew, only a dozen kilometers separated them from the town, but they’d travel almost thirty road kilometers by foot, hoof, or wheel.

  They paused just south of the first bend to refill water flasks, rotate the men in the wagons, and water their horses. Matthew, checking a suspicious mark on a chest-high paper-bark stump, sensed something and dropped, crouching behind a dropneedle tree. “Sh-thunk” hissed where his chest had been and an arrow wiggled in the wood. Someone yelled, others cursed, and he heard shouts of “Selkow! Selkow and her Rajtan!”

  Without waiting for an order, Matthew’s men began pulling in, forming up around the wagons. Yellow-clad figures boiled out of the woods and crossbow bolts buzzed from the shadows. A few men began returning fire, while others grabbed the animals to keep them from bolting. The Turkowi closed in. Matthew drew his sword and the others braced for the impact. “Godown! Godown and the Blackbird!”

  Matthew’s world narrowed to the hack and slash of close combat. He beat back two attackers, opening a breathing space. Bustos and a few of the other cavalry managed to mount, turning their horses into the fray and drawing some of the pressure off the infantry around the wagons. The yellow flood eased for a moment and Matthew’s men regrouped, a few taking a moment to scavenge weapons from dead Turkowi, and ensuring that the dead stayed that way. One of the militia men waved from behind a wagon, catching Matthew’s eye. He slipped over that way, eyes on the woods north of them.

  He tossed his hat into the wagon. Need to grab my helmet. “What?”

  The man jerked his head to the side, gesturing to the east. “My lor’ if we can get a kilometer down the road, there’s a rock pile at the edge of the woods in a clearing. Make a good strong point.”

  Right. We can’t stay here, in the open, and wait for them to kill us from cover. Break the ambush by fighting through it. East is as good a direction as any, and closer to where we need to be. “Good. You,” he pointed to one of the sergeants. “Start forming up. We’re going east, push through this.”

&nbs
p; The man’s eyes widened, then narrowed, but he didn’t argue. Matthew grabbed Brownie and heaved himself into the saddle by sheer force of will, finding the stirrups by feel as the gelding started moving. “Blackbird!” Matthew shouted. “Rally to the Blackbird!”

  Two wounded men scrambled into the wagons. The Turkowi disappeared as fast as they’d struck, leaving five of their number in the road and the ditches. Lt. Bustos, his horse limping a little, rode up. “Defensible position a kilometer up the road,” Matthew told him. “Split the riders. Half come ahead with me to clear the way, rest be ready for an attack from the rear.”

  Bustos nodded and gave a half-salute as he heaved his beast’s head around. The horse protested but complied, and Matthew took a moment to pull on his helmet and fasten the chinstrap. Much better. Ten riders clustered in around him. “Up the road. Defensive point. Follow me.” Swords scraped and hissed out of their sheathes. Matthew bared his teeth. “Tsaa.” He urged Brownie. The warhorse tossed his head and burst into a fast trot.

  Matthew saw the start of the bend in the road and waved, sending riders to the sides. Here’s where I’d put my second ambush. He squeezed Brownie’s flank and trot became canter. A glimpse of yellow appeared at the side of the road, and Matthew sensed a tripwire. Low or high? The yellow figure crouched down, as if making a last second adjustment, and answered the question. “Blackbird,” Matthew called, leaning to the side and sweeping down even as he cued Brownie to jump. Off balance, the gelding pushed into the air, clearing the tangle rope as his rider’s blade struck flesh and bone, almost pulling Matthew out of the saddle. Brownie’s momentum wrenched him free, but his shoulder and side screamed in pain. He regained his seat and rode on, bloody blade still in hand, alert for more trouble. Shouts and battle cries erupted from behind him, and four Turkowi horsemen charged out of the woods.

  Matthew pivoted, preparing to engage the closest rider as one of his own men cut the low rope. No! Nothing happened. Godown be praised, and Matthew rode into the Turkowi at full speed. Brownie screamed, the smaller horse scrambled for balance and fell, his rider lying in the road, helmeted head at an unnatural angle. Brownie slowed and turned, but the other three enemy riders all had multiple opponents. “Finish them and come on!” One of Matthew’s men lay in the road, but they couldn’t stop to see if he lived. The infantry would care for him. After a flurry of fighting, the cavalry regrouped and sped up, hot on Matthew’s heels.