Drawn taut, staked in place, the line vibrated every now and then when one some bird chose to perch on a nearby length of the cable, and he would instantly come alert.
It was nice to know that he was useful for something.
He hoped that he would detect somebody sawing away at the cable before it went limp when cut, but he wasn’t at all sure how far the vibration would carry, and he trusted more to his ears than to the fingers that rested on the line.
Off to the east a hoot owl announced to all and sundry that it had just snatched up a field mouse. That and the twittering of fidget bugs said that Kethol was alone.
Which he was. You could trust the insects and animals to tell you the truth, if only you knew how to listen to them.
They were stretched thin; the nearest one of the soldiers to him was that man of Tarnell’s — he said his name was Thorven, but that was an Osgradian name, and the soldier had never quite gotten the Salket lisp out of his voice. There was probably a story there, but it wasn’t any of Kethol’s business, or of Forinel’s, for that matter.
He hoped that none of the soldiers would move around. He had ordered them to remain in place, and he had had Tarnell order them to remain in place, but he was more aware than most that soldiers were not always obedient — particularly not when ordered by somebody they didn’t particularly trust.
They were a clumsy bunch, at least by his standards. Not one of them could move to a stand silently. When they took their positions in the early evening, they stumbled up and down the hills, seemingly taking every loose rock and stepping on every dead branch that they possibly could.
He was much more confident of the Keranahan peasants. Wen’ll was perhaps the best of them, but they all at least knew how to move silently. And once on watch, poachers all, they knew about being absolutely, utterly still, about waiting for an opportunity.
His only question about them was how well, if at all, they would fight. Which he wouldn’t know until it happened, so there was no need to worry about it now.
The light breeze brought a distant, pleasant reek of skunk to his nostrils.
Close up, the smell of the skunk was utterly painful, but off in the distance it seemed to have a comforting, homey smell to it. It made him relax, in the same way that the musky reek of rotting humus on a forest’s floor always did, although he wasn’t sure why, because they didn’t smell at all the same.
It would have been interesting to know what it was that had excited the skunk, but he was confident it wasn’t a human — there would have been some outcry. Men who would no more than grunt from an arrow in the belly would still shout, and scream, and dance around when sprayed by a skunk, after all.
He let his mind wander. As long as you kept your ears and eyes open, that didn’t hurt any. He tried not to think about Leria, but that never worked; he couldn’t help but think about the way that she smiled at him, or about the way that her legs had wrapped around his waist while she groaned beneath him. It wasn’t right that somebody like him should be thinking that way about somebody like her, and never mind the fact that it had been more her decision than his.
Erenor had better be watching over her, carefully. But he would, Kethol decided. At some level, he wasn’t sure quite why — he trusted the wizard, at least in that. If that made him a fool, he had been a fool before, and would be again.
In fact —
Quiet footsteps sounded behind him. From behind a boulder, a low voice whispered, urgently: “Baron. Baron Keranahan — are you there, Baron?”
Yes, he was there. He was where he was supposed to be. He hoped everybody else was where they were supposed to be, except, obviously, for Thorven, who instead of being where he was supposed to be was here.
Slowly, carefully, Kethol slid back from the ground cloth, and made his way painfully on his belly, up the rocky surface until he was over the ridge. He rose to his feet and padded carefully to where Thorven was crouching in the dark.
He couldn’t make out the expression on Thorven’s bony face; it was far too dark for that.
“What is it?” he asked, his whisper pitched low — low enough, so he hoped, that it wouldn’t frighten the fidget bugs into silence.
“I heard something.”
Wonderful. So Thorven had heard something. The night was filled with sounds — he was supposed to hear something. More to the point, he was supposed to stay on his watch post until dawn, when the patrol from Nerahan to Kimball’s Village would thunder through the draw below, announcing to all and sundry that the telegraph line would be patrolled — and on a predictable schedule — while giving the watchers a chance to retreat to their camp beyond the next ridge, so that they could sleep through the day and be ready for the next night.
“Well?” he whispered. There was no point in berating him here and now. Leave that for Tarnell, and the morning. “What did you hear?”
“Horses, I think.”
Kethol would have snorted at that, but he wasn’t going to make any unnecessary sounds.
Still, while there were always false alarms — that was the way of this sort of thing — you had to check them out. He didn’t think for a moment that Thorven could have heard anything from the road that Kethol himself wouldn’t have heard, but anything was possible, even if it was unlikely.
Horsemen, traveling down the road at this time of night? Un likely. And there was nothing happening down in the draw.
“Horsemen? On the road?”
“Not the road.” Thorven tried to hide his impatience. “Off in the hills.”
Kethol was skeptical. He hadn’t heard anything, after all, and it was hard to believe that some Salke would have ears better attuned to the wild than he had. “I —”
“Shh.” Kethol closed his eyes and listened. At first, all he could hear was the murmur of the wind, and the hooting of that same idiotic owl, and the skritching of the fidget bugs, and, far in the distance, a howl so faint and far away that he couldn’t tell whether it was a wolf or coyote.
But then he heard it. A quiet, irregular clop-clop, clop, clop, clop, clop-clop-clop. No ringing of steel-shod hooves on stone — unshod mountain ponies, perhaps?
Well, it was about time.
He swallowed heavily, trying to clear the bitter, steely taste from his mouth.
“They’re coming,” he said. “Circle around back — down to the path; don’t try to make your way across the rocks — and tell Pirojil. Captain Pirojil.”
Thorven crept off, as quietly as he could. Just as well that the wind was carrying sounds away.
The sounds of the horses grew louder, slowly, tentatively. Moving as quickly as he dared, Kethol crept back to where his ground cloth was, and slung his scabbarded sword across his back. It had been the best fit of any of those in the Residence armory — a heavy saber, only slightly curved, and while the basket hilt was inscribed in gold with a complex twisting of lines, the underlying steel would deflect an edge or a point. He wasn’t overly enthusiastic about the leather grip, but he had carefully wound it with brass wire, and it fit his hand well enough.
With any luck, though, he wouldn’t have to use it, or the matched dagger on his belt.
The bow would be his weapon of choice for tonight.
He emptied his quiver and carefully stuck each of the twenty arrows point-first into the hard soil next to the lonely pine that topped the hill. In daylight, he would have been easily seen, but he thought — and hoped — that their eyes would slide by.
He nocked an arrow, but didn’t draw. It was time to wait, to wait patiently, motionless, and hope that his guess had been right, that their path down into the notch would take them directly below him.
He tried to count heartbeats, but it was well past two hundred and he had long since lost count when the first of the ponies topped the ridge across from him, only momentarily visible against the starry sky.
It and its rider began to make their way downslope and into the notch, quickly followed by a dozen more.
A dozen? That didn’t make sense. He had expected far fewer. It wouldn’t take more than that many to cut the cable at two places, then quickly gather it up.
The best place for them to cut the cable, the most convenient place, the place where an overhang would have given easy access to the top of one of the poles, was directly below him, on purpose. The engineers had carefully arranged it that way at his insistence, over their objections of how that would still leave the cable particularly vulnerable when they actually put in a telegraph wire — and it would be sooner than later, so they said, if this managed to work.
The surefooted ponies made their way down the slope, but they didn’t go where they were supposed to; they turned and followed the line of poles east, back toward Nerahan.
Greedy. They intended to cut the cable as close as they could to Nerahan, and then coil it up as they rode back toward Kimball’s Village. The fact that there were a dozen or so suggested that they planned another raid on the village before escaping over the hills, although there was little left to plunder there.
He shook his head. He should have insisted on a full company of Imperials, enough for a chase — he had been expecting that he would be able to get one with his first bow shot, and perhaps another before the surviving bandits ran for safety to the west, or went scurrying back up the hill to where, if everything was going right, Pirojil and a team of six Keranahan archers were now quickly working their way, while Tarnell and his men prevented their escape to the west, down the road toward the village.
He settled his sword belt on his shoulder, and stuck the point of the scabbard into the back of his belt, then quickly scooped up his arrows and shoved them into the quiver, tying the drawstring tight across its mouth.
He picked up his bow and broke into a run.
Trying to catch up with the horsemen from behind was pointless — if they heard him pounding and panting down the road, all they had to do was gallop away — but if he could make it over the ridge and down the other side quickly enough, he could get ahead of them, and drive them back, in the right direction.
He ran.
The brush clawed at him, repeatedly making him stumble and almost fall, but he managed to keep to his feet, despite having to hold his bow over his head so that it wouldn’t catch on the brush.
He raced along, just below the ridgeline. Their horses should be making enough sound to cover the noise he was making, and he hoped that they either hadn’t noticed that the wild had gone all silent, or that they attributed it to their own movement having silenced the insects and birds.
The thing to do was to get there first, and worry about the rest of it later.
And the others? They should be along quickly. Quickly enough, he hoped. Thorven would have seen which way the bandits were heading, and he would have told Pirojil. And Pirojil, of all people, would know that Kethol would chase after them. He would call him stupid for doing that, of course, but Kethol was used to that.
He ran.
As he staggered down the hill, he lost his footing and fell. He slid, digging his heels in to slow his descent, and managed to fight to his feet, using only his left hand, his right hand holding the bow up and out of danger. If he dropped his bow on this slope, it was gold-to-copper that he wouldn’t be able to find it in time.
His heart was pounding loudly in his chest and his breath was painfully ragged when he reached the road, just beyond the bend he had been aiming for. The nearest trees large enough to provide any cover were across the road, and he could already hear the soft clopping of the ponies’ hooves, so he squatted down behind a rock and tried to force his heart to slow.
Kethol quickly unslung his quiver, and nocked an arrow, swearing at his traitor fingers as they trembled from the exertion.
If only the bandits had cut the cable where they were supposed to, then readied themselves to head in the other direction, all he would have had to do was spring the trap himself. He certainly could have put one down before the others noticed, and probably two. With good enough shooting — and good enough luck — he could have three, maybe four of them down before they even knew what was happening, and rode away in panic, charging into either jaw of the trap.
But not now. Now, what he need to do was get in front of them, and then make enough noise to sound like a company himself, and, if at all possible, put an arrow through the leader, and turn them.
He must have done something wrong.
But not everything. His fingers were steady, and he could ignore the bitter, steely taste of fear in his mouth.
Perhaps they had heard the noise he had made coming down the hill, or maybe, when the wind changed, one of the ponies got a whiff of him, but there was a loud cry as the first of the horsemen came abreast of where he was hiding.
He straightened, pulled back the arrow until he could feel the steel of the arrowhead against his knuckle, and let fly, rewarded instantly by the familiar thunk of it cleaving flesh, and a high-pitched scream as the bandit clutched at himself, then fell from the saddle, to fall, moaning and screaming, to the ground.
He would not have a chance to loose another arrow — they could ride him down while he tried — so Kethol let his bow fall to one side. He freed his sword from his scabbard, and shrugged out of the sword belt, letting the scabbard fall to the ground. His left hand clutched the hilt of the dagger.
The horses were milling about, their riders trying to control them.
Kethol stood himself straight in the middle of the road.
“I am Forinel, Baron Keranahan,” he said, letting his voice roar. “And you will dismount and lay down your arms right now, or you’ll die, right now.”
He didn’t really have any hope that they would do any such thing — surrendering was just an extended way of killing themselves — but he hoped that if they didn’t simply run, one or more of them would at least say something, giving him a chance to stall until Pirojil and the soldiers arrived. He didn’t have any particular hope that the Keranahan bowmen would do anything useful; you couldn’t really expect peasants to run toward danger. It was one thing to hide, hoping to shoot from concealment, but another to run toward men with swords and horses, men who were looking to cut your guts out.
But there was no conversation. The bandit nearest Kethol, a skinny little man who almost made his pony look large, kicked the pony into a gallop toward him. Kethol dodged to the right, away from the swinging sword, and barely managed to cut a shallow slice along the man’s knee as he rode by, already wheeling his horse about for another pass.
He couldn’t ignore the threat from behind for long, but there were still ten in front of him, and it was only a matter of moments before they would collect themselves enough to attack in concert — so he ran toward the nearest, slashing across the pony’s chest as he ducked under a wild swing from another of the bandits.
He had to keep moving. To stop was to die, and to slow was to die, and to move not quite fast enough was to die; he lunged at another one of the horsemen, but the horse reared and pranced quickly to the side, out of reach.
And then they were upon him.
A knee or an elbow or a horse — he was never sure quite what — caught him upside the head, and his sword fell from his hand. He was able to fasten his fingers in the tunic of one of the horsemen, but as he yanked the man to the ground, a slash from another’s blade sent agony screaming across the left side of his back, and almost made him drop his knife.
It was hopeless, but that didn’t stop him. There was no way that he could stop to find his sword, but he still had a knife, and at least that was —
Something hard hit him from behind, throwing him to the ground. He tried to roll away, but a hoof mashed down on his knife hand, and another blow or kick sent him sprawling.
One of the bandits kicked his horse toward Kethol.
A shot rang out, and then another, and as Kethol struggled to get to his knees, something brushed his cheek and an arrow seemed to sprout from the flank of the nearest pony, and it screa
med in pain as it reared, sending its rider tumbling to the ground.
And then Pirojil was at his side, and despite the pain, just for the moment all was right with the world, as shots and screams filled the air.
***
Kethol should have hurt. Not just hurt — he should have still been in agony. He wasn’t sure how many fingers had been broken by the hooves, but it was at least two, and it seemed somehow obscene that he could flex them so easily, so painlessly. The almost impossibly bitter Eareven healing draughts had washed away the pain almost as quickly as Pirojil had been able to bathe away the blood.
He stood in the wan light of predawn, forcing himself not to flinch every time he moved.
The road was still filled with death.
Two of the ponies had been captured unharmed, save for a few scrapes, and they had been led away. But four more lay on the ground, their wide, dead, dirty eyeballs staring blankly at nothing.
Just like the men.
Wen’ll and another one of the peasants whose name Kethol couldn’t remember were already butchering the dead ponies. Piles of viscera gleamed wetly in the predawn light beside the carcasses. Wen’ll already had most of the top half of the skin of his off, working swiftly and deftly with a knife that looked too small for the task, but clearly wasn’t. A live pony was more valuable than a dead one, of course, and there were far better things to eat than the stringy flesh of a grass-fed pony, but meat was meat, and not to be wasted, and there were a thousand good uses for cured horsehide.
No need to waste.
The peasants weren’t the only ones that felt that way. Already the buzzards were circling overhead, and occasionally a particularly brave one would swoop down toward one of the bodies of the men or horses, only to flee, its wings flapping madly as it lumbered back up into the air, when one of the soldiers raised a stick.
Let them eat later.
Kethol straightened.
You got used to this after a while, particularly with a stiffening breeze carrying the smells away. It wasn’t really that bad.
Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda Page 21