A Chance Beginning

by Christopher Patterson

  Yager leaned against his longbow, made of a burgundy-colored yew, as if it were staff.

  “So, fruit merchant, what’s yer next move?”

  Definitely Nordeth. That accent had the—what did Del Alzon’s mother say about the northerners—bucolic twang to it. The corner of the soldier’s mouth lifted a bit in an amused smirk. Yager knew his name but always chose to refer to him by some other title. Fruit merchant, peddler, even soldier once when he saw the scars on his shoulder—he knew the world well enough—but never Del Alzon.

  “Do you think we can take our horses into the woods? I suppose that’s my first question.”

  Yager peered into the Blue Forest and scratched his chin.

  “Aye.” A simple response from a simple man.

  “My next question, then, is can we ride them through the woods?”

  Yager stared again. “Aye. It’ll be tight, fer sure, but I think it’s possible.”

  “Too thick to track anything?” asked Danitus.

  Yager gave the old soldier a tilt of his head and a raised eyebrow.

  “Too thick? Show me a grown over field snowed and rained upon fer forty days, in the dead of a moonless night, with a thick mist setting just above the ground, and I will show you which way the deer have traveled and how many.”

  Del Alzon grinned, and Danitus nodded with a quirky smile as if accepting a challenge. “Very well then. What are we waiting for?”

  Del gripped the horn of his saddle and slowly pulled himself onto his poor horse. The beast stamped and snorted, and all Del could do was rub the animal’s neck and calm it with as sweet a voice as he could muster. He motioned for the others. Quintus seemed hesitant, but he followed, taking up a place at the rear of the group.

  Danitus pulled the huntsman’s mount behind his own as Yager led the way into the Blue Forest on foot. With an arrow half nocked in his great bow, the tracker slowly stepped over root and under bough, always watching the ground, sniffing the air, feeling the leaves, tasting his fingers after he touched them. Slow. The trek through the forest felt slow, but when Del Alzon looked behind him, all he could see was green—trees and brush and creepers.

  Night came on fast in the overgrown woods, and they camped with no fire. It seemed even the horses knew the need for silence, and not one of them snorted or neighed or stomped through the night. Truly, the only sound proved Quintus’ teeth chattering even though he wrapped himself tightly in not one, but two thick blankets.

  “Probably should’ve left him behind,” Del whispered. He stared into the darkness of the forest, picking out the soft scampers of fox feet and the drumming sound of nighttime toads croaking. An owl perched overhead and every so often hooted. That sent Quintus’ teeth chattering even more.

  Yager shrugged. “Every man serves his purpose.”

  “And what is, or was your purpose?”

  Truth be told, Del Alzon couldn’t figure if he really cared what Yager’s past life was or if he simply wanted to make the time go by with idle chat. He, after all, kept to himself well enough and normally didn’t delve into the business of others unless it suited his own needs. Of course, he was trying to change all that.

  “My purpose was my purpose.” Yager certainly seemed his own man, there was no denying that.

  “And that purpose was?”

  “A conversation, perhaps, fer another time.”

  Yager never loosened the half-nocked arrow, nor did he ever take his eyes off the woods beyond them, but something in his voice spoke of a life more complex than a simple hunter.

  Morning came on slowly, bits of light poking through holes in the canopy like strands of blond hair until the entire forest stood dimly lit, a low mist hanging just above the ground. Del Alzon and his band of followers were already moving by that time, but it was noon before Yager stopped the company with a raised fist.

  “They’re close.” His voice sounded a hoarse whisper, cautious and expectant.

  “They could be so close to the Straits?” Danitus questioned. “Especially after what seems such a big fight and bountiful quarry.”

  “Stay here,” Yager commanded. “I’ll have a look.”

  He was only gone for an hour. “Twenty, maybe twenty-five, not including captives of course.”

  “And of the captives?” Del Alzon asked.

  “Men, women, children. I didn’t get the best look. They’re all tied together or stuck in wooden cages.”

  The soldier nodded. He took a big breath, the girth of his belly expanding even wider, his girdle creaking under the strain. His eyes closed, and he tipped his head back. No one could tell if he was thinking or praying. When he opened his eyes again, he turned to his horse and drew a broadsword from behind the saddle. It looked a worn weapon, albeit capable. The steel no longer shone like it once had, but the edge was just as sharp.

  “One more time, my old friend.” Del Alzon stroked the broad side of the blade and then slapped it against his open palm. “Let’s go.”

  Yager and Danitus nodded. The three took the lead, and two other men—Gregory the Smith and Maktus the Carpenter—brought bows, and they followed their heels. The weaponry of the group of Watertonians was a mixture of implements, but mostly they all looked like the old soldier’s sword, worn and weathered, pulled from retirement for one last hoorah.

  A group of about ten men, none too concerned about being quiet or careful, sat amongst wagons and wooden cages in a small clearing of grass and clover and lavender bushes. They joked and drank, most of them looking as young as the two dozen men all bound together by hemp rope at the hands in one long chain, fresh blood and bruises on their faces and bodies. Del Alzon stared at the young slavers in disgust.

  One man marched back and forth, hands behind his back and a scowl across his face, ignoring the apparent revelry in which the other slave traders took part. He looked a larger version of the slight Samanian that hired the fruit merchant for his task of convincing young blokes to join the gypsy caravan, all the while knowing the slavers would eventually attack them under cover of night and take the men away to sell in far-off markets. So much for that plan. By the number of rotting bodies spread out amongst the abandoned camp, it seemed the slavers got more than they bargained for. Del didn’t see the man who hired him, only this fellow, who looked none too happy, who was probably a brother or a cousin.

  “I don’t think all of them are here,” Del Alzon whispered to Danitus and Yager. “I don’t see their leader. There’s no sentries posted. No guards. Odd.”

  “Maybe he’s dead,” Danitus offered. “Perhaps he died in the fight. It seemed many of them died in the fight.”

  Del Alzon shook his head. “Not that one. He’s too smart to die by the hands of gypsies and miners and young men and—”

  The soldier stopped. He spotted one wagon, its wooden bars uncommonly close together. Children. That was the children’s cage. A dozen, nearly two dozen. Del squeezed the handle of his sword until his knuckles popped.

  “Kill them.”

  Chapter 54

  A FIN PROVED THE FIRST to die. Blood exploded from his mouth as he opened it to take another drink from an ancient-looking bottle. The arrow lif
ted him off the log on which he sat, and he toppled forward, straight into one of the two campfires. His black hair singed, and the stink and smoke could have been what caught a tall Hámonian by surprise. Perhaps he was just that slow and not as drunk, but Yager had enough time to step from the woods, aim, and hit this second man square between his crystal blue eyes. The arrow thudded against the elm behind him, hair stuck to the shaft in a bloody mass, the man’s head fixed firmly to the tree. Next, a stout Golgolithulian who once sat in the slavers’ cages until he paid his way into their band, clutched at his neck, blood squeezing through his fingers, soft flesh torn by an iron arrowhead.

  Another slaver now charged the exposed Yager, and the man may have killed the huntsman with his boar spear, but Del Alzon emerged from the cover of the forest. He brought his blade down on the spear, and the wood splintered and broke. Then, with surprising speed for a man his size, the blade reversed upwards again and cleaved both hands from their wrists. Steel separating head from neck stopped the slave trader’s screams. Danitus took two men before they could even get up, and there more arrows left more slavers dead or dying. Only the man Del Alzon recognized as Kehl’s brother seemed willing to put up a fight.

  He drew his curved, Samanian sword and fended off two of Del’s comrades. He cut both down before the old soldier could reach him.

  “You fat piece of cow dung,” the slaver spat. “What are you doing? You weren’t paid enough? It figures; a traitorous eastern soldier would go back on his word. Thirty pieces of silver would be more than enough for any man living in that forsaken city of denizens and runaways.”

  “That doesn’t mean much coming from a slaver,” Del Alzon retorted, readying his sword.

  “Can you even move enough to fight?” the slaver chided. “You’re disgusting. I think when I kill you, I’ll feed you to the slaves.”

  Del smiled. “If you haven’t noticed, in a few moments you won’t have much of a slave train left.”

  He could tell the slaver tried not making his glances from side to side obvious, but he had to see his men fall, to die underneath old, worn steel. In fact, the rout happened all too fast. The old soldier had expected a hard fight, and this seemed a training session. How had these slavers survived as long as they did?

  The slaver attacked, and Del Alzon again moved with a speed which belied his bulk. With the weight of his sword gripped fast in his hand behind it, he first punched the Samanian in the nose. It broke with a resounding crack and blood soaked his oiled mustache and beard. Knowing the man would now have trouble seeing, Del lurched sideways and, with a strong backhand, brought his blade along the slave trader’s hamstring. He followed with an upswing, and the tip of his sword raked the man’s back, creating a neat tear in the black Samanian robes that soon began to turn red.

  “My brothers will find you. They will kill you for this.”

  “More Samanian filth—you’re worse than gypsies.”

  “Then you should appreciate what we did!” retorted the slaver, now down on his knees and clutching at the back of his leg. He looked up at the fat old soldier, a pained grimace tattooed on his face.

  “So you killed all the gypsies?” Del asked. “Or enslaved them?”

  The slaver didn’t answer. Del Alzon responded by driving the tip of his sword a finger’s-length deep into the man’s shoulder.

  “No, no. They fought back. We didn’t expect it. We nearly lost a third of our number in the fight. We retreated. Most of the gypsies lived.”

  “And what of the young men?” the soldier asked.

  “You see them, don’t you?” It seemed a legitimate response. They did, after all, sit, bound together at one edge of the camp.

  Del pressed his sword deeper into the man’s shoulder. “There was one in particular. He would’ve been with two others; family members.”

  Understanding and recognition brightened the slaver’s eyes, and a wry, malicious smile crossed his bloodied mouth.

  “I know of whom you speak. They escaped our nets. They, along with the gypsies are the reason my brothers left with the best of our men. They will die with the rest of the gypsies when Kehl finds them.”

  “Pray to your heathen gods, Samanian, for you are about to meet them.”

  “No, wait, I . . . we have money.”

  “I’ll take it anyway when you are dead,” Del Alzon said.

  “My brother will have revenge. He will raze Waterton to the ground for this.” The slaver’s pleading turned to indignation. As he fumed, the soldier’s steel met his neck and, with a single spurt of blood, his curses stopped.

  Del Alzon wiped his sword on the dead man’s robes and stared indifferently at the Samanian lying at his feet.

  “William is dead, Del.” Del Alzon found Danitus standing behind him, staring at the dead man. He spoke of William, a woodsman who worked in the lumber mill just south of Waterton. He, perhaps, was the one man in their company who hadn’t escaped to the border town from some other life. At just over twenty-five years old, he seemed one of the few men who could say they were natives of the western city. Now he lay dead. “And it seems Syd will soon follow.”

  The leather worker seemed a much less respectable person. Most found him drunk, even in the morning. Any woman of Waterton with an ounce of decency and a day under fifty avoided him like some disease, and fathers and mothers kept their little girls well away from him too. He did, however, agree to help Del Alzon, so a brother in arms he lay nonetheless.

  “Did Quintus survive?”

  Danitus nodded. Del walked to the cage with most of the children. They looked dirty, unfed, scared. Most huddled in a corner away from the fat soldier. He figured he didn’t look the friendly fatherly type. Some, two little boys, looked too numb to care who came to their cage, and one little girl simply lay on the ground, so weak she was unable to move.

  “Poor wee ones,” Yager said. Del Alzon felt a tear tickle his cheek. With a loud grunt, he hefted his sword over his head and brought it down on the iron lock that imprisoned the children. With a clang and a spark, the iron snapped, and the door opened slowly. The Golgolithulian tried to climb inside to retrieve the unconscious girl, but his mere size prevented it. As he stepped back, his girth rocked the cage back and forth, and one boy let out a loud cry. That spurred a scream from another cage—a woman, perhaps his mother.

  “Come now, children. I mean you no harm. We’re going to take you home.”

  The children didn’t move despite Del’s best efforts to make himself sound as friendly as possible, and so freeing them from the cages was done by several of the women. Even released, the children remained traumatized and just kept staring and not speaking. Even when fed later on a fresh deer, it took some of the children’s own mothers to coax them to eat.

  In the morning, Quintus and two other men set out through the forest and back toward Waterton with freed slaves and two dead westerners in tow.

  “Where to now?” Danitus asked.

  “Find Kehl,” Del Alzon replied.

  “Feels like old times,” Danitus added.

  Del nodded, and then said, “Only this time, I have a purpose.”

  Chapter 55

  ERIK STOOD OVER THE DEAD man. A
n arrow, the red fletching the same color as the thickening blood still oozing from the wound, protruded from his back. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn’t know if he wanted to touch the arrow—or was it a dagger? As he reached for it, the fletching fluttered gently in a sudden breeze. Erik felt a tingle travel along his spine to the back of his head.

  Pick me up. The words passed through his mind again. Pick me up.

  He furled his eyebrows, taking firm hold of the shaft, and pulled. With a sickening squelch of torn flesh and blood, the arrow was slowly extracted, and he held it in his hand as if it might burn him. The fletching and the reddish-steel arrowhead glowed, and when Erik blinked, he held a long-bladed dagger with a golden hilt. The steel of the blade was as clean and pristine as if it had just been forged.

  “What a curious thing you are?” he muttered and felt another tingle crawl up his arm and down his spine before sheathing the weapon.

  “You were that man’s brother,” Erik said, looking down at the body. “I saw him cry for you. Any man would cry over his brother’s death.”

  His stomach knotted. What would he do if his brother had died? Erik shook his head. He couldn’t even think of that without feeling sick.

  When he stood and turned, he found Turk Skull Crusher watching him.

  “What are you doing, Erik?” Turk asked.

  “Nothing,” Erik replied. “Just . . . nothing.”

  “You looked as if you were praying for this man,” Turk said.

  Erik paused a moment before answering. Then, he nodded. “Yes, I prayed.”

  “And what did you pray?” Turk asked.

  Erik looked down at the dead man again. He closed his eyes and saw the man’s brother. He saw red-stained eyes. He heard his wailing. He felt . . . pity.