by Nathan Jones
If that didn't brown a man's breeches, Brandon wasn't sure what would. Especially since the good news and bad news was that the horsemen seemed to have missed Neal, who'd either already gotten across the valley to the far slope and was making his way unnoticed through the thick trees there, or had gone to ground at the sight of the mounted enemy and was waiting for them to pass before continuing.
A dangerous trick, especially since the riders had dogs. Although it seemed to have paid off, which was the good news. The bad news was that it meant the unexpected pursuers had spotted Brandon farther down the valley; they came straight for him, racing to cut him off as he picked his way across the treacherous ground on the eastern side of the small stream cutting along the bottom of it.
He forgot caution and sprinted headlong for the protection of the densely forested western slope, just across the meager trickle of water. The thunder of gunshots joined the thunder of hooves somewhere off to his right, making him wince and nearly trip while leaping the stream.
As Brandon landed he heard sharp whines all around him, and saw sparks fly from bullets striking stones. He practically dove towards the first trees at the bottom of the slope, desperately grabbing a branch to swing himself behind two split trees growing from a single trunk. The rough bark scraped and scratched his palm, but he barely noticed or cared as he sagged back into the impromptu shelter.
Before he had a chance to breathe easier about the cover he'd found, he was spurred deeper into the forest as pale slashes appeared on trees all around him, lighter wood exposed as bullets slammed into them and sent the outer bark flying. A sliver kicked up by an impacting bullet even stung his cheek as he ducked past a trio of trees, which had suddenly started vibrating with a woody noise as if they were being attacked by a giant woodpecker.
Or someone emptying the magazine of an automatic weapon in his general direction with terrifying accuracy.
Then the hail of gunfire abruptly stuttered, the angry shouts of men and baying of hunting dogs joined by warning cries and yelps of pain. Brandon heard the steady crack of semi-automatic weapons from the slope above him as Mer Ellison and Ray Mickelson, up in their own ambush spots atop the western ridge, opened fire on the charging horsemen.
And the dogs, he hoped; now that he was running for his life with those four-legged critters in hot pursuit, he suddenly had a desperate fear that he was about to be bowled over from behind mid-step at any moment. At which point he'd find wicked teeth savaging the back of his neck.
Compared to that deep, primal terror, even the prospect of getting hit by a bullet didn't seem so frightening.
The slog up the equally steep, heavily forested western slope choked by deadfall and undergrowth was far slower than his breakneck sprint down the eastern one. Although in the adrenaline-fueled panic of dogs snarling somewhere behind him and bullets shredding trees to all sides, it felt like it passed in moments.
Nightmarish, eternal moments, sure, but somehow before he knew it he'd reached the top.
Only a few steps more to put the ridgeline between him and the horsemen still milling at the bottom of the valley below, searching for shelter and struggling to return fire at an unseen enemy. All the while shouting loudly in Spanish and Portuguese, screams of pain and warnings and orders. And, from the tone since that's mostly all Brandon understood of the foreign languages, he guessed they were also arguing about whether to try to find a way to get up to the ridge on their horses, or whether they should dismount and join the pursing Sangue on foot who no doubt had to be catching up to them by now.
That reminder, that there were dozens more soldiers where the horsemen had come from, put a bit of extra speed in his steps as he chugged past Mer's and Ray's positions, distantly aware of the sharp crack of their rifles continuing to cover his retreat.
With that sound ringing in Brandon's ears, a surprisingly large part of him wanted to find some cover and rejoin the fight. But that wasn't the plan, and certainly wasn't how he'd trained his skirmishers. Not to mention that, tactically speaking, digging in his heels would be disastrous for the very people his instincts were screaming at him to help.
So he kept going.
Rather than the terrain dropping down into another valley beyond the ridge, it formed a shallow saddle leading to an even higher ridge angling northwest to southeast. Brandon pushed himself to keep up the pace, grateful for how hard he'd worked the skirmishers to get them all into peak shape as he raced across the saddle and up the moderately steep slope to where an outcropping jutted out.
It was probably that hard work that kept him from emptying his guts when he reached his destination. That, or pure stubborn determination; he forced himself to breathe slower and deeper as he scrambled up to his first fallback position.
As he'd discovered on the way through here escorting Brady's group with the supplies, that outcrop overlooked not only the saddle but also the forested slope on the eastern side of the ridge Mer and Ray were on. The moment he reached the good firing position he'd scouted out earlier that day, he dropped down and settled his rifle on its bipod in a secure position.
It took bit longer for his exhausted arms to steady enough to hold the weapon straight, his painting breaths to calm enough that his head wasn't bobbing all over the place as he tried to look through the scope. Although the crosshairs still wobbled drunkenly as he began snapping shots off at the horses laboring up the steep, heavily forested slope, and the smaller shapes of dogs darting through the trees.
Especially the dogs.
Off to either side he caught glimpses of Neal and Reina disappearing towards their own fallback positions, a bit farther back than Brandon's. Neither of his team members were following the saddle up to the higher peak; it was an uninterrupted slope where Neal came up, while Reina was circling around the peak entirely to reach the next valley.
He soon heard his team members open fire, and almost immediately afterwards saw Mer and Ray bolting from their ambush spots and taking their escape trails. That was Brandon's cue to go as well, and he scrambled down from the outcrop and continued up the slope to the peak above.
From there things got a bit more confused. With all his skirmishers set up along the way to the meeting spot, he was able to go a lot farther under cover before his next fallback position. And the farther and farther he and the other fleeing skirmishers fled, the more people would be covering them in fallback positions and new ambush spots at any given time.
And all the while he and his skirmishers would know the terrain around them and the routes they'd be fleeing along, as well as their own numbers, while the bloodies in pursuit would be stumbling across unfamiliar ground and unsure of how many enemies they faced, or if they were being led into a trap.
Even so, it wasn't all smooth sailing. In fact, in spite of all their careful preparations and knowledge of the terrain, Brandon and his skirmishers were barely able to stay ahead of pursuit; with the horsemen able to move more swiftly and potentially cut them off, his carefully planned retreat was more like a headlong flight. Running exhausted from one fallback position to the next, while enemies flanked him and his people and dogs bayed in the distance.
Although fewer of those; he wasn't the only one doing his best to pick off the dangerous trackers.
Thankfully, just about at the point he was about to collapse from sheer exhaustion, forced to hunker in a fallback position and try to hold it for long enough to really catch his breath, the pursuit finally let up a bit. Brandon wasn't sure if attrition had finally ate away enough of the enemy to make them more cautious, or if their pursuers on foot were too exhausted to keep up the chase, or if the horsemen had finally encountered terrain where they couldn't move quickly enough to keep flanking, or some combination of multiple factors.
But at some point, the people in the fallback positions behind him started taking longer and longer after getting into position to begin firing. Which suggested that Sangue was taking longer and longer to give them targets; they were finally making go
od their retreat.
None too soon, since the meeting spot was only a few hundred yards away.
That was cutting it pretty close, since Brandon had selected the place to be three miles away from where his team had first hit the enemy, over rough terrain that took at least twice as long to traverse as flat ground. He'd thought Sangue would be eating their dust, stumbling around blindly chasing their own tails miles back, by the time they reached the meeting point.
In the same way that he, Neal, and Reina had been the first to fire on the enemy, they were also the first to reach the secluded clearing in the middle of a dense thicket of old evergreens. That gave them a few glorious minutes to sprawl in complete exhaustion, while they waited for the rest of the skirmishers to join them.
That, and listened for the signal that something had gone wrong and their friends needed help. Brandon dreaded that possibility, even as he kept his ears pricked over the thunder of his own panting breaths for any desperate whistles from his people ringing through the mountain valley he'd just crossed.
“How many you think we got?” Reina gasped, huddled on a patch of grass nearby. Neal was off in the trees puking his guts up.
Brandon literally had no idea. “More than zero,” he wheezed back. “Definitely got a lot of their dogs, and more than a few horses.” He paused to suck in a few more desperate breaths, chest burning and muscles so rubbery he could barely flop over onto his back. “You see any of our people run into trouble on the way?”
The former barmaid shook her head. “I was too busy just keeping ahead of the barking and hoofbeats.”
A few minutes later, just as Brandon was finally getting his breath back and Reina found the energy to drag herself over to check on Neal, Ray stumbled into the clearing. Like the rest of them, he was barely staggering along, face gray with exertion and thinning hair plastered to his head with sweat. He took a page from Neal's book and stumbled over to a tree to puke, then shoved away and collapsed onto his back a few feet away.
Brandon pulled himself to his feet and limped over to the older man. “Where's Mer?” he demanded, peering through the dense trees.
Ray, surly even at the best of times, didn't even bother to respond. Although his glower spoke volumes; like Brandon's own preplanned escape route, the skirmishers in the fallback positions all had routes of their own planned out. Ray hadn't been involved with helping Mer pick hers, and once she rabbited down it the responsibility would've been on the skirmishers in the farther back ambush spots to make sure her escape was covered.
Only Brandon couldn't remember seeing the young woman retreat past the last fallback position he'd taken before the meeting point. And if the man who'd been on the same ridge as her was already here but she was nowhere in sight, that suggested that something had happened.
Something bad. His stomach began to churn queasily as the awful possibilities began to rampage through his head. He could never forgive himself if Mer had been killed, but what truly made him feel sick was the possibility that she might've been captured.
Again.
She'd already suffered one day in Sangue's brutal clutches. Not all that long ago, either; he sometimes heard her cry out in her sleep at night, the sheer torment of the sound making him grit his teeth so hard they hurt. And even more commonly, he tried to pretend he couldn't hear the muted sounds of her sobbing in her tent for her family and friends, who she'd had to watch tortured and killed right in front of her.
More than once during training, he'd seen her with that thousand yard stare. The one he'd seen so often from Fiona and Logan and their friends from Simon's convoy, after Trapper had saved them all from Newpost. He'd recognized she was trapped back in memories of that hell, and felt helpless to offer any sort of comfort.
And now she might be right back there again, because of him.
Brandon grit his teeth and stepped past Ray, staring back the way he'd come. He caught glimpses of other skirmishers making their way to the meeting spot, Zeke and Bill and Evan who'd been in the next positions after Ray's and Mer's.
But no sign of the tall, dark blond teenager.
He never should've let her come! Granted, she'd known what she was getting into and had fiercely insisted on joining the skirmishers anyway. And if anyone had a right to want to hit back at the bloodies, it was her. But even so, what kind of monster was he to put her in a situation where she could end up in their hands again?
The skirmishers trickling in hadn't seen any sign of her, either, and Brandon's worry grew by the minute. He was practically climbing the nearby trees by the time the last two skirmishers, who'd served as rearguard and scout at the last fallback positions, arrived: old Luke Pine, their explosives expert, and Brandon's friend Andy Warrens.
He immediately hurried over to them. “Mer?” he demanded.
To his relief and further worry, by their expressions they at least had an answer for him. Andy shook his head grimly. “She got cut off by a couple horsemen. They didn't see her, but there was no way for her to keep coming . . . last I saw she was haring due north.”
Brandon bit back a curse. He wanted to go after her, but there was an entire force of bloodies between them and the young woman. At least their skirmisher training had accounted for being cut off from their team or the entire squad; if that happened, they were supposed to focus solely on escape, no fancy attempts to get the enemy following them or find opportunities to hit at them again, just straight up evade pursuit.
If they managed it, their next step was to get back to Camptown, ready to rejoin the skirmishers the next time they checked in. Best to let Mer do as she'd been instructed, and focus on their own problems.
Because even if the rest of them had made it to the meeting spot, that didn't mean they were out of the woods yet. Sangue was probably still hot on their trail, and that was actually a good thing since it meant the skirmishers could draw them away from Mer and make her escape easier.
Also, of course, the fact that their very purpose for being here was keeping the enemy's attention on them, rather than heading for Camptown and their loved ones.
Pine confirmed Brandon's speculations while he was still stewing over his missing skirmisher. “Bloodies slowed down a bit with all the ambushes we kept leading them into, but they're still coming,” the older man reported. “They've also spread out like crazy to try to circle around us.”
Neal had finally got over his misery and stumbled into the clearing to join them, just in time to hear that bit of news. And of course, the man could never pass up an opportunity to piss and moan. “Fantastic,” he grumbled. “We barely had a chance to hit them, we were so busy running away as they literally hounded us. At this rate we'll probably have to keep running ourselves ragged for days before we shake them, and that's if we're lucky.” He hefted his rifle as if considering hurling it to the ground, then seemed to think better of it and simply set it aside.
Probably a good idea; Brandon would've beaten the tar out of him if he wrecked his weapon when they were fighting for their lives. In spite of his worry over Mer, he forced himself to keep calm for the sake of the rest of the skirmishers gathered around listening. “At least we walked away from this one. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.”
“Pretty sure the bear only needs to get you once,” the bartender muttered, almost under his breath.
That wasn't what any of them needed to be thinking about at the moment. “You know the saying “the squeaky wheel gets the grease?” Brandon snapped. “You probably haven't heard the end of it, “but it's also the first to be replaced.”
Neal rolled his eyes. “Oh please, don't force me to go home so I no longer have to risk my neck in suicidal attacks against enemies that outnumber us two or three to one on a good day.”
He grit his teeth against the insult he wanted to snap back; the guy had a knack for pissing him off. Instead, he turned to the rest of the skirmishers. “We all chose to be here, because we know what's at stake if the bloodies get to our lo
ved ones in the valley. So if there's a lesson to learn from this, it's “don't be Neal.”
Reina laughed. “Lesson? That's practically my motto.” That drew laughter from the rest of the skirmishers.
It was also pretty harsh criticism, considering the woman had once been a barmaid and, ah, lady of purchasable affections at Neal's bar, and she knew the man better than anyone. Especially since she was now the bartender's girlfriend, although Brandon constantly wondered just what had possessed her to make that choice.
Neal scowled at the laughter directed his way. “Oh yeah, let's all laugh at the guy pointing out facts, like that the bloodies are at best a half hour away from putting bullets in all of us. Those they don't keep alive long enough to have some fun with, that is.”
That killed the laughter pretty quick. Especially for Reina and Toni, the other woman among the skirmishers, and especially with Mer out there and her fate unknown. Brandon knew the bartender was probably talking about torture as much as the . . . other horrific atrocities Sangue committed against their prisoners, but he still wanted to punch the man for his tactless remark.
Instead he took a deep breath and forced himself to sound confident. “The enemy's chasing us howling for blood? Good!”
At first the skirmishers all looked at him like he was crazy. But after a few moments realization dawned among his people.
This was what they were here for, to keep Sangue occupied so they never found Camptown. Hitting them was satisfying, whittling down their numbers would make the job easier, but ultimately the only thing that mattered was leading them on a merry chase away from the skirmishers' loved ones back in the bowl valley.
And Brandon intended to lead them on the merriest chase possible. “Let's keep going to Trapper's Gorge,” he said quietly. “We should get there by dark. If they're still on our trail, we can spend the trip planning how we'll hit their camp tonight.”
Chapter One
What Has To Be Done