“Your captain has it only part right,” he whispered, one muddy brown eye hidden by a fall of disheveled hair, snowmelt dripping off his crooked nose. “The Shadenmok … she has a taste for the seed of men, aye, but she will slaughter anything with the blood of life in its veins. In the last moon’s turn, six have been taken from Hilan, and only two were men. The rest were womenfolk.”
Rathe looked after the soldiers, the need to hurry hard upon him. “I have not heard this before. Are you sure your people did not wander off, get lost?”
Breyon shook his head slowly. “We searched, but Lord Sanouk and his pet viper will not trouble themselves with the cares of the village. We could have used the soldiers, but most are from Onareth. The villagers are of Hilan and the northern forests. We know these lands, but we found naught. Besides, those who vanished are not folk who would have left without word. Something took them.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Rathe asked.
Breyon cocked his head toward Treon. “Because you are the Scorpion. Even in Hilan, we have heard of you and your deeds. I hoped you would listen … hoped you would help, where others will not.”
Rathe shook his head. “I am not sure-”
“I am sure,” Breyon insisted, and clapped him on the shoulder. When Rathe nodded, he spun away without another word.
Rathe looked after the lanky woodsman a moment, then ran after the soldiers. The plan he had revealed to Loro had been to rise above Treon, show the man for the brutal coward he was and depose him, all without shedding a drop of blood. In that way, Treon would suffer a disgraced life, lose the authority he held most dear. He still meant to do those things. Yet Breyon’s plea for succor changed things, for it placed upon Rathe the responsibility that should have been held by Lord Sanouk. Should he lend himself to Breyon and the folk of Hilan, he would be treading upon dangerous ground. But how could he turn away from them?
Rathe pushed aside matters that did not need addressing at the moment, and caught up with the soldiers. The snowfall had increased, the sifting white beating back the shadow of dusk, even as it obscured visibility. He positioned the searchers, then moved to the midpoint in the line, between Loro and Aeden. Feet shuffled and wide eyes peered through the burry gray veil of falling snow. No one wanted to be the first to step away from the protection of the road.
“Begin!” Rathe called, motioning the men forward with his torch.
After little hesitation, the soldiers stepped off. To the last, each had drawn his sword. Inside of four paces, the forest engulfed the searchers. Twilight marched rapidly toward full dark under the gentle, hissing voice of drifting snow. Trees loomed, muting forest sounds.
“See anything?” Aeden called, sounding a short step from panic. He waved his torch overhead, peering into shadowy undergrowth.
Rathe shook his head.
Aeden pushed forward, slashing the brush with his sword. He gave a startled squawk and disappeared. Snow-topped bushes shook where he had been, and the sounds of struggle intensified. Rathe’s heart lurched into a gallop, his hand tightened on the sword hilt. He had taken his first step toward the fallen soldier when Aeden popped up, covered in snow and wet leaves.
“I fell,” he said, looking morosely at his extinguished torch.
A gurgling howl rose up, not twenty paces ahead.
“Alfan!” Aeden bellowed. “Where are you?”
Rathe stared through the whirling white. Something shifted under a leaning fir.
“You see that?” Loro demanded, even as the pale figure faded into the gloom under the tree.
Aeden made a strangled noise and ran back toward the road. Rathe ordered him to stop, but the soldier never slowed. Drawn to the yelling, the other searchers converged, their advance marked by bobbing torches.
“With me,” Rathe commanded, and crept toward the skulking murk under the leaning fir’s snow-clad needles. A metallic glint dancing with torchlight caught his eye, and he halted the others with a word. The men formed a half-moon circle around him, torches raised.
Between them and the hoary evergreen, a sword rested on a skim of snow, its clean edge running with reflected flame. A fan of crimson splashes steamed around scattered boot prints. Alfan, bleeding and battling, had run to that spot, spun round and round, striving to keep an enemy at bay … an enemy that had not left any tracks of its own.
With the scent of fresh-spilled blood in his nose, Rathe looked to upper boughs. “Alfan?”
No answer came.
“I will climb up,” a gravelly voice said. Rathe turned to see Remon’s lean, whiskered face. “He’s a dullard, but he’s my friend. I would know if he’s dead or maimed.” Eyes tight with fear, he handed off his torch, ducked under the lowest branches, and set to climbing.
“Mayhap wolves chased him,” one of the soldiers said.
Rathe pointed out what the man had missed. “The snow is new-fallen, the blood fresh enough to steam, but there are no tracks, save Alfan’s.”
“He’s not here,” Remon called in a glum tone. “No blood … nothing.”
“He vanished,” Loro said, swallowing loudly.
Rathe tried not to consider what Breyon had said of the missing villagers, but he could no more ignore those dire words than he could dismiss the falling snow.
“He was taken,” someone spoke up, garnering a few mutters of agreement. “Such is the way of the Shadenmok.”
Rathe looked around, hoping against hope to find some indication where Alfan had gone, but there was nothing. He bit back an oath. “With no tracks to follow, there is no way to search without ending up lost ourselves.”
Mutters of regret met the pronouncement, but no one disagreed, and Rathe ordered them back to camp.
At their approach, Treon strode past the ring of firelight and confronted Rathe. “I do not see Alfan in your ranks.”
“There was blood, his tracks and sword, but nothing else. Unless he gained the ability to fly … something took him.”
Breyon, huddled next to a silent Carul, looked up at this, his gaze unreadable.
“ ‘Took him?’ “ Treon said, lip curling. “I would judge, lieutenant, that you have failed your first crucial mission as a man of Hilan. Were it not against Lord Sanouk’s wishes, I would strike off your head at this moment.”
Rathe took a deep, steadying breath. The only thing that kept him from knocking Treon’s skinny backside into the cold mud was the disapproving rumbles from the soldiers at his back-discontent aimed squarely at Treon. This night, Rathe had gained supporters. In the end, that mattered more than satisfying a personal grudge.
“Forgive me, captain,” he said, turning.
The men stared back, their faces a grim tapestry. They were malcontents, lawbreakers, the broken warriors of Cerrikoth given a last chance to demonstrate their worth. Some might prove irredeemable, some might earn death by his own hand, but at that moment they were his men, and he was their leader.
“I ask the same forgiveness from all of you,” he said, raising his voice. “Would that the gods had rewarded our efforts, but our brother’s fate is now in their hands. However, trust that should any of you come up missing, or fall wounded in battle, or suffer any of a hundred trials that can trouble a soldier, I will aid you to the best of my strength.”
“We could ask no more,” Loro said from the back, earning nods of approval.
Treon glared at the men, opened his mouth, but a shout cut off his words before he spoke them.
“Glory to the Reavers!”
“And to the Scorpion!” another added.
“The Reavers and the Scorpion!” thundered eighteen men.
Only two of the company did not shout or bat an eye: Rathe and Treon. They stared at each other. The others beat a hasty retreat, talking overloud about Shadenmok, poor buggering Alfan, the women of Valdar, and anything else to distract from the motionless confrontation.