They took time to fire the structures of the two empty villages, so it was well into early afternoon when they entered the third. Out of no more than curiosity, a sergeant rode over to see what sort of offal this well contained … and the missing patrol was found.
Troop-Lieutenant Nikos was a veteran. After thoroughly searching the empty buildings, he posted three platoons in a tight, dismounted guard about the village perimeter, with another platoon standing to horse in a central location. The other two platoons were detailed to the grisly task of raising the bodies from the well.
When twenty nude corpses lay in ordered rows, Nikos examined them closely. Only four bore marks of violence: young Stamos’ skull had been cleft to the eyes by a sword blow; the wound in the sergeant’s back had been made by an arrow; two of the troopers had had their throats cut. There was no single wound upon the cold flesh of any of the remaining sixteen!
Nikos sent his best tracker on a wide swing around the village and a trail was sighted, headed across the charred fields, due west, toward the mountains.
Nikos recalled the guard, mounted the troop, and trotted them to the wide swath of disturbed ashes. “How many?” he demanded of the tracker. “How long ago?” Swinging from his saddle, the tracker eyed the trail critically, then switched the buzzing flies from a pile of horse droppings and thrust his finger into one of them, gauging the degree of warmth. “Between fifty and sixty horses, Lord Nikos, but not all bore riders. They are a day ahead of us.”
“Were any of the horses ours?” asked Nikos needlessly, already knowing the answer.
“Close to half, Lord Nikos, bore shoes of our pattern. As for the shoe pattern of the other horses, which were smaller animals, I have never seen the like. They were not shaped by Karaleenoee,” the tracker stated emphatically.
Nikos sighed. Nothing to be gained in following a day-old trail into unfamiliar territory with only one troop of light cavalry.
Returning to the village, they hastily distributed the score of corpses amongst the wooden houses, then fired them. They had only been on the return journey for a half hour however, when suddenly, without warning, four troopers fell from their saddles, dead.
When it was pointed out to the troop-lieutenant that these had been the four men who had labored in the depths of the well, affixing the ropes to corpse after cold corpse that their comrades might draw the burdens up, he brusquely ordered that none touch these bodies more. Leaving the men where they had fallen, he had the gear cut off their mounts, then set out for camp at a fast canter, his skin prickling under his armor at the thought of pestilence.
Despite King Zenos’ fears of dissension, High-Lord Milo’s horseclansmen and the mountain tribesmen of Karaleenos worked well and willingly together, far better than either group did with regular troops; their mutual dislike and distrust of the lowland Ehleenoee bound them together as much as did the war practices they shared and the fact that both faced a common foe.
A week after Troop-Lieutenant Nikos had frantically galloped his troop back to camp, three men squatted around a small fire near the mouth of a large cavern, chewing tough meat and tougher bread and washing down their fare with long drafts from a goatskin of resinous wine.
Tall, spare, and big-boned, Chief Hwahlt Hohlt’s brown hair and beard showed streaks of gray and nothing else betrayed his years, for he was possessed of a strength and endurance equal to that of his co-commanders.
He spoke: “Much as I hated to see thet good shine go down the gullets of them bastards, she worked like a charm—I’ll say thet.”
“Trust to an Ehleenoee to think of stealth and poison, rather than open battle and honest steel,” growled Pawl Vawn of Vawn through a mouthful of mutton. But the twinkle in his hazel eyes revealed his words as banter, not insult.
Tomos Gonsalos took a swig of wine and grinned. “I thank both of you ratty-looking types for the compliments, if such they were. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what you barbarians really mean.”
“But what good did it do God-Milo to feed those troopers poisoned whisky?” put in the Vawn quizzically. “With their two miserable watchers downed, we could as easily have shafted most of them, then ridden in and sabered the rest. They’d have been just as dead.”
Tomos questioned in answer. “Did you notice how Zastros narrowed his columns and stopped all patroling within leagues of that village, Pawl? Disease has killed more soldiers than all the steel ever forged, and they fear it in proportion.
“As to how this little scheme has aided King Zenos and High-Lord Milo,” he said, weighing the wineskin for a moment, “look you, Pawl.” And then he shot a thin stream of wine into the fire.
“Now, what would happen were I to now remove the nozzle from the mouth of the skin?”
Hwahlt answered, “All our wine would be in the fire and you’d find my knife blade kinda hard to digest.”
Tomos ignored the mountaineer and continued. “My King and your High-Lord need time, and the way we gave them some little time is this: the swamps extend far inland, near to that village, and Zastros is not fool enough to try to march troops and horsemen and haul wagons through the fens; therefore, it would appear that—as he needs to maintain a wide front to achieve any kind of speed of march—he originally intended to march both on the narrow strip of flatlands and in the foothills. But now that his troops are afraid that pestilence stalks those foothills … well,” he said, squirting another stream of wine into the fire, “we’ve put a nozzle on his army just like the nozzle on this skin. So there’s a stream going north, instead of a flood. Thus do we buy time for our lords.”
To the east, across the width of that narrow strip of flatlands, Benee poled his flat-bottomed boat through the ways known only to his fellow swampfolk. His skinny body was nearly nude and he was smeared from head to foot with mud. He beached his boat with a barely audible crunch on a tiny sand pit at the foot of a high, grassy bank. Taking a small, wooden cylinder from the bottom of the boat, he entered the grass and slithered up the slope as silently as a cottonmouth … and every bit as deadly.
Just below the rim, he stretched out on. his back and fitted the sections of his blowpipe together, then carefully inserted a two-inch dart, its needlepoint smeared with a viscous substance.
Gingerly, he parted the small bushes clinging to the edge of the slope and his keen eyes judged the distance between him and the nearest spearman, who slowly paced to and fro, his frequent yawns loud to Benee’s ears. No, the distance was just too far for a sure hit on vulnerable flesh, and blowdarts could seldom pierce cloth, much less armor.
Up … and over the edge, a shadow among the shadows. Flat as the earth itself, his supple body conformed to every hump or hollow of the ground it covered. Two yards closer … five yards, and Benee could pick out a movement of the sentry’s arm, accompanied by rasp of clothing and muttered curse as he scratched himself.
Six yards closer, then seven, eight, and Benee stopped, stockstill, fear suddenly drying his mouth, sucking the air from his lungs. The sentry had turned and was looking dead ahead at him! He fought the almost overwhelming urge to get up and run, run, run, back to the safety of the boat, of the swamps of his birth. But that way lay certain death; already could he feel that spear blade in his back.
Then, all was again well. Muttering something incomprehensible under his breath, the man began to pace back and forth, but never more than a few yards in any direction.
At the end of thirty agonizing feet, Benee felt he could be accurate enough for a sure kill. Slowly, he brought up his blowpipe, made certain that the war dart was still in place, then put it to his lips and took exacting aim. A single puff of his powerful, trained lungs … and death flew toward the nameless spearman.