“Ryshad?”
My horse shied and I snatched at the reins, startled.
“Dast’s teeth, Livak! What are you doing?”
“I was trying to stop you cracking your head open by falling off your horse asleep,” she replied a touch acidly.
I scrubbed a glove over my face. “Sorry?”
Odd fragments of what must have been half a dream hovered around my head, something about a pursuit over sweeping grasslands. Wasn’t Arimelin satisfied enough with ruining my nights, that the goddess had to start me dreaming during the day? I must have dozed off for a breath or so, something I couldn’t ever recall doing on a horse before, but then I couldn’t remember being quite so weary, not recently anyway. I wondered uneasily if all this difficulty in sleeping meant I was sickening for something. A series of shouts was handed back along the muletrain, scattering my confused thoughts. I realized we were stopping to make camp and saw that Nyle had fixed on a large grassy clearing, evidently well known to him. As Halice turned the gig off the main track, I could see the guards fanning out to hack down the early undergrowth all around. Muleteers were fixing picket lines for their beasts and fencing them in with thorn brush. As we headed for a comfortable spot, the wagons and carts drew in to form a defensive ring, canvases soon laced securely.
Nyle came over and spoke to Shiv while we were making our own little camp inside the circle.
“I want everyone to water their animals by that stand of withys.” He gestured toward a brook on the far side of the clearing. “Use that gully over there for a latrine.”
I wondered why his eyes kept straying to me, even though he was talking to Shiv and I was curious enough to mention it to Livak as we circled the clearing later collecting firewood.
She shrugged. “I don’t think he wants your body; he hardly looks the type to drink out of both sides of the cup. I think you’re seeing Eldritch-men in the shadows. You’re just overtired.”
I didn’t pursue it but I still felt uneasy as I peered into the gathering gloom under the trees.
“Does anyone think there’s much risk of trouble?” I asked the others as we sat down to eat.
“They’d have to attack in some strength to have a chance against a camp this size.” Halice scanned the area thoughtfully. “It depends how hard the winter has been around here.”
“According to one of the muleteers, the local Lords usually send their foresters in to clear as many vagabonds out as they can before the does start dropping their fawns, but we’re a bit early for that,” Shiv said, his words muffled by the chicken leg he was chewing. “Nyle’s not taking any chances, he’s setting a full watch, look.”
We saw to the animals, decided who would sleep where and watched the guards earning their coin with patrols around the edge of the clearing as the night closed in around the circle of campfires.
“I do like seeing sentries being set, knowing I won’t have to take a duty,” Halice smiled broadly as she rolled herself in her blankets.
Shiv was already snoring musically and Livak was yawning as she lingered over the last of her wine. I rolled my cloak for a pillow, tucked my blankets around myself and closed my eyes, half listening to the murmur of voices around the larger fires. A couple of verses of that Dalasorian song listing all the different boys trying to get under a virgin’s blanket drifted over to us, occasionally lost in a burst of laughter from a friendly game of runes. The rich scent of wood smoke mingled with the moist breath of the awakening woodland and I drifted off to sleep, vaguely hoping Livak wouldn’t be tempted to join in any of the gambling.
I was ripped from my slumbers by urgent shouts that my sleep-numbed brain could make no sense of. Halfway to my feet before my mind caught up with my body, I stared bemusedly at the black-haired stranger in front of me. His pale blue eyes were wide in his narrow-jawed face and he held out an urgent hand to haul me upright, a sapphire ring catching the firelight. I reached out but must have misjudged the distance, my fingers closing on empty air. He shouted at me again but I could barely make out what he was saying; it sounded like Formalin but no dialect I had ever heard.
A yell behind me spun me around and I saw three ragged and filthy figures scrambling out from under the nearest wagon, notched harvest tools and rusty swords questing before them, eyes bright with greed and faces bitter with hardship. I could smell their stench mingled with raw spirits and chewing weeds. Well, I’d soon take the wind out of their sails. I’d met worse than them in the rougher parts of Gidesta.
As I drew my sword and moved to drive the scoundrels off, I spared a fleeting glance around me. Shiv was moving to the center of the clearing, concentrating on weaving a dim tangle of light between his fingers, head turning this way and that as he looked for a chance to help. I couldn’t see Viltred but assumed he was somewhere close to Shiv, probably with the small group of women and children huddling together by the main fire-pit. A sudden lattice of sapphire magelight sprang up around the vulnerable ones, startling the guards who’d hung back to defend them.
Halice had already moved to our far side where two startled guards were being pressed back by a larger group of bandits rising up from the cover of the stream bed. The black-haired stranger must have wakened her first, not knowing about her leg. Wet and desperate, the vagrants hacked blindly as they fought for the food and coin they coveted. They were a sorry-looking lot, gaunt and filthy, many with old injuries or disease, but there was no pity in their stained blades, only death in their eyes. I looked for the stranger, but he was nowhere to be seen.
A rat-faced man in muddy rags came at me, swinging a nail-studded club in a flurry of ill-judged blows until I dropped him with a scything stroke to his thighs. As he fell, he tripped the youth behind him who took the opportunity to cut and run. The third was made of sterner stuff, or was just more desperate; he came on with jabs of a once fine blade that looked as if he’d been using it to cut firewood. I feinted to his side, parried, feinted again; as he reached out, too far, I smashed the small bones of his hand with a hacking down stroke. If he’d kept the sense Misaen made him he’d have run but he had to try again, sweeping the sword around in his off hand, agony twisting the lines and filth of his face. I brought my own blade up and ended his problems with a cut to the side of the head that took off his ear and dropped him in his tracks. I jumped sideways as I thought I saw a shadow at my shoulder, but to my relief there was no one there, just a trick of the uncertain light, with the greater moon barely at half and the lesser all but dark. Still, it was an unwelcome reminder of how naked my flank felt, without Aiten’s strong sword arm and burly frame to support me.
A sudden blow from behind sent me sprawling into a cart and I scrambled away from the slashing hooves of a loose horse, snapped halter dangling as it dashed, panicked, from the sound of battle and the sickly smell of blood. Curses rose from the picket lines as the muleteers struggled to restrain their beasts as terror spread like sparks from wildfire. The high-pitched whinnying of the mules and the wails of a frightened child spiraled upwards to pierce the night sky.
“Aid here!” Halice’s yell tore through the uproar of the fight and I looked out to see she was facing two men on her own. The other guards were unable to help as they held back attackers intent on a gap where they had dragged a wagon askew. Halice’s crippled leg was tying her to the spot as surely as a man-trap; unable to move freely, her shirt was already torn over a bloody scrape on her off-side arm. Cursing freely, I began forcing my way through the melee.
Before I reached her, I saw a bright knife slice through the canvas cover of a wagon and caught a glimpse of auburn hair in the firelight. A stunted youth hanging back and jeering at Halice got a thrown dagger among the boils on his neck, fair payment I think. He dropped with a choking cry as foam filled his nose and mouth, his head jerking back in uncontrollable spasm, his cry lost in the din of the fight. Livak dropped from the cart to drive a second blade into the kidneys of a brutish heap of filth whose heavy hedging-blade was hacking at Halice’s defenses. He clapped a hand to his side, mouth open in soundless surprise as much as anguish before the venom forced his face into a frozen snarl. Halice left him to the poison, taking her chance to drive her sword up into the face of his startled partner, who went down in a splutter of blood and shattered teeth to gut himself on his own skinning knife.