"An army?" Radstac asked. Had they reached the Felk faster than expected? She didn't like the thought.
"Smaller. A lot smaller." Anzal went to tell the rest.
Scouts, thought Radstac, though the camp might be anything, including a band of rival bandits. But instinct, when it was honed by so many hard-bitten years, was to be trusted.
They all dismounted.
"Why don't we go around?" Deo asked, but he spoke . the question mildly. Anzal had returned.
"Turfs ours," the chief said, shrugging her muscular shoulders. "If somebody's on it, we need to know who. They might have friends."
Which meant this wasn't simply a matter of animal territoriality, Radstac noted. True professionals then. That was good.
"I'll go with you," Deo said to Anzal, who was gathering up a small party.
"No need."
"If I decide I go, I go."
The chief frowned a moment, but Deo's words were certainly true. She moved off to the tall lad who was the expert archer.
"Why should you go?" Radstac wanted to know. It meant, of course, that she would go with him.
"Do these waylayers know the Felk?" A glimmer of his familiar charming smile crossed his features.
"Do you?" she countered. "Have you ever laid eyes on one in your life?"
"No. I never cared for the Isthmus's less gentle northerly climes. But from what I've gathered from the intelligence reports Uncle has received, I believe I can recognize a uniformed soldier. Or a wizard."
Radstac didn't fear wizards or wizardry. She was of the Southsoil, and she gave no quarter to baseless dreads. Nonetheless, she didn't know the extent of the powers these Felk mages might possess, or how she could successfully protect her client against such talents.
Regardless of what magic could do, she told herself as they prepared to move out, a blade could always cut flesh.
She had her heavy combat sword in hand as they fanned out quietly through the trees. Anzal, the archer, one other bandit, herself, and Deo. Deo still at her side. He hadn't drawn his sword, but he was tensed, ready, as they stalked through the woods.
It was late morning. There were birds making song and flitting among the wide canopy of branches overhead, small animals rustling through the brush. Good. Cover noise. Radstac let a glint of teeth show in her doubly scarred face. She felt the dark powerful current of combat readiness moving her blood through her veins.
They crept along low, in the direction Anzal had indicated. The three bandits demonstrated admirable stealth. Radstac peered ahead, picking out the movements of individual leaves, careful not to let her growing frustration throw her off. What exactly had Anzal seen?
Then she picked out the figures. They were glimpses among the trees. A camp. Yes. They were in a clearing. Radstac smelled meat cooked over a fire.
Anzal was gesturing sharply at her. She had missed the first signal. The bandit chief glared; Radstac still was not popular with this band. She put a hand to Deo's arm, and they both halted, crouched in the brush.
They were six. Two in dark robes, four in military uniforms. They lolled about the small camp. Deo studied the figures intently. Radstac had already plotted out the best way to raid the camp and slay its occupants—not that she saw any need for such an action. Deo's original idea was surely best. Just go around this camp. Anzal signaled the retreat.
When they returned to the horses, it was Deo who spoke first. "They're Felk. They've got to be scouting out Trael."
"Shouldn't we take them, just for the sake of good manners?" ventured the archer with a smirk.
"Shut up, Frog." Anzal shot the boy a glare. To Deo she said, "I agree. Scouts. That army's not going to be far away now."
Deo nodded. "But we need to capture one of those soldiers. I've got questions I want to ask."
"No way to pick off one," Radstac said. "Have to raid the whole camp."
Anzal's ready glare turned her way once more. "We can handle that. But what about those two in the robes? Are they soldiers, too?"
Deo pursed his lips a moment. "I believe those two are wizards," he finally said.
Radstac watched the shock ripple through the band. Fearful faces turned toward one another. It was comical— and so typical of these Isthmusers. This was still a young land, and these were young peoples, with juvenile cultures. They were unsettled by fears that adults learned to manage.
Protesting voices were rising, some quivering. Anzal silenced everyone harshly, clouting the archer—Frog— who had lost his smirk the instant Deo had said wizards.
"Actually," Deo continued, unperturbed by the hub-bub, "it's one of those wizards I want to talk to." Again he allowed a glimpse of his smile. He owned these bandits. They were bought and paid for, and what he said stood.
Radstac saw that realization reach the entire group. Comical indeed. But she didn't laugh. Instead she set about explaining how they could take the camp.
THEY HAD TO kill one to prove they were serious. Likely they'd have to kill all these Felk in the end, Radstac figured. What were they going to do—take prisoners?
The bandits prowled silently into their positions, ringing the little clearing. None of the Felk had a weapon in hand. A crossbow leaned against a tumbled log, but no one was near it. Frog shot an arrow into the embers of the cooking fire, sending up a cloud of sparks.
"Surrender yourselves—now!" Radstac called. She was behind a thick tree trunk, observing the camp through one eye.
For soldiers—for Felk soldiers, who had supposedly conquered the north half of this Isthmus—they did not respond professionally. The four in uniforms and the two robed figures all leaped to their feet, looking desperately around, seeing nothing but the surrounding woods. No one even seemed to know from which direction the arrow had come.
Radstac called again for their surrender. This gave one of the soldiers the idea of grabbing up his sword and chopping it through the air.
"Come and fight us, you dogs!"
It was the sort of heroic drivel Radstac had heard on many battlefields in her time. It was most often cried out by simpletons who had never before lifted a blade against an enemy, but who had heard exotic tales of war all their lives.
And like many of those, these were the last words ever said by the Felk soldier. Frog was as well camouflaged among the trees as the rest of the band, but he had taken up a blind that gave him clear sight lines into the camp. He put a shaft into the soldier's face. Radstac knew how taut the lad could draw that bow, and the force of the blow lifted the soldier off his feet. Blood sprayed. The sword thumped the ground.
Most persuasively of all, it took a long, grueling moment for the man to die, and he was not quiet about it. His fellow Felk agreed to surrender the next time Radstac called for it.
The bandits took the camp.
Deo asked questions, first of the soldiers. They replied readily. Yes, they were scouting ahead of the main body of the army. Yes, Trael was the next target of the Felk, so far as they knew. The city-state possessed no adequate defenses that they had observed. It would fall.
The bandits helped themselves to what rations they found. They divvied up the Felk weapons, eyeing the blades critically, debating the virtues of balance and heft. Deo confiscated the crossbow for himself
When Deo motioned for the two wizards to be brought forward, the bandits quieted. They were uneasy about the two robed specters in their midst, despite the fact that they wore perfectly ordinary faces .and had the same number of limbs as everyone else present. Even the Felk soldiers, remarkably enough, appeared to share in the uneasiness.
Radstac remained at Deo's side. The wizards' hands were bound, but she didn't know how well this would hinder their powers—if at all. Though magic was practiced and relatively accepted on the Southern Continent, she had never actually encountered a practitioner. They tended to live remote, cloistered lives.