Get Her Back (Demontech) Page 2

  Haft snorted. “It must be nice to know I’m so universally loved.”

  Spinner was so wrapped up with his own thoughts that he didn’t hear Haft. Fletcher ignored him.

  “So, now that everything else is ready,” Haft said, looking around when nobody replied, “where’s my guide?”

  “I found him trying to hide,” said Lieutenant Balta, commander of the platoon of Skraglander Bloody Axes. He had a firm grip on the arm of the seaman who had told Alyline about the sothar player he’d heard in the nomads’ camp. The “guide” looked distinctly unhappy.

  Haft took his leave of Spinner with a mock bow, and strode to Balta and the guide.

  “I can’t just call you ‘hey you’,“ he said. “What’s your name?”

  “I-It’s Jurnieks, Lord.” To Jurnieks, Haft looked, as did Spinner, to be far too young and junior to be in command, but the two obviously were running things—as near as Jurnieks could tell—as equals. They must be nobles of some sort, although he’d heard the fierce-looking soldiers with the bearskin trim on their maroon-striped cloaks call Haft “Sir.” And he’d never heard of the Frangerian Marines deferring to people because of their birth rank.

  “It’s time we were off,” Haft said. “Too much time has passed since the Golden Girl and her escort left. We need to move fast if we hope to catch them before they reach the nomads’ camp. Can you ride a horse?”

  “Y-Yes, Lord,” Jurnieks said, bobbing his head. But he didn’t sound very positive about it, which was fine with Haft as he’d rather walk himself.

  But time... Yes, Haft thought, we can’t take the time to go on foot. At least he wouldn’t be the only one uncomfortable on horseback.

  “Lieutenant Balta,” Haft said, “are your men ready?”

  “They’ve been ready for some time, Sir Haft.”

  Haft gave Spinner a cocked-eyebrow look as though saying, “See how you’ve made people wait?” Out loud he said to Balta, “Let’s not keep them waiting any longer.”

  An hour later Haft and a thirty-man platoon of Skraglander Bloody Axes, with Jurnieks as their reluctant guide, were atop the plateau of the High Desert, which rose some two hundred yards above the narrow strip of coastal plain that the refugee train was following.

  Haft rose in his stirrups to look over the landscape. He squinted to protect his eyes from the wind, which was gusting from the west. The High Desert looked very different from the Low Desert into which everybody in his party, except for their guide who hadn’t been with them at the time, had made a foray.

  The High Desert didn’t undulate as gently as the Low, which had given the quick-glance impression of being table-flat. Instead it looked jagged, even though no single place appeared to be much higher than any other. The ground did seem, however, to rise slowly into the distance. Nor did this desert appear to have numerous rills and small streams wending their way through it, flowing into or out of ponds and small lakes. What little green met the eye looked sparse and malnourished, with none of it even ankle high. He looked down at the nearby vegetation, expecting to see it all bent to the east by the west wind that buffeted him. But it wasn’t. While the leaves pointed to the east, the twigs and branches went every which way, twisted by time and variable wind direction. A sharp blast unexpectedly struck him from the north, rocking him in his saddle. That was another reason for him to prefer being on his feet instead of on a horse; he’d be lower to the ground, and the wind wouldn’t hit him so hard.

  But he knew he had to be on horseback, and tried to banish thoughts of walking.

  As he settled back in the saddle, he adjusted the axe hanging on his belt. The axe had a two and a half foot handle, with a half moon blade projecting a foot beyond the handle’s end, and an equal length down its length. A thick spike opposite the blade tapered to a sharp point. The face of the blade bore a rampant eagle. He got his name because when he used the axe, it was as though he became its handle, its haft. Man and weapon seemed to function as one.

  Looking over the landscape again, Haft realized that he would have to change his double-sided reversible cloak from mottled green to brown-side-out. Rising ripples in the air made the High Desert looked sere, which it probably was. At first he thought the ripples were caused by heat, then he realized with a shudder that they might be a form of demon he’d never heard of—the wind didn’t seem to affect the ripples, and there didn’t seem to be much heat in the High Desert.

  In no place was there any sign of habitation. Not a house, not a tent, not a tendril of smoke rising from a cook fire. There wasn’t even a road or a track that could lead to people or their places.

  “How can anyone live here?” Haft wondered out loud. He twisted to his left and shouted, “Jurnieks! Which way?”

  “You don’t need to shout, Lord,” Jurnieks said from just a few feet to Haft’s right rear, “I’m right here.”

  Haft jerked to his right and glowered at the guide. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” he demanded.

  “You didn’t ask, Lord,” Jurnieks said in a fatalistic tone.

  Haft jutted his face toward Jurnieks and said, “Your place is to the left rear of your commander, not the right,” snarling to cover his embarrassment. He looked toward the horizon that, because of its gentle rise, looked a little bit too near, and said thoughtfully, “Actually, you’re the guide, you should be in front.

  “Yes, Lord. In front.” Jurnieks swallowed, then eased his horse forward, looking uncertainly at the ground and the too-close horizon.

  “What are you waiting for,” Haft asked. “You’re the guide. So guide.”

  “But I—, I don’t recognize anything here.”

  Haft gave him a look that was more astonished than he actually felt—he could well understand someone not recognizing anything here. He didn’t think there was much to distinguish any part of the landscape from any other part.

  “But you came this way only two days ago,” he said.

  “Yes, Lord,” Jurnieks said, bobbing his head. “Two days ago. Two days caravan travel that way.” He pointed south. “I didn’t come across here.” He made a sweeping gesture at the landscape to his front.

  Haft groaned. Why hadn’t he, or anybody else, thought of that? This wasn’t even where Alyline and her Zobran Royal Lancers had climbed to the High Desert’s plateau!

  “Balta!” he shouted.

  “Yes, Sir Haft,” the Bloody Axes’ commander replied, also from very near by. He had a scarf wrapped around his face to keep wind-blown dust out of his nose and mouth.

  “We need to backtrack to where Alyline climbed the palisade.”

  “Certainly, Sir Haft,” Balta said with a knowing nod. He turned in his saddle and raised an arm to signal his platoon. The Bloody Axes set out in good order to the south.

  “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?” Haft muttered. “And you didn’t tell me!”

  “Sir Haft? I didn’t quite catch that,” Balta said, smiling.

  “Never mind, it was nothing.” Haft nonetheless made a sour moue.

  Before the entire platoon got moving south, there was a commotion at the edge of the plateau where they had come up.

  “Sir Haft!” a Bloody Axe near the edge called. “Sir Haft!” someone closer to Haft repeated, and another yet closer and another, until a grinning Bloody Axe a mere fifteen yards from Haft called out, “Sir Haft!”

  At the second call, Haft had turned back to see who was calling him. Well before the closest called, he could see that the only way for him to know why he was being called was to go and see for himself why several of the Bloody Axes were clustered together at the edge of the plateau.

  “Wait here,” he told Jurnieks. “Stay with him, Balta.” He turned his mare and headed toward the end of the column.

  “Look what we found trying to follow us, Sir Haft,” one of the Bloody Axes, Farkas by name, said when Haft reached the small knot of riders.

  What Haft saw was a funny-looking little man. His face was deeply lined and his sk
in was a bronzed tan. A colorful scarf was wrapped around his head. He wore a colorfully-patterned cloth that wrapped around his waist and hung almost to his ankles. Rope sandals were on his feet. He rode sidesaddle on a donkey, and led a pack mule laden with chests and bolts of cloth. He looked indignant until he looked at Haft, at which point his expression became belligerent.

  “Lord Haft,” the man said, “do you not recognize me?”

  Haft looked from the odd man to his pack mule and what it carried and back to him. “I don’t know your name,” he said. “But it looks like you’re a mage from the Kondive Islands.”

  The man gave a shallow bow while tapping his forehead, his lips and his chest. “I have the honor of being Tabib, Mage Second Class—from the Kondive Islands, exactly as Lord Haft has said. When the Lord Spinner realized that you had left without a mage, he assigned to me the honor of accompanying you.”

  “I see,” Haft said. “I sincerely hope we won’t need your talents or magics, but you’re welcome, Tabib.” Then to Farkas, “Put him in the middle of the column.” Back to Tabib, “That way you’ll be able to respond quickly wherever you might be needed. But I still hope you won’t be needed.

  “And cover your body before this infernal wind flays your skin to the bone!”

  Tabib smiled a secret smile, gave another shallow bow and ignored what Haft said about the wind flaying him. “It is better to have a mage and not need him than to need a mage and not have one,” he quoted sagely—or a bit self-importantly, as Haft thought.

  Haft turned and trotted his mare back to where Balta and Jurnieks waited for him. He told them about the Kondive Islander mage as they began leading the column south, and concluded with a sour, “Like all mages, he has no lack of a sense of self-worth.”

  While Haft was seeing to Tabib, Balta had sent three riders ahead as scouts. They were clearly visible more than half a mile ahead, bent over from a wind that was striking them from the north.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was late afternoon when the three-man point team stopped to wait for Haft and the rest of the small column to close the half mile gap between them. They had found the place where the Golden Girl and her Zobran Royal Lancers had reached the top of the High Desert’s plateau. By now, the runaway and her escort had a nearly two-day lead. Haft and Lieutenant Balta agreed it was unlikely that they’d catch up with Alyline before she reached the Desert Nomads’ camp. They also thought that the less time she spent there before they arrived, the easier it would be to extract her and any surviving Royal Lancers. The fearsome reputation of the nomads left them with no illusions about Alyline receiving a friendly welcome on her arrival at their camp.

  They turned inland, following the clear track Alyline’s party had left on the barren ground. In addition to the lead scouts they now put out flankers, two riders to each side, a quarter of a mile out from the short column, to watch for possible danger coming from the sides.

  Haft had hoped that the constant wind would die down, but it didn’t. All it did was change from gusts to a steady northerly wind. The wind didn’t, however, cover over the tracks they were following—the ground was too hard for the wind to quickly shift its surface, as such wind would cover tracks made in sand or snow.

  “What are you saying?” Haft asked Jurnieks. The guide was twenty yards ahead of Haft, and had been mumbling to himself. But not so quietly as to escape Haft’s attention.

  “N-Nothing, L-L—, ah, S-Sir Haft,” Jurnieks said, startled by the unexpected question—he hadn’t realized he was talking loudly enough to be overheard. And he still didn’t know whether to address Haft as “Sir,” as the Bloody Axes did, or “Lord,” as just about everybody else in the main column seemed to.

  “Well, then, be quiet about it. We don’t need unnecessary conversation alerting any hidden watchers that we’re here.”

  “Yes, Lord,” Jurnieks said meekly. Yes, he didn’t think he should let this young lord, or whatever it was that Haft was, know he’d been complaining to himself that he wasn’t needed as a guide. Certainly not looking at the clear trail the lady and her escorts left behind. But, “... alerting any hidden watchers that we’re here...?” If there were any hidden watchers, they could easily see the party as it moved across the barren landscape—and see it long before they could hear any mumbling.

  Hmm, he thought, maybe I should complain louder and get sent back. If there are any hidden watchers, one man’s mumbling isn’t going to alert them.

  But he said nothing. The huge war axe Haft carried so casually convinced him to keep his peace. As did the demon weapon the Frangerian carried hanging from his saddle’s pommel.

  “Stay close to me, guide,” Haft suddenly said as he clumsily heeled his mare to a trot. Jurnieks was just about as clumsy in getting his horse to trot. Even though Haft hadn’t mentioned him, Balta also came along—but only after signaling the rest of the column to maintain pace. Shortly, the trio caught up with the scouts.

  “Greetings, Sir Haft,” said Hegyes, who led the three-man point team.

  “Sir Haft! Sir Haft!” chimed in Asztalos and Halasz, the other two men.

  After returning their greetings, Haft asked, “Are you having any trouble following the trail?”

  “They left a trail a blind Zobran could follow,” Hegyes said with a laugh.

  “Maybe that’s because they are Zobrans, and that’s the only way they can find their way back!” Asztalos added, and snickered.

  “That’s enough of that!” Haft snarled. “We’re all on the same team here.” But he had to turn his face away so the point men wouldn’t see his grin.

  Balta had ridden twenty or so yards ahead, carefully looking at the ground and seeing how clear the trail was. After a few moments study, satisfied, he stopped to let the others catch up to him.

  “Sir Haft,” he said when they did, “the trail is as clear as Hegyes said. But I think it was so we could easily follow it, not for them to find their way back. I think maybe the Zobrans are hoping for reinforcements.” He stood in his stirrups and looked into the distance. “I also think they’re going slower than they could, to give us time to catch up.”

  “Are you sure?” Haft asked. He looked at the ground, but couldn’t tell much more than the direction in which Alyline and the Zobrans were going. “How long do you think it will take for us to catch them?”

  Balta shook his head. “At the pace we’ve been going, too long. But there’s another way we can travel. Canter a mile, trot a mile, and dismount to walk our horses a mile. Once an hour, stop for ten minutes so our mounts can rest. We’ll cover a lot more ground in a day that way, and not risk exhausting our animals.”

  Haft nodded sagely and seemed to be considering the wisdom of Balta’s suggestion. But what he was really thinking was that he didn’t want to be on a horse in the first place, much less on one that trotted and cantered. The one time he had tried running alongside a horse that was going at that variable pace had tired him too much, and he’d had to mount up and ride. But Balta was right, they needed to go faster. That way, maybe they could catch Alyline before she and the Zobrans reached the Desert Nomads’ camp, and turn them back before they got into trouble. And he did like the idea of getting off to walk, even if it was for only one mile in three. Too bad the walking couldn’t be two miles out of three, so he wouldn’t have to spend so much time on the horse.

  Haft had no illusions about the friendliness of the nomads of the High Desert, not after his experiences with the nomads of the Low Desert, who weren’t thought to be nearly as fierce. He wanted to find the Golden Girl and the Royal Lancers before the nomads found them. So trot and canter. At least he’d get to walk one mile in three.

  “Can we catch them in time traveling that way?” he asked.

  Balta shrugged. “It depends on how far it is to the nomad camp.” He looked at Jurnieks. “What does our guide say?”

  Jurnieks wanted to shrink into invisibility. Instead of answering directly, he told of his escape from the Dese
rt Nomads.

  “When I fled the camp, the first night I used the stars to guide me seaward,” he said. “The next morning I laid low. I could still see the camp on the horizon, so I knew the Nomads could see me in that emptiness if I stood up. Nobody came my way, but I was afraid to move because if anybody in the camp looked in my direction, they might see me. Hunger hadn’t set in yet, but I was growing parched and needed water.”

  Haft interrupted him. “Suck on a smooth pebble. That’ll make your saliva flow and make it longer before you have to drink. Continue.”

  “Suck on a smooth pebble, I’ll remember that,” Jurnieks said distractedly, hoping never to need to remember that, then resumed his story.

  “The wind raised a dust storm between me and the Nomads’ camp. Since I could no longer see them, I thought they wouldn’t be able to see me if I stood up and ran, so I did. That night I licked dew from some damp rocks I had found by touch.”

  Then he developed a routine of movement, going toward the rising sun in the morning, and keeping the sun to his back in the afternoon. He thought he found something to eat a couple of times, but he wasn’t sure. Almost the only drink he had was dew he licked off rocks. He was constantly on the move until exhaustion made him stop to sleep. But he never slept for long, he was too afraid of being caught by the nomads and tortured as punishment for escaping. He repeated his movement sequence daily until he almost fell off the edge of the plateau, and scrambled down to join the caravan he was fortunate enough to find passing on the narrow coastal plain.