Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) Page 4

  Xundoe looked at him, not understanding.

  “If you want to throw something while you’re running, you have to practice throwing while you’re running.”

  “But I’ve thrown phoenix eggs before, you’ve seen me.”

  “Yes we did, but you were standing, not running.”

  Xundoe still didn’t understand.

  Haft shook his head in exasperation; it was obvious to him, why didn’t the mage see what he was saying?

  Spinner explained it. “When you are standing and throwing, or shooting a bow, or swinging a sword, your target is in the same place you expect at the end of your movement as the beginning. If you do it while you’re running, where the target is doesn’t matter because you have moved, are still moving. You have to adjust for that movement or you’ll miss. You were in one place when you began your throw, the phoenix egg had a trajectory to where you were throwing it. But when you released it, you were in a different place and the trajectory had to be different. You didn’t make the adjustment. That’s what Haft means. It’s why archers almost always miss when they shoot on the run. If you had stopped before you threw, the egg would have gone where you wanted it to.”

  The mage looked from Spinner to Haft and back with dawning understanding. “You mean . . .”

  “Stop, plant your feet, and then throw,” Haft said. “You didn’t hurt any of us. Now stop worrying about it. Just make sure you do it right the next time.”

  “Are you sure?” Xundoe said hopefully. “Really sure it’s all right?”

  Spinner shook his head. “It’s not all right, you could have done serious damage to us. But you didn’t, and you learned a lesson, you won’t make the same mistake again.”

  “You’re right, I won’t make the same mistake again.” Xundoe grinned broadly, though his face was still drawn.

  “Right.” Spinner looked back at where food was being prepared. “Now let’s go and see if anything’s ready to eat yet.”

  Silent and Wolf returned a couple of hours later. They found no indication of a larger force. They wondered where the Jokapcul had been going. Were they the rear of a larger force moving toward the source of the Princedon Gulf, or somewhere else in the root of the peninsula? That didn’t seem likely, the road didn’t show much sign of recent traffic. Were they on their way to reinforce an outpost somewhere ahead? That was possible, so they’d have to be alert to danger from the front. Whatever the reason the Jokapcul platoon had been traveling along that road, they didn’t worry about it for the rest of that day; time enough for that on the morrow.

  By the time Silent and Wolf ate, it was late enough in the day that they decided to bivouac overnight in the clearing. The nearness of the bodies of the Jokapcul they’d killed didn’t bother anybody—they were buried, and the buried dead of an enemy weren’t a threat. In the morning Haft, as he usually did, led the three former Zobran poachers ahead to scout for danger along the way. Wolf, as he normally did, ranged ahead of them.

  It was just a walk in the shade for the scouts. Marks on the road showed two or three wagons had passed that way recently, as had some horses and a number of walking people. But none of the traces showed the marks of Jokapcul boots or shoeing. Soldiers often start a long march carrying unessential things. After they walk for long enough they begin to tire and want to lighten their loads, so they discard, bit by bit, anything they don’t really need for survival. Haft and his Zobrans found none of the leavings common to an army’s march along the sides of the rutted road. On the few occasions when Wolf came close enough to let them see him, he looked unconcerned. So after a few hours Haft let the Zobrans do some hunting, though he didn’t allow them time to dress their catch. They left several deer along the road for the company to pick up. The undulation of the land gradually increased, but it didn’t become sharp.

  In the middle of the afternoon, Birdwhistle was stalking a deer by himself when Wolf came to him. The animal was padding quietly at a fast walk when the Zobran first saw him, slipping from shadow to shadow with frequent pauses to sniff the air to his rear. When he reached Birdwhistle he turned about and growled low in his throat.

  “Someone’s up ahead?” the man asked. He didn’t have the difficulty accepting the wolf that Haft did.

  Wolf moved his head up and down, a nod.

  “Let’s get Haft.”

  Wolf shook his shoulders and, clamping his jaws on Birdwhistle’s sleeve, pulled. Birdwhistle went with him. As soon as he was sure the man wasn’t going to turn back, Wolf let go of his sleeve and led the way at a pace that allowed the man to move quietly until they came to a small hill. There, on a game trail that circled the base of the rise, Wolf gripped Birdwhistle’s sleeve again and pulled down. Birdwhistle lowered himself to the ground. Wolf bellied down next to him and crawled into the brush that covered the rise. Birdwhistle crawled with him; halfway up he began to hear voices from the other side. They stopped. Birdwhistle listened intently, occasionally making out a word. A faint whiff of fire drifted through the growth. After a few moments he became aware of Wolf watching him. He looked at Wolf and could have sworn the animal was looking at him expectantly, as though asking, “What are you going to do about it?”

  Birdwhistle mouthed, “Let’s go back,” and blinked in surprise when the wolf began working his way backward down the slope. He thought, Haft’s right, that animal understands too much.

  It didn’t take long for Wolf’s sense of smell to locate Haft.

  “What language were they speaking?” Haft asked after Birdwhistle told him what Wolf had guided him to.

  Birdwhistle was surprised, it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder about the language. “Zobran.”

  Haft thought they were still in Skragland, or maybe they’d reached the easternmost edge of the Princedons. He didn’t think they were in Zobra. So who might these people speaking Zobran be?

  “Men, or men and women?” he asked.

  “Men. I didn’t hear any women. Or children,” Birdwhistle added thoughtfully. Children would be harder to keep quiet. But men keeping quiet near a little-traveled road through an isolated land and speaking the language of a different country could be bandits, though maybe not—bandits sitting in ambush probably wouldn’t have a fire going.

  “Wait here.” Haft crossed the road. He was back in about a quarter hour with Archer and Hunter. Birdwhistle quickly briefed them on what he’d found.

  “Hunter,” Haft said when Birdwhistle was through, “go back and tell Spinner someone’s ahead and we’re checking them out.”

  As soon as Hunter was gone Haft had Birdwhistle lead him and Archer to a place where the foot of the rise was just visible.

  “Wait here,” he told them. “You, too,” he added to Wolf. Wolf made a brief whine, but lay down. Haft looked at him sternly for a moment, then handed his crossbow to Birdwhistle. He crouched and softly trotted to the foot of the rise. He squatted next to the game trail for a few minutes listening and smelling the air. He didn’t hear any voices, but did catch the faint smell of fire. Satisfied, he wended his way along the game trail, circling behind the rise away from the road. If an ambush was waiting, the bandits would be facing the road and maybe not watching their rear. When he was a little more than halfway around the rise he heard the wet snort of a horse, followed by soothing words to calm the beast. The voice was light—a woman’s, or a boy’s. He lowered into a squat and leaned forward to rest his upper body’s weight on his hands. He edged forward on hands and feet, with his head held as low as he could and still look ahead. A few yards farther along he saw what might be a gap in the bushes on the right side of the game trail. When he got close, he lowered himself to his belly and crawled.

  The break in the bushes was enough for him to see a small clearing from which brush had been removed. Several hobbled horses and a young woman were visible in the clearing. Her back was to him as she tended the horses. Four of them were eating from nosebags. When she turned, her profile told him she wasn’t a young woman—not yet—per
haps in another year or two. A horse snorted behind her; she looked back and spoke to it. Haft’s Zobran wasn’t very good, but it sounded to him like she said, “You’ve had enough, it’s someone else’s turn.” She held a wet leather bag in her hands and carried it to one of the horses without a nosebag. The horse dipped its head and drank when she held the bag in front of it.

  Horses with nosebags and an older girl tending them didn’t seem to Haft to portend the threat of an ambush. Still, he wanted to be more certain. As soon as the girl’s back was turned, he scooted forward and continued along the track. A few yards farther it branched. He followed the right branch. It passed near a wagon where a woman was nursing a babe and beneath which a few children were napping. Nothing he’d seen was threatening—just a woman, several children, and horses—but Birdwhistle had heard men talking. He reversed direction, found another game trail that roughly paralleled the one he’d followed before back to the front of the rise. How could he find out what, or who, was on the other side?

  He made his way back to the game trail where he’d begun his circuit of the rise and lay flat on it. From ground level, he saw the small tunnel under the lower branches of the bushes made by Birdwhistle and Wolf when they’d crawled up the slope. Before he was completely into the tunnel, his axe hung up on a bush. Swearing silently, he twisted so he could reach the buckles of his waist belt and the cross body belt and slipped them off. He felt naked without the axe when he resumed crawling. As he neared the top he heard rattling sounds from ahead.

  He caught his breath at the top of the rise. The brush was thin enough to let him see down to the bottom. An armed man sat cross-legged less than thirty feet away. His back was to Haft and a sheathed sword lay on the ground at his side. Six other armed men sat likewise in a close circle. All seven faced inward. Three of them wore the blue surcoats of the Zobran Royal Lancers. Were they refugees or deserters turned bandit?

  The rattling noise came again and one of the men flung his fist up and down, then threw the dice. He softly swore an oath that Haft understood quite well—it was an expression Zobran gamblers used when the dice went against them. The man to his left said something too softly for Haft to make out, which made the others laugh, and picked up the dice to roll in his turn. Haft watched and listened for a moment or two longer, wondering. At least seven armed men were quietly gathered close to a roadside, while their women, children, and horses were hidden away from the road—those were marks of bandits waiting for passing travelers to rob. Yet the armed men seemed to be paying no attention to the road, and he and the scouts hadn’t seen any sentries. It didn’t make sense.

  Haft slid backward until his feet told him he’d reached his axe. He wiggled his way past it, picked it up, and rose to a crouch.

  Spinner and Silent were with Archer and Birdwhistle when he got back to the tree. It only took a moment or two to relate what he’d seen—and hadn’t seen.

  “That’s very curious,” Spinner said. If they were bandits, where were their lookouts? If they weren’t bandits, why were the men gathered quietly by the road with their weapons ready? In either case, why weren’t they paying attention to the road?

  Throughout the telling, the scouts listened carefully and kept looking from Haft to the rise and back again. Silent was crouched in a squat. He didn’t look at Haft or the rise, but cocked his head as though he was listening to something only he could hear. Wolf sat next to the giant, tongue lolling from his open mouth, head cocked, ears perked, looking for all the world like he was aping Silent.

  When Haft was through, Silent stood, said, “Wait,” tapped Wolf on the shoulder, and moved toward the road. Wolf huffed a low ulgh! and followed.

  Spinner and Haft watched them disappear, then Spinner said to the scouts, “Stay here and keep alert.” He gestured to Haft and the two of them slipped through the woods back to the main body.

  “Did you put out security?” Haft asked partway back.

  Spinner shot him a glare. He never needed to be reminded about basic things such as putting out security; Haft sometimes did.

  Haft shrugged. “Never hurts to make sure,” he said dryly.

  The main body was a hundred and fifty yards back. Spinner and Haft quickly filled them in on what Haft had found. They left Fletcher and half of the fighters to protect the women and children, and took the other half forward as far as they thought was safe—they measured safety by how far the noises of the horses would carry. They left them there with orders to be prepared to move immediately.

  Silent and Wolf returned shortly after Spinner and Haft rejoined the scouts. They came from the opposite direction from where they’d left.

  “There are no sentries anywhere,” Silent reported in a low rumble. “Six more men are stationed fifty yards farther up the road. They aren’t paying any more attention than these are.” He shook his head. “Three of them are even asleep! We found a peddler’s wagon and more women and children. The women were at a stream doing laundry. I didn’t see the fires, but it smells like they’re starting to cook.”

  Wolf thumped his tail on the ground. Silent briskly rubbed his shoulders.

  “There are thirteen men in two groups,” Spinner said. “You saw no other men?”

  “That’s right.”

  “No sentries, the men you saw are armed but aren’t alert?”

  “Right again.”

  “Were any of the women armed?”

  Silent shook his head. “Only with knives.”

  Spinner and Haft turned away from the others and put their heads together to confer. After a moment they turned back.

  “Here’s what we are going to do.”

  Silent grinned, the scouts nodded grimly. Wolf wagged his tail.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  “Nobody move!” Spinner shouted.

  The seven men playing at dice jerked at the command and spun to face it, their hands reached for their weapons but stopped before touching them. Facing them at the top of the rise were a dozen men, half of whom held bows with arrows nocked and drawn, but not aimed. The others held swords. Two of the men glanced at their weapons, but the bowmen’s range was so short that their arrows would be in their targets before any of the seven could grab weapons and jump out of the way.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Spinner demanded in rough Zobran. He shifted his crossbow so it was pointed at the sky.

  Three of the men looked uncertainly at one another, the others stared at the bowmen covering them. No one spoke right away.

  At the same moment fifty yards farther along the road, Haft shouted, “Don’t move!” as he and a dozen horsemen abruptly appeared in a semicircle facing the six armed men at that end of the rough encampment.

  “Who’s your commander?” Haft asked in harshly spoken Zobran.

  He may as well not have asked for all the response he got.

  Screams of frightened women and children came from the trees away from the road. A loud, male voice called out, “Be calm, no one’s going to hurt you.” The screaming continued and the sound of running feet came to the two groups at the roadside.

  The thirteen men in the two groups jerked their heads toward the sounds, but none dared move. Outnumbered as they were and without their weapons in their hands, they couldn’t fight. But their women and children were being threatened, they had to do something. The tension was palpable.

  “Don’t do it,” Spinner said at his end as one man finally began to inch his hand closer to his bow.

  “Move and die,” Haft shouted at a man whose eyes flicked to his sword.

  Women and children burst upon the two groups and pulled up sharply at the sight of the armed men facing their men. The women and older children stood unsteadily, frightened and not knowing what to do. Small children bawled, then clung to their mothers and buried their faces in their skirts. A woman fell to her knees and cried with her face in her hands.

  A man in the first group, one of the three in the blue tunic of a Zobran Royal Lancer, swallowed
and held his hands open and wide. He slowly rose to his feet.

  “What do you want?” he demanded. “We’re poor refugees, we have little more than the clothes on our backs and a little bit of food.”

  Spinner lowered his crossbow and looked at the man. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Guma.”

  “You’re in command?”

  Guma looked at the others, they looked away. “As much as anyone,” he said as he looked back at Spinner.

  “Poor refugees?” he asked. “You are arrayed more like bandits sitting in an ambush.”

  “If we were bandits sitting in ambush, you wouldn’t have been able to sneak up on us like you did.”

  “So you didn’t expect anybody to come along now, that’s all,” Spinner retorted. “But you were in position if anybody did.”

  “Defensive position, we don’t plan to ambush anybody.”

  “How do you explain the peddler’s wagon. Who did you steal it from?”

  “The peddler is part of our party.”

  Suddenly Silent shouted, “No!” from behind the women and children.

  An arrow whizzed past Spinner’s head.

  There was a yelp and inarticulate shouts, then Silent called out, “I’ve got him.”

  “Hold!” Spinner shouted. “Be calm! Nobody gets hurt if everybody stays calm.”

  “That goes for you too!” Silent snarled at a half-grown boy struggling in the crook of his arm. The giant held a bow in his free hand taken from the boy. “This whelp thinks he’s ready to be a fighting man,” he said, not yelling but loud enough for everyone to hear. “That kind of thinking can get people unnecessarily killed.” He looked around and saw a woman with a anguished expression wringing her hands. “Is this one yours?” he demanded.

  The woman whimpered as she nodded.

  Silent put the boy on his feet and gave him a shove in her direction. “Keep better control of your sprat before he gets himself in trouble he can’t get out of.”

  The woman ran to her son and hugged him tightly then looked at Silent. Silent nodded curtly.