Good Company

by Dale Lucas

  Elvaris suddenly lurched upright. She swayed for a moment, then drew her sword and leveled it. “Let her go,” she commanded. Rem could see beads of sweat on her dirt-streaked face, the way she breathed in ragged gulps. The pain of that leg wound had to be fantastic, and yet there she stood, trying to still do her duty.

  “Toffey,” the Raven said.

  The bowman swung his drawn arrow from Rem to Elvaris. He couldn’t hold that draw much longer. Rem could clearly see the strain in his shoulders.

  Tzimena suddenly stopped her struggling. “No!” she cried.

  “You’ll come with me?” the Raven asked.

  Tzimena was staring at Elvaris, giving a silent command with her eyes. She nodded. “I will.”

  Elvaris took a single step. “Milady!”

  The Raven drew Tzimena close, an almost loving gesture. Tzimena threw up her hands. “Stand down,” she said to her bodyguard. Then she looked to Rem. “Both of you. He won’t hurt you if I just go.”

  Elvaris shook her head. “My job is to keep you alive, milady—”

  “This is what keeps me alive,” Tzimena said. “And the two of you. For now.”

  “Sir?” the archer said. “What about this one?” He swung his arrow back and forth between Rem and Elvaris, not sure which was the more important target now. Rem could see the strain sending tremors through his whole body.

  The Raven looked to Rem, then to Elvaris. His expression was quizzical—an unspoken challenge. Well? Will you or won’t you?

  Rem threw down his sword. Elvaris did the same.

  The Raven smiled. “Smart,” he said. “All that remains is to stay here after we’ve gone. See to that one”—he indicated Elvaris—“she doesn’t deserve to die on this road. Not today.”

  “If you hurt her,” Rem said, staring right at him.

  “She’ll be safer with me than anywhere in this world,” the Raven said, smiling with honest satisfaction. “On that, you have my word. Lower your arrow, Toffey.”

  The archer, Toffey, let out a long, relieved sigh as he simultaneously lowered the bow and slowly released his draw. He turned to the Raven and was about to speak when something long and sharp suddenly bit right into his skull and sent him tumbling sideward. It was an arrow, and it had killed him before he’d even known it was coming.

  The Raven yanked Tzimena into his arms and pulled her out into the road, back toward where his half-ruined cage stood on its little two-wheeled cart amid the ruins of the larger ox wain. Rem swung his gaze about, trying to find the sniper who’d put that arrow in Toffey’s skull.

  She stood about ten yards away, on the verge of the road, nearer the fallen redwood that blocked their retreat. It was Galen, face a mask of icy, lethal determination. The scout held a compact, elegantly curved compound bow, and she already had another arrow nocked and drawn.

  “Let the lady go!” she shouted. Rem had no doubt that if she loosed that arrow it would hit its mark.

  The Raven stood, arms locked around Tzimena, using her as a shield. Tzimena looked as though she had given up her struggle to be free of him, perhaps waiting for a better opportunity to present itself.

  Rem looked back and forth between the two, wondering what would happen. It was only as he swung his gaze toward Galen that he saw another form bleeding out of the smoke swirling behind her.

  “Galen, behind you!” Rem cried.

  Galen spun, turning fully around in the span of a single breath. Her would-be assailant—another of the Raven’s outlaws—charged out of the smoke as she whirled, and took an arrow in his throat. As he fell, choking on his own blood, Galen snatched another arrow from her quiver and spun back to face the Raven again.

  But the Raven was on the move. He was yanking Tzimena along, one arm held in an iron grip, across the road and into the dense green foliage on the far side.

  Rem snatched up his sword and took off running.

  “I’m going to regret this,” he said to himself, then plunged into the brush after them.

  Twilight fell hard upon them, the sun lost behind the encroaching mountains and many ranks of enormous trees, shadows deepening moment by moment, the forest choked with lingering clouds of smoke from the spent blasting spheres and the Devils’ firebombs.

  Emerging from the brush on the verge of the road, Rem saw the Raven just ahead, Tzimena in tow, speeding through the ferns and the undergrowth, wending around the enormous trees, due west, toward the river. Even as Rem gave chase, he began to realize that the woods around him were full of activity. He heard the ring of swords and shouted orders, saw the Raven’s outlaws retreating on paths of their own off to his left and right. Clearly some of the others in Rem’s party—the lord marshal, Wallenbrand, perhaps Tuvera and Redriga—had made it off the road and taken the fight to the outlaws. The outlaws, now seeing their master freed, fell back rapidly, two by two. Half the travelers were dead, and the outlaws had what they wanted; there was no point in fighting any longer.

  Rem didn’t like all the chaos. His goal was singular: he wanted to wrest Tzimena from the clutches of the Red Raven. He didn’t care if the Raven escaped; he didn’t care if he had to kill the man or any of his servants in order to succeed; he only knew that, with so many dead and so much blood shed, the only thing that could possibly assuage the sense of failure that threatened to overwhelm him was making sure that the Raven didn’t get away with the Lady Tzimena. It was that simple. If they couldn’t deliver the Raven himself safely to the Duke of Erald, the least he could do was save the duke’s bride-to-be.

  Torval, he suddenly thought. Gods and ministers of grace, what happened to him? He opened the rear gates of the cart and was the first out, but I was so eager to get Elvaris and Tzimena to cover that I lost track of him! What if he’s lying back on that road, right now, bleeding, dying, torn to pieces by the explosion?

  Then there’s no hope for him, a calm inward voice replied. The girl is your mission now. Get her away from that smirking bastard from the cage, and you’ll have done something worthwhile today. Mourn Torval when you know that he’s gone, not before.

  His foot caught a root and Rem nearly went sprawling. Miraculously, he managed to right himself and begin his pursuit again. Somewhere close, off to his right, he caught sight of fleet figures moving through the brush, shouting short, sharp reports and commands back and forth between them. He dared a look and saw that it was two of the Raven’s men—the Devils of the Weald—dressed in the same woodland greens and hoods as the two men slain on the road by Galen. Off in the distance, a hundred yards away or more, Rem could just make out other figures moving through the greenery, on the same westward path, stretched out in a broad, spacious line. Clearly the outlaws had a plan and they were now following it, affecting a swift and orderly retreat that would’ve made a veteran mercenary captain proud.

  The river. There must be some way the lot of them planned to cross the river. If they could make it across swiftly and destroy their own means of passage so no one following could use it, that would give them every advantage. There’d be no hope of staying close on their trails or tracking them back to their hidden lair after that.

  But I’m not trying to track them all back to anywhere, Rem reminded himself. My only task is to get Tzimena out of that bastard’s bloodied hands. That’s all. Nothing more.

  Up ahead the roar of the river increased as Rem drew near. Briefly he lost sight of the Raven and Tzimena on their headlong plunge through the brush, but suddenly, there were two moving bodies cutting north to run parallel to the river instead of heading directly for it. Maybe there was a deer path that they followed? Some deadfall they had to move around? From Rem’s vantage behind them, his world an unbroken screen of knotty tree bark, fern fronds, and tree boughs, the finer details of the forest and the terrain were lost. Worse, the light around him was fading fast.

  Rem suddenly saw a bare track of earth bending away from the trodden path that he ran upon. It headed right toward the path that the Raven and Tzimena were on, d
ead-ending on a little rise above and ahead of them.

  He made his decision instantly and followed the track. This was his chance. If he could get ahead of them and cut them off—

  He made the rise, leapt over a fallen log, hit the ground on the far side, and spun, righting himself. He was in their path now, sword at the ready.

  The Raven skidded to a stop. Tzimena kept running, trying to use momentum to yank herself out of his grip and hurry to Rem, but her kidnapper’s hold was ironclad. She screamed as her arm was yanked back toward him and her feet slid out from under her. Tzimena hit the forest floor with a cry and cursed. The Raven, his own sword leveled in his left hand and ready for a duel, reached out with his free right hand and dragged Tzimena back toward him by her dress.

  Rem waited, trying to size the man up. If he was, in fact, Korin Lyr of Erald, then he would’ve had good sword training all through his youth and young manhood. If he’d managed to make a living in these woods as an outlaw, that would’ve provided him even more valuable experience. He was also left-handed, presenting a number of challenges for Rem. No matter what, the contest ahead would be a deadly one, and Rem couldn’t afford to lose.

  You’re also exposed, he reminded himself. Any one of his Devils could sneak up on you from behind here. They’re just a little ways off in the woods, at your back. If one of them sees you here, standing toe to toe with their master . . .

  “Let me pass,” the Raven said.

  “Let her go,” Rem countered.

  The Raven yanked Tzimena closer. “She’s safer with me than she’ll ever be with you.”

  “Don’t do this, Rem,” Tzimena said, her face truly pained.

  “Are you telling me you want to go with him?” Rem asked.

  “I’m telling you I don’t want anyone else to die to keep me away from him,” she said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  The Raven shot a glance at her then: shock, hurt. It was as if that was the first time he truly knew—truly believed—that Tzimena didn’t want to run away with him into the woods to be an outlaw’s wife.

  “You can’t mean that,” the Raven began. “I told you—”

  She turned on him, defiant and angry. “Aye, Korin, you told me—but you never asked me.”

  Rem took a single step to close the distance between them. The Raven’s momentary distraction was blown away when he saw Rem’s advance. He yanked Tzimena close, into his arms, and held her tightly while still extending his sword in his left hand. She was his shield now. Rem couldn’t strike or attack in any way without endangering her.

  The Raven’s eyes flicked sideward—noting something, focusing on something just over Rem’s right shoulder. Rem knew exactly what that meant, even before he heard the low, slight scuff of a boot on the loamy earth.

  He spun just in time to parry a dagger thrust from the man who’d been sneaking up behind him. While the would-be knife man cursed and moved to make another strike, Rem brought the pommel of his sword around in a flat, backhand arc that connected hard with the villain’s jaw and sent him plummeting to the ground, dazed and bleeding from the mouth.

  But he wasn’t alone. There were three Devils on hand now, all approaching from what had been Rem’s rear just moments ago. Two were men—one with a sword, another with a hand ax—while the third was female—young, ruddy faced, bearing in her hands a longbow with an arrow already nocked but not yet drawn.

  Cack, Rem thought. Not much I can do against these three.

  He heard the rattle of fern fronds and spun again. The Raven wasn’t standing alone, either. Two more outlaws had joined him, also armed, also closing on Rem and ready for a fight.

  The Raven and five accomplices in all.

  Rem was surrounded.

  He had only one means of escape: the river. No one blocked his path toward it, and it was only about twenty yards from where he stood. That girl with the bow might be able to hit a moving target, but there was no way he could stand against all these armed assailants and come out on top. He was good, but he wasn’t that good.

  “Drop your sword,” the Raven said.

  Rem did as commanded.

  The Raven smiled—a rather sad smile, Rem thought—then gave a little nod.

  Rem knew what that meant and dove just as he heard the twang of the loosed bowstring. He hit the ground, saw the arrow zip lightning-quick through the empty air he’d just occupied, then scurried up onto his feet again and took off sprinting.

  “Run!” Tzimena screamed.

  “Take him!” the Raven ordered.

  Rem faintly heard a bow creak and the string twang again. He half expected to feel the bite of an arrow an instant later, but instead the missile plunged finger deep in the trunk of a cedar that he went speeding past.

  The river, make the river, get to the river.

  He heard boots pounding the forest floor, the rattle of disturbed underbrush, cries of exhortation and hatred.

  “Get him!”

  “He’s going in!”

  “Shoot him, Derva! Now!”

  Rem leapt from a little bluff on the riverbank right into the roiling current. The water was cold—colder than he’d anticipated. That bone-numbing cold stole his breath as wet, frigid darkness engulfed him. Rem kicked for the surface in answer, desperate for air, for some sense of control.

  He broke the surface and drank in a lungful. Blinking water from his eyes, trying to tread water even as the current swept him along, Rem looked back at the place he’d just abandoned. He saw the Raven’s outlaws standing on the shore, receding, staring, cursing, farther and farther away by the second.

  The current had him now. It was fast. He slammed into a rock, rolled around it, and was dragged underwater on its far side.

  Well, he thought, if Torval’s dead, I’m about to join him . . .

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Upon leaping out of the ox wain, Torval had scurried under the only cover available: the little two-wheeled cart that supported the Red Raven’s cage. For an instant the world was all fire and roar, ringing ears and blunt concussive force. The cage cart bucked and skidded backward in the mud a bit, but Torval was still sheltered beneath it. He might have blacked out—he couldn’t be sure—but soon enough, the world around him came into focus again, and the dwarf realized that he was not, in fact, dead and blasted to a million pieces. Only then did he finally stir.

  He was shocked to find that the cage cart hadn’t just skidded through the mud in answer to the explosion, but collapsed. Its entire ruined bulk lay atop him, and it took a great deal of effort to force himself upright and shrug all the wreckage off himself. When Torval finally managed to do so, he saw a ruined landscape in front of him that looked like the aftermath of a major military action. Every tree limb that had hung too close to the explosion was now splintered or in flames. A dead man lay just a few feet away—an arrow protruding from his skull—while another lay farther on, heaped right in the road beside the fallen tree that now barricaded the road. Smoke and the smell of charred wood clung to everything. The world was hazy and stinking and indistinct. Torval breathed the vile air and thanked a whole panoply of gods he didn’t believe in that he was still alive to smell it.

  Movement to his left. Torval turned and peered through the smoke. It was one of the Lady Tzimena’s guards—Galen, was it?—helping Elvaris to her feet. Elvaris was wounded—he could tell by her uneasy gait—but Torval couldn’t tell precisely what had happened to her. The dwarf turned in a full circle to survey the scene.

  All that remained of the oxcart were two broken wheels and a lot of charred wreckage. Farther ahead, the ox lay dead in the mud, though it looked as if the animal had succumbed to several of the Devils’ arrows long before the wain exploded. Beyond the dead ox still hitched in traces without a cart, Torval saw more prone figures through the swirling smoke: dead horses, dead bandits, dead allies. Only a few live bodies moved among the ruin.

  One of them, Torval suddenly realized, was the lord marshal. For the first time, the p
roud soldier had allowed his shoulders to slump, his weariness and despair to register through his normally strong frame. He was picking out their own dead from among the slain on the road, dragging them away from any beast or bandit who lay too close, gathering them at the verge of the road. Beyond him, Torval thought he saw more moving forms—one sitting, wounded, another tending the wounded person—but the air was too hazy to make out just who it was.

  “Torval!” Elvaris called. She sounded very surprised to see him.

  Torval turned toward the swordswoman. Blinked. Raised a hand.

  “Here,” he said weakly, and stumbled away from the cart wreckage to meet her.

  Elvaris sat on a fallen, hollowed-out log, one leg stretched out straight along its surface. Galen, the scout from the Lady Tzimena’s company, was examining her companion’s wound. As Torval tottered closer, he could just make out its particulars: a big, jagged piece of wooden shrapnel lodged in Elvaris’s left thigh, blood already coagulating around it. If she hoped to save her leg, that huge splinter needed to come out, but removing it would most likely provoke a new round of bleeding that could kill her.

  “That’s bad,” Torval said, gesturing at the wound. “Needs cauterizing.”

  “I agree,” Galen said calmly. “Care to build me a fire and heat me up a blade?”

  Torval nodded. As he turned to shuffle away, Elvaris spoke.

  “I thought we’d lost you for sure,” she said. “After the explosion—”

  “The cage cart,” he said with a weak gesture. “I was underneath. I guess it saved me.”